Santorum Plans to "Challenge" JFK's Message on Faith in Public Life

From The Daily Caller:

Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, a potential candidate for president in 2012, will travel to Texas next week to challenge Democratic President John F. Kennedy’s historic 1960 address on religion and politics in America.

Spokeswoman Virginia Davis said Santorum’s Sept. 9 speech titled, “A Charge to Revive the Role of Faith in the Public Square” will take on Kennedy’s message about the role faith plays in public life and in “our country in general.”

Santorum’s speech is scheduled to take place at the University of St. Thomas in Houston, the same city where Kennedy gave his address to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association nearly 50 years ago. Kennedy used the occasion to address fears that as the first Catholic president, he’d feel a duty to take orders from the Pope.

“I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish,” Kennedy said then, “where no public official either requests or accept instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source; where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials, and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all.”

Santorum, a Catholic who was elected to the Senate in 1994 but left in 2006 after losing his seat, told The Daily Caller last month that he plans to make a decision on a presidential bid by either the end of this year, or the beginning of 2011. “I’m going through the process of what someone who is seriously considering running would do,” Santorum said, “in order for when the time comes to decide, I’m in a position that I have a choice.”

[Read more]

My Comments:
Santorum has to be careful here in taking on JFK.

Unfortunately, Santorum is a has-been who no longer garners widespread support even among those in his own party, much less the public at large. (How's that Specter endorsement working out for ya, Rick?)

It's a pity that there's not a more prominent Catholic in public life - of greater stature than Santorum, at least - to deliver this "challenge" of what has become the prevailing view of the role of faith in public life. (By a prominent Catholic in public life, I mean someone involved in politics; Archbishop Chaput has already quite eloquently challenged the JFK view of faith in public life.)

Maybe give Bobby Jindal or Bob McDonnell a few more years ...

Does Catholic University's Choice for New President Represent a Step Backwards for Orthodoxy and Authentic Catholic Identity?

Catholic Culture has a profile of Catholic University's newly appointed President, John H. Garvey, current dean of Boston College Law School:

... Commenting on academic freedom and Catholic identity in a 2002 letter, Mr. Garvey wrote:

On several occasions I have heard people express concern that the Catholic identity of Boston College and the Law School will require a certain orthodoxy, or suppress unorthodox opinions, among its faculty and students. No school that regulates ideas can justly call itself a university. Indeed, it is precisely because we are committed to the search for truth in an atmosphere of academic freedom that the Law School can render a useful service to the Church and the cause of justice. It is natural that we should have a particular interest in the intersection of law and religion. (Though this is not our only focus.) But when people address that subject here they do not speak for (or against) the church hierarchy. They follow where their inquiries lead them.

In 2007, Mr. Garvey was criticized by the Cardinal Newman Society when the law school awarded an honorary degree to Rep. Edward J. Markey, an abortion proponent with a 100% 'pro-choice' voting record. “Congressman Ed Markey is one of the most distinguished graduates of Boston College Law School, whose career of public service reflects the very best values and traditions of the School,” said Mr. Garvey. “I don't believe Boston College has ever had a better friend in the United States Congress than Ed Markey.”

In awarding an honorary degree to Rep. Markey, Boston College Law School failed to heed the 2004 US bishops’ document “Catholics in Political Life,” which stated, “The Catholic community and Catholic institutions should not honor those who act in defiance of our fundamental moral principles. They should not be given awards, honors or platforms which would suggest support for their actions.”

[...]

According to federal election records, Mr. Garvey made three donations to Massachusetts Senator John Kerry, whose support for abortion led 14 bishops to state during the 2004 presidential campaign that they would deny him Holy Communion. In June 2002, Mr. Garvey donated $250 to the Kerry Committee; in March 2003, he donated $1,000 to John Kerry for President, Inc.; and in April 2004, he donated $500 to John Kerry for President, Inc...

[More]

Whatever Mr. Garvey's past inclinations at BC might have been, Archbishop Allen H. Vigneron of Detroit, who chairs Catholic University's board of trustees and led the nine-month search, has made clear where he thinks the priorities of the university's new president should lie:

... Vigneron said the university board expects Garvey to continue [former president and newly appointed Bishop of Trenton, N.J., David M.] O'Connell's work to reclaim a Catholic identity for the Northeast Washington campus. O'Connell raised the share of students and faculty who self-identified as Catholics and hosted Pope Benedict XVI in a 2008 visit...

My Comments:
I suppose we'll just have to wait and see how that works out.

Inside Catholic: "Shroud Skeptics Bump against Science" [UPDATED]

An interesting post on the Shroud of Turin at Inside Catholic:

...Experts in many disciplines have added to the growing body of knowledge about the Shroud of Turin: Physicians, historians, botanists, chemists, artists, anthropologists, physicists, textile consultants, and photographers. Their collective assessment is that, while we do not know how the image was made, we do know how it was not made. The confounding of science thus far forces a certain respect for the artifact, whatever one believes it to be: a holy relic, a pious work of art, a 14th-century hoax...

[More]

Incidentally, I recently watched an excellent History Channel documentary titled "The Real Face of Jesus?", which "follows a team of graphic experts as they use cutting-edge 3D software to bring a holy relic known as the Shroud of Turin to life".

It was a very sympathetic portrayal of the Shroud as quite possibly being authentic. Apart from a weird and completely unnecessary tangent the program takes regarding 1st and 2nd century Gnosticism, this documentary is one I can highly recommend.


Promotional images from the History Channel special, "The Real Face of Jesus?"


UPDATE
Let me just say that, if the image on the Shroud truly is that of Jesus, the 3D image that the software engineer created is surely the most accurate depiction of what our Lord actually looked like that will ever be produced. For me, the most interesting part of the program was when the researchers took a bust of Christ that was produced from the 3D image and placed it over a document scanner to produce an almost-identical replica of the face on the Shroud.

I was also pretty amazed to see the uncanny likeness of the computerized 3D image the researchers created to the portrayal of Christ by Jim Caveziel in "The Passion of the Christ".


Previous Pro Ecclesia posts on this subject:
USAToday on NBC, the Turin Olympics, and the Shroud (or Lack Thereof)

USAToday: NBC Chooses to Keep the Faith Out of Olympics — For Now

Mention of Shroud Absent From Turin Olympics Opening Ceremonies

Holy or Hoax, Shroud Still a Draw

One Reporter's Futile Attempt to See the Shroud of Turin

Criterion Online Provides "Olympic Coverage With a Catholic Twist"

Shroud of Turin Would Outdraw Winter Olympics

Before the Olympics, Turin Had the Shroud

What I'm REALLY Looking Forward To During the Turin (Torino) Olympics ...

Ralph McInerny and the Tragedy of Notre Dame

George Weigel eulogizes Ralph McInerny (and the Notre Dame that no longer exists):

... Ralph McInerny was arguably the most distinguished scholar ever to work at Notre Dame. His scholarly publications outstrip those of other Notre Dame philosophers by orders of magnitude—and that’s before we get to his popular fiction, his magazine work, and his encouraging of generations of younger Catholic academics. Yet a university that does not hesitate to boast of its accomplishments as measured by the U.S. News and World Report ratings seemed curiously reticent about celebrating the life and accomplishments of Ralph McInerny. The university Web site posted a nicely written obituary three days after his death, but there was little sense in the university’s official recognition of its loss that a gigantic figure had left the scene.

One cannot help suspect that this has something to do with the fact that Ralph thought Notre Dame had gone off the rails in its dogged and relentlessly self-promoting attempts to measure itself against what it likes to term “peer schools,” such as Dartmouth and Yale. What Ralph understood, and what the man who brought him to Notre Dame, the legendary Father Theodore Hesburgh, has never seemed to understand, is that that’s the wrong plumb-line by which to measure a Catholic university’s accomplishment. Or indeed any university’s accomplishment, given the intellectual chaos, political correctness, decadence, and madcap trendiness that has afflicted those “peer schools” since the late Sixties.

Ralph McInerny knew, and could demonstrate with acute philosophical rigor, that there are truths built into the world and into us: truths we can know by exercising the arts of reason; truths that, known, lay certain moral obligations on us, personally and in our civic lives. With the rarest of exceptions, they don’t know that, and in fact they deny that, at the “peer schools” to which Notre Dame is addicted to comparing itself. And therein lay the tragedy of Notre Dame and Catholic institutions of higher education of a similar cast of mind, as Ralph saw it: they had sold their intellectual and moral birthright—the true excellence that comes from an immersion in the Great Tradition of western higher learning—for a mess of pottage.

I’ve long thought that all of this had something to do with the misreading of a 1955 essay by Father John Tracy Ellis, “American Catholics and the Intellectual Life,” which justifiably criticized the shabby condition of too much of Catholic higher education in the United States in those days. Father Hesburgh and others influenced by one reading of Ellis’s critique decided that the thing to do was for Notre Dame to become Harvard, so to speak. Ralph McInerny thought that this didn’t make much sense at a time when those “peer schools” were awash in pragmatism and utilitarianism. Rather, he believed (and I think this was the more accurate reading of Ellis) that Notre Dame and other premier Catholic universities should play to strength, emphasizing a demanding liberal arts education while bringing the best of the mid-20th century Catholic philosophical, theological and literary renaissance to bear in the U.S. Doing that, Catholic universities would model a form of higher learning that was truth-centered, character-building, and life-inspiring...

(Hat tip: Don McClarey)


Previous Pro Ecclesia posts on this subject:
Notre Shame Fails the "Catholic" Test Yet Again

Ralph McInerny (1929-2010) [UPDATED]

Prof. Freddoso's Introduction to What Happened to Notre Dame? - Part 2: Why the Catholic Faithful WERE Scandalized

Prof. Freddoso's Introduction to What Happened to Notre Dame? - Part 1: "Why I Was Not Scandalized"

What Happened to Notre Dame?

Archbishop Chaput: JFK Speech Distancing Religious Views from Public Life "Sincere, Compelling, Articulate – and Wrong"

Fr. Z has the details:

... Recounting the historical context that led to the current state of affairs, Archbishop Chaput referred to a speech that the late John F. Kennedy made while running for president in 1960 which greatly effected the modern relationship between religion and American politics. At his speech almost fifty years ago, President Kennedy had the arduous task of convincing 300 uneasy Protestant ministers in a Houston address that his Catholic faith would not impede his ability to lead the country. Successful in his attempt, “Kennedy convinced the country, if not the ministers, and went on to be elected,” he recalled.

“And his speech left a lasting mark on American politics,” the prelate added.

“It was sincere, compelling, articulate – and wrong. Not wrong about the patriotism of Catholics, but wrong about American history and very wrong about the role of religious faith in our nation’s life.”

“And he wasn’t merely ‘wrong,’” the archbishop continued. “His Houston remarks profoundly undermined the place not just of Catholics, but of all religious believers, in America’s public life and political conversation. Today, half a century later, we’re paying for the damage.”

(Hat tip: Fr. Finigan)

Catholic College Leaders Lobby Bishops to Withdraw 2004 Policy Banning Pro-Abortion Speakers [UPDATED]

(Hat tip: Catholic Online)

LifeSiteNews reports:

June 17, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - In the wake of the Notre Dame commencement scandal, Catholic college leaders representing some of the worst violators of the U.S. bishops’ 2004 ban on honoring public opponents of fundamental Catholic teachings are lobbying the bishops to withdraw their policy.

Yesterday the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities (ACCU), which represents more than 200 Catholic institutions, released its summer 2009 newsletter, including a report on the ACCU’s board of directors meeting last week. The ACCU directors concluded “that it would be desirable for the [U.S. bishops] to withdraw” their 2004 policy, according to the newsletter. [ED.: Since we can no longer get away with twisting the policy beyond recognition now that the Bishops have called us on the carpet, it would be desirable for the policy to be rescinded altogether so that we can get back to the business of toasting our pro-abort buddies without all the discomfort of episcopal scrutiny.]

The policy in question is found in the U.S. bishops’ 2004 statement “Catholics in Political Life,” which reads in part:

“The Catholic community and Catholic institutions should not honor those who act in defiance of our fundamental moral principles. They should not be given awards, honors or platforms which would suggest support for their actions.”

The bishops gather today in San Antonio, Texas, for their biannual meeting.

***
“Why is it so hard for Catholic college leaders to understand that a Catholic institution does great harm when it honors or gives speaking platforms to those who work against core Catholic values?” said Patrick J. Reilly, president of The Cardinal Newman Society.

“The more than 367,000 people who signed The Cardinal Newman Society’s online petition and the scores of American bishops who publicly criticized Notre Dame’s honor for pro-abortion President Barack Obama clearly recognize that such actions by Catholic colleges are scandalous.”

The ACCU leadership suggests moreover “that juridical expressions of bishops’ or universities’ responsibilities should be kept to a minimum” in order to maintain a good relationship between the bishops and educators. [ED.: The chutzpah of these charlatans posing as "Catholic" educators to tell the Bishops in no uncertain terms that they should mind their own business and quit telling these institutions how to be Catholic.]

Reilly surmised that, in other words, Catholic colleges and universities would prefer that there are no clear rules to govern their conduct. He also pointed out that the statement implies that the educators believe that the bishops, and not college leaders, are responsible for tensions arising from scandalous activities on Catholic campuses.

“Catholic colleges and universities would like all of the privileges of being Catholic, but none of the responsibilities of being high-profile witnesses for the fullness of the Catholic faith,” Reilly said. [ED.: Exactly.]

Allowing for the possibility that the bishops might not agree to simply eliminate the 2004 ban, but might instead draft a new policy concerning Catholic honors and platforms, the ACCU’s directors proposed that the policy “should acknowledge more clearly the differing roles of campus authorities and bishops.” [ED.: Again, Bishops, you do your job, which, apparently, doesn't include enforcing Ex Corde Ecclesiae, and let us "Catholic" educators do our jobs, which, apparently, doesn't include doing anything particularly Catholic that might distinguish us from any other secular institution.] Reilly said that this phrase appears to be an attempt to get bishops to refrain from commenting on internal decisions at lay-controlled Catholic institutions.

In May, ACCU President Richard Yanikoski told the South Bend Tribune that he saw a “degree of ambiguity” in the bishops’ 2004 policy. He claimed that the Church’s canon lawyers disagree whether the policy applies to speakers or honorees who are not Catholic, regardless of whether those individuals oppose Catholic teaching. Several bishops strongly rejected that same argument when it was made by Notre Dame president Rev. John Jenkins, C.S.C., to defend his decision to honor President Obama.

(emphasis and editorial commentary added)

Meanwhile, Archbishop Burke is working in the opposite direction to prevent a repeat of the Notre Dame scandal:

VATICAN CITY, June 17, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Archbishop Raymond Burke, the highest ranking American prelate in the Vatican has given an interview in a Catholic magazine, in which he says that Notre Dame’s decision to honor President Barack Obama was not only “profoundly shocking,” but also underscores a grave situation requiring action to ensure the incident is never repeated.

Burke is the prefect of the Apostolic Signatura, the highest court of appeal in the Church next to the Pope, and an outspoken advocate for life and family values. He has made headlines repeatedly for his insistence that ministers of communion should deny the sacrament to publicly and obstinantely pro-abortion individuals, especially politicians. He told the Catholic periodical, Inside the Vatican, that a number of lessons must be taken from Notre Dame’s high-profile conferral of an honorary doctorate on Obama, the most aggressive pro-abortion president in American history.

Burke said that the “betrayal of the Catholic identity of Notre Dame University” grew out of the danger of “pursuing a kind of prestige in the secular world, which leads to a betrayal of the sacred aspect of its work, namely the fidelity to Christ and His teaching.” [ED.: In other words, exactly what the Catholic educators above are seeking more autonomy from the Bishops in order to do more.]

“So I think everybody now realizes the gravity of the situation. Also I believe that the whole situation has sensitized more people with regard to the gravity of the practice of procured abortion in our nation, that is, they realize even more how far we have gone away from God’s will for human life,” continued Burke.

“That the premiere Catholic university in the United States would give an honorary doctorate of law to one of the most aggressive pro-abortion politicians in our history is profoundly shocking.”

“Now, we cannot forget what has happened at Notre Dame,” said Burke. “We need to take the measures that are necessary so that this is not repeated in other places. [ED.: Amen. Hopefully, the U.S. Bishops will come away from their meeting with a policy that has even more teeth in it, contrary to the hopes and dreams of the prestige-seeking "Catholic" educators who would like this whole issue to just go away.] If it could happen at Notre Dame, where else could it happen?”

[More]

(emphasis and editorial commentary added)


UPDATE (18 June)
At First Thoughts, Ryan Sayre Patrico puts it even more succinctly:
Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities to USCCB: “Stop telling us what to do.”

Notre Dame's Missing Witness [UPDATED]

Bill McGurn writes in The Wall Street Journal:

... Pro-lifers are used to this. They know their stand makes them unglamorous. [ED.: Not according to Mark Shea, who believes pro-lifers ... errrr ... sorry ... the "anti-abortion movement" ... take this stand out of some sense of political "convenience" - using Catholic teaching as a "convenient prop", if you will - in an effort to be part of the "right-wing Catholic 'in' crowd".] They find themselves a stumbling block to Democratic progressives -- and unwelcome at the Republican country club. And they are especially desperate for the support of institutions willing to engage in the clear, thoughtful and unembarrassed way that even Mr. Obama says we should.

With its billions in endowment and its prestigious name, Notre Dame ought to be in the lead here. But when asked for examples illuminating the university's unambiguous support for unborn life, Mr. Brown could provide only four: help for pregnant students who want to carry their babies to term, student volunteer work for pregnant women at local shelters, prayer mentions at campus Masses, and lectures such as a seminar on life issues.

These are all well and good, but they also highlight the poverty of Notre Dame's institutional witness. At Notre Dame today, there is no pro-life organization -- in size, in funding, in prestige -- that compares with the many centers, institutes and so forth dedicated to other important issues ranging from peace and justice to protecting the environment. Perhaps this explains why a number of pro-life professors tell me they must not be quoted by name, lest they face career retaliation.

The one institute that does put the culture of life at the heart of its work, moreover -- the Center for Ethics and Culture -- doesn't even merit a link under the "Faith and Service" section on the university's Web site. The point is this: When Notre Dame doesn't dress for the game, the field is left to those like Randall Terry who create a spectacle and declare their contempt for civil and respectful witness.

In the National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian, there is a wonderful photograph of Father Ted Hesburgh -- then Notre Dame president -- linking hands with Martin Luther King Jr. at a 1964 civil-rights rally at Chicago's Soldier Field. Today, nearly four decades and 50 million abortions after Roe v. Wade, there is no photograph of similar prominence of any Notre Dame president taking a lead at any of the annual marches for life.

Father Jenkins is right: That's not ambiguity. That's a statement.

(emphasis and editorial commentary added)


UPDATE (20 May)
Steve Skojec has more on Notre Dame's purported "commitment" to the Church's pro-life teaching:

... We all agreed that it would add value to track the marchers as they journeyed across country. John Carroll High School of Birmingham, Ala., readily agreed to let us put a camera on one of its busses as did Missouri Right To Life, a non-denominational group out of St.. Louis.

We wanted a college group as well. Sanborn had contacts at Notre Dame University, and they too seemed eager to participate. Given Notre Dame’s status as the iconic Catholic university, we all thought the university’s participation a good idea.

As the Jan. 22 date approached, however, Sanborn started getting mixed signals out of Notre Dame. The administration was proving as unhelpful as his contacts had been helpful.

***
When I asked Sanborn whether the resistance was just routine boilerplate or active obstruction, he said obstruction. As far as he could tell, the Notre Dame administration did not want our camera on the bus.

The reason seemed clear enough even then: The university had no interest in seeing its name publicly associated with something as unblushingly Christian as the March For Life...

[Read the whole thing]

(emphasis added)

Yeah that's some "commitment" to the pro-life cause. If it were a civil rights march to protest racism, Notre Dame would be front and center, as Fr. Hesburgh's example indicates.

But a civil rights march against the holocaust of the unborn? No way! Notre Dame can't have its good name besmirched by being associated with such an unenlightened endeavor. Why, they would be the laughing stock of elite academia.


Previous Pro Ecclesia posts on this subject:
Notre Dame Should Be a Witness for Human Life

The REAL Beneficiaries of Abortion (Hint: It Ain't Women Who Are the Ones Being "Liberated")

Two Bishops Reflect on Obama at Notre Dame

(Hat tip: Amy Welborn)

First, Archbishop Chaput:

... Notre Dame did not merely invite the president to speak at its commencement. It also conferred an unnecessary and unearned honorary law degree on a man committed to upholding one of the worst Supreme Court decisions in our nation's history: Roe v. Wade.

In doing so, Notre Dame ignored the U.S. bishops' guidance in their 2004 statement, Catholics in Political Life. It ignored the concerns of Ambassador Mary Ann Glendon, Notre Dame's 2009 Laetare Medal honoree - who, unlike the president, certainly did deserve her award, but finally declined it in frustration with the university's action. It ignored appeals from the university's local bishop, the president of the U.S. Catholic bishops' conference, more than 70 other bishops, many thousands of Notre Dame alumni and hundreds of thousands of other American Catholics...

***
The May 17 events do have some fitting irony, though. Almost exactly 25 years ago, Notre Dame provided the forum for Gov. Mario Cuomo to outline the "Catholic" case for "pro-choice" public service. At the time, Cuomo's speech was hailed in the media as a masterpiece of American Catholic legal and moral reasoning. In retrospect, it's clearly adroit. It's also, just as clearly, an illogical and intellectually shabby exercise in the manufacture of excuses. Father Jenkins' explanations, and President Obama's honorary degree, are a fitting national bookend to a quarter century of softening Catholic witness in Catholic higher education. Together, they've given the next generation of Catholic leadership all the excuses they need to baptize their personal conveniences and ignore what it really demands to be "Catholic" in the public square.

(emphasis added)

Second, Bishop Finn:

... I think the message of the day was this - that the President of Notre Dame said that they had invited the President of the United States and decided to honor him for the sake of dialogue. And then the President got up and said that the differences that we have on abortion - namely the Catholic Church's staunch opposition to abortion and his staunch support of abortion were "irreconcilable." And at that moment, it would seem to me that the dialogue came to a screeching halt. Father Jenkins' expressed desire for dialogue, whether it was well-founded or justified, at that point got thrown back in his face. The President shut the door on dialogue by saying that there was not going to be any change in his position on abortion and he understood that there was not going to be any change in the Church's position on abortion. To me, that was the lesson of the day. I am glad that Mr. Obama was so clear.

And then, amazingly, everybody gave him a standing ovation. The perception unfortunately was that this was a completely acceptable position of his and, because he is a bright and talented man, this trumps the destructive decisions that he's making day after day...

(emphasis in original)

Weigel: "Obama and the ‘Real’ Catholics"

Yes We Can! Yes We Can!
George Weigel writes on what Obama at Notre Dame portends for the future of Catholicism in America:

... So the “seamless garment” went underground for a decade, only to be dusted off by Douglas Kmiec and others in the 2008 campaign; there, a variant form of the consistent ethic was used to argue that Barack Obama was the real pro-life candidate on offer. As casuistry, this was risible. But it worked well enough that Catholic Obama-supporters on the Notre Dame board saw their chances and took ’em, arranging for the president to come to Notre Dame to complete the seamless garment’s dust-off and give it a new lease on life by presenting the late Cardinal Bernardin — “a kind and good man . . . a saintly man” — as the very model of a real Catholic in America. Not the kind of Catholic who would ever criticize Notre Dame for bestowing an honorary doctorate of laws on a man determined to enshrine in law what the Catholic Church regards as a fundamental injustice. Not the kind of man who would suggest that, with the life issues, we’re living through the moral equivalent of the Lincoln/Douglas debates, with Barack Obama unhappily choosing to play the role of Stephen A. Douglas. Not a man, in other words, like Cardinal Francis George of Chicago, Cardinal Bernardin’s successor, the president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, and one of the most articulate critics of Notre Dame’s decision to honor a president who manifestly does not share what Notre Dame claims is its institutional commitment to the Church’s defense of life.

Whether or not President Obama knew precisely what he was doing — and I’m inclined to think that this politically savvy White House and its allies among Catholic progressive intellectuals knew exactly what they were doing — is irrelevant. In order to secure the political advantage Obama had gained among Catholic voters last November, the president of the United States decided that he would define what it means to be a real Catholic in 21st-century America — not the bishop of Fort Wayne–South Bend, who in sorrow declined to attend Notre Dame’s commencement; not the 80-some bishops who publicly criticized Notre Dame’s decision to invite the president to receive an honorary degree; not the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which explicitly and unambiguously instructed Catholic institutions not to do what Notre Dame did. He, President Obama, would settle the decades-long intra-Catholic culture war in favor of one faction — the faction that had supported his candidacy and that had spent the first months of his administration defending his policies.

***
What the bishops of the United States have to say about this usurpation of their authority will be very interesting to see. Whether Obama’s Catholic acolytes will recognize a genuine threat to religious freedom in what they are already celebrating as their Notre Dame victory over the pro-life yahoos and reactionaries will also be instructive.

Notre Dame Commencement Wrap-Up [UPDATED]

Amy Welborn has Notre Dame Commencement wrap-up coverage here, here, here, and here. Read them all.

I paid no attention to yesterday's activities at Notre Dame. It was Gracie's 2nd birthday, and our family had better things to do (and a more worthy person to celebrate).


UPDATE
By the way, the only "winner" in this imbroglio are the culture of death and Obama's cult of personality.

When the voice of a pro-life protester can be booed and shouted down with cheers of "Yes we can!" and the President's pro-ESCR statements can receive a standing ovation by those participating in graduation exercsises at the world's preeminent Catholic university, Our Blessed Mother, for whom said university is named, can surely only be weeping bitter tears.

Says Ron Chandonia, commenting at Amy's blog:

Whitney got this one exactly right:

I may not agree with him but he and the graduating students put the pro-lifers to shame. Did you hear the students BOO the pro-life guy and start chanting "Yes we Can"? It graphically showed how unimportant the students thought the pro-lifers and they out numbered them BIG time.

The whole country was treated to the spectacle of some of the most coddled and expensively-educated Catholic kids in America cheering for abortion rights and hooting at the cardinal value of Catholic moral teaching. If I were a conspiracy theorist, I would suspect George Soros had paid Father Jenkins 30 pieces of silver (or more) for this day.

UPDATE #2
Opinionated Catholic has an excellent roundup of what's being said about the Notre Dame Commencement around the Catholic blogosphere.

Catholic University of America Offers Forum to Discuss Life Issues at National Press Club

A big tip of the hat to Dr. Denise Hunnell, M.D. (a.k.a. Catholic Mom) for alerting me to this:

A truly Catholic university does not offer honorary degrees to staunchly pro-abortion politicians in the name of “dialogue”. Catholic University of America offers a truly Catholic approach and genuine dialogue on the issue of the sanctity of human life:

May 5, 2009

A Discussion of ‘Life’ Issues:

Professors George, Kmiec and Glendon to Headline National Press Club Event

A public exchange of views will be convened on the topic, “The Obama Administration and the Sanctity of Human Life: Is There a Common Ground on Life Issues? What is the Right Response by ‘Pro-Life” Citizens?” at Washington, D.C.’s National Press Club at 5 p.m., Thursday, May 28, 2009.

Discussing their respective views will be Robert George, McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and the Director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University, and Douglas Kmiec, Professor of Constitutional Law and Caruso Family Chair in Constitutional Law at Pepperdine University School of Law.

Their exchange will be moderated by Mary Ann Glendon, Learned Hand Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and former United States Ambassador to the Holy See. The event explores different perspectives on current governmental policy regarding such issues as abortion and embryonic stem cell research and its impact on societal attitudes regarding the respect for human life.

The discussion is sponsored by the Center for Law, Philosophy and Culture at the Columbus School of Law of The Catholic University of America. Seating is reserved by invitation. Due to space limitations, media coverage (broadcast and print) will also be by invitation only.

My Comments:
A debate between Professor Doug Kmiec and Professor Robert George ... moderated by Professor Mary Ann Glendon. This ought to be interesting and enlightening.

How a Catholic University Says "F*** You!" to the Bishops

I have my doubts as to the accuracy of this, based on its unreliable and self-aggrandizing source (that would be Mr. Terry, NOT Mr. Archbold who, as far as I know, appears to be quite the stand-up guy, despite what his brother says), but what follows is the purported text of the honorary law degree that Notre Dame will award President Obama this weekend:

"At the 164th Commencement The May Exercises

The University of Notre Dame Confers the degree of

Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, on the 44th president of the United States, whose historic election opened a new era of hope in a country long divided by its history of slavery and racism. A community organizer who honed his advocacy for the poor, the marginalized and the worker in the streets of Chicago, he now organizes a larger community, bringing to the world stage a renewed American dedication to diplomacy and dialogue with all nations and religions committed to human rights and the global common good. Through his willingness to engage with those who disagree with him and encourage people of faith to bring their beliefs to the public debate, he is inspiring this nation to heal its divisions of religion, culture, race and politics in the audacious hope for a brighter tomorrow.

On Barack H. Obama, Washington, District of Columbia"

(emphasis added by Patrick Archbold)

Again, the accuracy of this "leak" has yet to be determined. But, if a Catholic university did decide to say "F*** you!" to the Bishops, this is a prime example of how said university would do it.

Excuse me while I choke back the vomit I just threw up into my mouth.

Who's Really Playing a "Political Game" in the Notre Dame Imbroglio

George Weigel writes in the Denver Catholic Register:

... There's also a high-stakes "political game" here ... The Obama administration is full of very smart political operators. Reading last November’s electoral entrails, they’ve sensed the possibility of driving a wedge through the Catholic community in America, dividing Catholics from their bishops and thus securing the majority Catholic vote Obama received in 2008. And they’ve shrewdly judged that the soft underbelly of Catholic resistance to the Obama administration’s radical agenda on the life issues is composed of Catholic intellectuals, their prestige institutions (like Notre Dame and Georgetown), and their opinion journals—the very people and opinion centers who claimed last year that Obama was the true pro-life candidate. It’s a clever move on the political chessboard, and barring extraordinary actions from the bishops, it will likely meet with considerable success...

(emphasis added)


(Hat tip: American Papist)

Prof. Rick Garnett on What's "Behind the Angst at Notre Dame"

Notre Dame Law Professor Rick Garnett says that "this controversy is not about what should be said at Catholic universities, but about what should be said by a Catholic university":

... The question on the table is not whether Notre Dame should hear from the president but whether Notre Dame should honor the president. A Catholic university can and should engage all comers, but in order to be true to itself — to have integrity — it should hesitate before honoring those who use their talents or power to bring about grave injustice. The university is, and must remain, a bustling marketplace of ideas; at the same time, it also has a voice of its own. We say a lot about who we are and what we stand for through what we love and what we choose to honor. The controversy at Notre Dame is not about what should be said at Catholic universities, but about what should be said by a Catholic university.

It is also a mistake to frame the controversy in terms of academic freedom. Obviously, this freedom, properly understood, is central to the mission of any great university.

Even so, no one is proposing limits on what can or should be discussed, debated, taught, studied or written by students or scholars. The American Association of University Professors is right to insist that "the opportunity to be confronted with diverse opinions is at the core of academic freedom," but wrong to imagine that this principle requires a university to be indifferent to the messages it sends through the honors it confers.

No university is entirely neutral; every university makes decisions about what to affirm, through its policies, as good or true. One can (and should) affirm the right (and duty) of scholars at Catholic universities to be true to their scholarly vocations while still asking whether Notre Dame is being true to itself.

***
To doubt that a Catholic university should honor Obama at this time, and to worry about the message such an honor sends, is not to engage in partisan or "single issue" politics or to deny that there are many things to be celebrated and admired about our new president's life, campaign, election and vision. Indeed, these things make it all the more regrettable — tragic, really — that he is so badly misguided on such a fundamental issue of justice.

[More]

(emphasis added)

Joseph Bottum: "God and Obama at Notre Dame"

(Hat tip: Amy Welborn)

Joseph Bottum writes about the "clash between Catholic culture and Catholic colleges":

... What all these critics of Glendon share is a sense that Catholic unhappiness with Notre Dame must be about politics. "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, complained to the Boston Globe. As James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal noted, this was the same Fr. Himes who in 2006 wrote the faculty a 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."

You could cut the irony with a knife: It's only demonizing when conservatives do it. Still Fr. Himes joins Douglas Kmiec, and America, and Commonweal, and the administration of Notre Dame, and most of the newspaper columnists who've weighed in on the controversy, and a surprising number of conservatives. They all look at the Notre Dame protests and think it must be about politics. Bad politics or good politics, take your pick. But politics all the way down.

As it happens, they're wrong. Politics has very little to do with the mess. This isn't a fight about who won the last presidential election and how he's going to deal with abortion. It's a fight about culture--the culture of American Catholicism, and how Notre Dame, still living in a 1970s Catholic world, has suddenly awakened to find itself out of date.

The role of culture is what Fr. Jenkins at Notre Dame and many other presidents of Catholic colleges don't quite get, and their lack of culture is what makes them sometimes seem so un-Catholic--though the charge befuddles them whenever it is made. As perhaps it ought. They know very well that 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 different world from most American Catholics. Opposition to abortion doesn't stand at the center of Catholic theology. It doesn't even stand at the center of Catholic faith. It does stand, however, at the center of Catholic culture in this country. Opposition to abortion is the signpost at the intersection of Catholicism and American public life. And those who--by inclination or politics--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 the antagonism must derive from politics. But it doesn't. It derives from the sense of the faithful that abortion is important. It derives from the feeling of many ordinary Catholics that the Church ought to stand for something in public life--and that something is opposition to abortion.

Fr. Himes went on to tell the Boston 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." Of course, here, too, there's a level of irony: Out at Notre Dame, the president, Fr. Jenkins, has defended his choice of Obama on the grounds of "conversation," but, now in full-lock down mode, the school hasn't actually scheduled any conversations or debates on the topic. They did invite the 82-year-old Judge John T. Noonan to take Mary Ann Glendon's place on the platform, and he is not, by any means, an unfaithful Catholic or a supporter of abortion. He has the reputation, however, of being one of the dullest speakers in captivity, and the school can't really expect him to provide much "conversation partnership," as Notre Dame calls it, for Barack Obama and his quicksilver rhetoric.

Still, in a peculiar way, Himes is right that "some people have simply reduced Catholicism to the abortion issue." 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 50 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. They do not necessarily have bad theology when they equate the life issues with other concerns. They do not necessarily have bad faith just because they say that war and capital punishment outweigh the million babies killed every year in this country by abortion. But they lack the cultural marker that would make them 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 swim against the current to preserve family life. And until Catholic universities understand this, they will not be Catholic--in a very real, existential sense...

[Read the whole thing]

Archbishop Burke: Is Notre Dame Catholic?

National Catholic Register's Tom Hoopes reports:

“What should the Church do about Notre Dame?” I asked Archbishop Raymond Burke last night. His answer:

“What it should do is have Notre Dame come clean. Is it Catholic or isn’t it? A Catholic institution, a Catholic university, cannot give honors to someone who is a promoter of things that are opposed to the most fundamental beliefs of Catholics, and so that’s what needs to happen.”

How can the Church do that?

“There’s an apostolic constitution, Ex Corde Ecclesiae, which sets forth the requirements for a university to have the name Catholic. I think that Notre Dame has to either follow those norms or say ‘We’re not a Catholic university anymore.’”

Archbishop Burke, of course, is the prefect of the Apostolic Signatura, the Vatican’s highest court. He was archbishop of St. Louis from 2003 until last year.

***
At the prayer breakfast, Archbishop Burke said:

“In a culture marked by widespread and ingrained confusion about the most fundmental teachings of the moral law, our Catholic schools and universities must be beacons of truth and right conduct. “

He added, “The purposed granting of an honorary degree” by Notre Dame to Barack Obama is “the source of the greatest scandal.”

The archbishop said, “If we as individuals are not willing to accept the burdens” of the Catholic witness to the right to life, “we are not worthy of the name Catholic.”

(emphasis added)

My Comments:
Last I checked, Archbishop Burke is an actual Vatican official. As Hoopes notes above, the Archbishop "is the prefect of the Apostolic Signatura, the Vatican’s highest court".

So, given his status as an actual Vatican official, do you suppose the President's apologists (also here), his media sycophants, and the Catholic "smart set" will give Archbishop Burke's statement today the same weight of “Vatican authority” that they have given to some editorial written by a mere columnist for the Vatican’s newspaper?

In response to a similar question that I also posed at Southern Appeal, Paul Zummo provides this answer:

Jay,

E.J. Dionne is no doubt reconsidering the column he wrote yesterday now that Archbishop Burke has spoken out. His next column will completely repudiate yesterday’s, and he will reconsider the issue now that this Vatican insider has loudly condemned Notre Dame.

But I wouldn’t exactly hold my breath in anticipation of such a column.

Don't worry, I'm not. I think the question I've asked pretty much answers itself.

Fr. Corapi on Notre Dame Scandal

Fr. Corapi on Notre Dame Scandal

Two Statements on What it Means to be a Catholic University

Just to recap, in the past couple of days, we've seen 2 of the most eloquent and thoughful statements regarding the University of Notre Dame's decision to invite President Obama to deliver the university's 2009 commencement address and receive an honorary doctor of laws degree.

First is Bishop D'Arcy's "Statement to the Faithful", which seeks to publicly correct the errors and mistatements Notre Dame President John Jenkins has made in justifying the invitation.

Second is Bill McGurn's speech to the Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture and The Notre Dame Fund to Protect Human Life.

Each, in their own way, seeks to lay out the duties and responsibilities of the nation's premiere Catholic university in living out its Catholic identity in a world that has become increasingly secularized and hostile to a culture of life. If you haven't read both already, I strongly encourage you to do so.

Notre Dame Should Be a Witness for Human Life

(Hat tip: Feddie)

Bill McGurn delivered this powerful speech earlier this evening at the University of Notre Dame:

... The precipitate cause of our gathering tonight is the honor and platform our university has extended to a President whose policies reflect clear convictions about unborn life, and about the value the law ought to place on protecting that life. These convictions are not in doubt. In July 2007, the candidate spelled them out in a forceful address to a Planned Parenthood convention in our nation’s capital.

Before that audience, he declared that a woman’s “fundamental right” to an abortion was at stake in the coming election. He spoke about how he had “put Roe at the center” of his “lesson plan on reproductive freedom” when he was a professor – and how he would put it at the center of his agenda as president. He invoked his record in the Illinois state senate, where he fought restrictions on abortion, famously including one on partial-birth abortion. He said that the “first thing” he wanted to do as President was to “sign a Freedom of Choice Act.” And he ended by assuring his audience that “on this fundamental issue,” he, like they, would never yield.

These were his promises as a candidate. His actions as President – his key appointments, his judicial nominees, his lifting of restrictions on federal funding for abortion providers overseas, the green light given to the destruction of human embryos for research, his targeting of “conscience clause” protections for healthcare workers – all these actions are fully consistent with his promises. It is precisely this terrible consistency that makes it so dispiriting to see our university extend to this man her most public platform and an honorary doctorate of laws. There are good men and women working for an America where every child is welcomed in life and protected by law – and when they lift their eyes to Notre Dame, they ought to find inspiration.

So tonight our hearts carry a great sadness. But we do not come here this evening to rally against a speaker. We come to affirm the sacredness of life. And we come with a great hope: That a university founded under the patronage of Our Lady might be as consistent in the defense of her principles as the President of the United States has been for advancing his. In a nation wounded by Roe … in a society that sets mothers against the children they carry in their wombs … we come here tonight because however much our hearts ache, they tell us this: Our church, our country, and our culture long for the life witness of Notre Dame.

What does it mean to be a witness? To be a witness, an institution must order itself so that all who look upon it see a consonance between its most profound truths and its most public actions. For a Catholic university in the 21st century, this requires that those placed in her most critical leadership positions – on the faculty, in the administration, on the board of trustees – share that mission. We must concede there is no guarantee that the young men and women who come here to learn will assent to her witness – but we must never forget that the university will have failed them if they leave here without at least understanding it. That is what it means to be a witness.

This witness is the only real reason for a University of Notre Dame. We believe that there are self-evident truths about the dignity of each human life, and that this dignity derives from our having been fashioned in our Creator’s likeness. In this new century, these beliefs make us the counterculture. One does not need to be a Catholic to appreciate that abortion involves the brutal taking of innocent human life. To argue that this is a Catholic truth, or even a religious truth, is to overlook what science and sonograms tell us – and to insult the Protestants, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims and, yes, even some atheists, who appreciate that a civilization which sanctions abortion as a human right is in some essential way writing its death warrant.

Over the years, the whole idea of truth – much less our ability to know it – has been rendered doubtful by the slow advance of a soft agnosticism that has itself become orthodoxy at so many universities. Not so at Notre Dame. All across this wondrous campus, we pass imagery that sings to us about the hope born of a Jewish woman in a Bethlehem stable. Yet we kid ourselves if we believe these images are self-sustaining. Without a witness that keeps these signposts alive, our crosses, statues, and stained-glass windows will ultimately fade into historical curiosities like the “Christo et ecclesiae” that survives to this day on buildings around Harvard Yard and the seal that still validates every Harvard degree.

***
With the idea that one human being has the right to take the life of another merely because the other’s life is inconvenient, our culture elevates into law the primacy of the strong over the weak. The discord that this year’s commencement has unleashed – between Notre Dame and the bishops, between members of the Notre Dame community, between Notre Dame and thousands of discouraged Catholic faithful – all this derives from an approach that for decades has treated abortion as one issue on a political scorecard. This is not the road to engagement. This is the route to incoherence, and we see its fruit everywhere in our public life.

Twenty-five years ago, on a similar stage on this campus, the then-governor of New York used his Notre Dame platform to advance the personally-opposed-but defense that countless numbers of Catholic politicians have used to paper over their surrender to legalized abortion. Eight years after that, the school bestowed the Laetare Medal on a United States Senator who had likewise long since cut his conscience to fit the abortion fashion.

Today we have evolved. Let us note that the present controversy comes at a moment where the incoherence of the Catholic witness in American public life is on view at the highest levels of our government. Today we have a Catholic vice president, a Catholic Speaker of the House, a Catholic nominee for Secretary of Health and Human Services, and so on. These are America’s most prominent Catholics. And they have one thing in common: The assertion that the legal right to terminate a pregnancy – in the chilling euphemism of the day – must remain inviolable.

For those who think this a partisan point, let us stipulate for the record one of the curiosities of the Republican Party. Notwithstanding the party’s prolife credentials, at the level of possible Presidential contenders, the most prominent pro-choice voices in the GOP arguably belong to Catholics: from the former Republican mayor and governor of New York, to the Republican Governor of California, the Republican former governor of Pennsylvania, and so on. Notre Dame must recognize these realities – and the role she has played in bringing us to this day by treating abortion as a political difference rather than the intrinsic evil it is.

***
Ladies and gentlemen, the unborn child’s right to life represents the defining civil rights issue of our day – and it ought to be a defining civil rights issue on this campus.

This is not a popular witness. In our country, those who take it must expect ridicule and derision and a deliberate distortion of our views. In our culture, so many of our most powerful and influential institutions are hostile to any hint that abortion might be an unsettled question. And in our public life, one of the most pernicious effects of the imposition of abortion via the Supreme Court is that it has deprived a free people of a fair and open debate. Notre Dame remains one of the few institutions capable of providing a witness for life in the fullness of its beauty and intellectual integrity – and America is waiting to hear her voice.

***
In her most public witness, Notre Dame appears afraid to extend to the cause of the unborn the same enthusiasm she shows for so many other good works here.

If, for example, you click onto www.nd.edu, you will often find a link for the Office of Sustainability, which happily informs you about all the things Notre Dame is doing to be green-friendly. You will find another link that defines the university with a series of videos that ask, “What would you fight for?” Each home game during the football season, NBC broadcasts one of these videos. They are more than a dozen of them – each highlighting members of the Notre Dame community who are fighting for justice, fighting for advances in medicine, fighting for new immigrants, and so forth.

Imagine the witness that Notre Dame might provide on a Fall afternoon, if millions of Americans who had sat down to watch a football game suddenly found themselves face to face with a Notre Dame professor or student standing up to say, “I fight for the unborn.”

[Read the whole thing]

(emphasis added)

Amen.


UPDATE (24 April)
You can also read the full text of the speech at the website for the Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture, which co-sponsored last night's event with The Notre Dame Fund to Protect Human Life.

Bishop D'Arcy Publicly Corrects President Jenkins' "Flawed Justification for His Actions" [UPDATED]

“I consider it now settled,” writes Bishop D’Arcy, “that the USCCB document, ‘Catholics in Public Life,’ does indeed apply in this matter.”

My Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

Recently, Father John Jenkins, CSC, in a letter of response to Bishop Olmsted of the Diocese of Phoenix, who had written him, critical of the decision to invite President Obama to speak and receive an honorary degree of law at Notre Dame, indicated that it was his conviction that the statement “Catholics in Political Life” (USCCB) did not apply in this matter. Father Jenkins kindly sent me a copy of his letter, and also at a later meeting, asked for a response.

In an April 15th letter to Father Jenkins, I responded to his letter.

Now the points made in his letter have been sent by Father Jenkins to the members of the Notre Dame Board of Trustees and have been publicized nationally, as well as locally in the South Bend Tribune. Since the matter is now public, it is my duty as the bishop of this diocese to respond and correct. I take up this responsibility with some sadness, but also with the conviction that if I did not do so, I would be remiss in my pastoral responsibility.

Rather than share my full letter, which I have shared with some in church leadership, I prefer to present some of the key points.

1. The meaning of the sentence in the USCCB document relative to Catholic institutions is clear. It places the responsibility on those institutions, and indeed, on the Catholic community itself.

“The Catholic community and Catholic institutions should not honor those who act in defiance of our fundamental moral principles. They should not be given awards, honors or platforms which would suggest support for their actions.” — “Catholics in Political Life,” USCCB.

2. When there is a doubt concerning the meaning of a document of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, where does one find the authentic interpretation? A fundamental, canonical and theological principal states that it is found in the local bishop, who is the teacher and lawgiver in his diocese. — Canon 330, 375 §§ 1 & 2; 380; 381 § 1; 391 § 1; 392, & 394 §1.

3. I informed Father Jenkins that if there was any genuine questions or doubt about the meaning of the relevant sentence in the conference’s document, any competent canonist with knowledge of the tradition and love for Christ’s church had the responsibility to inform Father Jenkins of the fundamental principle that the diocesan bishop alone bears the responsibility to provide an authoritative interpretation.

4. I reminded Father Jenkins that he indicated that he consulted presidents of other Catholic universities, and at least indirectly, consulted other bishops, since he asked those presidents to share with him those judgments of their own bishops. However, he chose not to consult his own bishop who, as I made clear, is the teacher and lawgiver in his own diocese. I reminded Father Jenkins that I was not informed of the invitation until after it was accepted by the president. I mentioned again that it is at the heart of the diocesan bishop’s pastoral responsibility to teach as revealed in sacred Scripture and the tradition. (“Lumen Gentium,” 20; and “Christus Dominus,” 2.) I reminded him that it is also central to the university’s relationship to the church. (“Ex corde ecclesiae,” 27 & 28; Gen. Norm., Art. 5, §§ 1-3.)

5. Another key point. In his letter to Bishop Olmsted and in the widespread publicity, which has taken place as the points in the letter have been made public, Father Jenkins declared the invitation to President Obama does not “suggest support” for his actions, because he has expressed and continues to express disagreement with him on issues surrounding protection of life. I wrote that the outpouring of hundreds of thousands who are shocked by the invitation clearly demonstrates, that this invitation has, in fact, scandalized many Catholics and other people of goodwill. In my office alone, there have been over 3,300 messages of shock, dismay and outrage, and they are still coming in. It seems that the action in itself speaks so loudly that people have not been able to hear the words of Father Jenkins, and indeed, the action has suggested approval to many.

In the publicity surrounding the points Father Jenkins has made, he also says he is “following the document of the bishops” by “laying a basis for engagement with the president on this issue.” I indicated that I, like many others, will await to see what the follow up is on this issue between Notre Dame and President Obama.

6. As I have said in a recent interview and which I have said to Father Jenkins, 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. 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.

In my letter, I have also asked Father Jenkins to correct, and if possible, withdraw the erroneous talking points, which appeared in the South Bend Tribune and in other media outlets across the country. The statements which Father Jenkins has made are simply wrong and give a flawed justification for his actions.

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 Father 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 Father Jenkins must do their part if this healing is to take place. I will do my part.

Sincerely yours in our Lord,
Most Reverend
John M. D’Arcy

(emphasis added)


UPDATE
Tom Peters provides analysis at American Papist.


UPDATE #2 (23 April 2009)
Additional analysis by Fr. Z. (Hat tip: Don McClarey at The American Catholic)