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Columbia’s Catholic chaplain: Campus protests were pushed by ‘explicitly communist’ outsiders

Father Roger Landry, Catholic chaplain at Columbia University, discusses the protests at Columbia University in New York City on EWTN’s “The World Over with Raymond Arroyo” on May 2, 2024. (Credit: EWTN News The World Over / Screenshot)

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, May 3, 2024 / 17:05 pm (CNA).

Father Roger Landry, a Catholic chaplain at Columbia University, said on Thursday that the protests making national headlines at the New York City school are being organized in part by “explicitly communist” outside forces.

“There is an instrumentalization of what’s going on in Gaza to advance an agenda,” he said. “And that is to deconstruct our present world order at which the United States is considered the top of that order.”

Speaking on EWTN’s “The World Over with Raymond Arroyo,” Landry said that he had been walking through the encampment nearly daily, conversing with student protesters and other “outside agitators.”

While he said he believes that many of the protesters were genuinely concerned for Gazan civilians, there was a sizable percentage of whom were “explicitly in favor of Hamas” and “definitely antisemitic by their language and their actions.”

What is going on at Columbia?

The Columbia demonstration began on April 17 when a large group of students set up dozens of tents to occupy the university’s main quad. Protesters at the encampment said they were standing against Israel’s “genocide” against Palestinians in Gaza.

Many videos circulated online of protesters shouting antisemitic chants and calling for the destruction of Israel, and some Jewish students have reported being threatened by protesters.

Clad in riot gear, officers from the New York City Police Department cleared the encampment in a Wednesday raid that resulted in several hundred arrests.

Similar protests and encampments on campuses across the country, many of which are still ongoing, have taken place since the demonstration at Columbia began.

Marxist ideology at heart of protest

According to Landry, nearly half of the approximately 300 protesters arrested were non-student activists.

He said these outside forces are “explicitly communist groups” who have been distributing Marxist materials attacking the state of Israel since the Hamas Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack.

Landry said that these materials attempt to justify the Hamas attack “out of this neo-Marxist, ‘oppressor versus oppressed’ ideology that says whatever somebody in the category of ‘oppressed’ wants to do against a so-called ‘oppressor’ is justified, even killing way more than a thousand innocent people at a party.”

“This divide and conquer class warfare that comes from Marx and Lenin is the exact antithesis of what Jesus Christ himself taught,” he continued. “So, I try to get the Catholic students aware of that problem so at least they’re inoculated to that intellectual virus.”

Catholic students act as peacemakers

Landry said he was proud of the many Catholic students who have “stepped up” to be peacemakers amid all the hatred on campus.

He said that student Mass attendance has increased on campus. A Catholic student group sent symbolic olive plants to both Jewish and Muslim leaders at Columbia to show the “solidarity and peace of Christ,” he said.

“Transcending the moment but also incarnating ourselves in the moment, [we] are trying to bring the peace we have received from Christ that our world and our campus very much need,” he said.

Watch the full interview with Landry on “The World Over” below.


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26 Comments

  1. This is NOT a new development – leftist outside agitators have been hard at work
    on our nation’s campuses for decades – going all the way back to the 60s.

    The seeds sewn by Saul Alinsky lo those many decades ago are reaping a bitter fruit.

    • One recent development is the feeding frenzy of baby sharks eating their parents and grandparents, especially those swimming in the cesspool of the facility and administration. It’s like watching Jaws being devoured by his children. I would eat popcorn if the spectacle didn’t turn my stomach.

  2. I am in no way justifying the Hamas attack. However, in retaliation, Israel is killing and starving thousands of innocent Palestinian women and children, some of whom are Christians.
    Also, after the Oct. 7 attack, many Jews were amazed and openly wondering how it was possible that the most heavily guarded and surveilled border between Israel and Palestine could have not had any surveillance for many hours on Oct. 7.

      • Athanasius:

        While I support Israel in its war in Gaza, and polls show that the vast the majority (I believe it was over 80% in the Pew Poll) of “Palestinians” support violent Sharia (Palestinians are among the 3 most violent Muslim populations in the world) it is not truthful to say “there are no innocent Palestinians.” Obviously, a sizable minority are not in favor of violence, and that is a fact, in the same way that “the vast majority favoring violence” is a fact. Saying otherwise is not acknowledging reality, and cannot be justified, and when actions in war are explained on the basis of what is unjustifiable, then a person making such a claim is not defending justice, or arguing on the basis of “just war” principles.

        It may be the case that you don’t really believe what you wrote?

    • According to the Reuters report (I choose Reuters because they are not identified with the “radical right”), three in four Palestinians support the actions of Hamas on October 7.

      https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/poll-shows-palestinians-back-oct-7-attack-israel-support-hamas-rises-2023-12-14

      Of course, that was back in December and things may have changed, but I rather doubt that. Mind you, this support for Hamas is even after it has been revealed (multiple times in fact) that Hamas and other terrorists use civilians as human shields–placing their centers of operations and weaponry in schools and hospitals.

      • Interesting that you would only be concerned with media that may be considered “radical right”.
        Under this Administration anyone reporting the truth is being censored and demonized. Only the “radical left” is allowed to spout their propaganda.

        • Hate to tell you this, I would be considered among the “radical right.” I almost choose the National Review article on the subject, as it is more recent, but choose Reuters. In any event, NR reported the same thing: Palestinians overwhelming support Hamas, and have done so for years.

    • Mary,
      Your write: “many Jews were amazed and openly wondering how it was possible that the most heavily guarded and surveilled border between Israel and Palestine could have not had any surveillance for many hours on Oct. 7.”

      A deep look into what is a profoundly convoluted and fallen world…

      Some might even ask how it was possible that 9/11 happened at all? And twenty years in Afghanistan? In 2001 were too many security agents assigned to track domestic “terrorists” praying in front of abortion clinics in urban America? And, yet, further into the morass, would such a hypothetical distraction have been due to those misguided pro-life activists who firebombed clinics?

      It’s almost as if the relativistic calculus of consequences is incalculably evil. And, as if the clear and consistent defense of moral absolutes (!), as defended under the forgotten Veritatis Splendor, is still somebody’s God-given responsibility…but who am I to judge?

  3. Palestine has been turned into a pile of rubble with thousands of casualties including hundreds of women and children, and many more buried in the rubble. That is obvious to anyone.
    Maybe we should let God be the judge of whether Palestinian women and children are guilty or innocent.

    • Mary, what’s going on in the Holy Land is a terrible tragedy but I think doubly so for the people living in Gaza because not only are they the victims of collateral damage but they’re also victimized and exploited by Hamas and Iran.
      The entire population of Gaza has simply been a means of humanitarian aid to steal, indoctrination, human shields, and canon fodder for Hamas. Hamas is a terrorist mercenary cartel working for the highest bidder which currently is Iran.
      The rest of Israel’s neighbors want peace. October 7th was an attempt by Iran to derail the peace accords. (And many Iranians want peace also but good luck with free speech in Iran today. )

    • The IDF has taken more measures to protect putative civilians, measures that put their soldiers at risk, than any military in the world. Civilian casualties are unavoidable in urban warfare, especially when the enemy places forces and munitions adjacent to churches, schools, and other civilian structures.

      • Rich Leonardi, the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem reported that two Catholic women were shot and killed by an Israeli sniper in a Gaza Parish, while an Israeli tank destroyed the Convent of the Sisters of Mother Theresa. The two women shot were supposedly in a safe area and the second woman who was shot and killed by the sniper was rushing to the aid of the first woman (her mother).
        Also, many Jewish people in this country and even Military in Israel were in total disbelief that the Israeli Palestinian border was totally unprotected for hours – allowing the Hamas attack. Hamas, by the way, was created by Netanyahu.
        The Israeli media also lied about the beheading of babies, etc. in order to foment hatred toward everyone in Gaza.
        Something stinks to high heaven in this whole mess.

    • Mary, where are you seeing the footage of this massive starvation and death of innocent children in Hamas territory? I have seen photos of some destroyed buildings but can’t tell if they are old or if the location is accurate. We live in an age of fake news so it’s hard to tell.

      • RomyE, I search various websites to try to find the truth because, as you say, in an age of fake news it’s hard to know for sure. I’ve found Lifesitenews.com to be very reliable. One of their latest articles from April 30 is entitled, Hell on Earth: Inside the Overlooked Plight of Christians in Gaza, which interviews the founder of the Vulnerable People Project.

        • Lifesite News does from time to time have news items that are of interest but “reliable” is not the way I’d describe the site as a whole & certainly not in the case of news concerning Gaza or Israel.

          • MrsCracker, There are many pro Israel people who don’t like Lifesite News’ reporting of the Israel-Gaza war – even though I think their reporting is fair and balanced. I’ve found several videos on the net of Jewish Rabbis, Israeli Americans and members of the Israeli press who feel the bombing of Gaza should be stopped as the majority of casualties are women and children.

  4. The Palestinians will not see a homeland for themselves until they have earned it. Peace is not forced into existence by violence, but peace can force violence out of existence.
    Peace must come first. Only when the Hamas’ of the world drop their weapons, look up to Heaven and say “Israel has as much right to exist as we do”, will the Middle East experience true peace. The root of this entire historical and all-encompassing human tragedy rests, carved in stone, within the soul and cultural collective mindset of peoples who bear within their hearts, as if deigned by heaven itself, the complete physical, spiritual and temporal annihilation of the entire worldwide Jewish population.

  5. For the umpteenth time:

    1) Hamas has stated over and over and OVER through the years that they will settle for nothing less than the complete eradication of the state of Israel.
    2) Hamas started this latest version of the war last October.
    3) Hamas launches rockets from within civilian-populated areas as a matter of policy.

    These are NOT matters to argue over, rather they are FACTS. So, and I know I’m asking too much of college students whose parents are paying up to $90,000 per year for their little darlings to be educated to act the way they are:

    4) Do the math.

    • I hear you Mr. Terrence but occasionally students at Columbia are paying out of pocket and locating their own funding. That’s what one of my children did for his graduate study there. All I did was help him with the fee to reserve his dorm room and i sent him care packages of food. He soon figured out he couldn’t afford living in the dorm and he rented a room from a kindly Dominican grandma.
      But, yes his experience was that many of the students there were very privileged indeed and the whole thing was quite a culture shock.

  6. I stopped listening to this interview when Father Landry said that Jesus came to heal the divisions between the classes. I thought that was a very odd thing for a priest or any Catholic to say.

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