“This,” Lee argues, “is not a mere theoretical disagreement. This act of promoting a virulently pro-abortion politician will cost lives — the lives of many unborn. And it will harm young men and women by obscuring the ugly truth about abortion.”
Ralph McInerny, the noted professor of philosophy at the University of Notre Dame, takes a more ironic tack by affirming that “Barack Hussein Obama, enabler in chief of abortion, has agreed to speak at the 2009 commencement and to receive an honorary doctorate of law. That abortion and its advocacy violate a primary precept of natural law reinforced by the Catholic Church’s explicit doctrine is a mere bagatelle. Wackos of all kinds will kick up a fuss, of course, but their protest will go unnoticed in South Bend. The pell-mell pursuit of warm and fuzzy Catholicism will continue.”
“When the president dribbles onto the stage at the great event, the hall will erupt in ecstatic applause; the president, Father Jenkins, will wring his hand; and a final nail will be driven into the coffin of a once-great Catholic university. No one will note nor long remember what Barack Obama says on the occasion. Who listens to commencement addresses? But the Lady atop the golden dome, recalling the flight into Egypt, will exhibit one of her many titles: She who weeps,” McInerny says.
Charlotte Allen, author of “The Human Christ: The Search for the Historical Jesus,” argues that despite the ND’s “tradition” of inviting U.S. presidents, Bill Clinton was never invited. Any one Clinton’s anti-life actions which ought to have properly disqualified him from setting foot on Notre Dame’s South Bend campus “were spread out over the eight years of his presidency. By contrast, Obama has scarcely been president for eight weeks, and already he’s forced U.S. taxpayers to subsidize overseas abortion clinics; announced he’ll rescind a Bush-administration rule allowing health-care workers to refuse to provide services (such as abortion) they deem morally repugnant; and opened the sluice-gates for federal funding of embryo-destructive stem-cell research, all the way up to cloning.”
“If Bill Clinton wasn’t invited to be commencement speaker, why on earth has Obama been issued the implicit endorsement of his views — plus a bully pulpit — by the nation’s premiere Catholic university?,” she concludes.
R. R. Reno, features editor of First Things and professor of theology at Creighton University, says he can see “good reasons for the University of Notre Dame to invite Barack Obama to give a speech… But a commencement address? It’s not an academic event of intellectual exchange and debate. It’s entirely and richly symbolic.”
“What was the leadership at Notre Dame thinking? In May the university will give Mary Ann Glendon the Laetare Medal, its highest honor. Glendon has heroically devoted a great deal of her life to defending innocent life. And then Barack Obama — a man who has devoted a great deal of his life to representing elite liberal and anti-Catholic moral views about sex, marriage, and reproduction — enjoys the spotlight. It’s an insult to Glendon.”
“Alumni and donors need to wake up,” says Reno. “By all means write John Jenkins, CSC, the Notre Dame president. But don’t stop there.”