Washington D.C., May 18, 2009 / 05:30 am
Patricia McGuire, President of Trinity University in Washington D.C., accused pro-lifers protesting Obama's speech at Notre Dame of being "Catholic vigilantes" that are turning back the clock to pre-Vatican II times, when supposedly the Church had no respect for academic freedom.
Speaking on Trinity's campus in Northeast Washington, McGuire devoted almost all of her speech to the controversy surrounding the decision of Fr. John Jenkins, President of Notre Dame, to honor President Barack Obama despite having the strongest pro-abortion record of any previous President.
"A half-century of progress for Catholic higher education is at risk of slipping back into those insular, parochial pre-Vatican II days," when, according to McGuire, "academic freedom was not valued within the Catholic Church."
"The real scandal at Notre Dame today is not that the president of the United States is speaking at commencement," McGuire said. "The real scandal is the misappropriation of sacred teachings for political ends. The real scandal is the spectacle of ostensibly Catholic mobs camping out at Notre Dame for the specific purpose of disrupting the commencement address of the nation's first African American president."