NRL News
Page 32
July/August 2009
Volume 36
Issue 7-8

Heroine of Notre Dame Controversy to Be Honored by NRL
By Anthony J. Lauinger

Mary Ann Glendon, whose quiet strength, uncommon courage, and unwavering commitment to the sanctity of innocent human life made her the heroine of the Notre Dame commencement controversy this spring, will be honored by National Right to Life at its upcoming Proudly Pro-Life Awards Dinner.

Professor Glendon, attorney, lecturer, writer, and Harvard law professor, served from 2007 to 2009 as United States Ambassador to the Vatican. She will receive National Right to Life’s highest honor at a formal dinner October 6 at New York City’s Waldorf Astoria Hotel.

Ambassador Glendon, who had been invited to receive the University of Notre Dame’s highest honor, the Laetare Medal, at the university’s May 17 commencement, subsequently declined the Notre Dame award when it became apparent that her appearance was being cited as justification for Notre Dame’s honoring of President Barack Obama on the same stage. The honoring of Barack Obama was intensely controversial because of President Obama’s radically pro-abortion policies, position, and record.

Ambassador Glendon, in a letter to Notre Dame’s president, Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C., wrote that President Obama is “a prominent and uncompromising opponent of the Church’s position on issues involving fundamental principles of justice,” and indicated she was at a loss to understand why a Catholic university would honor a man with such a record.

Refusing to be an enabler of this de facto act of public scandal, Ambassador Glendon bowed out, withdrawing from the graduation ceremony and declining to allow herself to be used as a pro-life counterweight to Notre Dame’s honoring of the most pro-abortion president in our nation’s history.

The tragedy of Notre Dame’s commencement was captured by long-time faculty member, philosophy professor, and author Ralph McInerny, who wrote afterwards, “And so it was that on Sunday at Notre Dame faithful Catholics were regarded as dissenters ... .” He went on to describe President Obama on that fateful day as “the smiling Caesar, thumb turned down on life ... .”

The ceremony featuring Barack Obama, however, was not the only event on campus on graduation day. There was also a Pro-Life Rally held outdoors on campus. It was attended by a large crowd of Notre Dame students, faculty members, and parents—my wife and I among them, as our youngest child that day joined his seven brothers and sisters as a fellow graduate of Notre Dame. Among those in the crowd were a number of seniors who attended the Pro-Life Rally instead of the commencement program at which President Obama spoke.

At the Rally, organized by pro-life Notre Dame student groups, Rev. John Raphael, S.S.J., Notre Dame alumnus of the class of ’89, gave a heart-wrenching account of how his alma mater’s decision to honor President Obama had undercut his 20 years of pro-life work within the African-American community. As Father Raphael so eloquently put it, “At precisely the time when the collective voice, the official voice, of Notre Dame is needed on behalf of the unborn, this administration has chosen—like the priest and the Levite in the parable of the Good Samaritan—to walk on the other side of the road.”

Lacy Dodd, alumna from the Class of ’99, described her desperation when she learned, three months before her own graduation from Notre Dame, that she was pregnant. Her boyfriend, a classmate, offered to pay for an abortion and told her being pro-life is fine in the abstract, but not when it’s you who are pregnant.

Lacy repeated to those at the Rally a question she had posed to Notre Dame’s president: “Who draws support from your decision to honor President Obama? Is it the pregnant Notre Dame woman who may be sitting in this year’s graduating class who wants desperately to keep her baby, or those who, like my boyfriend at the time, tell her that the Catholic teaching on the intrinsic evil of abortion is just ‘dining-room talk’?” Lacy’s nine-year-old daughter stood by her side as she spoke.

Notre Dame history professor Rev. Bill Miscamble, C.S.C., referred to Barack Obama as “clearly the most radically pro-abortion president in this great nation’s history.” He lamented that, “[i]nstead of fostering the moral development of its students, Notre Dame’s leaders have planted the damaging seeds of moral confusion.”

Transcending this tragedy, which “damaged the ethos and the spirit of Notre Dame,” as Father Miscamble put it, was Mary Ann Glendon.

She chose moral clarity over moral chaos, truth over prestige, integrity over scandal. Ambassador Glendon’s conscience would not allow her to be a party to sowing “the damaging seeds of moral confusion.” And so she declined what is possibly the most prestigious worldly honor a Catholic in this country can receive: Notre Dame’s Laetare Medal.

For her edifying example, her inspiring leadership, and her selfless devotion to the protection of innocent human life, National Right to Life will honor Mary Ann Glendon with this year’s Proudly Pro-Life Award. It is we who are honored by her gracious acceptance of our invitation to attend the October 6 dinner in New York and receive the thanks of a grateful nation.

Previous recipients of the Proudly Pro-Life Award include the late Congressman Henry J. Hyde of Illinois; the late John Cardinal O’Connor, Archbishop of New York; Judge Robert Bork; Focus on the Family founder Dr. James Dobson; and the late Mother Teresa of Calcutta.

Proceeds from the Proudly Pro-Life Dinner, benefiting the educational work of the nation’s leading pro-life organization, go to the National Right to Life Educational Trust Fund. All contributions are tax-deductible.