We all knew this fight was coming. The Catholic Church and the Catholic colleges have been heading toward a crash since at least 1990, when John Paul II issued Ex Corde Ecclesiae, his apostolic constitution for Catholic institutions of higher education. And now, at last, the battle is public—brought to fever pitch by Notre Dame's bestowing of an honorary law degree on a prominent supporter of legalized abortion.
As it happens, that supporter of abortion is also the president of the United States, which is unfortunate in a number of ways—beginning with the fact that the office of the president, regardless of who holds it, deserves respect and honor from American citizens of every political persuasion. For that matter, a majority of at least self-described Catholics (54 percent, according to widely reported exit polls) voted for Barack Obama in November, and, as our first black president, he serves a symbolic function in American political life that Catholics should applaud.
But even when we know a fight is coming, we don't always get to choose the field on which it will be fought. A better place to make all this public might have been the Sacred Heart University dinner at the end of April, which the bishop of Bridgeport, William Lori, refused to attend because it was in honor of the pro-abortion Kerry Kennedy. Or the Xavier University commencement at the beginning of May, which the archbishop of New Orleans, Alfred Hughes, refused to attend because it was in honor of the pro-abortion political strategist Donna Brazile.
Of course, neither Kerry Kennedy nor Donna Brazile are as prominent as Barack Obama, and, in truth, neither Sacred Heart nor Xavier are as firmly identified with Catholicism in the American mind as the University of Notre Dame. And so this is where the long-expected fight at last broke out: in a public controversy over the honoring of the president of the United States with a Catholic law degree.
The story began in December, when the president of Notre Dame, Fr. John I. Jenkins, asked Mary Ann Glendon, the Harvard law professor and former ambassador to the Vatican, to accept this year's Laetare Medal—the university's annual honor for service to the Church and society. Then, on March 20, the White House announced that President Obama would be the commencement speaker this spring at Arizona State University, the University of Notre Dame, and the United States Naval Academy: the usual presidential grouping of a state university, an independent college, and a military academy. That same day, however, Notre Dame announced that it would also be honoring the president with a law degree: the only one of three schools to add an honorary doctorate to the commencement ceremonies.
The university's spokesman Dennis Brown said Notre Dame was "not surprised" by objections to the honoring of Obama. By itself, that fact contradicts the school's later claim that no one at Notre Dame had realized the faithful would be scandalized by the choice of commencement speaker. But it is surely correct to say that the school did not expect the volume of objection and the speed with which it built. By the end of April, an online petition had reached 350,000 signatures, and another online group announced that in a single week it had received pledges to withhold from Notre Dame $8.2 million in planned donations. News reports say the students on campus strongly support the school's administration, but the alumni are less happy, and the pro-life community is outraged—which led the wild-eyed, self-promoting activist Randall Terry to arrive in South Bend and announce, "We will make this a circus." (He started his own website, as well; named "Stop Obama Notre Dame," it offers, for the faithful, what it calls "Marching Orders from Randall Terry.")
Meanwhile, bishops from over fifty of the 195 American dioceses have publicly declared their discontent with Notre Dame—and, interestingly, other bishops, the ones who might have supported the school, have faded quietly from the scene. By the beginning of May, not a single bishop was in open dissent from what had clearly become the consensus of the American episcopate.
In part, that is because even the most politically liberal bishops want to salvage the work they put into "Catholics in Political Life," the carefully worded 2004 document from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, released after years of deliberation and compromise. "Catholic institutions should not honor those who act in defiance of our fundamental moral principles," the bishops had agreed. "They should not be given awards, honors, or platforms which would suggest support for their actions." And what was the point of all that careful work from the bishops, if Catholic institutions are now simply going to ignore it?
Fr. Jenkins' Escalations
Throughout it all, the behavior of Notre Dame's president, Fr. Jenkins, has been execrable. The word is not too strong: If the man manages somehow to keep his job, it won't be through lack of trying to lose it.
Jenkins' appointment as president in 2005 was greeted with some celebration by Catholics, who believed he would give more serious and direct attention to Notre Dame's Catholic character than had the two previous presidents, Fr. Edward Malloy and Fr. Theodore Hesburgh. For that matter, many who know him personally speak of his sincere faith and his good intentions. But when the protests over Obama's honorary degree began, he decided to raise the stakes—doubling down, as the blackjack metaphor has it—and as a result, he turned an unhappy situation into a disastrous one.
One good measure of just how badly he has failed may be the fact that he succeeded in driving off Mary Ann Glendon, who—in an open letter first published on the First Things website—announced on April 27 that she was withdrawing her acceptance of this year's Laetare Medal. A woman celebrated for her good manners and goodwill, Ambassador Glendon hardly wanted to do this, even after the March announcement of Obama's honorary degree; indeed, some of the Catholics who were organizing protests at Notre Dame criticized her for delaying her refusal of the medal. But, Glendon wrote, the school's own later actions compelled her to withdraw. By ratcheting up the confrontation with the bishops—threatening a "ripple effect" that could lead "other Catholic schools . . . to disregard the bishops' guidelines"—Fr. Jenkins had forced her to choose between the bishops and Notre Dame.
She sided with the bishops, of course; given the stark alternatives, she could hardly do otherwise. But her decision was made easier by Notre Dame's attempts to use her to defuse criticism. One of the school's official "talking points" instructed its spokesmen to reply to queries: "President Obama won't be doing all the talking. Mary Ann Glendon, the former U.S. ambassador to the Vatican, will be speaking as the recipient of the Laetare Medal." Indeed, if they were pushed on the question, officials at the university were told to answer: "We think having the president come to Notre Dame, see our graduates, meet our leaders, and hear a talk from Mary Ann Glendon is a good thing for the president and for the causes we care about." This was a game in which she didn't choose to be a pawn.
An even better gauge of Jenkins' failure is his alienation of John D'Arcy, the local bishop. For those who measure their bishops by their ecclesial politics, D'Arcy hardly ranks as a raging conservative. While an auxiliary bishop of Boston in the early 1980s, he reported to Cardinal Law about priests accused of abusing minors—for which he was apparently rewarded by being shipped out of Boston to the minor diocese of Fort Wayne—South Bend in 1985. During the 1990s, while the American bishops were engaged in the seemingly endless discussion of how to implement Ex Corde Ecclesiae, it was D'Arcy who urged the bishops to delay even longer before imposing the requirement that Catholic theologians at Catholic colleges obtain a mandatum from the local bishop.
To force this patient man away, Fr. Jenkins had to begin by failing to give him even a courtesy call while Obama's honorary degree was being planned. On March 24, Bishop D'Arcy released a rather quiet but firm letter in which he said he would not attend the graduation ceremonies, since Notre Dame had violated the 2004 bishops' statement, "Catholics in Political Life." "President Obama has recently reaffirmed, and has now placed in public policy, his long-stated unwillingness to hold human life as sacred," D'Arcy wrote. "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."
In reply, Jenkins offered a piece of sophistry so tawdry it embarrassed even his strongest supporters. He began by quoting the 2004 bishops' statement: "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." But, he explained, "Because the title of the document is 'Catholics in Political Life,' we understood this to refer to honoring Catholics whose actions are not in accord with our moral principles." And since President Obama isn't Catholic, Notre Dame's bestowal of a law degree does not honor "those who act in defiance of our fundamental moral principles."
On April 21, Bishop D'Arcy replied with a second public letter. "It would be one thing to bring the president here for a discussion on healthcare or immigration, and no person of goodwill could rightly oppose this," he wrote.
We have here, however, the granting of an honorary degree of law to someone whose activities, both as president and previously, have been altogether supportive of laws against the dignity of the human person yet to be born. . . .
I consider it now settled that the USCCB document, "Catholics in Public Life," does indeed apply in this matter. The failure to consult the local bishop who, whatever his unworthiness, is the teacher and lawgiver in the diocese, is a serious mistake. Proper consultation could have prevented an action which has caused such painful division between Notre Dame and many bishops—and a large number of the faithful.
That division must be addressed through prayer and action, and I pledge to work with Fr. Jenkins and all at Notre Dame to heal the terrible breach, which has taken place between Notre Dame and the Church. It cannot be allowed to continue. I ask all to pray that this healing will take place in a way that is substantial and true and not illusory. Notre Dame and Fr. Jenkins must do their part if this healing is to take place. I will do my part.
Fr. Jenkins' only public response to this invitation to work with Bishop D'Arcy was, reportedly, a snide remark to a Notre Dame audience that he didn't consult the bishop about inviting Obama, but then again he doesn't consult the bishop on most decisions regarding the university.
That may be the problem: He doesn't appear to be asking anyone for advice—at least, not anyone sensible. While Fr. Jenkins was in Washington in April, a former student (known to friends of First Things) emailed: "On my walk home from work I pass the White House. As I was walking by just now I ran into Fr. Jenkins from Notre Dame, on his way into the White House and had a quick moment to speak with him! This could be very hopeful! Please stop and pray right now that Fr. Jenkins finds the courage to do the right thing while he meets with President Obama, and for the president himself that his heart may be converted!" A recipient of the email (a professor at Notre Dame, also known to friends of First Things) asked about the incident, and he reports that Jenkins snapped in reply, "Whoever said I was even near the White House is either mistaken or lying."
Regardless of the truth of the matter, the tone of that reply is revealing. From the initial decision to grant Obama an unnecessary degree, to the tone-deaf announcement that he would simply replace Mary Ann Glendon as the Laetare medalist, to the trotting out of the former-medalist Judge Noonan to lull the crowd at commencement, Fr. Jenkins has chosen at each step of the process to force discontent into anger, anger into action, and action into war.
The Political View
Of course, the unhappy president of Notre Dame may well believe he is doing simply what Catholic university presidents do these days. His incompetence, however, helps make clear what a more skillful administrator might have obscured: the great divergence, in outlook and purpose, between Catholic universities and the Catholic culture of America.
A straightforward (if somewhat cynical) political analysis grants some insight into the confrontation between the colleges and the Church—the confrontation of which Notre Dame's honoring of President Obama has grown to become the central symbol. University communities tend to be more liberal—certainly more in tune with the Democratic party—than other locales. The Catholic Notre Dame is more conservative than, say, the secular University of California at Berkeley, but Notre Dame is still a university, and its faculty and administrators voted for Obama in percentages beyond the rest of Catholic America. From their point of view, the arrival on campus of the president is a mark of victory in the political arena. Why should they surrender the distinction merely because conservative agitators lost the last presidential election and want Notre Dame to suffer for it?
Of course, from the White House, the situation looks different. John Kerry managed only 47 percent of the Catholic vote in 2004. Barack Obama brought home much more in 2008, and the Democratic party wants to keep those hard-gained votes. The bad economy may have turned some Catholics against the Republicans, but it hasn't necessarily bound Catholics back to the Democrats. The sticking point remains abortion: Catholics are against it, Democrats are for it, and nothing on either side looks likely to budge. Enter the Catholic universities and colleges. In recent years, the bishops have proved generally unwilling to downplay the life issues, and, as a result, they have been systematically shut out by the Obama administration and the new Congress. No one in power in Washington feels the need to give in to the bishops about anything—or to compromise with the bishops, or even to consult the bishops. Much as Republicans over the past eight years never bothered with the National Organization for Women, considering it a wholly owned subsidiary of the Democratic party, so the Democrats now do not bother much with the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which they imagine mostly as a partisan opponent on the life issues and a sideshow on everything else.
Still, the Democrats need to keep their Catholic voters. They need Catholic cover—and they are seeking it among the Catholic schools: Georgetown and Xavier and Sacred Heart and, yes, Notre Dame. The people at these institutions do not all approve of legalized abortion; some do, some don't, and the percentages vary, with Georgetown probably high toward approval and Notre Dame certainly high toward disapproval. But, in general, the Catholic colleges have proved themselves willing to set aside the question of abortion when giving honors to politicians they otherwise support, while the bishops have gradually settled on refusing to grant those honors.
As the Democrats try what all political parties try—to turn a single electoral victory into a long-lasting majority—the lures they offer the Catholic colleges will grow larger and larger. Politics, taken all by itself, offers some explanation for how President Obama's honorary law degree from Notre Dame grew to become the central scene of a power struggle between the bishops and the Catholic colleges.
The Pro-Life Center of Catholic Culture
We should never take politics all by itself, however, just as we should never interpret human interaction solely in terms of power. Politics is a power-inflected function of culture, and at the root of culture lie the deepest commitments to what people hold to be true. The role of culture—American Catholic culture, in particular—is what Fr. Jenkins at Notre Dame, and John DeGioia at Georgetown, and many other presidents of Catholic colleges seem not to understand. Indeed, their lack of Catholic culture is what makes them appear so un-Catholic to the people they antagonize, and it is what so befuddles these college presidents when the charge is made. They know they are Catholics: They go to Mass, and they pray, and their faith is real, and their theology is sophisticated, and what right has a bunch of other Catholics to run around accusing them of failing to be Catholic?
But, in fact, they live in a distant world, attenuated and alone. Opposition to abortion doesn't belong at the absolute center of Catholic theology. It doesn't belong at the perfect center of Catholic faith. It exists, however, at the center of Catholic culture in this country. Yes, that culture is thinner than many that Catholics have known before, and yes, it seems in some ways an unpromising foundation for establishing a broad Catholic identity. For that matter, the pro-life core has only in the past twenty years begun to spread to the more distant reaches of the Church in America.
Still, opposition to abortion is hard and real, the signpost at the intersection of Catholicism and American public life. And those who—by inclination, or politics, or class distinction—fail to grasp this fact will all eventually find themselves in the situation that Fr. Jenkins has now created for himself. Culturally out of touch, they rail that antagonism must derive from politics or the class envy of their lesser-educated social inferiors. But it doesn't. It derives from the sense of the faithful that abortion is important. It derives from the feeling of Catholics that, however far they themselves may have wandered, the Church ought to stand for something in public life—and that something is opposition to abortion.
"There is a political game going on here, and part of that is that you demonize the people who disagree with you, you question their integrity, you challenge their character, and you brand these people as moral poison," Fr. Kenneth Himes, chairman of the theology department at Boston College, told the Boston Globe about the controversy at Notre Dame. As James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal noted, this was the same Fr. Himes who in 2006 wrote the faculty letter objecting to an honorary degree for Condoleezza Rice—a letter that read, "On the levels of both moral principle and practical moral judgment, Secretary Rice's approach to international affairs is in fundamental conflict with Boston College's commitment to the values of the Catholic and Jesuit traditions and is inconsistent with the humanistic values that inspire the university's work."
The irony is palpable—it's only demonizing when other people do it—but Himes went on to tell the Globe, "Some people have simply reduced Catholicism to the abortion issue, and, consequently, they have simply launched a crusade to bar anything from Catholic institutions that smacks of any sort of open conversation." And in his odd way, he's right. The aspiring professionals who attend and staff elite Catholic universities tend to identify with other upwardly mobile young people, focused on career and lifestyle choices. But the vast majority of Catholics, to whom Catholic universities ultimately must answer, seek in Catholic culture the strength with which to confront the urgent concerns of ordinary life.
One could offer here a number of analogies, of varying accuracy. Take divorce in detective stories, for example. In mystery novel after mystery novel through the 1950s, there existed an accepted trope that a reasonable motive for the murder of, say, a wife was that she was a Catholic and so would never give her philandering husband the divorce he wanted. It didn't matter that Catholics were, in fact, divorcing at nearly the same rate as everyone else in those years; what mattered was the trope: the cultural identity of Catholics as people who do not divorce.
Friday abstinence might be another analogy: the cultural identification of Catholics with their fish eating. This was a universally recognized marker, a sign of Catholic culture to Catholic and non-Catholic alike. Regardless of how much theology and liturgy were reformed by Vatican II, the loss of Friday abstinence may have caused more changes in Catholic culture than anything else attempted in the aftermath of the council.
Of course, Friday fish eating was never as central to Catholic thought as opposition to abortion is now. Even rejection of divorce was not as central, though it, too, involved defense of the family. A better analogy might be the role that veneration of the Blessed Virgin played in Catholic culture through the 1950s. Protestants always felt there was something deeply wrong with Catholicism's treatment of Mary, but—as many Catholic theologians pointed out—the Protestant complaint never precisely fit official Catholic theology on the point. That doesn't mean, however, that the Protestants were wrong. They understood, in fact, that the Blessed Virgin occupied a cultural place for Catholics that official Catholic theology did not fully express.
Indeed, the analogy with the cultural role of abortion gains strength when we remember that the Marian doctrines were not forced down on the Church by intellectuals or the hierarchy. Well into the nineteenth century, Catholic theologians and the Vatican generally resisted the movement. The importance of Mary—her symbols and the strong definition of the Marian doctrines—was pushed from below: given to the hierarchy by the sense of the faithful.
That much is true of opposition to abortion. In an important essay in the Fall 2005 issue of Human Life Review, the historian George McKenna demonstrated the surprising withdrawal of the bishops from the political fight over abortion in the crucial years from 1979 to 1983—and maybe all the way to 1998, when the American bishops finally issued a pastoral letter that sharply separated the life issues from other concerns. The cultural centrality of opposition to abortion in America was not pushed down from above; it was forced on the reluctant bishops by the sense of the faithful, and that forcing took almost twenty years to accomplish.
The End Game
It is a horrifying fact, in many ways, that Roe v. Wade has done more to provide Catholic identity than any other event of the last fifty years. Still, for American Catholics, the Church is a refuge and bulwark against an ambient culture that erodes morality and undermines families. Catholic culture is their counterculture, their means of upholding the dignity of the human person and the integrity of family—and, in that context, the centrality of abortion for American Catholic culture seems much less arbitrary than it first appeared.
This is what the leaders of Notre Dame need to grasp, along with those at Georgetown, Xavier, Sacred Heart, and all the rest. They do not necessarily have bad theology—although the bishops have argued that they do—when they equate the life issues with other concerns. They do not have bad faith just because they see the war and capital punishment as matters of equal weight with the million babies killed every year in this country by abortion. But they lack the cultural marker that would make them distinctively Catholic in the minds of other Catholics. Abortion is not the only life issue, but it is the one that bears most directly on the lives of ordinary Catholics as they fight against the current to preserve family life. And until Catholic universities get this, they will not be Catholic—in a very real, existentially important sense.
What's more, they will not be politically effective. Notre Dame and President Obama created the present situation by attempting to use each other in the normal political way, but Notre Dame has gained nothing from the exercise. If anything, Notre Dame has lost ground. What political capital has it earned with the White House from the embarrassment of Mary Ann Glendon's withdrawal and the open sniping of the bishops and the protesters camped outside the college gates? Nothing that will do the school any good.
What the bishops should do now is not clear. They lack much of a weapon beyond the pinprick of a sharp letter and the atomic explosions of declaring that an institution is no longer Catholic and, I suppose, issuing an interdict that bans the sacraments on campus. The likelihood of interdiction at Notre Dame this spring is vanishingly small—but the bishops might remember that weapons remain valuable only if they get brandished every once in a while.
They might remember, as well, that the day is coming when they will have to take on a major Catholic university, and it won't be because they much want to. It will be because the ordinary sense of ordinary Catholics compels them to it. Wouldn't it be more politically effective if Catholic schools withheld their honors to try to force the politicians they admire to oppose abortion? Wouldn't it be more culturally powerful if Catholic schools were Catholic in a way that Catholics understand?
Joseph Bottum is editor of First Things.
Comments:
Your cultural critique is spot-on (as usual), and the "many moves" of Fr. Jenkins appear out of touch with the best of pro-life Catholicism today.
I have two comments/questions in response, though, that attempt to further your discussion.
First, have you let Bishop D'Arcy "off the hook" a little too easily, here? You suggest (accurately, I think) that the removal of sacraments could be in order. In fact, could we not also argue that they, in fact, should have been denied? The idea of bishops "protesting" behavior that is clearly out of line with their own demands seems rather silly. Could it not be argued that "episcopal permissiveness" is also at work here? In the bishop-university dance, it takes two to tango, no?
Secondly, I find it interesting that, in the same edition of First Things, Archbishop Chaput is arguing that Catholic culture has failed to "get it" on the abortion question. Does this not suggest a flip side to the same culture that you are suggesting is, in fact, prolife?
1. He is granted considerable independence not normally present in a religious order relationship since presumably he is not the superior of this order in America.
2. He is being placed in a situation which is demonstrably in conflict with his religious vocation.
A number of Catholic priests in leadership positions in American universities seem to prize their independence as a principle of American Higher education. They apparently want to stand firm with other senior people in American education. At times then, this secular ambition to be respected by other education leaders might seem to be in conflict with a priest's religious obligations. As noted in the paper above, Fr. Theodore Hesburgh was a predecessor of Fr. Jenkins at Notre Dame. Fr Hesburgh seemed to be inordinately proud of the circumstance that he had been awarded more than 100 honorary degrees. Should a secular something such as recognition by other people in education be so important to a priest of Jesus Christ?
What was Fr. Jenkins motive in deciding to honor President Obama with an honorary degree? The most wicked crime of abortion is an abomination especially in directly interfering with God's exclusive right to create life. Many thousands of people in America have to interact with President Obama as the Chief Executive of the United States. Fr. Jenkins is not obliged to interact personally with any President. As a priest, as a Catholic, Fr. Jenkins ( and all of us) should be concerned with President Obama's soul as well as the lives of the millions of babies yet to be conceived.
President Obama has been linked with the position of allowing a survivor of a botched abortion to die without any care and attention. The consummate wickedness of behavior like this is that the abortionists and their supporters could not distinguish between the humanity of a wanted child and the unwanted abortion survivor lying side by side! In simple language these people which include President Obama, claim the right to murder human beings!
What could Fr. Jenkins have done publicly that would have been a warning to the President instead of some sort of confirmation that his abortion position is not all that important. God is not mocked indefinitely. Senator Bill Bradley, former senator from New Jersey responded to a letter I wrote to him that thoughtful people could disagree on issues. He might as well have included Adolf Hitler in the class of people we could disagree with!
There is a dreadful bottom line to all this. Following on from the abortion statistics referred to by speakers at my annual Right to Live trips to Washington, DC., the question occurred to me: "Who have killed the most Americans since Independence? Was it opponents in the American Civil War? Was it some European countries during foreign conflicts including World Wars I and II?" Was it Adolf Hitler? Surely the answer is American doctors enabled/aided and abetted by certain individuals on the United States Supreme Court, in Congress and in pressure groups.
Fr. Jenkins and the religious order he belongs to have something to answer for!
Thank you
Benedict has the intellect and scholarship to cope and then all Catholic teaching institutions should have to go through a reaccreditation process whereby they know if they do not state clearly what the Church teaches thay will forfeit their right to call themselves Catholic and lose Church funding For the protection of parents we need an educational index showing those institutions where a young person's faith will be supported and nurtured as opposed to those where it will be undermined and in some cases blatantly mocked.
See the Cardinal Newman Society for excellent information on Catholic colleges and universities.
Now, surely you will agree that an allegedly Catholic institution should not honor him with a degree, just as Notre Dame would never bestow an honorary degree on a slave-trader or rabid segregationist or torturer, no matter what other "nice" qualifications they may have?
A friend of mine, a 1968 Notre Dame alum, told me that when he was a student Governor George Wallace was invited to speak. Unfortunately, student protests at the time resulted in the invitation to the governor being withdrawn. Governor Wallace never had to try to defend his segregationist views to the Notre Dame community.
The truth is that authenticallyl Catholic institutions don't honor slave-traders, segregationists or radical pro-abortion politicians.
Mr. Coffey and Michael and M - Notre Dame's theology department was not certified when I attended, and to the best of my memory, has not been since; it certainly does not have Catholic Univ of America's certification. Notre Dame is only "a Catholic University" in the cultural sense Mr. Bottum speaks of, but with a much wider sense of that culture than he implies. For Bishop D'Arcy to make any such statement would make him a laughingstock.
Michael - since slavery was legal in the Papal States, and had been for much of the Church's existence, you might rethink your definition of an "authentically Catholic institution". Similarly you might ask precisely when abortion became the central issue of American Roman Catholic life. And just when did Jesus change his mind on either subject? The Gospels say very little on either issue.
Or put it another way: at one time or another, people with one or more of those beliefs you castigate have attended Notre Dame. And have held power in the Holy See.
M - Church teaching mocked? All we need do is examine how bishops and archbishops worldwide treated what you must surely call the second-most innocent humans - children sexually abused by their "shepherds" - and we need not go much further. The beam in thine own eye, you know.
Mr. O'Donnell and Marc - Fr. Jenkins and his order know their priorities and acted in light of them. Actually, the order was not unified on the issue; my understanding is that some members agree with Bishop D'Arcy and the Ambassador. They weren't unified on Reagan's 1981 invitation either. What they have to answer for is not your domain.
(And let's skip the "God is not mocked" stuff: two cardinals - testifying to their actions as the Archbishop of Boston and the Bishop of Stockton respectively - gave demonstrably false answers under oath, and they're still alive and well.)
I do find Mr. Bottum's description of Fr. Jenkins' lack of foresight compelling, but he (and the commenters) seem to miss the fact that Notre Dame has not in your lifetimes been the institution you all have been implying it should be. The institution thrives precisely because of the quality of the people there, including the POTUS. SAT scores and the contributions of the university will continue to rise even if even you dissuade some talented Catholics from teaching and/or attending. Good will still be created there; sometimes Good that your image of Catholicism cannot imagine or contain. It is a university first; it teaches varying degrees of Catholic dogma and thinking second.
A great Catholic university would not honor one of the most radically pro-death politicians alive, either by inviting him to deliver a valedictory address to its graduating class or by awarding him an honorary doctorate of law.
A great university with a Catholic residential culture could. And did.
Yes, you can attend Notre Dame as a student, go to Mass in your dorm, talk freely about religion on campus, and not suffer the subtle scorn of your secular classmates. But please, the majority of the faculty at ND are NOT Catholic, many of them are hostile to Catholicism in general, and the administration has little power or interest in investing campus culture with robust assertions of "Catholic identity." The CSC is all about Catholic "mission," which is considered more inclusive than Catholic "identity." Catholic identity is considered an obstacle to many things, and it's even a bit embarrassing, since ND aspires to be a peer institution of secular giants like Harvard and Yale.
Last, and perhaps most important of all, a significant percentage of ND's Board of Trustees (and the incoming Dean of the Law School) were donors to Obama's candidacy. They probably remain big donors of the DNC. ND would like to keep its access to the corridors of power, split the Catholic vote more in favor of the Dems, and thereby salve their guilty consciences.
The innocent be damned.
Thank you for this article, Mr. Bottum. I wonder about this statement, however: "Abortion is not the only life issue, but it is the one that bears most directly on the lives of ordinary Catholics as they fight against the current to preserve family life." Does abortion really bear most directly on the lives of ordinary Catholics - more than divorce, more than education, more than employment.
FYI Mr Wildermuth: "Ordinary Catholics" who divorce, obtain any kind of education or employment etc are, by definition, Catholics Who Have Been Allowed to Live. Turns out, millions of "Ordinary Catholics' haven't had that opportunity, in this land of opportunity, due to philosophies such as you seem to promote. You see, in your effort to be inclusive of all 'rights', you negate the first right: the Right to Live.
placing the abortion issue as the central core of Catholicism. And then develops a morality play, the Bishops, guardians of the truth and protectors of the laity, versus not only Notre Dame, but all Catholic Colleges as facilitators of evil and deviant thinking. In a startling return to pre Enlightenment religiosity he advances the thesis that Catholic scholarship is to be controlled by Bishops, and that the Universities should bow in repentance when a local bishop expresses his displeasure.
At the core of fundamental religious thinking is a simplified moral high ground. We are closer to God, our actions are a reflection of His will. Once the righteous path to God has been established, reasonable examination of problems cannot be held, and demeaning of another’s views expected.
A whiff of this can be found in the open letter by Bishop D’Arcy: I consider it now settled that the USCCB document, "Catholics in Public Life," does indeed apply in this matter. The failure to consult the local bishop who, whatever his unworthiness, is the teacher and lawgiver in the diocese, is a serious mistake. Proper consultation could have prevented an action which has caused such painful division between Notre Dame and many bishops—and a large number of the faithful.I consider it now settled…, indeed, bombast mixed in with faux humility, and of course the chilling coupling of teacher and lawgiver.
The painful division between Notre Dame and many bishops fails to reach a third of the members of the USCCB, while the large number of faithful approaches only 35% of Catholics. One thing can be said with absolute confidence. This statement by Bottum is disingenuous:By the beginning of May, not a single bishop was in open dissent from what had clearly become the consensus of the American episcopate.The unwritten rules of the game are that bishops do not disagree with each other publicly. Thus, the real question lingers: Why was Bishop D’Arcy able to attract such a paucity of support from the very Bishops that wrote the document on which he based his action?.
This is not the first time Bishop D’Arcy felt his moral fist should rule the educational life at Notre Dame. In 2008, suddenly scandalized that the young women students of Notre Dame planed to stage the play Vagina Monologues, which had been previously performed at the University without controversy, he issued a cease and desist order. He failed to bend the University to his will, but he did succeed http://www.wsbt.com/news/local/15441616.html>
in forcing a planned theological conference of bishops jointly held with Notre Dame faculty to be moved off campus.
I examined Bishop D’Arcy’s ecclesiastic politics as a means to point out that Ex Corde Ecclesiae deals with theological pronouncements by faculty at Catholic Universities, and has nothing to do with student activities or the granting of honorary degrees. Ex Corde Ecclesiae is an administrative document to establish some degree of uniformity among catholic universities. Most observers of the Vatican accept that this document was directed at American Catholic Colleges and Universities. It is irrelevant in Europe and most countries through out the world that do not have the variety of Catholic Educational Institutions that exist in the U.S.
In the wake of World War II, and the influx of veterans into Universities under the GI Bill, Catholic Universities found a need to expand, and change their rather parochial teaching to accommodate a more mature student population. In the decades immediately following the war, Theodore Hesburgh C.S.C. at Notre Dame, and Edward B. Bunn, S.J. at Georgetown, and others began transforming Catholic Colleges and Universities into Centers of Excellence, a place for scholarship, where problems could be examined from all facets, and science was not constrained. These institutions became fertile ground for the liberalizing winds that blew through the Church as Vatican II was initiated in 1962.
It is no secrete that both Pope John Paul II and his successor Benedict XVI are not fans of Vatican II. The recent revoking the excommunications of four schismatic bishops of the Lefebvre movement sent a clear message of the direction Benedict XVI wishes to move the Church. Yet, as the attacks on Notre Dame and Obama escalated, the Vatican refused to take a stand on Bishop D’Arcy’s claim that University had to bow to his wishes. Indeed, as pointed out by others, the Vatican's own newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, had a relatively neutral to positive assessment on Obama’s position on “life issues” as the pseudo controversy escalated.
One does not have to be a high school Valedictorian to tease out that this essay has precious little to do with the inner life or faith of Catholics and everything to do with politics. The savaging of Notre Dame and other Catholic Universities and the invectives heaped on their leaders and educators is unprecedented by any standards of normal discourse. Its only purpose is to serve as a distorted mirror that Mr. Bottum uses to reflect on Obama.
And what of those prelates who did not wish to support Bishop D’Arcy’s in the controversy he created? That American Bishops universally oppose abortion is not the issue. The question is what tactics are helpful, and what tactics are detrimental.
I suspect that those Bishops who did not comment on the controversy prefer excellence in education to the cookie cutter approach to religion that enthralls Mr. Bottun. Central to such education is the development of an inquiring mind, which requires the cultivation of doubt. And there in lies the tension between humanism and religion. For faith to survive, some degree of certitude must be maintained. For us to explore the wonders of our humanity, doubt is essential.
Some may have a more nuanced perception of Obama’s view on abortion than the ham fisted and crude characterization of the hard Right. Perhaps they just did not wish to join the dog whistle crowd that magically appears every time Randall Terry finds another way to get his name in print.
Most Bishops came of age when John Kennedy was running for the Presidency; he clearly stated that he would answer to the Constitution and not to Rome. Perhaps they realized that in political life the litmus test of abortion and the other Culture of Life issues cut both ways in a democracy. Too much prominence, and every Catholic politician will have to face the question as to whether he answers to the Constitution or to Rome.
Mr. Bottum and I will never find agreement on the function of Catholic Colleges and Universities in our society, or their intellectual freedom to pursue excellence. Central to their role is intellectual ferment, they will die as centers of learning if outside authorities, be they secular or religious, dictate what plays can be produced by students and by extension what books can be read, or who can receive an honorary degree. But one must wonder, why long after this pseudo controversy began to die, after clips of Obama’s speech were shown on TV and had been analyzed, does Mr. Bottum return to this poisoned well?
With all that said, I must confess that I did manage to get a small chuckle out of this nonsensical episode in the chronicles of higher education. Once the hysteria over the President’s appearance at Notre Dame quieted down, without fanfare Obama picked Miguel Diaz, Professor of Theology at St. John's University and the College of Saint Benedict in Minnesota as Ambassador to the Holy See. Fluent in Italian, conversant in Theology, Dr. Diaz will be able to circumvent the fundamentalist strains permeating some of the Catholic Bishops and open a direct line of communication between Rome and the Obama administration. Why the chuckle? Dr. Diaz received his doctorate at Notre Dame.
R. Paul Miller, B.S. (Notre Dame,’55), M.D. (Georgetown Medical School, ’59)
The truth hurts, doesn't it?
” …perhaps Johnson and Miller can write about their obvious "denial" and "projection." Their exertions are pitiful.”
You may benefit by taking 5 minutes to review Paul Graham’s brief essay “How to Disagree” which can be found here:
http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html
Friend Paul Graham outlines six gradations of refutations to a position taken by somebody who you may disagree with. The lowest form of discourse is name calling, the highest grade is achieved if one explores and exposes fallacy in the core, the “Central Point” of the argument on hand.
Joseph Bottum’s core argument is that Barak Obama is a very bad man, morally corrupt, unworthy of the Presidency of our Country. Had he left it at that, he would have drawn no response from me. Mr. Botum has established credentials as a conservative “hard right” Republican, there is no need to refute his thinking. Others can do it better than I can.
Unfortunately, Mr. Bottum decided to entwine his contempt for President Obama with a screed against Catholic Higher Education. He denigrated the University of Notre Dame, savaged its President, Father Jenkins, and attacked other Catholic Universities and Colleges for their association with Democratic politicians. The glue that keeps his essay together, the core argument, Paul Graham’s Central Point, was that Notre Dame was very bad in inviting President Obama in the first place, and just loathsome in refusing the claim of the local Bishop that he was the final arbitrator in spiritual and academic functions at the University.
My comments were directed at the core, or what brother Graham characterizes the Central Point in Mr. Bottum’s essay: Local Bishops have direct control over student life and Academic functions at Catholic Institutions of higher learning.
You may be right that my “exertions are pitiful”. I am a slow thinker, and slow writer, not the kind of traits to poses in developing a logical argument. Fortunately, I am an eager learner and look forward to you pointing out where I am in a state of “denial”, and where I am “projecting”. I would caution you to read Paul Graham’s essay first, others in this blog may do so, and judge your comments accordingly.
By the way, this blog does not accept html programing commands(block quote, italics, links) which perturbed the format of my original comments. Hopefully I will be able to correct that tomorrow.
Between the constant showing of the Vagina Monologues (where the lesbo-molestation of a minor girl is celebrated, free tickets to Brokeback Mountain (you know, where one cowboy anally sodomizes another on film), celebration of homosexuality during Easter, and now the lauding of an outright baby murderer - and this - following the giant pederasty scandal in the Church - we have come to NOT TRUST ANY PRIEST ANYWHERE.
We have no idea who to trust. We constantly are betrayed. The Church has become an impediment to teaching our children Christianity and right from wrong.
The Church is heavily infected with evil - and also with thousands of cowardly, cowardly men who will tolerate that evil.
My neighbors, who are not even Christian, have more moral sense than the feckless half-men who lead the church.
Your insightful critique of the Obama / Notre Dame issue has exposed a deeper, more worrisome problem in Catholic culture. In the Spring of 1970 (before Roe vs Wade) I was enrolled at St Patrick's Seminary, Menlo Park, CA. The student body, about 103 or so seminarians, voted to go on strike to protest President Nixon's authorization of the invasion of Cambodia. Two aspects of that decision troubled me more than the decision itself. First, the timing of the strike was carefully calibrated to closely follow the beginning of the strike at Stanford University (a short distance away). Second, the position of both liberals and conservatives on the traditional concerns of candidates for the priesthood was well known by all, and for the most part they treated each other with respect. However, when the debate over the strike began both liberals and conservatives became passionate and angry. It was obvious to me the secular ideology of both factions meant a great deal more to them then their Catholic beliefs. And these were men who would later become priests and bishops.
The problem is worse today. The rationale for Pro-Choice derives from American secular ideology. And many of those who are Pro-Life are more passionate about their conservative secular ideals than their Catholic beliefs. Can Catholicism in America survive?
And now---prestigious Notre Dame shows itself to be like so MANY obstensibly religious colleges (either Protestant or Catholic) which regularly EXALT the latest Secular death fashion OVER their core Christian beliefs.
What of colleges where the faculty and administration have STRONGER ties to their fellow secular brethren than to standards of Christianity? Such colleges and universities appear to be INDEPENDENT from their religious base.
And who funds them? I was glad to hear Notre Dame suffered a big dollar drop in giving. I hope the student enrollment drops significantly also. Maybe these two hard things will help be the cure the ND administration needs???
It would be BETTER if the alumni and (especially) the denominational religious leaders had more say in the day-to-day Notre Dame life. Thus, the womandebasing "Vagina Monologues" would be banned...and any public figures with EXTREME pro human death legal beliefs would not be welcomed - and then honored with a law degree.
Our society is being transformed (mostly for the worse) by mostly independent universities who got many ideas from corrupt idealists of the 50s & 60s like Alan Ginsburg, Dr. Tim O'Leary (of tune in -turn on - drop out fame) and Distinguished Professor and unrepentant former Bomber Radical Bill Ayers...to name a few!
I am an eager learner and look forward to you pointing out where I am in a state of “denial”, and where I am “projecting”. I would caution you to read Paul Graham’s essay first, others in this blog may do so, and judge your comments accordingly.
Um, no. This is a blog, not the Oxford Union, and I would kindly request that comments remain what they are: comments. If you want a full-blown essay, I'm afraid you'll have to pay me. So I'll be very brief:
First, I think you are in denial that ND did a very wrong and damaging thing by giving Mr. Obama an honorary doctorate of law. This is the central fact around which all discussion revolves. Typical of those in denial, your arguments thrash around in non-essentials, seeking to make them seem more essential. Second, I think you are projecting. That is, you think this is just one more "nonsensical episode in the chronicles of higher education," but however devoutly you wish this were so (trying to project your blitheness outward), the actions of ND in this affair remain grievous and severe.
Incidentally, did you see the recent, collective, official USCCB statement (June 23) in support of Bishop D'Arcy? http://www.usccb.org/comm/archives/2009/09-144.shtml
I suppose you have also seen that Mr. Obama is going to re-appoint the members of the U.S. Council on Bioethics. I don't see the need. His Executive Order of March 9 not only removed barriers to research on embryonic stem cells, contravening Catholic teaching, but revoked the previous Order, which provided federal funds for alternative adult stem cell research. This makes Mr. Obama two things: objectively pro-death in yet another way, and utterly oblivious to the well-konown practical scientific benefits of adult stem cell research.
Sorry to have rattled on, but these points evidently bear repeating.
In fact, opposition to abortion is only the most publicly pronounced element of the Gospel of Life, and as John Paul II says in the introductory paragraphs to EVANGELIUM VITAE, "The Gospel of God's love for man, the Gospel of the dignity of the person and the Gospel of life are single and indivisible Gospel." (EV #2)
I take this statement by John Paul II -- along with the very title of the encyclical, "The Gospel of Life, and John Paul's heroic work on the Theology of the Body -- to mean that in his view, it is precisely in the arena of the dignity of the human body that the Gospel needs to be proclaimed for the forseeable future.
Even Richard Nixon -- who was otherwise tone-deaf on abortion (witness his approval of it for mixed race children) -- said of Roe vs. Wade that "it breaks the family," and promotes "permmissiveness."
The problem is not just abortion, in other words. The problem is LEGALIZED abortion. Legalized abortion efffectively makes the state the bitter, mortal foe of the family -- and thus of ANY truly human "culture" whatsoever.
John Paul is adamant on this point, insisting that "We are facing an immense threat to life: not only of individuals but also to that of civilization itself." (EV #59) His call to (moral) arms is unmistakeable. "We are facing an enormous and dramatic clash between good and evil, death and lifes, the 'culture of death' and the 'culture of life'. We find our selves not only 'faced with' but necessarily 'in the midst of' this conflict and we all share in it, with the inescapable responsibility of choosing to be unconditionally pro-life."
So while Bottum is right that abortion does not belong at the center of Catholic faith, the imposition by the state of LEGALIZED abortion on society compels the faithful to make opposition to it central to the proclamation of the Gospel in time -- precisely in view of in our Christian vocation as "salt" and "light" in the world.
As an attack on civilization itself -- becuase it is such a profound attack on the family, implicitly urging morthers to kill their children as a solution to any difficulty whatsoever, effectively excluding fathers from their fundamental roles as providers and protectors, denying siblings to our children -- legalized abortion is an attack on ANY truly human culture.
By itself, however -- and as Bottum points out -- mere opposition to abortion si not sufficient to build a culture of life. And this is where JP II'S 'Theology of the Body' comes in. The Gospel we proclaim must not only be about what is forbidden -- abortion -- but of what is possible: the human imaging of the Holy Trinity through our bodily lives as male and female, husband and wife, children and grandchildren.
This is the grat positive, even mystical, vision -- which is the flip side of opposition to abortion, euthanasia, birth control, embryonic stem cell research and the rest -- and which must be fully developed and proclaimed before the Culture of Life attains victory over the Culture of Death.
Meanwhile, from protecting Catholic hospitals from attempts to force them to allow abortions, to defending health care providers from being forced to participate in abortions, all the way to preventing US tax dollars from promoting abortion internationally, the necessity of opposing the Culture of Death is already upon us these last few decades.
Finally, if FIRST THINGS wants to do something to promote the positive dimension of the Culture of Life, how about devoting some space to discussions of the Theology of the Body. This October marks the 30th anniversary of John Paul's first public presentation of his Theology of the Body. (It took him 5 years to get his entire message delivered at his weekly general Audiences.) How about an issue devoted to the Theology of the Body?
Ed Hurlbutt
In brother Graham’s view, “the most powerful form of disagreement is to refute someone's central point”, (classification DH6). As best I can tell, your central point can be found in your comment dated 6/17/2009 (11:37am), to wit:
“A great Catholic university would not honor one of the most radically pro-death politicians alive, either by inviting him to deliver a valedictory address to its graduating class or by awarding him an honorary doctorate of law.”
As you present no evidence to point to the characterization of Obama as “the most radically pro-death politicians alive”, I will presume you are talking about President Obama’s stand on abortion. I will rely on Joseph Bottum essay in the Weekly Standard, where he has this to say, to help us out:
“This is the man, after all, who voted against the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act when it was in the Illinois state legislature--the man who, by rescinding the Mexico City policy three days after he took office, now has American tax dollars paying for abortions in foreign countries, and the man who used a televised campaign appearance at an evangelical church to dismiss the moral question of abortion as ‘above my pay grade’."
I will take them one by one.
The Born-Alive Infants Protection Act was voted down by a majority in the Illinois State Senate. It was widely criticized as punitive and was not supported by the majority of the state’s population. Obama in publicly stated why he voted against this act. His view that the act was unconstitutional, and its provisions would fail to pass muster in the Supreme Court. This view was almost universally supported by legal scholars. The raising of this event points to the problem that fundamental Christians are unable to grasp. Any politician, what ever his or her faith, has to live within the boundaries of the Constitution.
The second point, the “Mexico City policy”, indicates the degree of ignorance Mr. Bottum believes his readership poses. The prohibition against tax dollars being utilized for abortion is within a Congressional act, and cannot be rescinded by Presidential order. That remains in place. What was rescinded was the Bush decree that no tax dollars could be provided to any organization that was associated with abortion services. What that meant was that support for immunization of childhood diseases could not be provided to an Agency that also might have provided abortion in selected cases as part of their women’s reproductive programs. What President Obama rescinded was a total ban on cooperation, and opened up the ability for the US to deliver health services in settings where under the Bush decree it could not.
The final point is straight forward, but points to the need to misconstrue events and statements to slime Obama. The question asked was when does life begin in utero. The question that should have been asked is when is the soul fused with the body. For fundamental Christians, it is at the moment of conception. That is an article of faith, and in human terms can be argued for, or against, and will remain unresolved. You may wish to join Mr. Bottum in condemning Barak Obama for not agreeing with him on this theological point, but most folks will understand that when policy is based on theology, we are dealing with a theocracy, controlled by prelates, and not a democracy.
The Weekly Standard article can be found here:
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/016/482btmli.asp
As is Mr. Bottum’s wont, he prefers calumny and denigration of somebody’s character than to examination of problems we face, in this case Douglas Kiemic. I did enjoy this snipet in the article:
“Bring in the sharpest canon lawyers from Marquette, and the cleverest Catholic ward-heelers from Chicago, and the slipperiest Jesuits from Georgetown.”
The “cleverest Catholic ward-heelers from Chicago” escapes me. The others are easily identified. The canon lawyers from Marquette is assuredly Daniel C. Maguire, who in an essay examined Academic Freedom and the Vatican’s Ex Corde Ecclesiae, and Thomas J. Reese, SJ who defended Notre Dame’s right to invite Obame. Both deserve a read, if for no other reason than to point out why the USCB statement, which Jack quotes as definitive, is in reality so weak. It fails to condemn Notre Dame’s invitation to President Obama or the granting of the honorary degree. The word abortion is not even mentioned. It is designed not to offend, and certainly not to support the condemnation of President Obama…
Maguire can be found here:
http://www.aaup.org/AAUP/pubsres/academe/2002/MJ/Feat/magu.htm
Reese’s article can be found here:
http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/georgetown/2009/03/notre_dame_right_to_invite_obama.html
And with those two links with a third. E.J. Dionne examines this controversy fro the view point of the Vatican’s official newspaper. Its comments on the stem cell research do not reach the level of accuracies that Jack has achieved.
Risking an ad hominem, I am awaiting, but not holding my breath, for Jack to substantiate his characterization that Obama is most radically pro-death politicians alive. Most political observers agree that any of his policies would decrease the number of abortions performed in this country.
You are "modestly aggrieved." Well, life can be disappointing.
What you're encountering isn't ignorance of logic and procedure. If you're a Roman Catholic, what you're getting from me is something called "rebuke." If you're not a Catholic, think of my posts as defenses of the Catholic view. Nothing tires me less than to rehearse well-known facts in defense of the truth.
It is well-established that when it comes to protecting and extending the practice of abortion, Mr. Obama is counted among the most hard-left and extremist of all US politicians. Two large groups of facts support this:
1. He received a massive amount of financial support from the abortion industry during his campaign. Why? Because, among other things, NARAL gave him a 100% approval rating for his work in the Illinois senate from 2005-07. He is deeply in their debt.
2. Next, Mr. Obama promised to pursue, and is now busily enacting, an extremist pro-death agenda. Readers here can find plenty on the web to illustrate this agenda. Here are the things that stick out to me:
- One of his first executive orders was to reverse the Mexico City Policy so that US dollars could fund abortion overseas.
- He restored US funding for the UN Population Fund, which was halted years ago when it was discovered that funds were supporting China's one-child policy through forced abortion. He increased funding to the UNFPA by 25%.
- International Family Planning (cough cough) was going to get a nearly 20% increase in funding from the Obama administration in FY 2009. I think that went through.
- Mr. Obama wanted to increase funding for Planned Parenthood to $700 million thereabouts. He tried to sneak this into the Spending Bill, but the whistle was blown because it would, naturally, only "stimulate" his pals in the multi-billion dollar abortion industry.
- Oh, and his Spending Bill cut funding for abstinence education by $54M, so spare us the canard that Mr. Obama is really ok for pro-lifers to support because he wants to 'reduce the need for abortions.'
- By the way, were any pro-life groups invited to Mr. Obama's health care summit at the White House? (crickets) I don't think so.
- As for embryo stem cell research, Mr. Obama immediately opened the federal coffers for the destruction of human beings at the earliest stage of development. At the same time, he slammed shut those same coffers for adult stem cell research, which has dozens upon dozens of therapies derived from it. The "science" is all on the adult side.
- Of course, when it comes to answering questions about when life begins (duh, conception), he evades, says it's "above his pay grade" and trots out some contemptible, unmanly evasions.
- Oh, and the new Vat ambassador? Mr. Obama's previous three nominations were all rejected because they were pro-abortion. Are you seriously suggesting Mr. Obama wants to play nice with the Vatican? (laughter)
- He has repeatedly supported the FOCA bill, which would nullify every federal, state, or local restriction on access to abortion procedures.
- He has appointed pro-abortion judges to federal circuits, pro-abortion people to federal administrative positions, and is likely to have a pro-death Supreme Court pick in his gift as well. All are going to advance the agenda.
This is a well-financed and aggressively pursued agenda that is demonstrably pro-death. Mr. Obama has fully signed onto it. If you want to see the plan, look at that document on the website he had up during his transition: http://www.change.org/. Most of the plans have already been enacted. NARAL is dancing happy dances.
So please, put an end to your flailing. Don't come here and try to say that Mr. Obama is some sort of happy medium, someone that pro-lifers "can work with." His game is to play rope-a-dope with pro-lifers and put them out of existence by statute and regulation. If you don't see that, you aren't paying enough attention.
If you do see it, and you're on his side, and you're Catholic? Brother, you need not only to be rebuked, but to get on your knees, pray for mercy, and stop letting your enemies wipe the floor with your wishful thinking.
This is what Notre Dame should've done, and conspicuously didn't do. These summer evenings, Rahm Emmanuel is lighting cigars and having a good long laugh at Notre Dame's expense.
When was the last time any people, institution or group was put under interdict...I remember none in my lifetime. Individuals have been disciplined.
Hans Kung and a number of others but not many have been dealt with..
I think that we are skidding into fantasy due to our wish to outdo each other in damning Fr. Jenkins and entertaining notions of imposing a 10th century punishment that would satisfy our outrage.
The local ordinary, in this case Bishop D'Arcy, should have sufficient means at his disposal to inflict embarrassment upon Fr. Jenkins to a greater or lesser degree as he determines in the near future and as the Ordinary with all the true meaning of that term he can determine what Catholic groups and institutions operate within his diocese so he should have some recourse to make his displeasure known without resorting to laying the entire university under interdict.
Also the first rule of authority is not to have recourse to your biggest weapons just to strike down a flea but to select a retaliatory method that inflicts a maximum of discomfort upon your adversary with a minimum of expenditure on your authority and which if selected well has the potential to reduce him to a laughing stock.
I believe that I would have recommended a different course to Bishop D'Arcy than simply to boycott the exercises but to attend as a speaker and to use that forum as a teaching moment by which he could layout the entire Catholic position on life and abortion in unambiguous terms reflecting on all the miss-steps of "catholic" politicians in the last election and by the president since his election. And he could end his oration much like Cato the Elder ended his senate speeches with “Carthago delenda est” by reminding the president that violation of a basic human right such as the right to life or the denial of humanity to a human group such as the unborn, is so heinous a matter that no other policy however noble or laudatory will be able to overcome the undermining of its own success by that fatal deficiency in basic humanity. No president who promotes abortion will ever succeed in any of his other grandiose enterprises. The wrongness of the one will preclude the success of the others as surely as the night overcomes the day.
The head-on approach would have been the best way to confront President Obama and confront him on a field that is the Bishop's own turf on which the president has willingly stepped. It would have possibly forced Obama to abandon his tempered address or simply have embarrassed him so greatly that his address would have been a lame rebuttal but it would have afforded Catholic teaching a prime opportunity to teach the entire country without interruption by the opposition. Alas, it was an opportunity missed, a moment gone.
Examination of the word in a thesaurus gives a variety of synonyms with graded meanings, from “reprimand” to “admonish”, to “censure”. These words imply that the individual or body has either expertise or some degree of authority. My electronic dictionary (Mac) has this to say when the family of words is examined:
“Rebuke is the harshest word of this group, meaning to criticize sharply or sternly, often in the midst of some action.”
It turns out that the open mind seeks criticism, for it is the only way that one’s thoughts can be refined or distilled during a discussion such as we are having. Rebuking assuredly is not criticism, nor is your assumption that your Catholicism is the one true word and superior to mine.
My comments have centered on the following two points:
First, if you are going to have excellence in Catholic Colleges and Universities you cannot have local Bishops claiming they have jurisdiction over University life. It goes without saying that such jurisdiction defines what goes into libraries, appointments to the faculty, what students can be accepted, and in the recent controversy, the awarding honorary degrees.
The constant battle to keep creationism out of science courses at the high school level just emphasizes of corrosive effects of having faith based tenants rule a College or University. The USCCB statement, which you provided, was effusive in its praise of Bishop D’Arcy, but had no condemnation of Notre Dame. There must have been a majority of Bishops that said they did not wish to have a dog in this fight.
Second, the controversy as presented by Mr. Bottum was politically motivated. It bore the marks of classic Hard Right politics of personal destruction. In this essay Joseph Bottum paints father Jenkin’s of Notre Dame as a blundering, amoral individual, and from there proceeds to attack academics at Georgetown, Boston College, and Xavier College. In a previous essay at the Weakly Standard, Bottum fallowed the same pattern, this time savaging Douglas Kiemic, and others. In reality, this is not unexpected.
The Republican Party since Nixon introduced the “Southern Strategy” has trafficked in demeaning their opponents, attacking academics, and subliminal racism. To this toxic brew, they added Culture of Life Issues; that gave them a dedicated cadre of political workers, and a megaphone to amplify their message. It also gives them a simplified moral high ground; we are closer to God, our actions are a reflection of His will.
Barak Obama poses a singular challenge to the blending of conservative ideology and fundamentalist Christian theology. Early attempts to demonize him through the medium of his bi-racial status and religion backfired. Other attempts at denigrating his accomplishments, be they the authorship of his books, his status as a law professor, or his work as a community organizer, failed. In the 2008 election he captured the educated class and the younger population by a wide margin. He reversed the drift of the Catholic vote to the fundamental Christian Right. From the dust of the Internet he built what had never existed before, a base of small dollar contributors that swamped the special interest money that fuels the Republican Party.
That Obama is a very dangerous politician is evident when one examines the ’08 electoral data (links below). The real question is whether this was an anomaly election, or whether the Obama election indicates that the direction of the country is changing. If it is an anomalous election, we can expect a “snap back” by the Center Right in the next two election cycles. If it indicates a change, the Center Right is going to have to adapt, and change its tactics. The future always lies in the young, and the educated class. There is no argument on this point. Simply stated, you have to stop shouting to the base, and learn of to communicate with the young and educated. A simplified analysis of the election statistics can be found here:
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/11/05/us/politics/20081104_ELECTION_RECAP.html
One thing was obvious in the ’08 election, the politics of personal destruction is a “turn off” to the younger population, while half truths, outright lies, and fabrications are no longer acceptable to the population as a whole. It is for this reason that I suggested Paul Graham’s essay to you. Blogs are open forums, and depending on how an argument is framed, or the rhetoric utilized, one may be helping or hindering one’s cause.
I do not wish to get embroiled in an argument about abortion, if for no other reason that my knees are old and arthritic, and falling on them to “pray for mercy” poses a burden. My question to you as to why you considered Obama “the most radically pro-death politicians alive” was posed so that other readers of this blog could judge your deep antipathy to Obama. It came as no surprise to me, that the politics of personal destruction were prominent in your response. Only a few comments will suffice.
Your claim that you represent the Catholic view can be evaluated by a variety of polls that investigated the Catholic electorate. The most resent was the respected Pew poll that showed the spectrum of Catholic thinking on Obama’s visit to Notre Dame. You speak for some Catholics, but assuredly not all. It can be found here:
http://pewforum.org/docs/?DocID=413
The problems in American Health Care are apparent, and without controversy. On a per capita basis we pay more, have worse health outcomes, and our costs are rising faster that any other industrialized country in the world. Exactly what a “pro-life” participant would contribute to the White House meeting escapes my rather disorderly mind. We do know that when it comes to sexually transmitted disease, and cancer prevention their thinking can be a bit muddled. Here is a recent example:
http://news.scotsman.com/health/Catholic-leaders-block-contraceptive-advice.4398680.jp
President Bush’s policy on stem cell research was two pronged. First, he limited funds for research to a few established cell lines. None of these lines were candidates for human therapy because of their history. Second, he prevented the mixing of private funds with public funds. This prohibition was not trivial. A University would lose all Federal funding for research if a laboratory was funded with private funds anywhere within the boundaries of its campus. It was this prohibition that President Obama lifted by an Executive Order. How stem cell research will be funded is up to Congress. Ethical restrictions are currently being debated, but not yet finalized. The Vatican view on Obama’s stem cell policy can be found here:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/05/07/the_stakes_at_notre_dame_96374.html
You state that the Vatican rejected three Ambassador nominations because they were “pro-abortionist”. Names or sources to substantiate this claim were not presented. Will you be kind enough to provide them for us?
President Obama’s position on abortion is clear. He believes that women have the right to chose whether they wish to terminate their pregnancy or to carry them to term. This option is a right defined by the Supreme Court as being inherent in the Constitution. The FOCA issue, although much beloved by fundamentalist Christians is bogus. Links to Obama’s views, and the silliness of the FOCA issue follow:
http://www.korrektiv.org/2009/05/ed-henry-asks-president-obama-about.html
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1880451,00.html
I will close by revisiting the problem conservatives and fundamental Christians (pro-life exponents) face. Obama captured the young and educated vote by a large margin, both are the future of the nation. As Nate Silva (link below) has pointed out, the residue of the Bush administration may persist for a long time. Attacking Universities, vitriol in political discourse, or claiming to be following the dictates of God are not ways to attract recruits to your cause.
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/05/bush-may-haunt-republicans-for.html
1. I find this Dr. R. Paul Miler to be rather tedious. He seems to assert that if Bishop Darcy criticizes Fr. Jenkins, the bishop is trying to assert control over the university. Nonsense. The bishop has an obligation to speak out when he believes the university derelict in its most basic Catholic obligations. What are bishops for?
2. I disagree a bit with Mr. Bottum. He chastises ND for failing to line up adequately with so-called U.S. Catholic culture, which supposedly now revolves around the abortion issue. Again, nonsense. ND is an intellectual apostolate, to which the culture is only marginally relevant. The basis on which to criticize ND is precisely the issue of truth. If abortion is wrong--which appears to be a basic Catholic truth -- ND must not appear to take the issue lightly. Its having done so at the commencement strongly suggests ND is more secular-minded than Catholic. Bottum should be criticizing ND for its apparent cavalier dismissal of the importance of the truth question regarding abortion.
You seem most interested in appealing to young people in order to achieve political effects. I agree this is sensible, but it needn't come at the cost of obscuring truth in a gauze of niceties. There is something deeply foul in our society, and young people need to see it and confront it directly.
The argument I hear (from Kmiec et al) is that Catholics need to play nice with the Obama administration in order to get other things done. Obama & Co. will never agree with us on abortion, they say, so we should bracket abortion and work with them on finding other "common ground" upon which to work together.
I certainly agree that Obama & Co. will never agree with us, but there are at least three problems with this bracketing approach:
1. The Obama administration will carry on their destructions regardless. They have no intention of bracketing abortion as an issue. While we give up, they are eagerly carrying forward their agenda. Just this past week at the UN, the Obama administration called for "universal access" to "sexual and reproductive health services including universal access to family planning" in UN Child Services policy. This is code for abortion services (which US funding, incidentally, could then support). Not widely reported, at least in the secular media.
Among those countries objecting to the language is Catholic Malta. Isn't it interesting that Douglas Kmiec has just been appointed to be Obama's ambassador there? Perhaps he can persuade Maltese women that their freedom depends on the annihilation of their children, should they so desire.
Lesson: Obama & Co. are using the Alinsky playbook to hold Catholics to the standard of graciousness and collaboration but have zero intention to hold themselves to the same standard. Hence, Obama & Co. are actively hostile to Catholics while Catholics are be gracious and passive. This is not "finding common ground": it is lying on the ground, supine, and being rolled over.
2. Young people in my experience are not at all averse to conflict. They rather thrill to it. What they tend to detest is hypocrisy and equivocation, which they see through instantly. We will speak plainly. We are after their hearts.
3. And you see, Catholics were winning the abortion debate until Obama was elected. Attitudes were changing. Science remains firmly on the Catholic side. For Notre Dame to hand an honorary degree of law to Obama is not so much to reject the interference of a local bishop (though it did that) but to reject and abandon the truth. I know personally several persons who spoke with a certain high-level ND person about these matters, and he is reported to have sighed and said, "we have lost the debate about abortion." He is in despair and hardly in a position to mount a defense.
Under these circumstances, it is imperative to fight and to speak sharply. What ultimately attracts is truth, and the love of it.
Sitting here in Central Texas on Memorial Day, I enjoyed your article. It is thought provoking, and clearly NOT a smear job on Fr Jenkins. You, and I and Fr Jenkins are alive today because our mothers chose to NOT abort us. So too for the POTUS.
Fr Jenkins is clearly out of control - scripture should have led him to consul with Church elders and abide by their wisdom. He did not do so. and chose, regrettably, to side with the great Sin of us all: PRIDE.
He should resign his position, since by his own actions he is a failed leader. One more great man done in by PRIDE.