The author of “The Exorcist” and who used Georgetown University in this book, is now planning to sue the school for not being Catholic enough. William Peter Blatty, a graduate of Georgetown was upset at the university’s invitation to Kathleen Sebelius, the Health and Human Sergice Secretary. She has been criticised by some Catholics for approving a policy which requires religious institutions to cover employee’s birth control costs.
William Peter Blatty, 85, credits a Georgetown scholarship with fostering his writing career, which includes an Academy Award for “The Exorcist,” a blockbuster based on his best-selling 1971 novel. In the book and movie, a Jesuit priest at Georgetown, the nation’s oldest Catholic university, struggles to save a demon-possessed girl.
“What I owe Georgetown, however, is nothing as compared to what Georgetown owes to its founders and the Christ of faith,” Blatty said in a statement.
The author says that Georgetown has violated church teaching for decades by inviting speakers who support abortion rights and refusing to obey instructions the late Pope John Paul II issued in 1990 to church-affiliated colleges and universities.
In response to criticism of the Sebelius speech, Georgetown president John J. DeGioia said this week that the university is “committed to the free exchange of ideas” even if it does not agree with all of them.
Blatty’s “indictment” against Georgetown charges the school with failing to recruit Catholic teachers and students, neglecting to instruct students in Catholic morality and failing to act in accord with church doctrine. He expects the suit to be filed in the Archdiocese of Washington’s court of canon law this fall.
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