Inviting Obama to Speak at Notre Dame Exposes New Catholic Church Rift
The Catholic university's students appear to strongly back the invitation
News that President Barack Obama will deliver this year's commencement address at the University of Notre Dame, a prestigious Roman Catholic institution, has triggered denunciations from at least nine American bishops. They oppose lending a platform to a politician who rejects the church's firm antiabortion stance. "Notre Dame didn't understand what it means to be Catholic when they issued this invitation," Cardinal Francis George, head of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, told a crowd of antiabortion advocates last weekend.
And yet Notre Dame's students appear to strongly back the university's invitation to Obama. The campus newspaper reports that 97 percent of the letters that have come in on the subject from graduating seniors are supportive.
It's just the latest example of the rift between the Catholic Church hierarchy and its American flock on a political matter. When President Obama lifted restrictions on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research last month, the bishops conference, the organizational body for American bishops, condemned the move as a "sad victory of politics over science and ethics." But an analysis this week by Gallup found that 63 percent of American Catholics consider embryonic stem cell research to be morally acceptable.
Indeed, as the bishops conference issues new critiques of the Obama administration on an almost weekly basis, it can be easy to forget that most American Catholics backed Obama at the polls last November. They supported him by 54 percent to 45 percent, a reversal from 2004, when more voted for George W. Bush than for John Kerry, a Catholic. Forty percent of Catholics with the most orthodox beliefs backed Obama, a 100 percent increase from Kerry's showing among those voters.
As U.S. bishops are becoming more emboldened in speaking out, they are spotlighting more than the differences between the church and the Democratic Party on key political issues. Increasingly, they are pointing out the differences between the church and its own American followers. "We have had a de facto schism in the church for the last generation," says Catholic League President Bill Donohue, an outspoken critic of Notre Dame's invitation to Obama and, generally speaking, of the Democrats. "The issue being forced upon the bishops is: What are they going to do to get their house in order?"
The Gallup analysis shows that American Catholics are to the left of other Americans on many so-called moral issues, despite their church's conservative positions. Fifty-four percent say that homosexual relations are morally acceptable, a clear rejection of church teaching, compared with 45 percent of non-Catholics. On the issue of embryonic stem cell research, a majority of even the most devoted Catholics, who attend church regularly, say that it's morally acceptable. Most Catholics told Gallup that abortion is morally wrong, but in the same proportion as other Americans. "The argument of those who protest the extension of the invitation to Obama is that Catholics have a distinctly conservative position on these moral issues," Gallup Editor-in-Chief Frank Newport wrote. "That is certainly the case as far as official church doctrine is concerned, but not when it comes to average American Catholics."
There are many explanations for that yawning gap: the expanded role for lay Catholics and other '60s-era reforms of Vatican II, which critics say chipped away at church authority; the priest sex abuse scandals of the past decade, which undercut the Catholic hierarchy's moral voice; and more than a century of Catholic assimilation, particularly among white Catholics. A recent Trinity College survey found that 25 percent of Americans who identify themselves as having no religion, the fastest-growing segment of the American religious landscape, are former Catholics. Had it not been for the recent surge in immigration from Latin America, the Catholic Church in the United States would have contracted dramatically in the past decade. "You're now dealing with an educated population that won't take 'because the bishop said so' as an answer on moral questions," says Thomas Reese, a Jesuit priest at Georgetown's Woodstock Theological Center.
For Reese and other left-leaning Catholics, that loss of authority is all the more reason to have a dialogue with public figures like Obama, rather than denying him a speaking platform at Notre Dame. "If you had faith in your argument, you would say, 'Bring him on—we can beat him,' " says Reese, arguing that Catholics might move the president to the right on abortion and stem cell research through engagement.
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Reader Comments
catholic church
Shame on you. Sending mixed messages about what is moral and what is not.
I've been a strong Catholic all my life....now 76.....and I can see why so many Catholic churches are closing.....when our Catholic church allows someone to speak and give him an honary degree....who believes completely the opposite of the churches teaching, saying "it's a sin to have an abortion" and than saying no it's not......oh, well.......guess I'll use my gut "feelings" about what is right or wrong....not the church's teachings.....
Obama at Notre Dame
When stating percentages of Catholics, it is important to find out if such Catholics are practicing Catholics or simply Catholic by birth but not practicing their faith (or C & E Catholics - those that attend their church on Christmas and Easter and other special occasions).
Also, it matters little how many have this opinion or that opininion, rather what mattes is the truth. The magisterium of the church promotes truth even if it is not popular since Jesus IS truth.
If one asks "What would Jesus say about abortion?", it is extremely hard to believe that Jesus would say "Do whatever you like, your happiness is what is most important". He would simply say, "Don't do this" or if someone had an abortion he would say, "Your sin is forgiven, go and do this no more". Those facing an unwanted pregancy, be courageous and believe thee is help for you and "beauty can be brought out of the ashes of your fear", let God show you the way.
Jesus IS truth, and I think we'd have to admit he would say abortion is an abomination (or do you say Obama-nation!)
Dialogue with Obama OK, don't give him an honorary degree, or let him lie to our students
Having a dialogue with Obama would be good, and that may be, but a speech is not a dialogue. Also, any “REAL” Catholic knows that abortion is killing a pre-born person. Anyone who doesn’t see that is either misinformed or what I call a “FAKE” Catholic, like the priest at Notre Dame that invited Obama in the first place, and many of the commentators on this blog. Honoring any pro abortion speaker, president or not, at a Catholic event is dishonoring to the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Jesus did not come to unite; he came to divide the sheep from the goats. At this point, Obama is in the goat category. Let’s all pray for the Holy Spirit to convict Obama of his sins and wrong thinking so that he can become a true Christian and right his wrongs. Catholic Christians and non-Catholic Christians, Jews and Muslims all need to pray or meditate for discernment on every matter, but especially on who we decide to teach our children. Most people graduating from a college are in their early 20’s and are still gullible to a point, especially when they are trusting the generation before them to “have it right”, and to “know better” as to what should be done in a situation. Some say the abortion issue is a non-issue, but guess what? They’re wrong! No other law means anything if you are dead. Obama voted three times for allowing a baby to die if during an abortion it was indeed born alive out of the mother’s body even though the baby was far enough along to warrant standard medical care which would have allowed the baby to survive? Don’t forget, in America, it is legal to kill an unborn baby through ALL NINE MONTHS. It’s quite bizarre, don’t you think? It’s difficult to wrap your mind around that concept, isn’t it? Obama also said something to the affect that he wanted his daughters to have the “choice” (the choice is either life or death) to be able to have an abortion if either of them found themselves in an unwanted pregnancy. So, that means that Obama wouldn’t mind if one or both of his daughters had his grandchildren killed by an abortionist. A strange idea for any man who calls himself a Christian, let alone one with Jewish or African ancestry. Too many times in history Jewish or African children were killed in the name of some so called great purpose. ENOUGH! America has legalized too many sins. We have to wake up and stand for the truth. This is not only a religious issue; the “Natural Law” also shows abortion to be wrong. Look it up. If a pregnant woman is killed by manslaughter, the law shows that the unborn baby is a person, the person responsible is charged with two counts of manslaughter. So, why do people “tolerate” the murder of our United States citizens just because a woman finds her pregnancy inconvenient and wants to get on with “HER LIFE”? What about the life of her baby? Ask a woman who has had an abortion whether murdering her baby made her life easier. Her answer, if she can even answer without bursting into tears, would be “NO, it made it much worse!” Seek God’s face. Is He smiling at you or do you make Him sick? Be careful, He might spit you from His mouth!
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