Fifty years ago, during my final undergraduate semester at City College, I created a new section in the culturally and politically radical newspaper Observation Post (OP). I called the section "Mind Ooze." It was, for the most part, a collaboration with the late Robert Attanasio, an artist whose greatest talent was stirring up outrage with his drawings and cartoons.
Attanasio was raised Catholic, and his childhood experiences at the hands of nuns and priests in his Bronx church had traumatized him, perhaps leaving him with a case of PTSD. He drew on these experiences to produce some of his most powerful artwork.
One of the set pieces in the book I've been working on involves an Attanasio cartoon published in Mind Ooze that The New York Times, in their inimitable way, described as "a nun using a cross as a sexual object." The Times was writing about Attanasio's art because ultra-conservative New York senator James Buckley was so outraged by the cartoon, which he described as "a vicious and incredibly offensive anti-religious drawing," that he called for the Justice Department and the Department of Health, Education and Welfare to investigate OP for violating federal discrimination statutes, and demanded that City College suspend OP and expel the editors responsible for publishing the nun.
OP found itself in the eye of a media firestorm focusing on the First Amendment, free expression, and whether a student newspaper supported by student fees has the right to publish anti-religious material. Many people inside and outside the college came to OP's defense, and as I look back at an issue published March 13, 1974, at the height of the controversy, one story in particular stands out. Leonard Liggio, a Jesuit-educated history department lecturer, provided a scholarly analysis of the social and political implications of Attanasio's nun. That analysis remains as relevant today as it was 50 years ago.
Here are the main points of Liggio's essay:
· There has been a huge outflux of priests and nuns from the Catholic Church, principally because of their unwillingness to accept celibacy as a condition of remaining in the clergy.
· The nun cartoon is not the cause of the controversy; it's a reflection of an ongoing controversy in a society that was originally defined in Puritan terms.
· As American society attempts to find rational guides to a happy life in the wake of the failure of Puritanism, those still committed to Puritanism refuse to allow others the freedom to seek a happy life.
· Puritanism does not respect the autonomy of each person and his or her free choice. Therefore, it has always opposed tolerance.
· Puritanical politicians like Senator Buckley appeal to special interests and sub-groups. Therefore, they are opposed to tolerance.
· Catholic politicians like Buckley want to force non-Catholics to adhere to the demands of a Puritanical state.
· Catholic politicians would never dare interfere in the affairs of colleges operated by religious orders. Why should they have any say in non-Catholic higher education?
· Every person and newspaper on campus should be free to criticize any newspaper. Mutual exchange of commentary and criticism is an important part of the learning process and contributes to tolerance. No one is forced to read any of the several papers published at City College.
Spoiler alert: The First Amendment won. The editors were not expelled, and OP continued to publish for five more years until it finally found a way to push the authorities too far.
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