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Effort to Persuade Notre
Dame to Withdraw Obama Invitation Just Beginning
Part One of Two
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Part Two looks
at "Obama's Initial Media Strategy." Please send
your comments on either or both columns to
daveandrusko@gmail.com.
By Dave Andrusko
"The University of Notre Dame
administrators who invited President Barack
Obama to deliver this spring's commencement
address surely consider his acceptance a
historic coup for their school and yet more
proof of Notre Dame's self-declared role as the
place 'where the Church does its thinking.' In
reality, their decision only cements the
school's reputation as the place where anti-life
politicians do their rationalizing. … There
Obama can bask in the reflected glow of Notre
Dame's storied Catholic heritage while
continuing to advance policies that contradict
the Catholic faith and natural law.
Colleen Carroll Campbell
"President Obama has recently
reaffirmed, and has now placed in public policy,
his long-stated unwillingness to hold human life
as sacred. While claiming to separate politics
from science, he has in fact separated science
from ethics and has brought the American
government, for the first time in history, into
supporting direct destruction of innocent human
life.
"This will be the 25th Notre Dame
graduation during my time as bishop. After much
prayer, I have decided not to attend the
graduation. I wish no disrespect to our
president, I pray for him and wish him well. I
have always revered the Office of the
Presidency. But a bishop must teach the Catholic
faith 'in season and out of season,' and he
teaches not only by his words -- but by his
actions. … [T]he measure of any Catholic
institution is not only what it stands for, but
also what it will not stand for."
Bishop John M. D'Arcy head of the Catholic Diocese of
Fort Wayne-South Bend, Indiana.
The response to Notre Dame's
invitation to pro-abortion President Barack
Obama to give its commencement address has been
overwhelming. Just speaking for what NRLC has
experienced, we have been flooded with emails
that combine indignation, irritation, with a
deep sadness that such a great Catholic
University would honor the most pro-abortion
president in history by allowing him to speak
May 17 and receive an honorary degree to boot.
By the time you read this later
today, a spokesman for Notre Dame President Rev.
John Jenkins will no doubt have repeated yet
again the standard response to the mounting
criticism: they have no intention of withdrawing
the invitation. And, at this point in time, that
is doubtless true.
Those same spokesmen will tell
reporters yet again that they expected
controversy. With respect to what the University
has heard up until this point, that is doubtless
true as well.
But the issue is not whether the
leadership at Notre Dame could have anticipated
a wave of criticism. It is rather what is
implicit in what they have said since last
Friday when the announcement first became
public: the conviction that if they just hunker
down, people will gradually resign themselves to
the inevitable, no matter how distraught they
may be. And there is where they are wrong.
Far from cresting, the resistance
is just beginning. Why?
#1. Nobody who has attained the
age of reason believes for a second the labored
rationalization offered by Rev. Jenkins in an
interview with the school paper, the Observer:
"We are not ignoring the critical issue of the
protection of life. On the contrary, we invited
him [President Obama] because we care so much
about those issues, and we hope … for this to be
the basis of an engagement with him."
This insults your intelligence.
Obama will be there for a couple of hours, much
of it spent glad-handing. How much "engagement"
can there be in what is barely more than a
flyover?
#2. Obama won a majority of the
Catholic vote in 2008 by lobbing gauzy
come-let-us-reason-together rhetoric. But now,
as President, he has begun to unleash his
pro-abortion artillery. And for this he gets not
condemnation from the most prestigious Catholic
University in the country but a forum. This is,
to be polite, maddening to an awful lot of
folks.
But the reason the heat will get
turned up will not be primarily because of those
who opposed Candidate Obama for his clear record
on abortion. The pressure will continue to mount
as individual citizens who treated Candidate
Obama as an empty vessel into which they poured
their unrequited hopes are educated. I predict
over the next six weeks that you will almost be
able to hear the scales falling from eyes.
#3. I quoted at the beginning
from Colleen Carroll Campbell, a fellow at the
Ethics and Public Policy Center. In her column
she does a great job putting Obama's strategy in
perspective. He is already beginning to stagger
under the weight of ill-chosen and inconsistent
policy choices and buyer remorse among some
Catholics who gave him the benefit of the doubt.
How does he "butter up his
flagging Catholic base" when "substantive policy
changes are out of the question for such a
strident supporter of abortion rights and
embryo-destructive research"? According to
Campbell he has "only one solution: a visit to
that reliable ally of pro-choice Democrats, the
University of Notre Dame."
That is a scandal.
My point is a simple one. We
cannot know how this will turn out. What we can
know for sure is what will happen if those who
are opposed to this decision suddenly stop
voicing their displeasure.
So, you have three avenues.
1. Call Father Jenkins at
574.631.3903 or 574.631.5000.
2. Email Father Jenkins at
President@nd.edu
3. Or write him at:
Reverend John I. Jenkins, C.S.C.
Office of the President
400 Main Building
University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, IN 46556
Please either call, email, or
write Father Jenkins and ask him to rescind the
invitation to President Obama. Better still, do
all three!
Part Two --
Obama's
Initial Media Strategy |
