Like so many Catholic League victories, this one happened quickly, but it was never clear from the start what the outcome would be. Once again, our relentlessness paid off, and once again we couldn’t have done it without the legions of supporters who bombarded the United States Air Force Academy (USAFA) with their ballistic e-mails.
We learned the week of April 7 that some faculty and cadets had to attend a seminar on war and terrorism on April 9. Included in this event was the showing of footage from a movie, “Constantine’s Sword,” that is based on book by that name. This is what ignited our protest.
James Carroll is the author of this book, and he is one of the most angry and unfair critics of the Catholic Church in the nation. An embittered ex-priest, Carroll is a journalist who has no credentials in the area of church history. His book is nothing less than an all-out assault on the Catholic Church, holding it responsible for anti-Semitism throughout the ages, leading up to the Holocaust.
Clips of the new movie were to be shown in the name of fighting religious prejudice, yet the clips were taken from a film that smacked of religious prejudice towards Catholics!
We issued our first news release on April 8. We struck again on April 9, and declared victory on April 10. As it turned out, footage from the movie was never shown on April 9.
