But Dolan acknowledged he did not speak out against Notre Dame when President George W. Bush received the same invitation in 2001, despite Bush being an avid supporter of the death penalty and, later, of the Iraq War -- two positions that deeply conflicted with then-Pope John Paul II's views.Secondly, on Wednesday, Wall Street Journal columnist William McGurn spoke at Notre Dame. ND visiting professor and philosopher Francis Beckwith noted it on his "Return to Rome" blog and the text is here in a pdf version:
"On those two hot-button issues that I'd be uncomfortable with, namely the war and capital punishment, I would have to give [Bush] the benefit of the doubt, to say that those two issues are open to some discussion, and are not intrinsically evil," Dolan said. "In the Catholic mindset . . . that would not apply to abortion."
It's powerful and fair minded, I think:
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.A reminder: The Notre Dame Eucharistic Procession is this Sunday - we've been. It's a great afternoon and very inspiring! I wrote about our adventures there at the 2007 procession here.
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.
In his writings, Pope John Paul II noted the awful contradiction of our times, when more and more legal codes speak of human rights while making the freedom to deprive the innocent of their lives one of those rights. Several times he uses the word "sinister" to characterize the enshrinement of abortion as a legal right. And he states that all pleas for other important human rights are "false and illusory" if we do not defend with "maximum determination" the fundamental right to life upon which all other rights rest.
Maximum determination. 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.
Those who say that as Notre Dame engages the world, she cannot expect her guests to share all her beliefs are right. But that is not the issue. The issue is that we engage them. Think of how we would have treated an elected Senator or President or Governor whose principles and actions were given over to seeing that segregation enjoyed the full and unqualified protection of American law. We would have been cordial ... we would have been gracious ... we would have been more than willing to debate - but we would have betrayed our witness if ever we brought them here on the idea that all that divided us was one political issue.
My friends, the good news is that the witness for life is alive at Notre Dame. We see this witness in the good work of teachers here in this room. We see this witness in the new Notre Dame Fund to Protect Human Life. I have seen this witness in a very personal way, on the cold gym floor of a suburban parochial school on the outskirts of Washington - where 200-plus students spent a freezing January night just so they could raise the Notre Dame banner at the annual March for Life. These are but a handful of the wonderful things going on at this campus. And we know that this witness exists too in the other, unheralded acts of love designed to ensure that the unwed sophomore who kneels before the Grotto with an unexpected pregnancy weighing on her mind has a better choice than the cold front door of a Planned Parenthood clinic.
Unfortunately, people across this nation - and perhaps even here at this university - know little of these things. And they do not know because the university keeps this lamp under a basket. 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 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."
Even more important, imagine the larger witness for life that would come from putting first things first. So often we find support for abortion rights measured against decisions involving war, capital punishment, and so on. All these issues deserve more serious treatment. But the debate over these prudential judgments loses coherence if on the intrinsic evil of abortion we do not stand on the same ground. What a challenge Notre Dame would pose to our culture if she stood united on this proposition: The unborn belong to no political party ... no human right is safe when their right to life is denied ... and we will accept no calculus of justice that seeks to trade that right to life for any other.
Now, there are different paths to this witness - and many who say they share it maintain their only problem is with the prolife movement itself: It's too Republican, it's not effective, it's too militant, and so forth. We who are prolife must admit that some of these criticisms have an element of truth. Yet those who advance them must also acknowledge that in practice such criticisms often serve not to strike out a bold new path for a more informed witness, but to rationalize a preference for remaining on the sidelines.
One more thing - check out the Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture - a vibrant center of engaged, vibrant thinking and doing on campus.
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Dear Bill,
I sincerely honor your dedication and activity in the sphere of life you can influence. When we do these things for the love of God and our sense of moral imperative in our own lives, we have the effect of strengthening others. It gives us all a sense of hope. Thank you.
Catholic institutions are strange compared to secular ones. Catholic institutions either are dedicated to the Faith or they die. Anybody who cares about them does whatever they can to see that they don't die, which means doing what we can to keep them dedicated to the Faith.
Catholics have the right to receive the Faith and the Sacraments administered according to the mind of the Church. Nobody has the right to badly administer a Catholic institution, least of all out of some vague sense of not having "outsiders" interfere. In issues such as those the administration of the University of Notre Dame has forced recently, the only question is which outsiders represent the highest authority for a given case.
But, in the end the people in any institution cannot be compelled or forced to do the right thing. That's why we have to pray in this case. Only God can move their hearts and open their minds, or remove them from positions where they can affect events - rarely, but sometimes, though what he has us do.
I don't like being manipulated by Republican operatives trolling for money. That's all this is.
That might have been a credible claim a day or two after the story broke, when the longest written statement on this was a typically self-inflating press release from the Cardinal Newman Society.
One month, several dozen bishops' statements, and two examples of Fr. Jenkins's reasoning on the matter later, it sounds like the claim of someone who made up his mind on Day 2 and can't change it now.
For the record, Tom, I didn't need one day to determine my position on abortion, and I usually don't need two to decide what to do about it.
The Republicans may be in free fall, but when it comes to money, they play the same ol' tune and the bishops and others dance the same ol' dance.
Ask yourself why so much effort is devoted to protest, to raising money for politics, and to wage the culture war, and why so little print and e-space is devoted to the real needs on the ground in just about every locality: helping pregnant women make the best possible choice? The Birthright in my town needs office volunteers to keep the doors open. I would much rather lend my support in real ways than get into a shouting match. But not all the people I read on the internet would agree.
As for the several dozen bishops you mention, my suggestion is that they lack imagination. It's easy enough to sit at a computer or tell your secretary to take dictation. That's last year's idea, and the same idea from the last thirty-five years. Fat lot of good that's done us.
Prolifers are the ultimate civil rights activists. We speak and act for a group of people that will not be given the opportunity to speak or act for themselves because their lives are brought to an abrupt end. We believe in life and liberty for all, born and unborn. This means we treat the unborn as persons rather than property.ND, 50 million Americans say let your light shine for the unborn. Stand up and be counted.
Amidst the controversy of abortion issues President Obama spoke at the Notre Dame graduation. Here is a copy of his speech. http://pfx.me/BU