NRL News
Page 5
October 2009
Volume 36
Issue 10

Mary Ann Glendon:
The Heroine of the Notre Dame Commencement Tragedy

Editor’s note. The following are the introductory remarks made by NRLC Vice President Tony Lauinger prior to Prof. Mary Ann Glendon receiving the Proudly Pro-Life Award October 6.

We are extremely privileged tonight to honor a very special person. Named one of the “Fifty Most Influential Women Lawyers in America,” she is a highly distinguished legal scholar, author, and lecturer. She has traveled the world in the furtherance of her devotion to both the learning and the teaching of the law; she has, likewise, traveled widely in selfless and dedicated service to her Church, and in the promotion of the pro-life values that she, and we, so deeply cherish.

She has been accorded the high distinction of receiving honorary degrees from universities both in our country and abroad. She traveled to China as head of the Holy See’s delegation to the United Nations Women’s Conference.

During the George W. Bush Administration she traveled to Vatican City to represent our nation as Ambassador to the Holy See. She traveled here tonight from Boston, where she is the Learned Hand Professor of Law at Harvard University.

In a lifetime of scholarship and service, Mary Ann Glendon has done much. She has traveled much. But it is primarily for something she declined to do, and for a trip she did not take, that we honor her here tonight—a trip that she declined to take to a small city on the plains of Indiana that is home to our nation’s best-known Catholic university.

Mary Ann Glendon had been invited to receive what is arguably the most prestigious worldly honor an American Catholic can receive—Notre Dame’s Laetare Medal. What initially she had so anticipated and treasured, became, instead—due to a drastic change of circumstances—something very different. Because months after inviting her to attend the commencement to receive the Laetare Medal, Notre Dame invited Barack Obama to receive an honorary degree at the same event.

Sadly, the honor which was to be conferred on her began being portrayed as part of a convoluted balancing act by the Notre Dame administration to justify their decision to honor the most aggressively pro-abortion president in our nation’s history. Mary Ann Glendon was unwillingly being put in an untenable position. And so she withdrew from the commencement and declined the Notre Dame honor.

There is an old saying for which, I would submit, Mary Ann Glendon has given us a new adaptation: “A conscience is a terrible thing to waste.”

For it was, no doubt, the conscience of this courageous woman that led her to renounce the pomp of the Notre Dame commencement. And it was her principled refusal, her conspicuous absence, her silent witness to the dehumanized, discarded, dismembered unborn children of our throw-away society that made Mary Ann Glendon the heroine of the Notre Dame commencement tragedy.

Many were willing to overlook the pro-abortion policies of Barack Obama in exchange for the pageantry of a presidential visit. Many were enthralled by the excitement of such a prospect and put aside their moral reservations. It took Mary Ann Glendon—a layperson, a wife, a mother—to put the whole sad spectacle in perspective. With crystal clarity, she showed us what the priority ought to be: fidelity to the Truth, and to the sanctity of innocent human life.

My wife Phyllis and I have been blessed with eight children. We entrusted each of our children to Notre Dame—Notre Dame, Our Mother, and Notre Dame, the institution. We were disillusioned by the institution’s failure to reflect the values of its namesake, but our faith was fortified during those dark days this spring by the quiet strength, uncommon courage, and edifying example of this inspiring, selfless, solitary individual, Mary Ann Glendon.

It had to be distressing to her to see the excuses offered by the university in its own defense. She must have lamented the nation’s leading Catholic university circling the wagons—not to defend the university from the secular culture, but to defend the university’s administration from pro-life students, faculty, alumni, and parents.

Mary Ann Glendon did not seek out a university committee, a board of trustees, or a faculty senate to tell her what was right. A lifetime of faithfulness to the Truth had conditioned her moral compass. And she obviously had taken to heart the words of Abraham Lincoln: “It is a sin to be silent when it is your duty to protest.” Mary Ann Glendon had the humility, and the humanity, to heed her conscience, and the integrity and strength of character to do what was right.

Recognizing that 50 million unborn children killed since Roe v. Wade is an abomination beyond comprehension, Mary Ann Glendon was not willing to run the risk that even one young woman might infer from her participation in the commencement that she condoned the policies that were the cause of the controversy.

It was St. Ambrose who taught us: “Not only for every idle word, but for every idle silence, must man render an account.” Mary Ann Glendon can look forward to the day when she gives an accounting of her faithfulness to that ultimate little masterpiece of God’s creation, the helpless, innocent, defenseless child waiting to be born.