The following is a press statement from the Catholic Action League of Massachusetts…
Matt Lamb, the Associate Editor of The College Fix, contacted the Catholic Action League, seeking a comment on the decision of the University of Minnesota to present a play, at taxpayer expense, promoting homosexuality.
The play—De Profundis Ego Resurrexit—celebrates the life of the Irish poet, playwright and novelist Oscar Wilde, a man notorious for, and ultimately imprisoned on account of, his promiscuous practice of sodomy.
According to the university, the play will allow students to “critically engage with the literary queer history of Oscar Wilde, queer theory, and the personal and sociopolitical queer experience of the playwright.”
C. J. Doyle, the Executive Director of the Catholic Action League, made the following comments:
The homosexual sub-culture has a perverse, preternatural and longstanding obsession with Catholic themes, language and imagery.
The title of the play, in this case however, refers not only to the penitential psalm, but to the long letter by Oscar Wilde, written while in prison in 1897, to his young sodomite paramour, Lord Alfred Douglas.
The letter was published in 1905, five years after the death of its author.
For organized homosexualism, the matter of Oscar Wilde is a sore point, which requires constant reinforcement.
You might even say that it is an example of cultural expropriation, attended by much special pleading.
Oscar Wilde lived a depraved life, but died a good death.
A Dublin born Anglo-Irishman, Wilde was baptized in the Anglican C of I–the Church of Ireland. Wilde went on to graduate from Trinity College, Dublin and attend Magdalen College, Oxford. He later became a Master Mason.
Wilde’s best known works include The Picture of Dorian Gray, The Importance of Being Earnest and The Ballad of Reading Gaol.
After being released from Reading Gaol in 1897—where he had served a sentence of two years hard labour for gross indecency—Wilde, who had a lifelong interest in Catholicism, began attending Mass, and later made a pilgrimage to Rome.
Oscar Wilde was received into the Catholic Faith on November 29, 1900—the day before he died—by a Passionist priest, Father Cuthbert Dunne.
Wilde was anointed and absolved, receiving Extreme Unction, and was conditionally baptized.
A written account of the event, composed by Father Dunne, was discovered in the archives of a Paris church. It only became available to scholars in 2023.
According to Dunne, Wilde recited, with the priest, the words of the Act of Contrition.
Wilde is claimed by the homosexual movement, but he died a repentant sinner, in the fullness of the Catholic Faith.
As for the taxpayer supported venue for the play, it is important to recall that the separation of church and state has never been a consistent principle for the cultural Left, just a convenient cudgel to batter the Christians whom they despise.
Doyle’s comments were included in an article by Brendan McDonald (the son of New Boston Post Publisher and Editor Matt McDonald), which appeared in The College Fix on October 28th.
