Violence at Notre Dame Showdown

The protests against Notre Dame honoring of President Obama this coming Sunday at commencement are making local headlines. Protests help to sell papers, of course, and this one--Catholic students sitting out their own graduation ceremonies, and busloads of protesters coming to Notre Dame on Sunday--has all the markings of a good story. It is, certainly. How big the story will be as it is played out--and as the media spins it--is another matter. It's over abortion pure and simple, and the Catholic Church's witness on this moral issue that is every bit as moral as the issue of slavery.

But when it comes to whatever number of people protesting at Notre Dame, the right image is not that of Vietnam War protesters or those people that show up at the various global economy "summits", and certainly not the PETA people. It's not there won't be violence--there will be violence, but it won't be on the part of protesters, though they will be accused of angry hatred. The violence will be seen in the pictures some of them will be carrying, and the aborted fetuses depict a violence approved of, sanctioned by, and fully supported by the President who is speaking to the students on Sunday.

Joseph Scheidler of the Pro-LIfe Action League see this as "a teaching opportunity" to be taken by "peaceful protesters," who are coming on buses from Chicago, Aurora, IL, Indianapolis, Ann Arbor, St. Louis and other places. They will stand along the route to be taken by visitors coming to the school for graduation, holding signs depicting both fetal development and fetal "termination."

President Obama recently has declined to release photos of alleged torture lest they incite certain people and cause the deaths of American serviceman. The fetal photos won't be censored, and they are displayed in the hope of inciting others, not to violence (God forbid!) but to end the violence and spare the lives of thousands upon thousands upon thousands.

Now we know Notre Dame can read, but can Notre Dame understand pictures? The protesters aim to peacefully point out the violence in pictures. Notre Dame needs to learn something else: honoring the man who was publicly the most pro-abortion legislator in Washington and remains unrepentant is complicity with deep evil.

Comments

[Truth Unites... and Divides]

James Kushiner: "Notre Dame needs to learn something else: honoring the man who was publicly the most pro-abortion legislator in Washington and remains unrepentant is complicity with deep evil."

Here is a First Things essay on Moral Complicity with an Evil Act.

Excerpts: "Weigel may also wish to engage in a theoretical debate about hypothetical public support for the funding of abortion, and whether that results in improper moral complicity with an evil act. That is a worthy seminar topic, but we recommend he start by asking the same question of himself in terms of coerced taxpayer support for an unjust and unjustifiable war in Iraq costing over $10 billion a month and thousands of Iraqi and American lives, which Weigel aided and abetted with his vocal support, contrary to the express prayers of the Holy Father he called “a witness to hope.”

[Francesca in a previous thread: "Pope JP II condemned the invasion of Iraq, so perhaps any Catholic associated with Bush would also have to go."]

The FT essay continues: "The not so implicit suggestion is that if a Catholic politician were to receive ecclesiastical sanction (e.g., excommunication, withholding the sacraments) for advocating (or voting for) government funding of abortion, so should those Catholic politicians who supported the Iraq war (and who voted to fund it). Conversely, the suggestion seems to be that if you are not willing to sanction Catholic politicians who supported the war, you should not be willing to sanction Catholic politicians who support funding for abortion.

[T]heir argument for the moral equivalence between supporting the Iraq war and supporting funding for abortion is equally risible, and a rhetorical cheap shot."

[Benighted Savage]

Speaking of violence.....

IF this is true, then LifeSiteNews.com (and the Drew Mariani Show and PewSitter.com) has decided to "nuke the site from orbit, just to be sure":

Headline: Notre Dame President Sits on Board of Directors of Pro-Abortion, Pro-Contraception Organization

http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2009/may/09051309.html

Put on your helmets. Folks are playing hardball...

[Benighted Savage]

I clicked on the links that LifeSiteNews.com provides and they confirm what was reported. No "ifs" here.

This is copied directly from p.92 of the Millennium Villages handbook:

• Abortion services: In countries where abortion is legal, safe abortion services in controlled settings by skilled practitioners should be established. In villages with a nearby district center with sound surgical capacity, these services can be referred. However, in instances where no district center or alternate post for safe abortion practices is accessible, abortion services can be offered at the village level, provided that sufficient surgical capacity exists.

• Contraception and family planning: Family planning and contraception services
are critical to allow women to choose family size and birth spacing, to combat
sexually transmitted infections, including HIV infection, and contribute to the
reduction of maternal morbidity and mortality. Services include: (1) Counseling;
(2) Male and female condoms; (3) Pharmacologic contraceptives including oral,
transdermal, intramuscular, and implanted methods; and (4) IUDs.

http://www.millenniumvillages.org/docs/MVP_Handbook_complete_18jun08.pdf

[Truth Unites... and Divides]

I just read the essay on Lifesite about Notre Dame President Fr. Jenkins sitting on the Board of Directors of a Pro-Abortion, Pro-Contraception organization, thanks to Benighted Savage.

Simply staggering.

Q: What should the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy do about Fr. Jenkins? Doing nothing is a possible option. However, if the RCC leadership does nothing of consequence about Fr. Jenkins, what's the likely impact? Will this impact have lasting effect, or will it blow over relatively quickly, and fading from memory?

Has Fr. Jenkins pushed the RCC hierarchy into a corner where it has to act, when it would rather not have to act in this high-profile matter? Again, if the RCC hierarchy fails to act, what message does that send? And does it matter?

[John]

Abortion is murder. Those who murder innocent children, and those who try to make it easier for others to do so without criminal penalties will both be held accountable by the One in whose image humans are made.

[CHUCK]

I am not Catholic but I just don't see how Catholics can tolerate politicians like Nancy P and Ted Kennedy who not only approve abortions but actively work toward it. How far do they have to go before they are called on the carpet. Can I just pick and choose what I want to believe in.

[c. stirling bartholomew]

I am glad to see that capacity for outrage has not been lost. We need more of this sort of outrage and this is a fine opportunity to display it.

[lewsta]

Obama has been oparating within a safe, controlled bubble, seeing his political career this far has been lived out in the natty suburbs of Chicago, according to Chicago rules. He's been able to do as he wills, with little to no consequence. Methinks demonstrations such as this one may be amongst the early prickings of his bubble. He must needs be exposed to a reality he has, thus far, escaped. Whether such demonstrations will actually bring him to a change of HEART on the matter of murdering the not yet born, he at least must know many of his "consitituents" will not abide such moral corruption.

and as to the poster above prattling on about the death toll in Iraq being "thousands", well, he is partially correct. To date, about five thousand Americans have perished in that confilct. Somewhere under a thousand Iraqis have perished at American hands ("collateral damage", mostly, and the odd Iraqi promoting violence against his own people). And the "fruit" of this toll is that, in the main, the people of Iraq enjoy a level of freedom and safety unthinkable prior to this engagement.

In contrast, in Mexico in the last two years, more than five thousand Mexican citizens have been pointlessly murdered at the hands of the narcotraficantes. And, in the time since operations in Iraq commenced, more than FIVE MILLIONS of American children have been killed. Their crime? Merely occupying their mothers' wombs.

Perhaps we oughtn't BE in Iraq.. or Afghanistan, Sudan, Kenya, Mexico, Colombia.... but our activities in those nations is based on moral principles far different than the FACT that the murder of the not yet born is still the murder of an innocent human being who has not had opportunity to do anything beyond exist. The most often given "reason" for these murders is nothing more than the convenience and comfort of the mother... or, as often happens, her parents, other "friends".. and, with fifty millions of children killed before birth, is it any wonder our economy is in disarray? Imagine the increase in prosperity and production we might have been afforded were there fifty million more American citizens living today...... the "twelve million illegal aliens" would not be so desparately needed, as there would be an abundance of able-bodied American workers on hand. Nor would we be so fearful of Social Security being bankrupt in twenty years, as there may well be another twenty million contributing workers.....
none of which changes the bottom line: abortion is murder, pure and simple. Until THAT ends, we will never know peace OR prosperity as a nation. That "poor foolish girl" who poured out her life to the untouchables on the streets of Calcutta until she'd nought left to pour knew that much. She shamed this nation more than once on the abortion issue, and rightly so. Obama should take notice....... her words cut to the heart of it. Made some folk very angry, she was hated for it. But SHE had nothing left to lose....... what do WE have to lose that keeps us fearful? Let us hope the thousands pouring in to Notre Dame's hometown have little enough to lose... and take a strong stand.

[Margaret]

Well said, Lewsta.