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Should Notre Dame Honor An Infanticide Advocate?
The Advocate
By Herb Denenberg, The Bulletin
Here’s one more little item the mainstream media neglected to tell you during the campaign of President Barack Obama — he’s the first president in history to have voted for and advocated infanticide and is one of the most radical abortion advocates in America. Yes, our 44th president is the first to be a strong advocate of the murder of little babies. That’s as shocking as it is true. Regardless of your position on abortion, virtually everyone will find President Obama’s position on infanticide shocking and unacceptable, because regardless of your views on abortion, infanticide is murder pure and simple.
Let’s get one thing straight. President Obama’s record shows he is not only a supporter of abortion and an opponent of any and all restrictions on it, but also is an aggressive supporter of infanticide. This issue exploded again after Notre Dame University, the leading Catholic university in the U.S., invited him to deliver the commencement address and receive an honorary degree. This led to a major national protest over what is now called the scandal at Notre Dame.
But the objections to the Obama invitation may be focusing on the wrong place. They have noted his position on abortion, on stem cell research, on government financing of abortion and a few other matters. But they are missing the most telling reason to reject President Obama’s presence — his enthusiastic support for infanticide.
His proinfanticide record is clear, but was by and large buried by the mainstream media. It is documented in detail in the three excellent books that came out during the campaign attempting to inject some truth into the pro-Obama picture painted by the mainstream media:
• The Case Against Barack Obama by David Freddoso
• The Audacity of Deceit by Brad O’Leary
• The Obama Nation by Jerome R. Corsi
Mr. Obama’s record suggests he thinks the key human right — ahead of freedom of speech, religion and the rest from the Bill of Rights — is the right to abortion. He was a reliable vote for abortion in any form including the barbaric partial-birth abortion and infanticide; and he was a reliable vote against any proposed restriction on abortion. He promised Planned Parenthood the first act he would sign would be the Freedom of Choice Act, which would sweep away all restrictions, however reasonable, on abortion, such as parental consent.
Needless to say, Mr. Obama tried to dance away from and lie out of his voting record for infanticide. But to step up by one notch Abraham Lincoln’s famous phrase, his excuses and lies are as thin as a digital picture of the shadow of a pigeon starved to death. This is one more example of Mr. Obama’s tendency to confuse his words with facts and reality.
You probably haven’t heard much about Mr. Obama’s love affair with infanticide and abortion if you limit yourself to the mainstream media. Only conservative media voices paid attention then and now to his record. For example, here’s how Rush Limbaugh described his abortion record during his March 27, 2009 radio broadcast:
“We secure the truth on this program, and the truth is, that President Obama — by virtue of his votes, as a member of the Illinois Senate, and a member of the United States Senate — is perhaps the most anti-life president. Well, there’s no question. He’s the most anti-life president we have had in American history. This is a man who three times voted for infanticide in Illinois. He tried to excuse it any number of ways, but this is a man who voted three times, that if a baby survives an abortion, it may still be killed because of the mother’s intent to abort it.”
“If the abortion is botched, the doctor can go ahead and complete the job outside the womb. He voted for it three times. I don’t care what your position on abortion is, but now we’re not talking about abortion, not when the child has been born outside the womb and is alive. And Obama voted three times to support the notion of infanticide. The pro-abort crowd is a militant ideological group of people to whom abortion is a political advancement. It’s a political achievement. It’s rooted in feminism and liberalism, which is also inextricably linked. He has taken steps every chance he’s gotten to make abortion easier.”
The battle against the Obama invitation is being led by the Cardinal Newman Society, a group dedicated to renewing and strengthening Catholic identity at America’s 224 Catholic colleges and universities, which has a Web site with a petition asking the invitation be withdrawn. You can sign the petition at www. NotreDameScandal.com. The petition makes an eloquent statement against Mr. Obama’s participation in the graduation. For example, it states:
“It is an outrage and a scandal that ‘Our Lady’s University,’ one of the premier Catholic universities in the United States, would bestow such an honor on President Obama given his clear support for policies and laws that directly contradict fundamental Catholic teachings on life and marriage.”
The petition mentions Obama’s anti-Catholic position on the following:
• Expanding federal funding for abortion.
• Inviting taxpayer funded research on stem cells from human embryos.
• Indications of Mr. Obama’s positions and future action on traditional marriage, and on conscience protections for Catholic doctors and nurses.
• Expansion of abortion rights. The petition doesn’t specifically mention his votes and advocacy during his tenure as a senator in the state legislature of Illinois, and as a U.S. Senator. That record placed him among the most aggressive abortion advocates in politics. He was the leading abortion advocate in the U.S. Senate and perhaps even in all of politics.
If you examine the Obama record you will conclude he is a leading advocate of not only abortion but also of infanticide. You will also conclude that he is a bald-faced liar when he denies or attempts to explain his advocacy and votes for infanticide.
Just to set the record straight, I’ll outline his record on abortion and infanticide. The infanticide history starts when a nurse, Jill Stanek, went public when she discovered that at her hospital babies born alive after a botched abortion were sent to a soiled utility room to be left to die. She so testified before an Illinois Senate committee, which then-state Sen. Barack Obama was a member of. Her testimony set off public outrage in Illinois. As a consequence of the nurse’s testimony, the Attorney General of Illinois found there was then no law in Illinois making such passive executions of such babies criminal. So in February 2001, Sen. Patrick O’Malley introduced “Born Live” bills to protect babies born during these botched abortions. The bill is reprinted in Mr. Freddoso’s book at page 195, and it clearly provides that such infants born after a botched abortion would be treated as a human person and given medical care. The bill made it clear it does not apply to the unborn, and would in no way limit or control abortions, and in no way was in conflict with Roe v. Wade.
There was only one Illinois senator speaking against the bill — Sen. Barack Obama. He made the phony argument that the “Born Alive” Bill would make all abortions illegal, which it clearly did not do. He then voted “present,” meaning it was not a yes or no vote. This strategy was worked out with lobbyists for Planned Parenthood, and joined by 12 other senators. The bill passed the Senate but died in the House.
The same bill came before Obama’s health committee two years later in 2003. Mr. Freddoso reports, “As chairman, he [Obama] bottled it up in committee and killed it.”
In his book, Audacity of Hope, Mr. Obama makes one of his many phony arguments for opposing the “Born Alive” Bill:
“It mandated lifesaving measures for premature babies (the bill didn’t mention that such measures were already in the law) — but also extended ‘personhood’ to pre-viable fetuses, thereby effectively overturning Roe v. Wade.”
That’s got to be one of the king- size lies that Mr. Obama is now famous for. Remember he claimed he never heard any of Rev. Wright’s bigoted anti-American remarks even though he was a member of Rev. Wright’s church for 20 years, sat in the pews for 20 years and was a close associate of Rev. Wright. The “Born Alive” Bill didn’t mention that the law already provided for medical care to a born-alive infant, as the law didn’t protect such infants in Illinois. Sen. Obama was familiar with the history of the matter. He had heard the nurse testify before his committee. And he was undoubtedly aware of the Illinois Attorney General’s opinion that said Illinois law did not protect such infants born during a botched abortion. In any event, it 1was immaterial if the law already protected such infants, as reinforcing and clarifying such law, if it existed (which it did not), would do no harm.
It’s also totally phony that the bill extended personhood to pre-viable fetuses. The law was clear, with not a tiny sliver of ambiguity, that it applied only to “born-alive” infants, and did not apply to previable fetuses or the unborn. Surely this brilliant legal mind was aware of this history, and unless we assume he was an unconscious dolt, when he tried to excuse his opposition to the born-alive bill he was lying through his teeth.
Andrew McCarthy, in a National Review online article (Aug. 22, 2008) titled “Why Obama Really Voted for Infanticide,” traces the entire history of Mr. Obama’s lies and excuses for supporting infanticide. Mr. McCarthy writes, “The shocking extremism of that position — giving infanticide the nod over compassion and life — is profoundly embarrassing to him now. So he has lied about what he did. He has offered various conflicting explanations, ranging from the assertion that he didn’t oppose the anti-infanticide legislation (he did), to the assertion he opposed it because it didn’t contain a superfluous clause reaffirming abortion rights (it did), to the assertion it was unnecessary because law already protected the children of botched abortions (it didn’t — and even if it arguably did, why oppose a clarification?)
Mr. McCarthy also dug into the transcript of the Illinois Senate debate on the “Born Alive” Bill. Mr. McCarthy writes, “When it got down to brass tacks, Barack Obama argued protecting abortion doctors from legal liability was more important than protecting living infants from death.” In the transcript it is clear Mr. Obama is more concerned about the legal liability of abortion doctors than making sure born-alive infants got medical care.
He also repeated one of his many lies on the subject when he said, “I, at least, have confidence that a doctor who is in that room is going to make sure that they’re looked after.” He’s arguing the “Born Alive” Bill is unnecessary, as he’s sure a doctor in the room will provide medical care. Mr. Obama is not just a liar, he is a pathological liar. He knew from his own committee hearing that these babies were allowed to die. The nurse who testified before his committee told how she held a baby for 45 minutes while it died, rather than putting it in the soiled utility room to die alone. The nurse’s testimony included this: “I couldn’t let him die alone. And so I held him for the forty-five minutes that he lived. He moved a little bit. Of course he didn’t cry [because his lungs weren’t developed enough to cry].” This made headlines in Chicago. This was not a unique case, as the procedure was performed frequently. Sometimes the baby would live a few minutes; sometimes it would live a few hours. But they were always left to die. What’s more, Mr. Obama had to be aware of the opinion of the Illinois Attorney General who said that this involved no criminal violation. So how could Sen. Obama possibly say he was confidant the baby born after a botched abortion would get medical attention? He had to be lying.
Here’s Mr. McCarthy’s comment on Mr. Obama’s lie: “This is staggering. As Obama spoke these words, he well knew that children were being born alive but precisely not looked after by the abortion doctor whose water the senator was carrying. As Stanek [the nurse who testified before Obama’s committee] put it, as many as one in five were left to die. That was what prompted the legislation in the first place.”
So to return to Notre Dame, I would advise the sponsors of the petition, the Cardinal Newman Society, to revise it, and include this question: Should Notre Dame honor someone as a commencement speaker and as a recipient of an honorary doctorate, who is:
• One of the nation’s strongest advocates of infanticide?
• One of the nation’s biggest liars on the subject, who is so deficient in character that he not only aggressively supports infanticide but also aggressively lies to deny what everyone knows is the truth?
• One who has a long record of supporting abortion in every way, opposed all restrictions on abortion (such as parental consent), and even enthusiastically advocated partial birth abortion, one of the most barbaric forms of abortion, which experts say never makes sense for any woman?
• One whose legislative maneuvering delayed the passage of the “Born Alive” Bill in Illinois, and consequently was responsible for many deaths of children born after a botched abortion?
Congratulations are due to Bishop John D’Arcy of the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend who immediately denounced the invitation:
“President Obama has recently reaffirmed, and has now placed in public policy, his long-stated unwillingness to hold human life as sacred. While claiming to separate politics from science, he has in fact separated science from ethics and has brought the American government, for the first time in history, into supporting direct destruction of innocent human life.
“This will be the 25th Notre Dame graduation during my time as bishop. After much prayer, I have decided not to attend the graduation. I wish no disrespect to our president, I pray for him and wish him well. I have always revered the Office of the Presidency. But a bishop must teach the Catholic faith ‘in season and out of season,’ and he teaches not only by his words — but by his actions.
“My decision is not an attack on anyone, but is in defense of the truth about human life.”
Note again that this Notre Dame scandal can be resolved without even facing the question of abortion. Infanticide is not abortion, but murder pure and simple. So that still leaves the key question unanswered: Does Notre Dame really want to honor someone who not only advocates baby killing but must also be assigned responsibility for baby killing in Illinois? We should respect the office of president but that does not mean we must honor the occupant of the office with an honorary degree and a commencement speaking assignment when he has a record that goes against the basic teachings of the Catholic Church and the basic morality that binds all religions and civilizations together.
Herb Denenberg is a former Pennsylvania Insurance Commissioner, Public Utility Commissioner and professor. He is a longtime Philadelphia journalist and consumer advocate. You can reach him at
advocate@thebulletin.us.
Let’s get one thing straight. President Obama’s record shows he is not only a supporter of abortion and an opponent of any and all restrictions on it, but also is an aggressive supporter of infanticide. This issue exploded again after Notre Dame University, the leading Catholic university in the U.S., invited him to deliver the commencement address and receive an honorary degree. This led to a major national protest over what is now called the scandal at Notre Dame.
But the objections to the Obama invitation may be focusing on the wrong place. They have noted his position on abortion, on stem cell research, on government financing of abortion and a few other matters. But they are missing the most telling reason to reject President Obama’s presence — his enthusiastic support for infanticide.
His proinfanticide record is clear, but was by and large buried by the mainstream media. It is documented in detail in the three excellent books that came out during the campaign attempting to inject some truth into the pro-Obama picture painted by the mainstream media:
• The Case Against Barack Obama by David Freddoso
• The Audacity of Deceit by Brad O’Leary
• The Obama Nation by Jerome R. Corsi
Mr. Obama’s record suggests he thinks the key human right — ahead of freedom of speech, religion and the rest from the Bill of Rights — is the right to abortion. He was a reliable vote for abortion in any form including the barbaric partial-birth abortion and infanticide; and he was a reliable vote against any proposed restriction on abortion. He promised Planned Parenthood the first act he would sign would be the Freedom of Choice Act, which would sweep away all restrictions, however reasonable, on abortion, such as parental consent.
Needless to say, Mr. Obama tried to dance away from and lie out of his voting record for infanticide. But to step up by one notch Abraham Lincoln’s famous phrase, his excuses and lies are as thin as a digital picture of the shadow of a pigeon starved to death. This is one more example of Mr. Obama’s tendency to confuse his words with facts and reality.
You probably haven’t heard much about Mr. Obama’s love affair with infanticide and abortion if you limit yourself to the mainstream media. Only conservative media voices paid attention then and now to his record. For example, here’s how Rush Limbaugh described his abortion record during his March 27, 2009 radio broadcast:
“We secure the truth on this program, and the truth is, that President Obama — by virtue of his votes, as a member of the Illinois Senate, and a member of the United States Senate — is perhaps the most anti-life president. Well, there’s no question. He’s the most anti-life president we have had in American history. This is a man who three times voted for infanticide in Illinois. He tried to excuse it any number of ways, but this is a man who voted three times, that if a baby survives an abortion, it may still be killed because of the mother’s intent to abort it.”
“If the abortion is botched, the doctor can go ahead and complete the job outside the womb. He voted for it three times. I don’t care what your position on abortion is, but now we’re not talking about abortion, not when the child has been born outside the womb and is alive. And Obama voted three times to support the notion of infanticide. The pro-abort crowd is a militant ideological group of people to whom abortion is a political advancement. It’s a political achievement. It’s rooted in feminism and liberalism, which is also inextricably linked. He has taken steps every chance he’s gotten to make abortion easier.”
The battle against the Obama invitation is being led by the Cardinal Newman Society, a group dedicated to renewing and strengthening Catholic identity at America’s 224 Catholic colleges and universities, which has a Web site with a petition asking the invitation be withdrawn. You can sign the petition at www. NotreDameScandal.com. The petition makes an eloquent statement against Mr. Obama’s participation in the graduation. For example, it states:
“It is an outrage and a scandal that ‘Our Lady’s University,’ one of the premier Catholic universities in the United States, would bestow such an honor on President Obama given his clear support for policies and laws that directly contradict fundamental Catholic teachings on life and marriage.”
The petition mentions Obama’s anti-Catholic position on the following:
• Expanding federal funding for abortion.
• Inviting taxpayer funded research on stem cells from human embryos.
• Indications of Mr. Obama’s positions and future action on traditional marriage, and on conscience protections for Catholic doctors and nurses.
• Expansion of abortion rights. The petition doesn’t specifically mention his votes and advocacy during his tenure as a senator in the state legislature of Illinois, and as a U.S. Senator. That record placed him among the most aggressive abortion advocates in politics. He was the leading abortion advocate in the U.S. Senate and perhaps even in all of politics.
If you examine the Obama record you will conclude he is a leading advocate of not only abortion but also of infanticide. You will also conclude that he is a bald-faced liar when he denies or attempts to explain his advocacy and votes for infanticide.
Just to set the record straight, I’ll outline his record on abortion and infanticide. The infanticide history starts when a nurse, Jill Stanek, went public when she discovered that at her hospital babies born alive after a botched abortion were sent to a soiled utility room to be left to die. She so testified before an Illinois Senate committee, which then-state Sen. Barack Obama was a member of. Her testimony set off public outrage in Illinois. As a consequence of the nurse’s testimony, the Attorney General of Illinois found there was then no law in Illinois making such passive executions of such babies criminal. So in February 2001, Sen. Patrick O’Malley introduced “Born Live” bills to protect babies born during these botched abortions. The bill is reprinted in Mr. Freddoso’s book at page 195, and it clearly provides that such infants born after a botched abortion would be treated as a human person and given medical care. The bill made it clear it does not apply to the unborn, and would in no way limit or control abortions, and in no way was in conflict with Roe v. Wade.
There was only one Illinois senator speaking against the bill — Sen. Barack Obama. He made the phony argument that the “Born Alive” Bill would make all abortions illegal, which it clearly did not do. He then voted “present,” meaning it was not a yes or no vote. This strategy was worked out with lobbyists for Planned Parenthood, and joined by 12 other senators. The bill passed the Senate but died in the House.
The same bill came before Obama’s health committee two years later in 2003. Mr. Freddoso reports, “As chairman, he [Obama] bottled it up in committee and killed it.”
In his book, Audacity of Hope, Mr. Obama makes one of his many phony arguments for opposing the “Born Alive” Bill:
“It mandated lifesaving measures for premature babies (the bill didn’t mention that such measures were already in the law) — but also extended ‘personhood’ to pre-viable fetuses, thereby effectively overturning Roe v. Wade.”
That’s got to be one of the king- size lies that Mr. Obama is now famous for. Remember he claimed he never heard any of Rev. Wright’s bigoted anti-American remarks even though he was a member of Rev. Wright’s church for 20 years, sat in the pews for 20 years and was a close associate of Rev. Wright. The “Born Alive” Bill didn’t mention that the law already provided for medical care to a born-alive infant, as the law didn’t protect such infants in Illinois. Sen. Obama was familiar with the history of the matter. He had heard the nurse testify before his committee. And he was undoubtedly aware of the Illinois Attorney General’s opinion that said Illinois law did not protect such infants born during a botched abortion. In any event, it 1was immaterial if the law already protected such infants, as reinforcing and clarifying such law, if it existed (which it did not), would do no harm.
It’s also totally phony that the bill extended personhood to pre-viable fetuses. The law was clear, with not a tiny sliver of ambiguity, that it applied only to “born-alive” infants, and did not apply to previable fetuses or the unborn. Surely this brilliant legal mind was aware of this history, and unless we assume he was an unconscious dolt, when he tried to excuse his opposition to the born-alive bill he was lying through his teeth.
Andrew McCarthy, in a National Review online article (Aug. 22, 2008) titled “Why Obama Really Voted for Infanticide,” traces the entire history of Mr. Obama’s lies and excuses for supporting infanticide. Mr. McCarthy writes, “The shocking extremism of that position — giving infanticide the nod over compassion and life — is profoundly embarrassing to him now. So he has lied about what he did. He has offered various conflicting explanations, ranging from the assertion that he didn’t oppose the anti-infanticide legislation (he did), to the assertion he opposed it because it didn’t contain a superfluous clause reaffirming abortion rights (it did), to the assertion it was unnecessary because law already protected the children of botched abortions (it didn’t — and even if it arguably did, why oppose a clarification?)
Mr. McCarthy also dug into the transcript of the Illinois Senate debate on the “Born Alive” Bill. Mr. McCarthy writes, “When it got down to brass tacks, Barack Obama argued protecting abortion doctors from legal liability was more important than protecting living infants from death.” In the transcript it is clear Mr. Obama is more concerned about the legal liability of abortion doctors than making sure born-alive infants got medical care.
He also repeated one of his many lies on the subject when he said, “I, at least, have confidence that a doctor who is in that room is going to make sure that they’re looked after.” He’s arguing the “Born Alive” Bill is unnecessary, as he’s sure a doctor in the room will provide medical care. Mr. Obama is not just a liar, he is a pathological liar. He knew from his own committee hearing that these babies were allowed to die. The nurse who testified before his committee told how she held a baby for 45 minutes while it died, rather than putting it in the soiled utility room to die alone. The nurse’s testimony included this: “I couldn’t let him die alone. And so I held him for the forty-five minutes that he lived. He moved a little bit. Of course he didn’t cry [because his lungs weren’t developed enough to cry].” This made headlines in Chicago. This was not a unique case, as the procedure was performed frequently. Sometimes the baby would live a few minutes; sometimes it would live a few hours. But they were always left to die. What’s more, Mr. Obama had to be aware of the opinion of the Illinois Attorney General who said that this involved no criminal violation. So how could Sen. Obama possibly say he was confidant the baby born after a botched abortion would get medical attention? He had to be lying.
Here’s Mr. McCarthy’s comment on Mr. Obama’s lie: “This is staggering. As Obama spoke these words, he well knew that children were being born alive but precisely not looked after by the abortion doctor whose water the senator was carrying. As Stanek [the nurse who testified before Obama’s committee] put it, as many as one in five were left to die. That was what prompted the legislation in the first place.”
So to return to Notre Dame, I would advise the sponsors of the petition, the Cardinal Newman Society, to revise it, and include this question: Should Notre Dame honor someone as a commencement speaker and as a recipient of an honorary doctorate, who is:
• One of the nation’s strongest advocates of infanticide?
• One of the nation’s biggest liars on the subject, who is so deficient in character that he not only aggressively supports infanticide but also aggressively lies to deny what everyone knows is the truth?
• One who has a long record of supporting abortion in every way, opposed all restrictions on abortion (such as parental consent), and even enthusiastically advocated partial birth abortion, one of the most barbaric forms of abortion, which experts say never makes sense for any woman?
• One whose legislative maneuvering delayed the passage of the “Born Alive” Bill in Illinois, and consequently was responsible for many deaths of children born after a botched abortion?
Congratulations are due to Bishop John D’Arcy of the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend who immediately denounced the invitation:
“President Obama has recently reaffirmed, and has now placed in public policy, his long-stated unwillingness to hold human life as sacred. While claiming to separate politics from science, he has in fact separated science from ethics and has brought the American government, for the first time in history, into supporting direct destruction of innocent human life.
“This will be the 25th Notre Dame graduation during my time as bishop. After much prayer, I have decided not to attend the graduation. I wish no disrespect to our president, I pray for him and wish him well. I have always revered the Office of the Presidency. But a bishop must teach the Catholic faith ‘in season and out of season,’ and he teaches not only by his words — but by his actions.
“My decision is not an attack on anyone, but is in defense of the truth about human life.”
Note again that this Notre Dame scandal can be resolved without even facing the question of abortion. Infanticide is not abortion, but murder pure and simple. So that still leaves the key question unanswered: Does Notre Dame really want to honor someone who not only advocates baby killing but must also be assigned responsibility for baby killing in Illinois? We should respect the office of president but that does not mean we must honor the occupant of the office with an honorary degree and a commencement speaking assignment when he has a record that goes against the basic teachings of the Catholic Church and the basic morality that binds all religions and civilizations together.
Herb Denenberg is a former Pennsylvania Insurance Commissioner, Public Utility Commissioner and professor. He is a longtime Philadelphia journalist and consumer advocate. You can reach him at
advocate@thebulletin.us.
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lynngeyer wrote on Apr 7, 2009 9:14 PM:
Perhaps Fr. John Jenkins should have exercised some common sense and simply NOT invited him. Why did he invite him? Surely, he KNEW what was going to happen when this invitation became public.
Perhaps Obama's office should have shown more respect for the institution and declined the invitation. But why would it? Look at the enormity of the platform Obama has gotten since this hit the media feeding frenzy. Like he needed a larger platform. ;o) There are those who believe he's thumbing his nose at all Catholics by accepting this invitation. That notion is certainly open for debate, though he could also be feeling great honor at having been asked.
In a weird way, it's good for us. The insulting implication of it is mobilizing Catholics and non Catholics alike. Finally, the silent majority is speaking out. I don't know how much more it will take to open our eyes; Obama might never have been elected without the Catholic vote. Perhaps some of us could have worked harder to get someone else elected. Who knows?
One of the first things he did when he took office was to undo the good things Bush did to protect the unborn. I don't have to list here all the abominations he upholds, the worst of which is taking no extraneous measures to save an aborted baby born alive. Stick it in the corner and let it die. That's despicable. How much more immoral can one get?
I don't like this any better than anyone else does but my biggest problem is not with his speaking. It is their conferring the Honorary Degree. An 'honorary' LAW degree when he and his policies are in clear violation of the law of our church is completely hypocritical. It implies that he is someone Notre Dame deems worthy of our highest admiration, someone we should emulate and follow, someone with whom we should be in agreement. According to the USCCB, that is not so in the case of Mr. Obama or anyone else who does not uphold the basic tenets of our faith.
We know, of course, in many ways he is a good person, vibrant, young; he is brilliant. He is a successful politician but as a politician he stands in direct opposition to the teachings of our faith, our church and Notre Dame University. What on earth has happened to Fr. Jenkins? Will he serve President Obama Holy Communion should Obama wish to partake?
The entire debacle is a slap in the face to those who defend life, Catholics as well as non Catholics and causes one to question the motives of the President of Notre Dame. Fr. Jenkins had to know the firestorm this would create.
President Obama also knew and decided anyway to come to the most prestigious of all Catholic institutions. Could his purpose be to try and spin his charismatic magic, to bring more of us over to his side of the controversial issues, especially concerning 'life'? Sadly, some of us Catholics are already there. What he and most pro-death advocates don't know is that very often, when properly educated, pro-death people become pro-life.
Truly Pro-life people NEVER become pro-death.
For myself, I'm praying for President Obama to gracefully renege on his acceptance, to show respect for the dissention this has caused within the Catholic Church at large. It should go without saying that we must pray for Fr. Jenkins and his compromised regard for the Magisterium and the USCCB.
I'm also praying for those who are confused and conflicted in this fiasco. You need not be. In 2004, the USCCB issued a statement, "The Catholic community and 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." Plain and simple direction from our church fathers, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.
The bottom line is this: As Catholics, we've withstood worse times than these and regardless of the outcome, the Catholic Church and Notre Dame will remain standing. In the end, we will be stronger, more focused and hopefully, start a journey back to the morality in leadership that we have allowed to slip away. >< "