Academy-award winning author William Peter Blatty, who wrote both the screenplay and book “The Exorcist,” is helping Georgetown University students and others to prepare a canon lawsuit to be filed with the Archdiocese of Washington and the Vatican. Blatty, a Georgetown alumnus, seeks remedies “up to and including the possible removal or suspension of top-ranked Georgetown’s right to call itself Catholic or Jesuit in its fundraising and representations to applicants.”
The canon lawsuit is being prepared following an unprecedented reprimand by the Archbishop of Washington D.C., Cardinal Donald Wuerl, of the university and its first lay president, Dr. John DeGioia, for inviting HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to speak at a diploma ceremony Friday.
Secretary Sebelius has advanced the HHS mandate, which is part of ObamaCare, that forces Catholic-affiliated organizations, charities, schools, and hospitals to provide free contraceptives, sterilization procedures, and abortion-inducing drugs to their employees. In addition, Sebelius has been a proponent of late-term abortion and supporter of the murdered late-term abortionist, Dr. George Tiller.
Blatty is urging all Georgetown alumni, students, parents, faculty, and other interested parties, to join the lawsuit at www.gupetition.org. The author has asked The Cardinal Newman Society to advise the process of the suit and to provide documentation of the scandals that have compromised Georgetown’s Catholic identity. In response to Blatty’s request for its assistance, the Cardinal Newman Society writes:
We’re thrilled that the distinguished alumnus William Peter Blatty has invited us to assist him and others in their efforts to defend Georgetown’s Catholic mission from those who would undermine or abandon it. Such intervention is necessary only because Georgetown’s leadership has repeatedly demonstrated its unwillingness to uphold Georgetown’s obligations under the U.S. bishops’ guidelines, Ex corde Ecclesiae and Canon Law.
Following notice of the invitation of Secretary Sebelius to the university’s diploma ceremony at its Public Policy Institute, Blatty, a longtime financial contributor to Georgetown, said, “This is simply the last straw. The scandals that Georgetown has given to the faithful are too many to count, and too many to ignore any longer.”
Blatty, who is now retired and lives in Maryland, says that Georgetown is no longer true to the Catholic identity he knew as a member of the class of 1950. A full interview highlighting the reasons why he, and concerned alumni, have filed the canon lawsuit, can be found here.
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