Nuclear Option for Notre Dame

Our friend Tom Roeser writes at his blog arguing for what he calls the nuclear option for Notre Dame in response to the school's controversial invitation to President Obama to give this year's commencement address. Notre Dame news gets fair coverage here in Chicago.

Comments

[Judy K. Warner]

Bishop John D'Arcy of the Diocese of Fort Wayne, Indiana, will not attend:

http://www.diocesefwsb.org/COMMUNICATIONS/statements.htm

Concerning President Barack Obama speaking at Notre Dame
graduation, receiving honorary law degree
March 24, 2009

On Friday, March 21, Father John Jenkins, CSC, phoned to inform me that President Obama had accepted his invitation to speak to the graduating class at Notre Dame and receive an honorary degree. We spoke shortly before the announcement was made public at the White House press briefing. It was the first time that I had been informed that Notre Dame had issued this invitation.

President Obama has recently reaffirmed, and has now placed in public policy, his long-stated unwillingness to hold human life as sacred. While claiming to separate politics from science, he has in fact separated science from ethics and has brought the American government, for the first time in history, into supporting direct destruction of innocent human life.

This will be the 25th Notre Dame graduation during my time as bishop. After much prayer, I have decided not to attend the graduation. I wish no disrespect to our president, I pray for him and wish him well. I have always revered the Office of the Presidency. But a bishop must teach the Catholic faith “in season and out of season,” and he teaches not only by his words — but by his actions.

My decision is not an attack on anyone, but is in defense of the truth about human life.

I have in mind also the statement of the U.S. Catholic Bishops in 2004. “The Catholic community and Catholic institutions should not honor those who act in defiance of our fundamental moral principles. They should not be given awards, honors or platforms which would suggest support for their actions.” Indeed, the measure of any Catholic institution is not only what it stands for, but also what it will not stand for.

I have spoken with Professor Mary Ann Glendon, who is to receive the Laetare Medal. I have known her for many years and hold her in high esteem. We are both teachers, but in different ways. I have encouraged her to accept this award and take the opportunity such an award gives her to teach.

Even as I continue to ponder in prayer these events, which many have found shocking, so must Notre Dame. Indeed, as a Catholic University, Notre Dame must ask itself, if by this decision it has chosen prestige over truth.

Tomorrow, we celebrate as Catholics the moment when our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, became a child in the womb of his most holy mother. Let us ask Our Lady to intercede for the university named in her honor, that it may recommit itself to the primacy of truth over prestige.

[Truth Unites... and Divides]

I'll still be rooting for Notre Dame vs. USC in college football.

[Kamilla]

Hmmm, so Glendon is advised to receive the award and use it as an opportunity to teach?

Wouldn't it be better to, then, return the award at the end of her speech?

Kamilla

[Steve K.]

The nuclear option would be exactly the right thing to do. It would finally get the attention of the rotten administration of ND, and perhaps put an end to the phony war phase of the struggle for the Church between the faithful and rebellious, and move things out in the open, in earnest. It is long past time to resist.

But what do you think the chances are that any consequences would follow?

[Benighted Savage]

>>> But what do you think the chances are that any consequences would follow? <<<

Without God's grace, slim to none.

Given Bishop D'Arcy's lukewarm (!) letter, I don't imagine he'll stick his neck out much further on this matter. Other bishops will say that this is Bishop D'Arcy's concern, not theirs. "Any consequences" will thus be safely kept in their box, the nuclear option never having been used.

But then, I belabor the obvious.

[Fr. Bill]

How can any American Catholic bishop even think about this nuclear option when the Pope, in his own mass in New York, communed Nancy Pelosi, Rudolph Gulianni, John Kerry, and who knows how many others who champion the murder of infants?

Captains cannot be counted on to act responsibly when their general pointedly refuses to do so.