As the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minn., began its spring semester yesterday, the Cardinal Newman Society (CNS) again called upon its president to drop the freshman requirement to read a lurid and anti-Catholic book, The Handmaid’s Tale.

The sexually graphic novel, written by Margaret Atwood in 1985, was selected to be the Common Text in introductory English courses this year, both in the fall and now in the spring semesters.

“Not only is the book vulgar and obscene,” wrote CNS President Patrick J. Reilly in a letter yesterday to Father Dease, “but it endorses a political-social feminist agenda that contradicts Catholic teaching and implicitly ridicules the Catholic Church.  It is very disappointing that a Catholic university would honor this book for required reading and extensive campus-wide attention.”

Reilly had earlier expressed the CNS concerns in a December 18 letter to college president Father Dennis Dease but has not received a response.

“Many alumni and parents of current students also have asked for the removal of this book, but to no avail,” Reilly wrote yesterday.  “It would be appropriate that today on the feast day of Saint Thomas Aquinas, the patron of the university, that you would exercise leadership and stop this scandal created by the English department.”

CNS has urged that the Common Text Program be thoroughly reviewed.  Previous selections have raised similar questions about their value on a Catholic campus.  If a Catholic university is to require all freshmen to read one work, it should choose one of the hundreds of classics in the Catholic intellectual tradition.

The Cardinal Newman Society praises the efforts of two parents who have launched a website to call attention to the misguided requirement and to sign a petition to Father Dease.  The website is located at www.ustclassaction.com.