And again in a later event from the apocryphal Acts of Peter that the movie “Quo Vadis?” is based on. Domine quo vadis?
It was Elton John/Bernie Taupin who asked “Where to now, St. Peter?”
Well, what brought this to mind for me was having been deeply impressed at the time of my sophomore year in high school when the Quo Vadis" 1951 movie (click here) was a big event. It was billed as being the first movie whose budget surpassed the $1 million mark. It is informational to read through the detailed history of its production (click here).
Our Latin teacher (I was in the second year of it, and now grateful for the exposure to Latin's strict grammar and construction) was a graduate of the nearby Catholic women's college, starting with us as her initiation into secondary education. So after a year of experience with her as the teacher of both Latin and freshman English, my class knew her well.
What happened was that she gratuitously organized a venture for both of her Latin classes to go to the grand opening of it in the palatial Loew's Theater in Rochester, only 17 miles away. Out of her meagre salary of a beginning teacher, she paid for all of our tickets so that none were left out, and conned the Principal into letting her have a bus to take us all there in a body. Of course, the idea of Catholicism and its still heavy focus on Latin as the Mass language and training of priest provided a weak but then effective link through the Latin title and Roman context.
Such a blatantly super-religious event could never, ever happen today in the current public high-school environment. But even then the agitators were hard at work nationally firing up the "separation of religion and state" myth. through the year I graduated (1954) the schools still permitted release time for religious education classes to be conducted by cooperating local churches oh site, not forcing any demurring students to attend.
Following the US Supreme Court decisions (Engel v. Vitale (1962), etc.) the whole idea of publicly open schools has regrettably become preposterous and the butt of crude humor.
We can see where that has taken us regarding our society's moral status. Today's schooling that invites open instruction in how to sin, and the former pursuit of school-sponsored prayer, cannot coexist, can they>