Reaction continues to spread through the US at Catholic university’s decision to honour most pro-abortion public official in the country.
By Catholic News Service
NOTRE DAME, Indiana (CNS) – A group of 10 Holy Cross priests said the decision to invite President Barack Obama as the University of Notre Dame’s commencement speaker “portends a distancing of Notre Dame from the Church which is its lifeblood and the source of its identity and real strength.”
“Such a distancing puts at risk the true soul of Notre Dame,” said the priests, who are graduates of Notre Dame and members of the order that founded the university.
The priests’ signed letter to the editor was published in the April 8 issue of Notre Dame’s student newspaper, The Observer.
They said they wished to join and support the “courageous students and treasured alumni” who similarly opposed the university’s “sad and regrettable decision” to host Obama as the school’s May 17 commencement speaker and honorary degree recipient.
Critics of Obama say his support of legal abortion and embryonic stem-cell research make him an inappropriate choice to be commencement speaker at a Catholic university.
The group of priests echoed the US bishops’ 2004 document, Catholics in Political Life. The document says: “Catholic institutions should not honour those who act in defiance of our fundamental moral principles. They should not be given awards, honours, or platforms which would suggest support for their actions.”
In an early April letter to Notre Dame’s board of trustees, not released by the university but published on April 8 by LifeSiteNews.com, Holy Cross Father John Jenkins, university president, said the invitation to Obama, announced on March 20, was in keeping with the “letter and the spirit” of the bishops’ document.
He said university officials understood the document to be specifically referring to Catholic politicians, a view he said has been supported by canon lawyers and what other university presidents have been told by their bishops.
As far as the university giving honours, awards or platforms “which would suggest support” for speakers that do not support church teachings, Father Jenkins wrote that he always has been clear to express his disagreement with the president “on issues surrounding the protection of life, such as abortion and embryonic stem-cell research.”
“If we repeatedly and clearly state that we do not support the president on these issues, we cannot be understood to ‘suggest support,’” he wrote.
“However misguided some might consider our actions, it is in the spirit of providing a basis for dialogue that we invited President Obama,” he added. In their letter to The Observer, the Holy Cross priests said they regretted the “fissure” that the invitation caused between the university and some US bishops, including the local bishop, Bishop John D’Arcy of Fort Wayne-South Bend, who said he will not attend the graduation in protest.
The priests said that even though their public stance puts them at odds with Father Jenkins, they could not remain silent on the issue.
“Notre Dame’s decision has caused moral confusion and given many reason to believe that the university’s stance against the terrible evil of abortion is weak and easily trumped by other considerations,” they said, urging Father Jenkins to “revisit this matter immediately.”
“Failure to do so,” they said, “will damage the integrity of the institution and detract from all the good work that occurs at Notre Dame and from the impressive labours of its many faithful students and professors.”
The issue of the campus newspaper that included the priests’ letter also included a column by Cecilia Prinster, president of the Notre Dame Alumni Association, stressing that some of Obama’s policies are in line with Catholic social teaching.
She said she did not speak for the alumni association or its board of directors, but after talking to several people and reflecting on the issue, she said, she was convinced that “although we disagree with Mr Obama on some core issues, we must not condemn.”
She urged the university community to respectfully welcome the president, saying it would “do well to heed” the words of the Second Vatican Council document Gaudium et Spes, the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World.
“Respect and love ought to be extended also to those who think or act differently than we do in social, political and even religious matters. In fact, the more deeply we come to understand their ways of thinking through such courtesy and love, the more easily will we be able to enter into dialogue with them,” she wrote, quoting the document.
“With this approach,” she said, “this commencement will be the beginning of a constructive engagement with the president on the issues where we are aligned as well as on those where we disagree.”
l Among the remarkable responses from individual US bishops is Bishop Thomas Wenski of Orlando who announced on his diocesan website plans to offer a Mass of reparation in response to the University of Notre Dame’s decision to award President Barack Obama an honorary degree.
“As Catholics we are aware of the many shortcomings and transgressions committed against the dignity and sacredness of human life in our world,” according to a diocesan notice.
“That is why it is inconceivable that Notre Dame University, a Catholic institution of higher learning, should receive and honour anyone who promotes policies that are contradictory to who we are as a people of faith.
“As our Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI stated in his visit to the US last year in reference to Catholic university presidents, “to justify positions that contradict the faith and teaching of the Church would obstruct or even betray the university’s identity and mission.”
“Come and pray with Bishop Wenski for all of our transgressions against the Gospel of Life,” the notice read. Bishop Wenski recently stepped down as chairman of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on International Justice and Peace.
A new organisation of University of Notre Dame alumni is seeking the removal of Father John Jenkins CSC as the university’s president. ReplaceJenkins.com urges alumni “to withhold all funding to the University of Notre Dame until Father John Jenkins is replaced as President of the University with someone who will uphold fundamental Catholic moral principles and steer Notre Dame to its proper place of prominence as a Catholic university faithful to the complete teaching of the Magisterium of the Catholic Church.”
Another organisation of concerned alumni, Project Sycamore, also opposes Father Jenkins’s decision to award President Obama an honorary degree. Project Sycamore was founded in 2006 and seeks to foster the university’s Catholic identity.
Meanwhile, the bishop whose diocese includes the University of Notre Dame has said that he might take part in student-led demonstrations protesting the commencement speech there by President Obama.
Bishop John D’Arcy of Fort Wayne-South Bend, Indiana, who had earlier warned against “unseemly and unhelpful demonstrations,” reportedly expressed his support for the campus group NDResponse, and said that he would welcome “prayerful and dignified demonstrations” and might participate in them if his schedule allowed it.
Numerous US bishops have condemned the honouring of President Obama.
Saying that “conditions for constructive dialogue simply do not exist,” University of Notre Dame President Father John Jenkins, rejected a request to discuss the university’s decision.
Father Jenkins withdrew an offer to meet with 25 students after the Notre Dame Response Student Coalition requested that the dialogue be open to all members of the coalition, the Catholic World News website reported.
The coalition had also asked Father Jenkins to take specific steps to uphold an institutional commitment to the sanctity of human life:
“We request that you take concrete steps to demonstrate that the University of Notre Dame is “firm and unwavering” in its commitment to defending human life in its most vulnerable stages,” the students said in a letter to Fr Jenkins.
“We ask that you promise now and going forward to use the moral authority of your office and the prestige of Our Lady’s University to speak out on behalf of the cause of life in a meaningful, concrete and sustained way.”
Cardinal George issues clarification, but still suggests protest
By Catholic News Service
CHICAGO (CNS) – Although the University of Notre Dame is not controlled by the US Catholic hierarchy, “in Catholicism, no person or institution is totally independent,” Cardinal Francis George of Chicago said.
“Any institution that calls itself Catholic needs to anticipate in some fashion the impact their decisions make on others who are part of the Church,” the cardinal said in a statement posted in mid-April on the Web site of his archdiocesan newspaper, The Catholic New World.
The statement was issued to clarify earlier remarks by Cardinal George, president of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops.
The cardinal said the invitation “has embarrassed some of those who were also invited to be part of the commencement ceremonies,” including Bishop John D’Arcy of Fort Wayne-South Bend who has said he will not attend. “The reason for the strong reaction lies in the growing dismay among many, after years of discussion and organising, over their inability to stop the killing each day of about 4000 unborn babies,” Cardinal George said in the statement.
“The indications now that the present administration intends to solidify the right to abortion as a permanent civil rights law, without possible qualification of any sort, add to that dismay and increase frustration,” he added. “Abortion is a society-dividing issue.” The statement said Cardinal George has not urged Notre Dame to “disinvite” the president.
“The president’s views are well known as are his reasons for them; he is not himself the issue here.”
Cardinal George said “those who were upset about the invitation should let their opinions be known to the university, not to him or other bishops, since the bishops do not control or manage the university.”