Holy Cross is fortunate to benefit from the fiscal generosity
of alumni and friends whose contributions consistently
improve our College. Raising money for Holy Cross is a
necessary and honorable endeavor. It will allow for the
new buildings, technologies and other amenities critical
to providing the highest quality, modern education. However,
as I began to receive mailings about the “Lift High
the Cross” campaign, I became worried about the terminology
chosen for the project.
There is something particularly significant about attending
a Catholic college named after the ultimate Christian symbol—the
Cross. When we are called, as students and alumni, to be “men
and women for others,” we have the very name of our
College as a concrete source of inspiration and hope.
My concern is that this slogan belittles the true meaning
of lifting high the cross and too narrowly equates our “lifting” with
contributing money. The most important way we can all lift
high the cross is by living as proud alumni who make a
variety of meaningful contributions to the world. Being
ambassadors of the cross is a difficult and vital undertaking.
The heart and soul of the crucifix is being sadly overshadowed
by all the wrong that plagues the Church. I believe in
the academic, community and ethical excellence that mark
a Holy Cross education; when we take these values into
the world, we are living testaments to the integrity of
both the College of the Holy Cross and the cross itself.
I am confident that the dedicated staff and alumni who
manage the development campaign do realize that our actions
and characters far outweigh the amount of any check we
could write. My hope is that as we strive to raise the
excellence of Holy Cross through monetary contributions,
we remain aware of, and committed to, the true meaning
of “lifting high the cross.”
Marybeth Kennealy ’99
Charlestown, Mass.
My spring 2002 Holy Cross Magazine just arrived
in the mail. I stared at the cover photograph of “The ‘New’ Jesuits” for
a full two minutes, asking myself, “Are these men
priests, or not?!”
Good men of the Cross, put your clerics back on! Now,
more than ever, we need you to stand as visible manifestations
of Jesus in this world. Now, more than ever, we need that
gentle reminder of the call to vocation, celibacy, and
fidelity. Remember, each of you is an alter Christus. Don’t
be invisible. Don’t be anonymous. Don’t blend
in with the crowd with casual-day attire.
There is a story, post Sept. 11, that is worth telling.
A priest, dressed visibly in his Roman collar, waited in
an airport, about to board a flight on a major airline.
Before departure, half a dozen men and women approached
the priest with this request: “Please, Father. Before
the flight takes off, would you hear my confession? Just
in case.”
Surely, this moment of grace and conversion would never
have occurred if the priest had been wearing a wool blazer,
button-down shirt and tie. Please, dear Fathers, be priests
and be proud.
Lori Brannigan Kelly ’83
Norfolk, Mass.
I
just received the spring issue, with
the “New” Jesuits cover, more suited I think
for a men’s wear magazine where inside one might expect
to see a Jebbie modeling Jockey underwear. Men for others,
that’s what they are; it is a catchy byline fitting
the devolution of a onetime religious order to their now
politically correct nesting place.
I’m a graduate of a Jesuit high school, college and
med school—Xavier in Manhattan, Holy Cross and Georgetown.
All pre-Vatican II, of course, when priests faced the altar
and said the Mass in Latin. So I know what we have lost,
in contrast to now, when creepy rhetoric spawns phrases
like “presiding among, rather than presiding over.”
Please remove me from your mailing list.
Terence O’Flanagan, M.D., ’54
Rockville Centre,
N.Y.
