American Catholics scandalized: Notre Dame's Obama invite ignites abortion debate.

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On May 17, 2009, U.S. President Barack Obama delivered the commencement address to the 2009 graduates of the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana. He was also honoured with an honorary Doctor of Laws degree. What should have been a joyous occasion for U.S. Catholics--to witness their President honoured by the leading U.S. Catholic university--became an occasion of shame, humiliation, anger and protest. Why? Because, as many now believe, Notre Dame forfeited its status as a Catholic university, selling its birthright for prestige and influence with America's anti-life powers.

Bishop D'Arcy, in whose diocese Notre Dame resides, declined an invitation to attend the ceremonies, objecting to Obama's radical pro-abortion views. Former Ambassador to the Vatican Mary Ann Glendon, who was to receive a Catholic achievement award, turned it down. By May 17, 367,000 alumni and others had sent word that they disapproved. Among the hierarchy 83 bishops, including cardinals and archbishops, had publicly regretted the invitation to the President. And donors to the University had withheld $15 million in donations.

Never before have American Catholics expressed their objections to a University President as vigorously as they have in the case of Father John Jenkins of Notre Dame. Today, many people understand that his behaviour was not an isolated incident but the result of 40 years of systematic choosing money and influence over fidelity to the Church's teaching about marriage.

At the same time Notre Dame's defiance was approved by a large number of Catholic intellectuals, including the staff of the National Catholic Reporter, the editors of the Jesuit bi-weekly periodical America, and many nominally Catholic university executives, their boards of trustees, faculty members and assorted Catholic commentators.

DEFIANCE OF THE CHURCH WIDESPREAD

In 2004, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops established rules which prohibit honours from being bestowed by Catholic institutions on public figures who have clearly and publicly positioned themselves against the Church's moral teaching.

But Notre Dame University is far from the sole exception among U.S. Catholic institutes of higher learning in bestowing its honours on morally repugnant public figures. On April 22, 2009, Georgetown University Law Center, an affiliate of Georgetown University, a Jesuit institution, honoured Vice President Joseph Biden with the "Legal Momentum Hero Award." Biden is a pro-abortion politician who calls himself a "devout Catholic." The bishop of his hometown has repeatedly rebuked Biden for his support of the pro-abortion agenda.

One week earlier, Georgetown University had covered all the symbols of the Catholic faith in Gaston Hall when President Obama gave a talk there on April 14; this action was in response to a request from the White House itself.

Also in April the Jesuits' Fordham University in New York came under fire from pro-life Catholics for once again putting two pro-abortion speakers before its graduating students and bestowing an honorary degree on pro-abortion New York mayor Michael Bloomberg. In 2008 the same university gave an ethics award to the pro-abortion Superior Court Justice Stephen Breyer (LifeNews, May 28, 2009). In fact, according to the Cardinal Newman Society, in 2009 eleven Catholic Colleges joined Notre Dame in violating the bishops' 2004 guidelines, up from seven in 2008, but down from 24 in 2007.

There are prominent Catholic politicians who are notorious for their refusal to take into consideration civil rights and justice issues such as killing the unborn or freedom of conscience when these are of special concern to their Church. For example, on April 2, 2009, Senator Tom Cockburn (R. Oklahoma) offered an amendment to the budget bill to protect the conscience clause for health-care workers, a position supported by the Catholic bishops; the amendment was defeated 41-56, with sixteen Catholic Senators voting against it. Only nine Catholics supported it. This is one of many examples indicating scorn, if not contempt, for Church teaching among Catholics who have achieved political power. Nor can ignorance be invoked, because they had all received a barrage of e-mails from the pro-life side.

RECENT HISTORY OF NOTRE DAME

The history of Notre Dame, America's premier Catholic University, is especially instructive in tracing the road of separation from, and the subsequent infidelity to, the Church. Father Jenkins has followed in the footsteps of his predecessors: Holy Cross Fathers Theodore Hesburgh and Edward Molloy. Hesburgh was the architect of the 1967 Land O'Lakes Statement, which brought a definitive break between the Church and those Catholic universities and colleges which chose government subsidies in return for abandoning Church control.

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1964

But even earlier, in 1964, Father Hesburgh had hosted three unpublished conferences attended only by theologians and academics in favour of the then new birth-control pill and thus opposed to the traditional teaching against artificial contraception. They prepared a "Catholic" position paper justifying contraception, which was then published with massive publicity in 1964 in order to influence the debate at the Vatican Council (1962-1965). Four yours later in 1968, the Papal encyclical Humanae vitae rejected any such justification of contraception.

Notre Dame was rewarded for its efforts with millions of dollars from the Rockefeller Foundation and other groups which had financed the conferences in order to weaken the Church's opposition to birth control in American society.

1984

With the loss of juridical control over Notre Dame College by both the Congregation of the Holy Cross and the Catholic diocese of Fort Wayne-Grand Bend in 1967, Hesburgh moved to put his university more clearly on the secular, agnostic side of American politics. In 1984 he invited Mario Cuomo, the Catholic governor of New York, to deliver a speech explaining why faithful Catholics could in good conscience defend and legislate abortion "rights." The speech came immediately after Cardinal John O'Connor of New York had rebuked the Democratic Vice Presidential candidate, Geraldine Ferraro, for holding that view. The Notre Dame speech was hosted by Father Richard McBrien, head of the Department of Theology. The challenge to Church teaching could not have been clearer.

1992: NO TO POPE JOHN PAUL 11

Dissent became more firmly ensconced under Father Edward Molloy, C.S.C., who, in 1992, rejected Pope John Paul II's Apostolic letter Ex Corde Ecclesiae issued in 1990, which called for loyalty by Catholic teaching institutions and faculties.

1992 being an election year, Father Molloy invited Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, another pro-abortion New York Catholic, to receive the prestigious Laetare Medal (the one ambassador Mary Glendon refused). In other words, Molloy, too, preferred prestige in the secular world to loyalty to the Church. Cardinals O'Connor and Law protested, but only in private letters, shying away from a public altercation at the time. Clearly, the Notre Dame administration had moved firmly onto the pro-choice side of American politics, where it has stayed ever since. The 2009 invitation to the outspoken pro-abortion President Obama to receive a Doctor of Laws degree and address 2,000 graduates is clearly in line with its previous history.

The secularization of the faculty had also proceeded apace under Father Molloy. At the time of Father Jenkins' arrival in 2005, the number of Catholic faculty members had shrunk from over 85 percent to barely over 50 percent.

Note: [For the history of Notre Dame, see, for example, Charles E. Rice "The Trajectory From Land O'Lakes to honoring Obama" Notre Dame student newsletter The Observer, reprinted in The Wanderer, April 23, 2009; Patrick B. Payne, LifeSiteNews.com, May 6, 2009; Fr. Raymond De Souza, "No Notre Dame" National Catholic Register, May 10, 2009; Anthony Esolen, "Not to Notre Madame" insideCatholic.com, June 15, 2009; Michael V. McIntyre, "Sic transit gloria--Goodbye Notre Dame," LifeSiteNews. corn, June 9, 09].

NATIONAL SUPPORT

The stand of Notre Dame's Executive (not a single trustee is known to have objected to the Obama invitation) was hailed by those in the Catholic community who had long resented the vigour of the pro-life movement and especially its rejection of the "seamless-garment" argument, i.e. that every social justice issue is of equal value, with abortion ranked only as one of a multitude of issues.

THE JESUITS OF AMERICA MAGAZINE

The editors of the Jesuit magazine America headed their editorial comment "Sectarian Catholics" (May 11). They quoted St. Augustine's denunciation of the Donatists, a perfectionist sect in the early Church ("We are the only Christians.") as applicable to the protestors and "self-appointed watchdogs of orthodoxy like ... the Cardinal Newman Society" which "push mightily for a pure church.... They thrive on slash-and-burn tactics; and they refuse to allow the church to be contaminated by contact with certain politicians."

For these "sectarians," the editorial continued, "it is not adherence ... to the church's doctrine on the evil of abortion that counts for orthodoxy, but adherence to a particular political program...." According to the editors, the "sectarians' targets" are "those Catholic universities and intellectuals who defend the richer, subtly nuanced, broad-tent Catholic tradition," presumably such as Father Jenkins and Notre Dame University.

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The editors claimed to have Pope Benedict on their side who, they said, has modeled a different attitude toward higher education. In 2008 he had been prevented from speaking at Rome's La Sapienza University. In his prepared speech the Pope had argued, the editors claim, that freedom from ecclesiastical and political authorities "is essential to the universities' special role in society and that even the Pope "certainly should not try to impose in an authoritarian manner his faith on others."

The editors further charged that "the divisive effects of the new American sectarians had not escaped the notice of the Vatican where they have become a matter of concern." As if to clarify the matter for any reader in Vatican City who might not grasp this fine distinction, they spelled it out: "it is time to call this one-sided denunciation by its proper name: political partisanship," In order not to be misunderstood they added that it was a Republican partisanship at that!

Finally, to clinch their case, the editors claimed that Pope Benedict and the Vatican were quite open to receiving people with whom they disagree, implying thereby that Pope and Vatican are very like Father Jenkins and Notre Dame University, but unlike, of course, the "sectarians" who supposedly reject dialogue.

Let us summarize the editors' views:

1) Pro-life protestors are sectarians and self-appointed busybodies, who use slash-and-burn tactics (like the Shiite Iranian religious mullahs, perhaps?).

2) These people insist on creating a new Church for saints only, contrary to the historical Church of saints and sinners.

3) They reject dialogue with anyone who differs because they do not want to be contaminated; they attempt to impose this rigidity upon universities.

4) They only pretend to be concerned about the preservation and dignity of human life; their real aim is to return Republicans to power.

5) Pope John Paul II's Ex Corde Ecclesiae (1990) stands overruled by Pope Benedict XVI, who does not favour ecclesiastical interference.

6) The Vatican is "concerned" about these divisive "sectarians."

SLEIGHT OF HAND

The editorial is sleight of hand, a deceptive trick which would turn the issue on its head. I would even call it malevolent.

Principled opposition to a pro-abortion President invited to present a monologue disguised as dialogue and to receive an honorary degree, for among other things, approving partial-birth abortion, is described as "sectarian."

It speaks of a "broad-tent" Catholic tradition, an American political term for a party open to everyone and every opinion. The term has never been, and should never be, applied to the Catholic Church.

The Catholic faith is now threatened by dissenting Catholics who, in earlier generations, would have left the Church but who today stay in it, demanding that their alteration of doctrine and morals be accommodated. Merely to note this fact is mocked as fanaticism and fear of "contamination."

The editors misconstrue Pope Benedict's views on the management of a university in suggesting that they contradict the instructions of his predecessor, John Paul II; in fact Benedict helped draft that document.

Finally, America's interest in Vatican "concerns" about pro-lifers is like the concern of the wolf disguised as Red Riding Hood's grandmother. America's editors rejected Humanae vitae in 1967, and they have shown little concern for the Curia and the Vatican since.

The editorial is alarming, not for what it says about the maligned "sectarians," but for what it reveals about the attitude of the editors.

PROFESSOR LANGAN

In the same edition, there is an article, by John Langan, S.J., more thoughtful but not more accurate than the editorial. Father Langan holds the Cardinal Bernardin Chair of Catholic Social Thought at Georgetown University. He, too, refers to "theological vigilantes," "zealots who show more passion than judgement" and who are ruled by "ideological rigidity." This, he says, leads them to the position that there "can be no compromise with what they call the 'culture of death.'" (Is he unaware that the author of the phrase is Pope John Paul II?) But he, at least, tries to situate these phrases within a more extensive analysis.

The gist of the article is:

1) Obama's policies (financial recovery and regulation, health-care reform, energy and environmental policies, immigration reform, etc.) can be broadly characterized as "inclusive, egalitarian, communitarian, solidaristic and internationalist." Therefore, Langan states, "we should expect them to be broadly compatible with Catholic social values." Catholics should therefore cooperate with the Obama administration.

2) Critics who concentrate on the President's "crucial failure to affirm the right of the unborn life" see this not simply "as a negative consideration which should make Catholics reluctant to support him," but as something that "rules out any comprehensive support or endorsement of him and his policies."

These critics, he asserts, "are mistaken." "It would be a serious extension of a pro-life position beyond its original moral premises to hold that pro-life people should work for the failure of Obama's presidency." (Along the way Langan admits that he hasn't actually found anyone who objects to everything the President proposes.)

What to do? Langan answers:

3) Use a pragmatic approach. Accept the Obama agenda wherever possible, and hope for the best.

4) Reject those zealots who "stubbornly refuse to recognize the limits to what is politically possible in a pluralistic and individualistic society."

ADVICE TO CATHOLICS

Langan concludes by advising bishops to adopt a "new style of teaching," one that does not publicly criticize President Obama but quietly encourages him to reduce abortions and, secondly, to pray for him. As for pro-abortion Catholic Democrats, they should try not to limit Catholic teaching on abortion to the private realm only.

Finally, pro-life advocates must cease "to distort the views of their adversaries" cease to "encourage hatred and contempt," and "cease to condone sharp political practices." (The author provides no examples for any of these charges.)

In short, Professor Langan's position is the "seamless-garment" philosophy said to have been invented by Cardinal Bernardin whose name is attached to the Chair Langan now occupies. It calls for cooperation on all social issues, but does not see the pro-life issue as part of the agenda. Moreover it is too divisive and, in fact, impossible of success and best left to seminary theology. Professor Langan's advice rests ultimately on two unproven opinions: abortion is here to stay because it cannot be challenged in present-day American society; and the Obama program, give or take a few exceptions, is close to Catholic social teaching and as such should be supported.

Professor Langan seems not to have noticed that over the last three months President Obama has filled his administrative ranks with hundreds of pro-abortion, pro-contraception, same-sex union agitators-true zealots these--some of them feminists with 30-year-long records of hating men and Christianity. He has also succeeded in appointing many nominal or former Catholics to positions in his government.

MORE OBAMA SUPPORTERS

On the graduation day itself, May 17, only 40 seniors out of 2000 absented themselves; the others accorded President Obama a standing ovation, together with the faculty and the 12,000 other people in attendance. 23 of the University's 24 student groups are said to have expressed support for Father Jenkins. One poll showed that of American Catholic churchgoers, 45% disapproved of the invitation to Obama. That leaves 55% in favour of it or, perhaps, undecided. Another poll found that 60% of Catholics agreed that Notre Dame should obey the bishops, with 25% disagreeing. (LifeSiteNews.com, May 13, 2009).

Other supporters of Father Jenkins and Notre Dame University included the president of the Association of Catholic College and Universities, Richard Yanikoski, who claimed that there were ambiguities in the 2004 USCCB statement. (On July 1, 2009, this claim seems to have been withdrawn.)

In mid-April, the president of the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities told the National Catholic Reporter that he and the presidents of the group's 28 member institutions had privately expressed support to Father Jenkins for the Obama invitation. (LifeSiteNews.com, May 11, 2009). Many of these universities, like Notre Dame, have refused to accept or enforce John Paul II's Ex Corde Ecclesiae.

One of Commonweal's regular contributors, Wilham Pfaff, in an article entitled "Consumed by Zeal" (April 24), also called the boycott of President Obama "vulgar zealotry as well as a discourtesy to the university." He congratulated Father John Jenkins and his colleagues for having "conducted themselves in this affair with high-mindedness and dignity." An earlier editorial advised against making Notre Dame's invitation to President Obama a loyalty test of fidelity to the Catholic faith (April 10, 2009).

The text of the honorary degree to President Obama lauded the President on some issues such as slavery and racism but was silent on his pro-abortion record.

Obama himself urged a "fair-minded U.S. abortion debate" and asked for "open minds," but only after he had first conceded that the opposing positions were "irreconcilable." That admission, of course, rules out debate and dialogue; and so Obama simply put forward his own long-held views.

THE DIVIDE

Although the above report does not give a clear picture of just how wide the divide among American Catholics is, it does confirm that in some academic circles it is firmly entrenched. Are the seven editors of America and the 28 supporting presidents of Jesuit universities representative of their faculties and students? Are these editors representative of American Jesuits in general in their contempt for the "protestors"? If so, the Church in America has dark days ahead.

After President Obama's visit to Notre Dame, Cardinal Francis George of Chicago, President of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, formally endorsed, on their behalf, the attitude of resistance to Father Jenkins expressed by Bishop Robert D'Arcy of the Fort-Wayne, South-Bend diocese. 83 bishops had done the same in writing before May 17. Yet, as became clear in the Presidential election years of 2004 and 2008, the bishops are a long way from unanimity on how to handle Catholic politicians who publicly support practices contrary to important Catholic doctrinal and moral teaching. On the other hand, the number of resisting bishops seems to be growing year by year, and the crisis at Notre Dame almost certainly will extend their ranks further.

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ARCHBISHOP DONALD WUERL

Among the holdouts is Archbishop Donald Wuerl of Washington, D.C., where the federal politicians reside when Congress is in session--including Catholics who accept or even defend the killing of the unborn, such as Vice President Joseph Biden, Nancy Pelosi, Kathleen Sebelius, etc. Bishop Wuerl will not refuse Holy Communion, even when bishops of the politicians' hometowns do so.

To a question from a conservative Catholic journalist regarding pro-abortion Catholic Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House, Archbishop Wuerl stated in 2004 (when she was the House Minority Leader) that his style of pastoral ministry was not to withhold Communion but to "teach" (Melinda Henneberger, www.politicsdaily.com, May 6, 2009). So far his "teaching" appears at odds with Section 915 of the Code of Canon Law, with the instructions of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith (under Cardinal Ratzinger, in June 2004), and with the more than three-dozen American bishops who in 2008 felt obliged to censure their local Catholic politicians for defending abortion, or same-sex "marriage," or other moral practices opposed by the Catholic Church.

Canon 915 of the Code of Canon Law states that those who have been excommunicated ... or others "who obstinately persist in manifest grave sin, are not to be admitted to Holy Communion" Archbishops Wuerl's argument--that this canon has never been used in the past "to bring politicians to heel"--is a weak one. Never before until the post-Vatican Council II period have so many dissenting Catholics, including theologians and politicians, vowed to remain Catholic despite their rejection of the Church's teachings.

With respect to Holy Communion, Pope John Paul II in his Apostolic Letter on the Mystery and Worship of the Holy Eucharist (Dominicae cenae, Section 8, 1980), reminds Catholics that:

There is a close link between this element (of Mysterium) and its sacredness ... the Eucharist is a holy and sacred action. Holy and sacred, because in it are the continual presence and action of Christ, "the holy one" of God ... The Eucharist is a holy and sacred action, because it constitutes the Sacred Species, the Sancta sanctis, that is to say the "holy things (Christ, the Holy One) given to the holy...."

Now, to describe the duty of safeguarding the sanctity of the Eucharist as "politicizing Communion," as several bishops have done, is theologically out of order. Politicians who publicly promote immorality can claim no legitimate exemption from the Church's discipline.

CONCLUSION

What is to be done about pro-life Catholics, Notre Dame University, and renegade Catholic politicians?

The editors of America recommend that:

* The bishops do nothing except occasionally whisper in politicians' ears, and then pray and hope.

* Renegade Catholic politicians themselves are encouraged not to make it quite so obvious that they don't care about Church teachings.

* Pro-lifers are told to behave, and stop pursuing the impossible.

The advice is unacceptable. Bishops must work with the pro-life movement to spread a culture of life throughout America. They should help change the attitude of nonchalance of many of today's churchgoers towards reception of Holy Communion. And they should close ranks against those who publicly mock Church teaching by denying them Holy Communion.

What is to be done about universities like Notre Dame? That is more difficult.

Many Church authorities no longer have jurisdiction over institutions which from 1967 onwards chose government subsidies over ecclesiastical control. Hence, they cannot remove their presidents or their advisory boards. Nevertheless:

I) A local bishop could lay an interdict forbidding the administering of the Sacraments, including celebrating the Eucharist. That would drive priest-professors away, close the chapels, and end Church life on the campus. At present, Notre Dame appears to have a lively Catholic religious life on campus, so that it is unlikely that Bishop D'Arcy would use this discipline. It would adversely affect Catholic students while leaving the rebellious administration untouched.

II) Bishops could proscribe rebellious universities as "Catholic" and have them removed from national and local Catholic directories.

III) Bishops, and their local Catholic communities, could encourage Catholic donors to send their money elsewhere. There are good Catholic colleges, which need and deserve support and which have maintained Catholic faculties and Catholic classical courses superior to the secular humanities offered in nominally Catholic colleges. Catholic parents could advise their sons and daughters to avoid places like Notre Dame, Georgetown and others.

IV) To do nothing is not an option. Abortion and same-sex unions are not issues which concern Catholics only; they are civil-rights and justice issues, which must be defended by all. Bishops should not hesitate to support non-Catholic pro-life groups as well.

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Father Alphonse de Valk is a priest of the Congregation of St. Basil (C.S.B.) and editor of Catholic Insight. His article, "Fr. Jenkins, Notre Dame University, and President Obama: three against the Catholic Church," appeared earlier (April 15) on C.I.'s website "www.catholicinsight.com).