Dear Members of the Notre Dame Family,

Coming out of the vigorous discussions surrounding President Obama’s visit last spring, I said we would look for ways to engage the Notre Dame community with the issues raised in a prayerful and meaningful way. As our nation continues to struggle with the morality and legality of abortion, embryonic stem cell research, and related issues, we must seek steps to witness to the sanctity of life. I write to you today about some initiatives that we are undertaking.

Each year on January 22, the anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision, the March for Life is held in Washington D.C. to call on the nation to defend the right to life. I plan to participate in that march. I invite other members of the Notre Dame Family to join me and I hope we can gather for a Mass for Life at that event. We will announce details as that date approaches.

On campus, I have recently formed the Task Force on Supporting the Choice for Life. It will be co-chaired by Professor Margaret Brinig, the Fritz Duda Family Chair in Law and Associate Dean for the Law School, and by Professor John Cavadini, the Chair of the Department of Theology and the McGrath-Cavadini Director of the Institute for Church Life.  My charge to the Task Force is to consider and recommend to me ways in which the University, informed by Catholic teaching, can support the sanctity of life. Possibilities the Task Force has begun to discuss include fostering serious and specific discussion about a reasonable conscience clause; the most effective ways to support pregnant women, especially the most vulnerable; and the best policies for facilitating adoptions. Such initiatives are in addition to the dedication, hard work and leadership shown by so many in the Notre Dame Family, both on the campus and beyond, and the Task Force may also be able to recommend ways we can support some of this work.

I also call to your attention the heroic and effective work of centers that provide care and support for women with unintended pregnancies. The Women’s Care Center, the nation’s largest Catholic-based pregnancy resource center, on whose Foundation Board I serve, is run by a Notre Dame graduate, Ann Murphy Manion (’77). The center has proven successful in offering professional, non-judgmental concern to women with unintended pregnancies, helping those women through their pregnancy and supporting them after the birth of their child. The Women’s Care Center and similar centers in other cities deserve the support of Notre Dame clubs and individuals.

Our Commencement last spring generated passionate discussion and also caused some divisions in the Notre Dame community. Regardless of what you think about that event, I hope that we can overcome divisions to foster constructive dialogue and work together for a cause that is at the heart of Notre Dame’s mission. We will keep you informed of our work, and we ask for your support, assistance and prayers. May Our Lady, Notre Dame, watch over our efforts.

In Notre Dame,
Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C.

As a Notre Dame alum, I received the above letter from Fr Jenkins, the president of Notre Dame, earlier this week.  While I am glad to hear that Fr Jenkins will be attending the March for Life and has these pro-life initiatives, I question why it is only now, after awarding Barack Obama an honorary doctorate of law, that Fr Jenkins is doing this.  To me, this letter has almost a “Well, I got my way in the end, so now I’ll show you that I’m pro-life” feel to it.  Proving his support for life would have been much more meaningful if he had attended the March before Obama’s visit to campus.  I have hope that this pro-life task force is not just for show.  I am glad Professor John Cavadini is one of the co-chairs.  Prof. Cavadini is a great guy.  My fear is that he is just being used similar to how the university administration tried to use Mary Ann Glendon to offset Obama’s anti-life positions.  I hope that all of this is an authentic support for life rather than just a political move to try to undo damage to the university’s Catholic identity by the Obama visit and honorary degree.

Bishop D’Arcy has written an excellent article in America Magazine about the events at Notre Dame that have placed her relationship with the Church in crisis.

http://www.americamagazine.org/content/article.cfm?article_id=11840

An excellent article by a friend:

http://www.thedcwriteup.com/2009/08/reinventing-popes/

I meant to post on this some time ago, but for a variety of reasons it kept getting put off.  The upside is that now that the Notre Dame commencement ceremony has taken place, I can comment on things in their totality.

First, I want to be clear that I am very angry with the university for allowing President Obama the opportunity to speak at the commencement ceremony in addition to awarding him an honorary doctorate of law.  That being said, I also want to express my displeasure and disappointment with some of the attacks leveled against the university.  I think Matt of the Holy Whapping put it best:

For a lot of us, it was a bit like discovering our dear old mother had a drinking problem. Something must be done, but watching others gleefully taunting her was a bit hard to handle, as right as they might have been in the abstract to rebuke her. She is still someone’s mother, after all.

To be blunt, the name calling of the university (e.g. “Notre Shame”) is just downright juvenile.  You might as well add “Nanner, nanner, nanner” and be done with it.  It adds nothing constructive to the issue at hand.

In regards to the protests, I must commend the student groups, organized under ND Response, for their prayerful and constructive response to this decision by the university.  I firmly believe that the primary response should be with the students.  This is a matter of their university administration making a very poor decision.  Furthermore, the students have the best information about what the atmosphere is on campus as well as how a university works.  While outside groups wanting to protest is commendable, I believe the best they could have done is followed the students’ lead and joined with them rather than staging their own protests.  Third party groups, while they may be well-meaning, can be woefully ignorant about the university and end up setting back the work the students have accomplished with the administration.

In the end, of course, the awarding of President Obama with an honorary doctorate of law is a gross violation of the 2004 USCCB document “Catholics in Political Life”.  Aside from that, as Arizona State University said, what has the president done during his term in office to merit such an award?  His term is just beginning.  Unfortunately, what he has done is enact policies that are detrimental to the culture of life.  These policies violate the Natural Law, and as such should automatically disqualify someone from receiving any legal award, especially one from a supposedly Catholic university where the Natural Law should still be recognized and upheld.  A law is an ordinance of reason, and violations of the Natural Law are unreasonable.

The university tried to couch this decision by speaking of “dialogue” or “debate”.  I have problems in using the word debate in reference to abortion.  There is no debate on abortion — it is intrinsically evil.  A debate implies that there are two different approaches to an issue, each one valid, and we are trying to decide which is best.  We can debate the best way to reform the health care system, if at all.  We can debate the best ways to help mothers care for their children.  Regarding abortion though, even if the pro-abortion/pro-choice side makes what appears to be a more convincing argument in a “debate”, they are still wrong because abortion is intrinsically evil and contrary to the Natural Law, which is written on the heart of every person (even if they try will not admit it).  Dialogue might be a better word to use, but even that can be misconstrued.  I think these terminological concerns are particularly important in a society steeped in relativism where the prevalent idea is that I have my truth and you have your truth and never the twain shall meet.  The goal about talking with the opposing side regarding abortion is to convert their hearts and help them see the truth that it is human beings that are being killed.

Obama in his speech at commencement, as Bishop Finn pointed out, ended any real hope for dialogue when he described the positions on abortion as “irreconcilable”.  While he spoke about the opposing sides working together to try to decrease the number of unwanted pregnancies, his plan for that involves promotion of a contraceptive mentality.  So long as contraception is practiced mainstream in this country there will always be a push for abortion because it is viewed as the “fail-safe” should the contraception inevitably fail.

In this whole Notre Dame fiasco, there has been much focus on the negative aspects of Notre Dame.  I am telling you from experience that Notre Dame is not all bad.  There is a yearly Eucharistic Procession at which 600+ people have been attending the past few years.  There are something like 150 Masses that are said on campus each week.  Campus Ministry is heading in the right direction.  Right to Life is the largest student group on campus, and there are several hardcore Catholic groups on campus.  There is daily adoration on weekdays, and numerous opportunities for Confession throughout the week.  The Catholicism of Notre Dame is in her students.  Granted, some students live what would be considered the stereotypical college student lifestyle, but there are many good Catholic students who are on fire for their faith.  There are also many strong priests within the Congregation of Holy Cross.  This is where the future of the Catholicism at Notre Dame lies.  The University is not beyond redemption, and I firmly believe that this future redemption will come about through the grassroots witness of the Catholic students on campus.  While all these good aspects do not excuse the bad, they show that Notre Dame is not as far gone as some other so-called “Catholic” schools in this country.

I have no regrets about attending Notre Dame for my graduate studies.  If it had not been for my time at Notre Dame and the people that I met there, I highly doubt I would be in seminary right now.  I think that is a great witness to the good that is still possible at Our Lady’s School.

And so, on Sunday, surrounded by priests and all the panoply of Notre Dame, the smiling Caesar, thumb turned down on life, was engulfed in allegedly Catholic applause. Elsewhere on campus, faithful Catholics gathered and sent up prayers of reparation.

http://www.thecatholicthing.org/content/view/1602/2/

I’m a bit late in posting this, but here is an excellent article by Fr Raymond de Souza analyzing Notre Dame’s desire to bestow honors on Barack Obama:

http://www.ncregister.com/daily/glendon_declines_nd_honor

Notre Dame’s decision to invite Barack Obama to the 2009 commencement and honor him with an honorary doctorate of law is now clearly providing a bad example to others.  The student newspaper at Catholic University of America has published an article praising Notre Dame’s decision and pining that Catholic has not done something similar.

Over the course of reading articles about the scandal at Notre Dame regarding Obama as the commencement speaker and awarding him an honorary doctorate of law, I have noticed that the religious congregation attached to the university is sometimes call the “Congregation of the Holy Cross”.  This is incorrect because of the word “the”.  The actual name of the congregation is “Congregation of Holy Cross”.  This is because they are named after a neighborhood of the French city in which they were founded.  They were the congregation from the Holy Cross neighborhood, and, hence, the Congregation of Holy Cross.  They are not directly named after the cross of Christ, but only indirectly named after it since the neighborhood was named after Christ’s cross.

Here are two more articles about Notre Dame.

“Priest Thanks God for Signs of Hope at Notre Dame”
This article is a ZENIT interview with Fr John Coughlin, OFM.  Fr Coughlin is a canon lawyer and a faculty member of the Notre Dame Law School.  Knowing Fr Coughlin personally, I highly respect his thoughts on the matter.

“South Bend on the Land O’Lakes—or, it’s in the fine print”
An article correctly tracing the current problems at Notre Dame, and most so-called Catholic universities, to the 1967 declaration from the Land O’Lakes conference, which was hosted by Fr Ted Hesburgh, CSC, the then-president of Notre Dame.  Land O’Lakes basically said that Catholic universities are above the Magisterium.  Of course, not being issued by any authoritive body, this declaration is nothing more than the Catholic universities rebelling against the Magisterium.

The student groups at Notre Dame are starting to make official responses to the news that President Obama will be this year’s commencement speaker and receive an honorary doctorate of law.  Here is the website for several of these groups: http://www.ndresponse.com.