Ten Notre Dame Priests of the Congregation of Holy Cross Object to Honoring Obama As Creating "Moral Confusion"

From the Notre Dame student Newspaper, The Observer:

Work to maintain Catholic traditions

By: Letter to the Editor

Posted: 4/8/09

We write as priests of the Congregation of Holy Cross and as proud graduates of the University of Notre Dame to voice our objection to the University's decision to honor President Barack Obama by inviting him to deliver this year's Commencement address and by conferring on him an honorary Doctor of Laws degree.

We wish to associate ourselves with and encourage those courageous students and treasured alumni who, while deeply loving Notre Dame, vigorously oppose this sad and regrettable decision of the University administration.

It is our deep conviction that Notre Dame should lead by word and deed in upholding the Church's fundamental teaching that human life must be respected and protected from the moment of conception. In so doing the University must take seriously the 2004 instruction of the U.S. Catholic Bishops that "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."

We especially regret the fissure that the invitation to President Obama has opened between Notre Dame and its local ordinary and many of his fellow bishops. We express our deep gratitude to Bishop John D'Arcy for his leadership and moral clarity. We ask that the University give renewed consideration to Bishop D'Arcy's thoughtful counsel which always has Notre Dame's best interests at heart.

The University pursues a dangerous course when it allows itself to decide for and by itself what part of being a Catholic institution it will choose to embrace. Although undoubtedly unintended, the University administration's decision portends a distancing of Notre Dame from the Church which is its lifeblood and the source of its identity and real strength. Such a distancing puts at risk the true soul of Notre Dame.

We regret that our position on this issue puts us at odds with our brother priest in Holy Cross, Fr. John Jenkins, C.S.C. Yet, in this instance, for the good of Notre Dame and the Congregation of Holy Cross, we cannot remain silent. Notre Dame's decision has caused moral confusion and given many reason to believe that the University's stance against the terrible evil of abortion is weak and easily trumped by other considerations.

We prayerfully request that Fr. Jenkins and the Fellows of the University, who are entrusted with responsibility for maintaining its essential character as a Catholic institution of higher learning, revisit this matter immediately. Failure to do so will damage the integrity of the institution and detract from all the good work that occurs at Notre Dame and from the impressive labors of its many faithful students and professors.

We offer these views as we enter Holy Week, recalling the triumph of Christ's holy cross. As "men with hope to bring" we are confident that Notre Dame may yet give true honor to its patroness, and witness to Her Son, through its commitment to the sanctity of life.



Wilson D. Miscamble, C.S.C.

Stephen M. Koeth, C.S.C.

Gregory P. Haake, C.S.C.

Daniel J. Parrish, C.S.C.

Michael B. Wurtz, C.S.C.

Mark R. Ghyselink, C.S.C.

Terrence P. Ehrman, C.S.C.

John A. Herman, C.S.C.

Ronald J. Wasowski, C.S.C.

Vincent A. Kuna, C.S.C.

Holy Cross Priests

April 7

© Copyright 2009 The Observer

Fourteen Easy Ways to Improve the Liturgy

Arlene Oost-Zinner and Jeffrey Tucker provide a straightforward guide to improving your parish's liturgy according to the true meaning of Vatican II's dogmatic constitution on the Liturgy, Sacrosanctum Consilium.

George Weigel: An Honorary Degree Is Not The Same As an Invitation to Dialogue

Why might orthodox Catholics be upset with Notre Dame's decision to honor President Barak Obama with an honorary degree?

George Weigel addresses this in the Chicago Tribune, "When a university invites a prominent personality to deliver a commencement address and accept an honorary degree, a statement is being made to graduates, students, faculty, parents, alumni and donors: 'This is someone whose work is worth emulating.' The invitation, in other words, is not to a debate, or to the opening of some sort of ongoing conversation. The invitation and the award of an honorary degree are a university's stamp of approval on someone's life and accomplishment.

"Which is precisely why the University of Notre Dame, which claims to be America's premier Catholic institution of higher learning, made an egregious error in inviting President Barack Obama to address its May commencement and accept an honorary doctorate of laws degree."

Francis J. Beckwith is the 2008–2009 Mary Ann Remick Senior Visiting Fellow in the Notre Dame Center for Ethics & Culture at the University of Notre Dame, and professor of philosophy and church-state studies at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. Portions of this essay were delivered by Prof. Beckwith on March 28, 2009 at the University of Notre Dame for the 2009 Notre Dame Right to Life Collegiate Conference.

Is this simple a matter of disagreement? a difference of opinion?

No. The President has already taken actions that advance an evil which the Second Vatican Council called "an unspeakable crime" [Gaudium et Spes]. Weigel elaborates: "The president has put the taxpayers of the United States back into the business of paying for abortions abroad. He has expanded federal funding for embryo-destructive stem-cell research [in contradistinction to non embryonic stem cell research] and defended that position in a speech that was a parody of intellectually serious moral reasoning. The Obama administration threatens to reverse federal regulations that protect the conscience rights of Catholic and other pro-life health-care professionals."

The Tribune published Weigel's piece with one by Professor Douglas W. Kmiec as a kind of debate over Notre Dame's decision. You can click through the Catholic News Service's coverage of it to get to Kmiec's arguments.

On the magazine's blog ("On the Square"), Stephen Barr, the physicist and frequent contributor to First Things, writes an intellectual reaction colored by the fact that his son is to be among the graduating class at the commencement.

Barr puts it plainly in perspective, "Abortion is a defining issue of our time, in the way that slavery was in the mid-nineteenth century and segregation and racial discrimination were in the mid-twentieth century. Overlooking the pro-abortion views of a politician now would be analogous to overlooking pro-slavery or segregationist views in those eras. Would Notre Dame have invited a champion of segregation to be a commencement speaker in the 1960s, however brilliant or talented, however well-meaning in other ways and on other issues he or she may have been?"

Barr concludes that Notre Dame, the premier Catholic brand, is willing to give Obama cover on this, the defining moral issue of our age, to secure the Faustian bargain of this world's acclaim. It is well we begin each Lent being reminded of the three temptations in the desert, representing the flesh, power, and fame.

Francis J. Beckwith is one of the foremost recent converts (actually a "revert") to Catholicism and the former head of the Evangelical Theological Society. Beckwith is the 2008–2009 Mary Ann Remick Senior Visiting Fellow in the Notre Dame Center for Ethics & Culture at the University of Notre Dame, and professor of philosophy and church-state studies at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. On March 28, 2009, he addressed the 2009 Notre Dame Right to Life Collegiate Conference. You will find his edited talk reproduced in "On the Square." His arguments are both theologically weighty and powerfully expressed

He ends quoting a the Reverend Martin Luther King's prophetic call for a return to the early church so "god intoxicated" it was neither intimidated nor impressed by the power and approval of this world. How different from today: "Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church’s silent—and often even vocal—sanction of things as they are.

"But the judgment of God is upon the church as never before. If today’s church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth [and twenty-first] century."

Obama to the Vatican: Give Me Cover

I have met Austin Ruse and heard him speak. His wife, the former Cathleen Cleaver, chief pro-life spokesman for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, is an even more dynamite paraclete for life than he is. What a couple!

He writes in The Catholic Thing, "A reliable source tells me that someone representing the Obama administration is about to put pressure on the papal nuncio to the United States to get Archbishop Raymond Burke to be quiet."

Now why does the President want to gag Cardinal Burke? You need a bit of background.

Katherine Sabelius is my governor. She was an early and effective supporter of Barak Obama who carried the Kansas caucuses very nicely. Sebelius is a professed Catholic whose views and actions on abortion among other issues are very pro-death. In addition to her legislative and administrative record, her association with Dr. George Tiller is notorious. He is one of the few late term abortionists in the country. His evil work occurs virtually within walking and certainly within easy praying distance of where we live. A jury has just voted to acquit Tiller of 19 counts of violating the state's abortion laws, but is now under investigation by the state medical board. He was one of the largest contributors to Sebelius's campaign and she in turn gave him the use of the Governor's mansion to host a fundraiser for his pro abortion organization.

Archbishop Joseph Naumann, Bishop of Kansas City, Kansas, is her bishop. He has privately counseled her on the threat to her soul of actively promoting abortion. He has admonished her privately not to present herself for communion and offered her counseling. She spurned his pastoral efforts. He then repeated his injunction publicly. Archbishop Naumann appears to be of that solid central European stock whose hard work tamed the Kansas plains.

President Obama has nominated Sebelius to head Health and Human Services. Naturally enough, if her pastor in Kansas has admonished her not to present herself for communion at home, the same advice applies in Washington, her new base of operations. If A, then B, as John Chamberlain used to say.

Does B follow A in cannon law? Yes it does according to Archbishop L. Burke, formerly archbishop of St. Louis, bishop of La Cross and now Prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura, the cannon law equivalent to Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.

Now candidate Obama got some cover on the abortion from the formation of some "pro abortion Catholic" (an oxymoron?) organizations such as Catholics United and Catholics in Alliance. They remind me of the popular front strategies of the old Communists. In these front groups they could always find "useful idiots" as Lenin described them.

Ruse tells us the Obama administration has commissioned a former Republican office holder to work behind the scenes to shut Burke up. More than one Catholic Blogger has used his blog to put Henry II's "Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?" into the President's mouth.

And the call the Mexico City policy a gag rule!

Sacrosanctum Concilium and the Reform of the Liturgy

The University of Scranton Press has published Sacrosanctum Concilium and the Reform of the Liturgy: Proceedings from the 29th Annual Convention of the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars Kansas City, Missouri September 22-24, 2006, Kenneth D. Whitehead, Editor.