In addition to the puff-piece editorial on Obama at Notre Dame (which praised the president for seeking “dialogue,” and saying very little about the Christian witness of the student and faculty protesters), OR has an article that, from the summary anyway, looks as if it is correcting the impression of that earlier editorial that Obama’s ESCR policy wasn’t as bad as thought. THIS story quotes Cardinal Rigali’s and Archbishop Chaput’s strong criticisms of Obama policy. It’s about time!
In my reply to the earlier article, I actually sent them Cardinal Rigali’s remarks! (So did many other people I’m sure).
I haven’t been able to find any trace of these articles in Italian on the OR part of the Vatican website, though.
Update: evening of May 22:
The Osservatore Romano article that I called a “puff piece” on Obama has been causing a firestorm in the last few days. Here’s a translation (thanks to Joey on Fr. Z’s blog-I’m too overwhelmed with work to do more than correct it a bit):
Obama in a Search for Common Ground
The search for common ground: it appears that this is the path chosen by US President Barack Obama in affronting the delicate question of abortion. Putting aside the heated tones of the electoral campaign, Obama affirmed as much on the occasion of the press conference for his [first] hundred days in the White House, when he affirmed that the launch of the new law on abortion is not a priority of his administration. And to reaffirm this position, the president chose the ceremony for the conferral of a doctorate of law honoris causa from Notre Dame in Indiana, the most prestigious Catholic college in the United States.
Increasing controversies have marked the weeks following Obama’s invitation from university president John Jenkins. And also yesterday—as was predictable—protests were not lacking. But from the podium prepared in the basketball stadium, the president invited Americans of all faiths and ideological conviction to “hold hands in a common effort” to reduce the number of abortions. “I don’t want to say that the debate concerning abortion will disappear: the opinions of Americans concerning it are complex and, at certain levels, irreconcilable,” the president said, exhorting those present to defend their opinions with passion and conviction, but “without reducing to caricature those who don’t think like us.”
In his speech Obama reaffirmed the line of the task force assembled “to reduce the number of abortions, diminishing unwanted pregnancies, facilitating adoptions, and assuring assistance and support for those who decide to keep the baby”. The president also proposed a conscience clause for doctors and paramedics who disagree with the practice of abortion. “But”—he added—“let us work so that our health policies are founded on clear scientific and ethical criteria, such as respect for the equality of women”.
In his speech the president reminded the students the challenges posed by the economic crisis and by violent extremism, by nuclear proliferation and pandemics. But the attention was completely focused on the issue of abortion. “Even if they do not agree”—he said—“we can agree that it is a painful decision for any woman”.
I’m going to post some comments from the pro-life rally at Notre Dame from those who were there, since it seems there was a major lack of mainstream media coverage, compared to what was given to Obama’s speech.
Crowds at Notre Dame rally
Estimates of the crowd at the Mass and rally ranged were about 1,000-2,000 people, and another 1,000 or so watching the rally on TV in the South Quad. A number of graduating seniors, sporting the cross and baby feet on their mortarboards, boycotted graduation to attend the rally, as did about 50 Notre Dame professors — in full academic regalia!
Graduating seniors protest at Notre Dame rally
(Both photos courtesy of the South Bend Tribune)
Here’s an on-the-spot report, by Deirdre Mundy, taken from Red Cardigan’s (Erin Manning) “And Sometimes Tea” blog:
The speakers at the rally weren’t terribly famous, but they were all very good. Father Wilson Miscamble, a Holy Cross father and a professor at Notre Dame, gave a great barn-burner to start things off, calling out the administration on their cowardice, and praising the students for having the courage to stand up for the truth, even when it was inconvenient. Also, he’s Australian, so he has a great accent, and he made Lord of the Rings references!
After Father Miscamble was done speaking, Bishop D’Arcy arrived. He said he hadn’t been planning on coming, because he hadn’t seen what he could possibly contribute, but that he realized the night before at Adoration that while D’Arcy the man wasn’t that important, the office of the Bishop was, and so it was his job to be there and let the protesting students know that the church stood with them. Very short remarks, but much appreciated.
. . . the next speaker, Father John Raphael SSJ, was awesome. He talked about abolition, civil rights, and abortion. He also had some great, snarky comments about the fact that Obama’s supporters called anyone who didn’t want him to get a degree from Notre Dame a racist, and well, what does that make Father Raphael? And then he ripped into Obama for being racist by promoting abortion for poor and minority women, and acting like a black mother on welfare can’t love her child as well as a white woman in the suburbs. HUGE reaction from the crowd, a really great speech. A reporter from the local Fox affiliate was there for some of it, but he seemed to be filming the crowd, not the speaker…..
The final speaker, Professor David Solomon, was joined on stage by about 50 professors in full academic regalia—they were all boycotting the commencement and supporting the ND Response kids instead. My husband pointed out that, sadly, it didn’t look like there were many younger faculty members with them—I don’t know if this is because the young faculty unanimously approve of honoring pro-choice speakers, or if they’re just afraid to speak out before they have tenure. Solomon’s talk was more about speaking the Truth even when it’s inconvenient, and fighting to make Notre Dame Catholic again.
I’ll be back with more and possibly videos as they go up. Notre Dame Response has said they might have some soon.
Update May 18: Superb article by David Freddoso, from the National Review Online, with more details from the Baccalaureate Mass, and Bishop D’Arcy’s homily, as well as the rally.
Another photo, this one of Fr. Frank Pavone leading prayer with Notre Dame students:
From History Professor Fr. Wilson Miscamble’s speech:
But what matters for us here is less what President Obama says, but rather what the day will mean for Notre Dame and its place in American Catholic life. The truth is this: This painful episode has damaged the ethos and spirit of Notre Dame. But there is another truth that we must also remember: IT IS NOT THE END OF THE STORY!
Some among the administration of Notre Dame will want the issue to “go away” quickly. It may even be likely that there are some among them who genuinely understand the evil of abortion, and who are inwardly troubled by these recent events whatever their outward bravado. –They will have a chance to show through future deeds and in very practical ways Notre Dame’s commitment to the prolife cause. Let us hope and pray that they take up that opportunity.
But we cannot rely on them. As we have seen, on their own, their commitment will never be more than tepid.
Instead, let us link ourselves with those Holy Cross religious over the generations who never gave up – whatever the set-backs … whatever the trials … whatever the personal cost. In some ways, the task before us today is tougher than theirs. In those early days, the problems were clear – but so too was the mission.
Now we are engaged in a more intellectual and spiritual struggle. Will we be true to the founding vision? Can we resist the subtle and not so subtle temptations to surrender our distinct religious identity –and conform to the reigning and rather barren secular paradigm of what a university should be?
The Obama visit suggests that the University’s leadership has succumbed to this temptation. Yet when we look back on these days, I have a sense that what will stand out is how a group of dedicated prolife students, wonderful alumni, and ordinary Catholics who cherish this place refused to acquiesce in the Administration’s willingness to wink at its most fundamental values in exchange for the public relations coup that attends a presidential visit.
The people who refuse to give up – and I speak especially of you students —have taken on the role of teachers here. While the administration and many of the faculty sold out easily for the photo-ops etc, you and some of your alumni sisters and brothers showed the benefits of your Notre Dame education. You held firm to the foundational principles of respect for life and for the dignity of every person. You are the ones who have understood what really matters. You refuse to just go along. You have made your voice heard and led the way to a better future.
This article came out several days ago, and hasn’t received much attention in all the furor. Father Jenkins has a lot of explaining to do, but he’s not the only one.
No Likely Support From Notre Dame’s Board of Trustees For Rescinding Obama Invite
By Frank Walker
May 10, 2009 - A great deal of criticism has been leveled at Notre Dame President, Rev John I. Jenkins, for his choice to honor President Obama at this year’s commencement. But Fr. Jenkins, like all university presidents, must consider the will of the school’s governing board. The Notre Dame Board of Trustees is a powerful organization, comprised of top international business owners, chairs of rich endowments, academic leaders, judges, attorneys, faculty, and prominent clergy. These individuals are typically very wealthy, well-connected and highly accomplished; many with broad interests outside the university. A closer look at the board and its affiliations might shed light on just how Notre Dame came to this decision.
Many of the influential alumni on the Notre Dame board are from the nearby Chicago area, and are part of the same Chicago power structure that President Obama ascended. Richard and Peggy Notebaert are leading members of the ND community, and Notebaert is chair of the Notre Dame trustees. While Obama served in the senate, the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum, received federal funding earmarked by Obama.. Key Obama campaign fundraiser, Frank Clark served on the board of the Notebaert Museum at the time. The Chicago Museum of Science and Industry, where ND trustee Arthur Velasquez is on the board, also received millions in earmarks. Velasquez contributed to Obama’s campaigns in ’04 and ’08.
Chicago power at Notre Dame extends to political posts as well. Justice Ann Claire Williams was appointed by Bill Clinton in 1999 to the U.S. Court of Appeals 7th District. In 2004, she ruled that the Department of Justice could not subpoena hospital abortion records to enforce the ban on partial birth abortions. Left-leaning Chicago politics has a place on the Notre Dame governing board. Currently Ann Claire Williams is receiving serious attention among the top three possible Obama replacements for retiring Supreme Court Justice David Souter.
Some Notre Dame board members have made ethical misjudgments in the past. Chicago trustee Philip B. Rooney, Chairman of Claddagh Investments, is former CEO of Waste Management Inc., the world’s largest waste services company. In 2002, Rooney and Waste Management, along with Arthur Andersen, Enron and others, were indicted by the SEC in a massive fraud case. WMI management eventually settled for 30.8 million in penalties. The SEC barred Rooney permanently from being an officer in a public company. He divested most of his own stock before the investigations caused shareholder assets to plummet. Despite this history Rooney retains his board position at Notre Dame today.
ND Trustee Douglas Tong Hsu is chairman of Far Eastern Group, a $32 billion dollar Chinese conglomerate. Hsu’s strong political connections in Taiwan lean toward unification with mainland China. He recently stated that democratic governance is a hindrance to investment, and praised communist China’s system for being more favorable to business with its staunch system of rule. In 2006, Hsu was indicted for breach of trust and forgery in connection with a major department store takeover. These charges also involved the Taiwanese first lady, Wu Shu-chen. With Douglas Tong Hsu, the political and business interests of the PRC have influence at Notre Dame. In 2006, ND President Jenkins led a small delegation to East Asia, where they met with Hsu, and travelled to communist Beijing to develop partner programs for the university.
There are Notre Dame trustees who directly support [sic] Obama administration goals. Dr. Mary Anne Fox is chancellor at U[niversity of] C[alifornia] San Diego and Vice-Chair of the National Science Board. Recently Fox announced the opening of a new research facility where the school will cultivate and experiment on human embryonic stem cells. The laboratory will partner with Scripps Research and the Salk Institute in La Jolla, CA where Fox also sits on the leadership council. In 2007 the Institute hosted a stem cell ethics conference. R. Alta Charo, bioethicist and advisor to the Obama transition team was a key speaker. At UCSD the bio-engineering department has just established a partnership with Tsinghua University in China, to further their research.
Raymond G. Chambers, co-founder of anti-poverty organization Millenium Promise, serves on the ServiceNation leadership council. ServiceNation is a political group that supports the enormous multiplication of federal national service programs in the Obama agenda, including the just-passed Kennedy Serve America Act. The Kennedy act was touted as the “largest expansion of community and national service since the launch of the Civilian Conservation Corps.” In September, Chambers was a panelist at the ServiceNation Summit as special envoy for malaria, United Nations.
Several Notre Dame board members lead American banks and major investment houses, where the federal government has sunk billions in bailout funds and stock purchases. Robert Conway was head of Goldman Sachs (AIG). Philip J. Purcell was formerly CEO of Morgan Stanley and COO of Dean Witter. Enrique Hernandez, Jr. is on the board of Wells Fargo Bank. Business leaders in this sector are under increasing pressure to appeal to the Obama administration, the Treasury Department, and the U.S. Congress for their survival and direction.
In conclusion, a review of the Board of Trustees at Notre Dame does NOT reveal a particularly strong Catholic identity. There are board members whose actions and associations put them in a position directly at odds with Church teaching and in line with the Obama administration. At the Notre Dame board, we see a group of well-connected well-heeled individuals from all sectors of society, and at the most prominent levels. Taking a stand against inviting the President of the United States would likely jeopardize membership in the elite club where they travel. Therefore it is highly unlikely that there will be any movement from within the board to rescind invitation to President Obama.
Every once in a while, for all my scribbling in comboxes, I write something I think is well, kind of good. Today was one of those days. I wrote something I thought fitting for the anniversary of Leo XIII’s encyclical Rerum Novarum. And since I want to put all the time I spent writing it to good use, here is my reply to a man who thought that the “social justice” and “common good” talk of Catholics is a crock, and that it’s all just a cover up for “socialist” ideas about the re-distribution of wealth. He thinks all social justice and the welfare state is a great evil. He says he really doesn’t care what papal social encyclicals say on this subject, and that they’re not infallible, though the Gospel is, he is for freedom and individuality, etc. (Evidently, in spite of this, he is a Catholic). My reply:
I was very glad to hear that you practice what you preach in the way of individual charity in helping that man [find a home]. It’s a great example and a true following of the Gospel.
But let me ask you something. Suppose you learned of a sweatshop or a factory where the employer required his employees to work fifteen hours a day, without air-conditioning or heating, without opportunities for meals, and their children as young as 9 or 10 years old, had to work with them under the same conditions, all for pay so small that it still left the whole family starving. And suppose there weren’t any laws to prevent the employer from doing that.
And what could you, being a Christian, do all by your lonesome to prevent this injustice and help this family? The answer is: not a lot, however charitable you might be, at least not without a shotgun, which not be at all advisable. In this case it’s clearly a matter for the law and the state. Fortunately, we don’t have to worry any longer about such things taking place because our laws about fair wages, child labor and proper working conditions prevent them.
One of the primary reasons that we do have these laws is because the Catholic Church took a leading role beginning in the late nineteenth century to call the world’s attention to the problems of working people who were faced with employment conditions similar to the above, and who were being solicited, to the great danger of their freedom and in their faith by the Communist and socialists and their labor organizations.
One hundred and eighteen years ago yesterday (May 15, 1891), Pope Leo XIII issued the first in the long line of modern papal social encyclicals, Rerum Novarum, in which he called for the neeed for true Christian’s workingman’s associations, and at the same time he asked that the State itself do something in this regard by distributing . . . .what? Not wealth (that was the Communist line), not charity (because that’s the individual’s duty), but justice. He even called it “distributive justice” because it meant giving everyone an equal shot and equal rights, including the right to be free from such oppression. The Pope thought that there were a few things, perhaps just a few, that the State could do well, and that was one of them. The social thought of the Church was one of the things that helped ensure that today we have laws regulating fair wages, and good working conditions.
So the Church’s social justice teaching is not socialism. Properly understood, it’s a preventative against socialism. And so it continues today, up through the writings of John Paul II (and Benedict XVI is about to issue his own social encyclical). Each of them spells out not only what the state, but individuals, small groups and associations, and the state itself should do to promote social justice. The primary duty of individuals and associations and the Church in all of this is charity, broadly speaking, but for the state it’s justice, because that’s the state’s job; it’s why states were founded, to ensure and protect every individual’s rights.
You have a strange idea that the social ideas of the Church are identical to those of the left wing of the Democratic party today, or to socialism, or the welfare state. The truth is, they’re not. There are people who misread these encyclicals on the left (and a good many on the left who claim to have read them and haven’t). There are a good many people on the right who shun them like the plague, and never read them, and insist that they are good Catholics while rejecting papal teaching without ever having read it.
In regard to one of your other statements, the social encyclicals of the Popes are not all strictly speaking infallible, but are part of the Church’s magisterium, or teaching authority. They are certainly worthy of respect, and at the very least, an unprejudiced reading.
I don’t know whether you ever have read them or not, but it sounds as if you haven’t. So in honor of the anniversary of Rerum Novarum, here’s a link:
There. Now you won’t even have to get out of your chair to read what the Church really thinks of these matters.
Pausing to look at all the sights on our way to Jerusalem. . . Mainly about faith, the Church, film, writing, famous Christian authors, and anything else I'm interested in at the moment.
The photo above was taken at St. Peter's Basilica in Rome in March 2007.
Quote of the Month
"The history of the Catholic missions is by now a long road: at the beginning of that road is the Father of Mercy, who holds out his arms to all his children. All those who encounter the missionaries encounter the Father. And they also encounter the Son, the first missionary, who, obeying the Father, comes to earth, becomes flesh in human nature, is one of us, in solidarity with our misery (except for sin) and ends up dying for us in order to then return to heaven, carrying on his shoulders the human race his has won back.
Out of the same mold are the missionaries, who repeat, in some way, his journey. They too leave their fathers and families and depart to go among a foreign people. They too strip themselves of the refined culture they have acquired in their homelands; and of their native customs and habitat, of a hundred little comforts, in order to be in solidarity. With who? With a people who are on one hand naked and poor, and on the other rich in possibilities, which the missionaries intend to respect, value and elevate."
Albino Luciani (Pope John Paul I), to the people of his diocese of Vittorio Veneto, on his return from the diocesan missions in Africa in 1966
