Obama and Georgetown

There seems to be a lot of controversies surrounding our new President and the Catholic Church lately.  First of all, there is a lot of displeasure that he was invited to speak at Notre Dame, but the university seems to be sticking to its guns on this one.  The controversy stems primarily from Obama's abortion stance, which is completely opposite of the Catholic Church.

However, it got taken to a whole new level when he spoke at Georgetown University recently.  It was released that the White House asked that a religious insignia be covered up behind the President as he addressed the economy.  It is said that the request was made because of a standard backdrop for whenever the President speaks.  At first I thought that people were blowing it out of proportion.  After all, if the backdrop naturally covers up the insignia, then I don't see what the problem is; however, that was not the case.  I got to looking at the pictures, and the insignia is blatantly covered up by something that is not a part of the backdrop.

The IHS insignia that was intentionally covered up is a monogram for the name of Jesus (i=iota, e=eta, s=sigma; the first three letters in the Greek for Jesus; the eta looks like an "h" when it is capitalized).  I have to say that I don't get too riled up about things like this, but it does remind me of how often we are forced to hide the name of Jesus in our own worlds.

We don't face a lot of persecution in America for being Christians; usually nothing more than simply being called "idiots" or "irrational" by those who don't understand the Christian faith.  But for some reason, that social ostracism keeps us from proclaiming the name of Christ in our daily interactions.  Why should we be outraged that the White House asked Georgetown to cover it up (and that Georgetown did cover it up), if we do it in our own lives as well?