Covering up the cross won’t diminish its power

For the past 15 years, the New York City Department of Education (DOE) has leased a building on Staten Island from the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York. The building housing South Richmond High School, a public school for teens with special needs, is located on the campus of the Mission of the Immaculate Virgin at Mount Loretto. A cement cross is attached to the building, and the DOE apparently had no problem with it until recently, when one, anonymous person filed a complaint. The DOE then had workers cover up the symbol with a sign that references the school’s mascot and its status as a public school.

The building, built in the late 1950s, originally was a Catholic school for troubled and orphaned children who lived at Mount Loretto. Crosses also can be found elsewhere on campus, but after one complaint, the DOE hid the one on the school building. The Staten Island Advance reported:

“The cement cross, approximately eight-feet tall, embedded in the brick facade, is located to the far left of the school’s entrance. It had been partially obscured for years by a large evergreen bush, but became fully visible when the bush was recently removed. … But the cross cover-up sparked anger among other South Richmond families and staffers, who pointed out that the cross has been there for years without controversy.”

According to the DOE, it is required to cover up or remove a lessor’s religious symbols because of the so-called constitutional separation of church and state doctrine (though it tries to be “sensitive”), which, like the right of privacy to kill one’s unborn baby, isn’t in the U.S. Constitution.

“When leasing buildings from religious institutions, we work closely with building owners to ensure religious symbols and iconography are removed or covered,” DOE spokeswoman Toya Holness said.

Even the local newspaper’s editors said covering the cross on church property was “ridiculous” and suggested: “If it’s so offensive, it might not be the right place for your child.”

The shock of such things has probably worn off for many. They might say: Who cares about a covered-up cross with so many pressing matters in the world? Symbols can be powerful, but we don’t need them to do the work we’re commissioned to do. Still, it is a concession when we allow our government to remove and cover up objects that point to our faith and to the Creator of all. Covering up an object that represents how Christ died pales in comparison, however, to why He died.

“Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, Whose sin is covered,” the psalmist wrote. “Blessed is the man to whom the LORD does not impute iniquity, And in whose spirit there is no deceit.”

Removing and hiding crosses won’t diminish their power or uncover the sins of the unrepentant before God. Christ eternally covered our transgressions by offering up Himself and dying once for sins, the just for the unjust. That’s what we should remember when we read stories like these.