Q: Many stories have been emerging about the pro-life response to the Notre Dame commencement ceremony. What kind of response did Notre Dame see that day from students and others who came together for the pro-life cause?
Reilly: The response to the Notre Dame scandal was immense and unprecedented.
More than 367,000 Catholics signed the Cardinal Newman Society’s petition against the honor at NotreDameScandal.com.
Bishop John D’Arcy of Fort Wayne-South Bend, the local ordinary for Notre Dame, boycotted the commencement ceremony.
Nearly 80 bishops, representing about one-third of the dioceses in the United States, spoke out against the honor, and none publicly supported it.
Mary Ann Glendon, the former U.S. ambassador to the Vatican, who was to receive Notre Dame’s prestigious Laetare Medal, declined the honor rather than share the stage with America’s pro-abortion leader.
strong disagreement about an issue where at least one side (pro-life) cannot negotiate.
We all recognize that the right to choose is limited. Choices are frequently limited, even personal and private ones, when the public good is at risk. People cannot choose to smoke wherever they like, for example. People are not free to choose to drink too much in public (all the time). But there is never a time when one is free to kill an innocent life.
Seems to me that the Bishops would have much more credibility
and respect if they would find the courage to deny communion to those RC politicians that support, promote and encourage the taking of life of that human in the womb.
I would love to know what all these people have said in response to the pedophilia scandals. Have any of them criticized their leadership, boycotted meetings, etc?
But the Holy Spirit is working in the Church in America, and the Vatican and the bishops have established a clear direction for Catholic education.
Right, just like it always does.
Fully Catholic without compromise.
No, I’m afraid our cultural identifications always involve some compromise of integrity. Wish it were otherwise.
I wonder what Our Lady, the Blessed Mother of Jesus, thinks of Notre Dame. And where is the highly valued Magisterium? For the Bishop to play hooky from the graduation was hardly an act of great courage. Statmann
Sorry, I mixed up the italics in my comment 3. Elves, you can delete #3.
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I would love to know what all these people have said in response to the pedophilia scandals. Have any of them criticized their leadership, boycotted meetings, etc?
But the Holy Spirit is working in the Church in America, and the Vatican and the bishops have established a clear direction for Catholic education.
Right, just like it always does.
Fully Catholic without compromise.
No, I’m afraid our cultural identifications always involve some compromise of integrity. Wish it were otherwise.
While I have little respect for what the administration of Notre Dame did and their rationalization for it, I have serious doubts that Mr. Reilly’s vision of what a Catholic university ought to be corresponds with Cardinal Newman’s. It’s quite obvious that Mr. Reilly’s intellectual light is fairly dim compared with Newman’s.
Would Cardinal Newman have presented President Obama with the Honorary Degree? Statmann
With respect to comment #6 – did anyone else besides me see the letter to the editor in the NYT from Norman Minow, who stated his pride at being the first Jewish trustee of Notre Dame and his pleasure at the invitation to Obama to deliver the Commencement address and receive a degree, since ‘Barack and Michelle’ had spent some time in the employ of Minow’s law firm in their early years? Possibly this had something to do with how the invitation came to be issued, though I don’t think that was stated.