Bishops, others react to Obama, Father Jenkins talks at Notre Dame
By Nancy Frazier O'Brien Catholic News Service
WASHINGTON (CNS) -- The commencement addresses by Holy Cross Father John I. Jenkins and U.S. President Barack Obama at the University of Notre Dame May 17 have drawn some strong comments from U.S. bishops.
Archbishop Charles J. Chaput of Denver said the introduction of Obama by Father Jenkins, university president, did "a real disservice to the church" and suggested in a May 18 statement that Catholics "insist -- by their words, actions and financial support -- that institutions claiming to be 'Catholic' actually live the faith with courage and consistency."
Bishop Robert W. Finn of Kansas City-St. Joseph, Mo., said in a May 18 interview with his diocesan newspaper, The Catholic Key, that although Father Jenkins warned against a tendency to "demonize each other," he himself used "a whole series of very, very hard words" and spoke "in a very negative way about anyone who appears to be contrary to the decision" to invite Obama.
Archbishop Chaput said Catholics "have the duty to avoid prostituting our Catholic identity by appeals to phony dialogue that mask an abdication of our moral witness."
He criticized the Indiana university's decision to confer "an unnecessary and unearned honorary law degree on a man committed to upholding one of the worst Supreme Court decisions in our nation's history: Roe v. Wade." The 1973 ruling lifted most state restrictions on abortion.
"There was no excuse -- none, except intellectual vanity -- for the university to persist in its course," the archbishop said. "And Father Jenkins compounded a bad original decision with evasive and disingenuous explanations to subsequently justify it."
Noting that Mario Cuomo, then governor of New York and a Catholic supporter of keeping abortion legal, spoke at Notre Dame 25 years ago "to outline the 'Catholic' case for 'pro-choice' public service," Archbishop Chaput said, "Father Jenkins' explanations, and President Obama's honorary degree, are a fitting national bookend to a quarter-century of softening Catholic witness in Catholic higher education.
"Together, they've given the next generation of Catholic leadership all the excuses they need to baptize their personal conveniences and ignore what it really demands to be 'Catholic' in the public square," he added.
Bishop Finn said in the interview with Catholic Key editor Jack Smith that the church can never dialogue about "the rightness or wrongness of abortion -- this is an intrinsic evil."
"We're fighting for the right to exercise a rightly formed conscientious difference with public policy," he said. "We shouldn't underestimate the danger of dragging our feet in this effort."
"If we are not ready to make a frontal attack on the protection of conscience rights, the overturning of Roe v. Wade and the primacy of authentic marriage, we will lose in these areas," Bishop Finn said. "If we sit back and allow ourselves to be lulled into a false sense of peace and cooperation in regards to these things, then we lose these battles and, later, wonder why."
Bishop Finn noted that at one point in his talk Obama called the views of supporters and opponents of abortion "irreconcilable."
"And at that moment, it would seem to me that the dialogue came to a screeching halt," he said. "The president shut the door on dialogue by saying that there was not going to be any change in his position on abortion and he understood that there was not going to be any change in the church's position on abortion. To me, that was the lesson of the day. I am glad that Mr. Obama was so clear."
In a brief entry on his blog, Bishop Robert N. Lynch of St. Petersburg, Fla., urged close attention to the commencement talk by Judge John T. Noonan, a former recipient of the university's Laetare Medal who spoke instead of Harvard Law professor Mary Ann Glendon, who declined the 2009 medal because of the controversy over Obama.
Noonan's words "make a lot more sense than 90 percent of the rhetoric in the last few weeks," Bishop Lynch wrote.
In his talk Noonan compared the debate over life issues to the 19th-century debate over African-Americans' rights that long had respected leaders Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass on opposite sides.
"Debate is not now about to close. At its center are the claims of conflicting consciences," he said, adding that differing consciences should be met with love no matter how vexing they may be.
"To satisfy that frustration by shunning or denouncing your unseeing companion will accomplish little beyond expressing your exasperation," Noonan said.
Also commenting on the talks in an entry on the Archdiocese of Washington's official blog was Msgr. Charles Pope, pastor of Holy Comforter-St. Cyprian Parish in Washington, who said the controversy over the honorary degree given to Obama by Notre Dame was "not about being nice," but "about whether a Catholic institution should honor someone who is vigorously and uncompromisingly pro-abortion."
Msgr. Pope compared the church's stance on abortion to its views on Communion for those who are not Catholics.
"In the same way that Communion actually means something and is not just an old ritual, bestowing an honorary doctorate of (laws) means something," he said. "It means we honor the recipient's understanding of and interpretation of the law. But we do not honor an interpretation of law that says it is legal to kill thousands of innocent people every day."
Another Washington priest found much to praise in Obama's speech, however.
"President Obama did exactly what he needed to do at Notre Dame," said Jesuit Father Thomas J. Reese, senior fellow at the Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University, in an entry for The Washington Post/Newsweek magazine blog, "Georgetown/On Faith."
"He challenged the students to take on the problems of the day, he spoke beyond them to a wider audience of Catholic citizens and presented a demeanor that contrasted with those who tried to paint him as a demonic, anti-life fanatic," Father Reese added.
In his talk, Obama "showed himself to be respectful of Catholic views, of Catholic institutions like Notre Dame and of Catholic leaders like Notre Dame's former president, Father Ted Hesburgh, and Chicago's former archbishop, Cardinal Joseph Bernardin," he said.
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