Chicago, Ill., Mar 30, 2009 / 12:01 pm
On Sunday, the Chicago Tribune invited the Catholic scholars Professor Douglas W. Kmiec and George Weigel to express their opposing views about the controversial invitation of President Barack Obama to give the commencement address at the Catholic University of Notre Dame.
In his column “Notre Dame's common ground,” Professor Douglas Kmiec, who was a dean at the university, and who defended Obama as the best option for Catholic voters in the recent election, writes that regarding the selection of commencement speakers “it's depressing to think Mother Teresa is deceased.”
“The controversy over President Barack Obama at Notre Dame –he says- is different. Even as unprecedented numbers of Catholics voted for the president… there's the rub, the Catholic Church is the foremost defender of unborn life, and properly, uncompromising about it. Obama is more pragmatic, accommodating other religious and scientific views that see the origin point of life differently.”
According to Kmiec, Notre Dame's president, Fr. John Jenkins, has “made it plain that the commencement invitation represents no disregard of the church's commitment to life. And while it is unfortunate the local prelate, Bishop John D'Arcy, has chosen to be elsewhere rather than pray with Obama and engage him in conversation, the significance of the bishop's absence and Jenkins' candor is surely not lost on our intellectually gifted 44th president.”