From a pro-life point of view, the two-month-long Obama-Notre Dame fiasco was a gift of the Holy Spirit. If nothing else, it cemented abortion to Obama once and for all.
The Obama-Abortion Connection Has Been Made
Anyone paying attention now has rock-solid evidence of Obama’s firm, unyielding stand for abortion. That connection is made. The Republicans failed to make it during the presidential campaign, but Fr. John Jenkins unwittingly did it for them.
It is important that Obama’s support for abortion be affirmed, because the tide is changing on abortion as more and more Americans see it for what it is-the killing of helpless, innocent human beings.
Some basically good people helped elect Obama without knowing of his strong pro-abortion stand. We believe that if the Republicans can come up with a good candidate in 2012, Obama will be a one-term president, and if the country can survive 1400 more days of Obamanomics and other disastrous programs.
Our Graduates Aren’t Taught How To Think
What has happened to Notre Dame over the past forty years is a shame.
I’ve talked with professors from many teaching venues, who all complain that most universities today taught crafts and jobs and how to make how to make a living using modern technology-but almost none are taught how to think. They know how to do things, but not how to judge right from wrong or act on sound principles. Their philosophy is pragmatism and materialism, and their judgments confused by values based on self-interest and expediency. They are lifetime moral sophomores.
Example: During his address, Obama said in defense of embryonic stem cell experiments that, while we all respect the sacredness of human life, parents of a sick child want stem cell experiments (he dodges the word “embryonic,”) to find cures for such things as juvenile diabetes. The Notre Dame crowd broke into thunderous applause.
Yet, what they were cheering is the violent destruction of human life, on a scarce chance that killing some human beings can help cure other human beings. The flummoxed students and their parents were actually cheering lethal human experiments and most of them didn’t even realize it. They were simply not thinking, but were caught up in the excitement of the moment.
Fortunately, from reports we have from some inside, not all were caught up in the moment, but sat quiet and bewildered.
Jenkins And Noonan Let Us Down
But bad as Obama’s talk was, philosophically Jenkins’ was even worse. He set the stage for accepting the President’s ideology by suggesting that all differences can be resolved-even basic moral differences-by setting our beliefs aside while we listen politely to lies.
We can almost hear Pilate asking, “What is Truth?”-and not waiting for answer because the truth really isn’t all that important.
Our last hope was Professor Noonan. Maybe he would say something of substance. But he never got to the real issue in his talk. He mused over the intrinsic evil of this and that, but never got to abortion-the big, black cloud that hovered over the convocation, the campus and the country.
He seemed unwilling and fearful of confronting the truth in the awesome presence of Barack Obama and Fr. Jenkins and the mostly comfortable assembly, so he simply by-passed the real conflict and dodged the substance of the debate, the main issue of abortion.
He had an opportunity and gave it up.
Someday They Will Realize
Everything inside the Joyce Center was disappointing except for the unhappy students and parents who sat quietly and resigned, and a few mortarboards with baby feet painted on them. We can understand the frustration of the few hecklers, and saw the students’ chants to drown out the truth predictable but scary. “We are N D!” was out of place and insulting, and those of us who heard it could only respond, “We hope not!”
But the graduates and their families had their big day, and it surely is one they will never forget. And none of them will ever have to try to remember who their commencement speaker was.
As Ann Scheidler said after seeing the replay, some day each in his or her turn will come to realize how bad it all was that they were inside the Joyce Center instead of outside at the South Quad and the Grotto with their more valiant classmates who knew what this conflict was about. It was about the value of every individual human life.
Inside, most didn’t have a clue. Maybe someday Notre Dame, and other pseudo-Catholic universities, will return to the faith, and replace maudlin courtesy with rightly informed consciences. Maybe.
But meanwhile, you and I have got to be out educating the public on the culture of death running and ruining this country. We’ll pray for Notre Dame and the others, and go down there to protest from time to time, but as the playwright put it, “Leave her to Heaven.”
Only Our Lady can save Notre Dame. And, after all, it’s her school. Or at least it used to be.
