I kept Christ out of the classroom.

Or would have.

Usually it is those who support a vigorous separation of church and state who want to keep Christ out of the classroom, and their efforts usually reach only our public schools.  But when the pope's personal theologian drops in on your undergraduate classroom, you realize the potential for misspeaking could lead to some embarrassment.  You wouldn't want to say something that could start a process ending in ecclesiastical censure.  So I was ready to cut off any student who started to speak about Christ or the Trinity.  Fortunately, our class was on the pre-Socratics and nothing theological was said.

Fr. Wojciech Giertych* was at the College to give a lecture on moral theology.  It was an engaging lecture and quite intelligible, which is all too uncommon.  He even took a question from me afterward, which I appreciated, since he kindly admitted that some of his summary of St. Thomas's position was his own spin on what the saint actually said.

*I can't tell you how to pronounce his name without seeming to make fun, so I'll skip it.  If you have never heard of him before, that makes two of us. Perhaps Chrysostom knows him from the Angelicum.

Of course, speaking on theological topics in front of visiting ecclesiastical dignitaries can cause embarrassment  in other ways as well.  There was a time when a bishop was visiting one of our senior theology classes.  He listened as the students worked through some ideas and couldn't help himself from jumping in to clarify some points.  After leaving the class, the discussion continued and showed that the good bishop's ideas were identical to the heresy St. Thomas was refuting.  On the final exam, one question the tutor asked was, "What is the Bishop Z----- heresy?  How does St. Thomas use scripture and argument to refute it?"