#11 - Shame on Notre Dame!

This past weekend, the awarding of an honorary degree to President Obama, unquestionably the most pro-abortion President we have ever had, at Notre Dame University, the nation’s largest Catholic university, and his subsequent commencement speech, was the opening news story on national news broadcasts. In the days leading up to this past Sunday’s graduation ceremony, 70 Catholic bishops expressed their protest, an Orlando priest held a special Mass to ask God’s forgiveness for what Notre Dame was planning to do, the recipient of one of the school’s highest annual awards declined the award in protest, dozens of people were arrested protesting outside the school, and 20 graduates and their families decided to hold their own ceremony on Sunday separate from the one held by their school. When you finally look at the President’s commencement speech that addressed abortion in America, I find a number of things to comment on.

(1) The university, and many media pundits since last fall’s election, greatly underestimated those of us who value the lives of the unborn and are horrified that our nation continues to destroy over a million of our most defenseless each year (having already slaughtered nearly 50 million during the past 36 years). Why did the school extend such an invitation? My only guess is that the school decided that the notoriety of having the President speak at their commencement would aid in recruiting students to their school and was worth overlooking a foundational teaching of the Catholic church – the sacredness of life created by the Creator in His image. Shame on their leaders! As so many women continue to offer their unborn child to hired killers on the alter of convenience, so the school was willing to offer a foundational teaching of their school on the alter of notoriety. As the previous posting(s) on the nature of pragmatism described, we again see an example of people choosing what “works” over what is RIGHT.

(2) Seventy Catholic bishops protested this sell-out, and none supported it. Furthermore, at least one priest (in Orlando) held a special service to ask God’s forgiveness for the university’s actions. Praise God for these Catholic leaders whostood up for principle. It does remind me that, until I had been a Christian for 14 years and saw the documentary, “The Silent Scream”(a former abortionist’s account through sonogram images of an actual abortion), by the sheer lack of any mention of abortion from my pastors and the ministry I was with, it was implied that abortion was a “Catholic” issue that was not as deserving of attention as doing evangelism. There has been nothing like seeing an actual abortion on film (and seeing an aborted baby up close) to instill in me that abortion is murder and therefore a human rights issue that should be of concern to evangelicals as well as Catholics (and others who value innocent human life).
The actions of these Catholic leaders do make me wonder, however, if 70 evangelical Christian leaders would protest if a Christian university, say Regent or Liberty University, decided to have the President or some other nationally known pro-abortion advocate, address their commencement ceremony? What proportion of local evangelical pastors would also protest? My experience tells me, sadly and tragically, that I should not expect any where near that many evangelical leaders to protest. (When pro-abortion former New York City major Rudy Giuliani gave the commencement address at Liberty University several years ago, I do not recall hearing of one evangelical leader protesting.)


(3) Question: If their university (or high school) had a pro-abortion speaker, would a significant number of evangelical teens protest by not attending their own commencement ceremony? Would it be more than the less than one percent who did so at Notre Dame? Again, I sadly doubt that such would happen.

(4) As to the President’s speech, I do applaud that he said (for now at least) that he favors “a sensible conscience clause” that would give pro-life health providers the option to refuse to perform the procedure. However, I do take issue with his saying that “those on each side of the issue can still agree that this is a heart-wrenching decision for any woman to make…” This attempt to pull at people’s ‘heart-strings” is true but hollow because it does not recognize that so many make an uniformed CHOICE because their abortionist will not tell them about the real nature of what will be done to their unborn child. Also, you can be certain that that doctor will NOT make any mention of the physical and emotional consequences that await a woman who submits to this procedure as well as the generational impact this will have on their lives. (I will never forget a co-worker who almost broke down telling me that he doesn’t know how he will tell his sons that he and his former girl friend aborted their older brother or sister.) Except for the most hard-hearted, there is no woman who has reason to decide to end the life of her unborn child if she knew of the people who were ready to give her emotional and financial support in any community she lives in. And much too often, she does not freely CHOOSE make that decision but is pressured by her boyfriend or spouse or family members to make a decision that is never a “quick fix” but which she will suffer with the rest of her life.
Yes, the President did mention the need “to work together to reduce the number of women seeking abortions …” but that challenge also rings hollow and hypocritical when you consider that as President (and throughout his entire political career) he has not only done nothing along those lines, but he has, by executive order (bypassing the legislative process) lifted the decades long ban on sending federal dollars to support providing abortions overseas (the Mexico City ban), the ban on abortions at military facilities around the world, and the ban on federal dollars to promote EMBRYONIC stem cell research. In other words, when we should be spending as little of our tax dollars as possible during this economic downturn to keep us from going into greater debt as a nation, our President sees the need to spend precious dollars to kill unborn babies! And let us not forget that as a state senator and as a United States senator, he did nothing to support bills that protected babies that survived abortions, something no other politician, no matter how strongly pro-abortion, can lay claim to.

Notre Dame, you only dishonored yourself by extending honor to this President. And if you, or any of us, cannot stand strong against the anti-life forces in our country, than we stand complicit in this on-going holocaust that is abortion on demand in our country.

[By the way, for the first time since it began polling people on this question in 1995, a Gallup survey found the majority of those responding (51%) saying they were “pro-life” versus 42% who said they were “pro-choice.” Just a year ago, 50% of those surveyed termed themselves as “pro-choice” while 44% identified themselves as “pro-life.” The Gallup survey also found that Republicans and independents who lean Republican who opposed abortion grew in the past year from 60% to 70% of the respondents. I share that last survey result to encourage you who are conservatives that the Republican party, still the only party that supports a pro-life position, does not need to be “moderated” because the party, in the past year, if only on this key issue, has become more conservative!]

from Chuck Colson’s Breakpoint commentary for 5/19: “ … no applause or chanting was warranted when he took positions that flatly contradict Catholic teaching and the Gospel. Notre Dame, after all, is the most prominent Catholic university in America. Its mission statement speaks of the “Catholic vision” in Notre Dame’s scholarship, research and service. It speaks of “God’s grace [prompting] human activity to assist the world in creating justice grounded in love.” As Pope John Paul II and others have made clear, an important part of “creating justice grounded in love,” is working to end abortion. Catholics pray for this every Sunday. For Catholics abortion is an “intrinsic evil” that “must always be rejected and opposed and must never be supported or condoned . . .” The sanctity of life, in fact, in Catholic teaching, is part of the Gospel itself."

"So while the president was being consistent [in his pro-abortion statements], the wildly cheering crowd was not. Obama never claimed to belong to a church that calls abortion an “intrinsic evil.” But they do. Now the real problem this creates for all of us is that the average observer will conclude Christians were wildly cheering a pro-abortion president. So we pro-lifers must be the lunatic fringe. The whole church is weakened. This is why a century ago J. Gresham Machen warned that there is no such thing as liberal Christianity. There is Christianity and then there is liberalism. What we saw in the auditorium Sunday was, for the most part, a crowd of what Machen would call cheering liberals; that is, people who claim to be Christian but deny the essential teachings. The true Christians were on the outside, protesting. Be sure your friends and family know the difference."