March 25, 2009 5:43 PM
Obama at Notre Dame - petition to rescind the invitation
The petition appears to be gaining about 5000 signatures per hour. For comments by noted Catholic writers, click belowBREAKING NEWS: The Notre Dame student response: NDResponse.comPresident Barack Obama - Commencement Speaker at Notre DameHelp Stop the Scandal at Our Lady's UniversityJoin the petition opposing Notre Dame's decisionto host and honor President Barack Obama at commencement.more than140,010signers!!!! (202,040 as of 3/29)for insightful commentary: National Review and The Catholic Thing.
George Weigel writes:
Notre Dame's decision to make President Obama its 2009 commencement speaker is a very bad thing. It's bad for Notre Dame, bad for Catholic moral witness in America, and bad for the bishops who are trying to mount a defense against the Obama administration's assault on the conscience rights of Catholic health-care professionals.
The invitation to deliver a commencement address, especially when coupled with the award of an honorary degree, is not a neutral act. It's an act by which a Catholic institution of higher learning says, "This is a life worth emulating according to our understanding of the true, the good, and the beautiful." It is frankly beyond my imagining how Notre Dame can say that of a president who has put the United States back into the business of funding abortion abroad; a president who made a mockery of the very idea of moral argument in his speech announcing federal funding for embryo-destructive stem cell research; a president whose administration and its congressional allies are snatching tuition vouchers out of the hands of desperately poor Washington, D.C., children who just as desperately want to attend Catholic schools.
As to Lenin's question, "What, then, is to be done?," one does not risk a charge of cynicism by suggesting that the most effective advocates for Notre Dame's recovering its senses will be alumni and other donors capable of withdrawing or withholding contributions in the range of seven, eight, or nine figures. That is the sad state to which things have descended under the Golden Dome: moral argument seems to be unavailing with the leaders of an institution dedicated to developing the arts of moral reason.
James V. SchalL, S.J.
When a university invites anyone to its campus to present a commencement address, it honors the person chosen. Likewise, the invitation itself indicates what the inviting institution thinks of itself, of what it, as an institution, considers to be worthy of honor. Some people would not be invited; others would not accept. Those invited do not accept every invitation. When they do accept, they indicate that it is worth their while to give the said address and receive the said honor. Clearly, some things are incompatible with honor, others are incompatible with truth, the purpose of a university. Aristotle says that the highest reward of the politician is honor, something more coveted than power or wealth. Honor is something the politician seeks, even covets. The academic, for his part, longs for recognition. He wants his often obscure work to be "appreciated." The polity has its own rewards, its own honors. The accepting of the honor to the president evidently meets his purposes. The awarding it seems to meet the purposes of the university. Some say that it is a perfect fit. Others suspect that both parties, in accepting and giving such honors, manage to demean each other in what each is, in truth, expected to stand for.
--Rev. James V. Schall, S.J., is a professor of government at Georgetown University.
CANDACE DE RUSSY
The word "perfidy" derives from the Latin "perfidus," that is, "faithless" or "detrimental to faith"; it is also synonymous with "treachery," or "violation of allegiance or trust." The University of Notre Dame's decision to honor President Obama as its commencement speaker in May is perfidious and treacherous in the extreme.
President Obama has zealously moved in his first weeks in office to carry out the most radical anti-life, un-Christian agenda of any American president. Among other actions antithetical to the teachings of the Catholic Church, he has increased federal funding for abortions across the world.
For Notre Dame to give President Obama its highest honor is blatantly to break faith and trust with all the Catholic faithful, the U.S. bishops who have expressly spoken against such Catholic institutional awards, and generations of Catholic parents and students who have relied on the university to stand by its hallowed purpose.
Unprecedented and humbling as such an about-face would be, Notre Dame should withdraw this invitation. And President Obama, given his unremitting anti-life crusade, should recognize the gross dissonance, and the insult to millions of Catholics, of dominating the commencement at the nation's most beloved Catholic campus; he should graciously withdraw his agreement to speak.
Barring these outcomes, members of this year's graduating class and their parents should boycott the May ceremony. The U.S. bishops should publicly rebuke the university. Bishop John M. D'Arcy of the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend should explore means by which to formally strip Notre Dame of its Catholic identity. University alums and donors should inform the campus that they intend to withhold funds from it. Parents and students who value the Catholic faith should plan to attend other -- more faithful -- Catholic institutions.
In short, a bold defense of faith is needed to overcome perfidy.
-- Candace de Russy is an expert on higher education who blogs at NRO's "Phi Beta Cons."
Pia dE SOLENNI
Just about every university would be honored to have the democratically elected president of the country as its commencement speaker. Things get complicated, however, when the president has repeatedly positioned himself against some of the core beliefs that the university is supposed to uphold.
The president, within three days of his inauguration, revoked the Mexico City Policy, which precluded the use of foreign aid for abortion. Shortly thereafter, he announced that he would be rescinding the conscience-protection language that protects health-care workers from having to perform procedures contrary to their religious beliefs. Before the first 60 days of his administration were over, he also lifted the ban on the use of federal funding for human embryonic-stem-cell research. One would never know that this president had been elected to represent everyone in the country, including Catholics, or that he had campaigned on a promise of change and bipartisanship.
This could be an excellent opportunity for Notre Dame gently and publicly to remind the nation of the university's Catholic identity and the incompatibility of the president's hostile actions with this identity. At the same time, the university could extend an invitation to dialogue in hopes that the president could come to respect these beliefs even if he does not agree with them. This could take place without rescinding the invitation, but it would have to be eminently clear to all on the part of the university that a tension exists between its professed values and the president's actions.
Given his actions so far, especially his threats to Catholic health care, Catholics will have to give many more such witnesses in the days to come. It would be wonderful if one of our leading universities set the standard, remaining true to its ideals while respecting the political office. I'm not sure that it's the best tone for a commencement ceremony, but it could be an excellent lesson in living one's faith. After all, what is a commencement but the final stage of preparing students to begin the rest of their lives as active citizens who will inevitably have to confront and live with values that oppose their own?
-- Pia de Solenni is an ethicist and moral theologian, residing in Philadelphia.
RICHARD W. GARNETT
Most institutions don't, in the big picture, really matter. There are workable substitutes available, and lots of other players doing pretty much the same thing in pretty much the same way.
The University of Notre Dame -- which is, obviously, flawed and fallible in many, many ways -- does matter. Truth be told, it is the only real hope left for a great university that is meaningfully Catholic. The Church and the world -- all of us, Catholic or not, football fans or not -- desperately need such an institution.
This great need imposes a weighty burden. To paraphrase Peter Parker's Uncle Ben, with Notre Dame's matter-ing comes a great responsibility to be true to her calling and worthy of her mission. Unfortunately, by honoring President Obama -- who has, in recent weeks, taken steps that are glaringly in conflict with his bedrock moral obligation to respect and protect the equal dignity of unborn children -- Notre Dame has clouded what should be clear, and deeply disappointed not just her usual critics, but also those of us who want very much for her to succeed (and work hard to help her succeed).
To say this is not to say that a Catholic university should only invite speakers or engage leaders and thinkers whose views and records are consistent with the Church's teachings. It is not to question President Obama's accomplishments or to deny that his election was, in many ways, historic. Certainly, a Catholic university should engage, challenge, learn from, and "dialogue" with, the wider world.
Still, to do these things, to be what the world needs her to be, Notre Dame has to be distinctive -- not weird, "sectarian," narrow, or nostalgic, but authentic, courageous, integrated, and . . . interesting. Here, I am afraid she failed.
-- Richard W. Garnett is a professor of law at the University of Notre Dame.
PATRICK LEE
Imagine a Catholic university in the 1960s awarding a segregationist politician an honorary doctorate. This would have been an outrage -- giving religious cover to someone who denied the equal rights and fundamental equal dignity of a whole class of human beings. In the same way, it is an outrage for a Catholic university to provide a stamp of approval to someone who just last week wrote the death warrant for millions of embryonic human beings, the most recent of a long line of anti-life acts. Obama's pro-abortionist extremism relegates a whole class of human beings -- unborn human beings -- to the status of mere sub-personal objects that can be dismembered, ripped to shreds, or disposed of in trash cans.
Some may object that selecting a commencement speaker is no endorsement. But Notre Dame will also award Obama an honorary doctorate. Not a recognition of demonstrated knowledge (as are other degrees), this is a public declaration of honor to a recipient for what he is best known for, in this case his political "service." It is therefore an enthusiastic affirmation by Notre Dame that Obama is a worthy public servant. To affirm that is to embrace the idea that denying the personhood of the unborn is just a minor mistake.
This is not a mere theoretical disagreement. This act of promoting a virulently pro-abortion politician will cost lives -- the lives of many unborn. And it will harm young men and women by obscuring the ugly truth about abortion.
-- Patrick Lee is John N. and Jamie D. McAleer Professor of Bioethics and Director of the Institute of Bioethics at Franciscan University of Steubenville.
RALPH McINERNY
Bernie Madoff has declined an honorary doctorate in economics from the University of Notre Dame, but all is not lost. Barack Hussein Obama, enabler in chief of abortion, has agreed to speak at the 2009 commencement and to receive an honorary doctorate of law. That abortion and its advocacy violate a primary precept of natural law reinforced by the Catholic Church's explicit doctrine is a mere bagatelle. Wackos of all kinds will kick up a fuss, of course, but their protest will go unnoticed in South Bend. The pell-mell pursuit of warm and fuzzy Catholicism will continue. How better to defend the faith than to celebrate a man who advocates polishing off babies even after they are born? The newly created Herod Award will be added to the university's recognition of the chief magistrate. Administrators are hugging themselves with delight at this massive publicity coup. The national championship in football has eluded Notre Dame for many years, but when the president dribbles onto the stage at the great event, the hall will erupt in ecstatic applause; the president, Father Jenkins, will wring his hand; and a final nail will be driven into the coffin of a once-great Catholic university. No one will note nor long remember what Barack Obama says on the occasion. Who listens to commencement addresses? But the Lady atop the golden dome, recalling the flight into Egypt, will exhibit one of her many titles: She who weeps.
-- Ralph McInerny, professor of philosophy at the University of Notre Dame, is author of the Father Dowling mystery series.
PATRICK J. REILLY
The University of Notre Dame's decision to publicly honor Pres. Barack Obama at this time is not simply inconsistent with the university's mission -- although it certainly is that. It is not simply wrong -- although it is that, too. It is a scandal and an outrage, which is why we launched www.NotreDameScandal.com. Already more than 10,000 rightfully angry Catholics agree.
This is not an academic event; it is an honors ceremony. There will be no unique voice that hasn't been in the news for months and even on the Tonight Show. There will be no questions or dialogue, nothing learned. The president has been invited to delight the graduates, to bring prestige to the university by his reputation, and to be honored with the highest award a university can bestow -- an honorary doctorate. On each score, a Catholic institution should not be honoring a president who has launched a campaign of human destruction by releasing federal funds for abortion and research on the stem cells of human embryos.
And there's more to the outrage. Beyond the matter of propriety, Catholics rightly suspect betrayal by a Catholic institution. With all of the possible honorees who could have been selected, Notre Dame chose the individual who is today the most dangerous proponent of the Culture of Death in the United States. For centuries, faithful Christians persevered under the persecution of emperors, kings, and Communists; but in the Land of the Free, so-called Catholic intellectuals freely honor those who are responsible for great evil. We have been betrayed. -- Patrick J. Reilly is president of the Cardinal Newman Society.PAUL KENGOR
This invitation is, of course, an outrage. Notre Dame is not asking Obama to compromise his convictions. Notre Dame is asking the Church to compromise its convictions.
It boils down to the abortion issue: The late, great Pope John Paul II, along with the Magisterium (the teaching body of the Church), the cardinals, and American bishops, ordered Catholic colleges not to extend platforms to pro-choice speakers. And Obama is not even your run-of-the-mill "pro-choicer." He is, flatly, the most radical supporter of abortion ever to occupy the White House.
He doesn't merely want abortion to be "safe, legal, and rare"; he wants every American to fund abortion at all stages of pregnancy, for any reason, with no restrictions, both at home and abroad. He is currently considering eliminating freedom-of-conscience exemptions for pro-life medical personnel who refuse to participate in abortion procedures.
What Notre Dame has done with Obama couldn't be a more flagrant violation of the Church's instructions. Does Notre Dame care more about what Obama has to say than what the Church has to say?
Of course, we know how Notre Dame will justify this: The invitation to Obama will fly under the banner of "diversity," of "open-mindedness," of "academic freedom," of the "free exchange of ideas," of "open inquiry," and, of course, the ultimate idol of the religious Left: "social justice." No surprise.
In a way, though, this situation is fitting. Obama won the presidency -- it can be argued -- because he won Catholics. Thus, it seems only natural that the nation's most celebrated Catholic college will look to Barack Obama to inspire the faithful as they graduate and become adults.
Obama and his staff are surely pleasantly amazed at how some Catholics continue to roll out the red carpet, in spite of the man's fanaticism on a matter the Church calls "gravely contrary to the moral law." There was a long line of duped Catholics who stumped for Obama in 2008: Doug Kmiec, Dan Rooney, and Sen. Bob Casey Jr. There was an actual group called Catholics for Obama. We can add Notre Dame to the list.
Well, there is some good news in this: Faithful Catholics now know better than to send their kids (and money) to Notre Dame. I, for one, appreciate the moral clarity.
-- Paul Kengor is professor of political science and executive director of the Center for Vision & Values at Grove City College. His books include God and Ronald Reagan: A Spiritual Life, The Judge: William P. Clark, Ronald Reagan's Top Hand, and The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism.
CHARLOTTE ALLEN
Notre Dame takes the position that inviting Obama to be commencement speaker in May is just one of those nice things the university does whenever a new president takes office. In its online press release about the Obama invitation, Notre Dame points out that Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush were commencement speakers during their first years in the White House. The release also points out that George H. W. Bush, who ran on the GOP's Human Life Amendment platform, was commencement speaker in 1992, and Jimmy Carter, who at least made mushy noises about being religiously opposed to abortion, was commencement speaker in 1977.
The idea seems be that Notre Dame is non-partisan. So what's the problem? The problem is that Notre Dame has not in fact been, and as a Catholic university should not be, non-partisan. All the speakers listed are pro-life -- in line to some degree with the Catholic Church's position on abortion -- and Obama's appearance will mark the first time the school has invited a pro-choice president.
Notice that Bill Clinton isn't on the list. Clinton vetoed Congress's first effort to ban partial-birth abortion, enabled Janet Reno's crusade to prove a national pro-life conspiracy to kill abortionists, and supported government funding for research using tissue from aborted fetuses (the last effort went south after animal experiments revealed that such tissue does nasty things to the brain).
Those actions -- any one of which ought to have properly disqualified Clinton from setting foot on Notre Dame's South Bend campus -- were spread out over the eight years of his presidency. By contrast, Obama has scarcely been president for eight weeks, and already he's 1) forced U.S. taxpayers to subsidize overseas abortion clinics; 2) announced he'll rescind a Bush-administration rule allowing health-care workers to refuse to provide services (such as abortion) they deem morally repugnant; and 3) opened the sluice-gates for federal funding of embryo-destructive stem-cell research, all the way up to cloning.
A letter-writing campaign at Notre Dame is in order. If Bill Clinton wasn't invited to be commencement speaker, why on earth has Obama been issued the implicit endorsement of his views -- plus a bully pulpit -- by the nation's premiere Catholic university?
-- Charlotte Allen is author of The Human Christ: The Search for the Historical Jesus.
R. R. RENO
I can see some good reasons for the University of Notre Dame to invite Barack Obama to give a speech. Free inquiry, open discussion, vigorous debates -- that's what universities do. And Catholic universities do it very well, because unlike most universities, they don't censure conservatives.
But a commencement address? It's not an academic event of intellectual exchange and debate. It's entirely and richly symbolic.
And the symbolism is obvious: A famous Catholic university is putting forward a politician who is closely and unapologetically associated with the most extreme abortion agenda in the modern Western world.
What was the leadership at Notre Dame thinking? In May the university will give Mary Ann Glendon the Laetare Medal, its highest honor. Glendon has heroically devoted a great deal of her life to defending innocent life. And then Barack Obama -- a man who has devoted a great deal of his life to representing elite liberal and anti-Catholic moral views about sex, marriage, and reproduction -- enjoys the spotlight. It's an insult to Glendon.
The complacent leaders of Catholic institutions need to wake up. Many of the richest and most powerful people in our country are utterly and aggressively opposed to traditional Catholic moral principles. Notre Dame can't pretend that the elite's fondest hope isn't for the death of the pro-life movement. And Notre Dame also can't pretend that giving Obama the podium on commencement day doesn't create the illusion that his abortion policies are somehow okay.
Alumni and donors need to wake up too. By all means write John Jenkins, CSC, the Notre Dame president. But don't stop there. Some faculty and programs at Notre Dame are deeply committed to the Catholic culture of life. The Center for Ethics and Culture run by David Solomon comes to mind, as does the Maritain Center run by John O'Callaghan. Helping their lights shine more brightly is the best response to the ugly fact of an abortion supporter's being in the spotlight on commencement day.
-- R. R. Reno is features editor of First Things and professor of theology at Creighton University.
COLLEEN CARROLL CAMPBELL
The University of Notre Dame administrators who invited Pres. Barack Obama to deliver this spring's commencement address surely consider his acceptance a historic coup for their school and yet more proof of Notre Dame's self-declared role as the place "where the Church does its thinking." In reality, their decision only cements the school's reputation as the place where anti-life politicians do their rationalizing.
That reputation first took hold 25 years ago, when former New York governor Mario Cuomo, a Catholic, took the podium at Notre Dame to make the case for Catholic politicians who support legalized -- and, in Cuomo's case, taxpayer-funded -- abortion. Cuomo's speech was riddled with logical fallacies; but for Catholic politicians who wanted to please the powerful pro-abortion lobby without forfeiting the Catholic vote, it was a home run. Cuomo's abortion alibi soon was parroted by pro-choice politicians across America, its appeal bolstered by the fact that his words bore the apparent imprimatur of the nation's leading Catholic university.
Now President Obama, struggling with sagging approval ratings and the growing dissatisfaction of Catholic voters who finally have awakened to his deep-seated disregard for unborn human life, needs to butter up his flagging Catholic base. Substantive policy changes are out of the question for such a strident supporter of abortion rights and embryo-destructive research. That leaves only one solution: a visit to that reliable ally of pro-choice Democrats, the University of Notre Dame. There Obama can bask in the reflected glow of Notre Dame's storied Catholic heritage while continuing to advance policies that contradict the Catholic faith and natural law.
How sad that Notre Dame's administrators imagine themselves as free-thinkers when they are, in fact, mere political pawns on the wrong side of today's leading civil-rights struggle. Alumni embarrassed to see their alma mater used in this way should express their outrage in the language that Notre Dame's image-conscious, endowment-hungry administrators understand: money. By withholding their donations, alumni can send the message that a Catholic school that sells its soul for secular prestige cannot depend on the faithful to foot its bills.
-- Colleen Carroll Campbell, an NRO contributor, is a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a former speechwriter to Pres. George W. Bush, a columnist for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and the author of The New Faithful: Why Young Adults Are Embracing Christian Orthodoxy. Her television and radio show, Faith & Culture, airs weekly on EWTN, Sirius Satellite Radio, and Relevant Radio.
FR. GEORGE W. RUTLEr
This is a highly cynical act, contemptuous of the Church's prophetic voice in civil society and wagering that there will be no retribution. If a midwestern school seeks attention by granting Mr. Obama an honorary doctorate in law, the next logical step would be to grant Judas Iscariot posthumously an honorary doctorate in business administration.
-- Fr. George W. Rutler is a Catholic priest in New York.
Love,
Posted in Activism, Catholicism, Church Issues, Obama Nation | Permalink
Comments
This is a clear case of how living Biblical values will just naturally contradict an increasingly secularist and post-modern American society.
Posted by: Johanne | March 25, 2009 10:34 PM
It's better for Pres Obama to now face Catholic truth in this world with hope for him to repent of the evil that he promotes against Christ Jesus than to face Jesus in his Particular Judgment at the time of his death and be cast into eternal hellfire for being and obstinate (public) mortal sinner.
Posted by: Richard Liberatore | March 29, 2009 11:28 AM
Here's a great article explaining WHY the invitation to speak at Notre Dame is SUCH a big deal: http://www.squarewon.org/2009/03/30/notre-dame-conservative-catholicism-and-the-tv-show-house/
Posted by: Emily | March 30, 2009 10:15 AM
I an very sad about this invitation in particular and the lost of a true Catholic identity at what used to be Catholic Universities. I'm praying for this school named for the faithful Mother of God.
Posted by: Carol Garcia | April 6, 2009 4:41 PM
Rescind the invitation of Obama to speak at Notre dame.
Posted by: Helen Moore | April 8, 2009 2:44 PM
Yes we are a christain nation!!! yes unborn children have a right to life!!!
Posted by: Robert Metzger | April 9, 2009 8:09 AM
withdraw the invitation !
Posted by: john wildenauer | April 13, 2009 1:41 PM
Notre Dame is a liberal mecca, no one should be surprised. It would be a surprise if they rescinded the invitation. Pray that they do!
Posted by: Phil Barney | April 30, 2009 6:37 PM
To Robert Metzger from April 9th
You are a namesake of my great great grandfather, Robert Metzger obviously.....
He donated land to Notre Dame and family members are buried at the base of the chapel in the cemetery grounds.
Let's take the land back if the invitation of Barack Hussein Obama is not withdrawn!!!
Posted by: brenda hull (metzger) | May 15, 2009 3:37 PM
