The American Spectator

Stuart Koehl| 3.23.09 @ 7:31AM

Notre Dame is a Catholic school? When did this happen?

In any case, so what? As Bishop Fulton Sheen said back when I was in diapers, "Parents, if you want your children to lose their faith, send them to a Catholic college or university".

That certainly was my observation from my four years at Georgetown University (1972-76)--though I am always careful to call it a "Jesuit university", there being a very large gulf between "Catholic" and "Jesuit".

During my time at Georgetown I was not Catholic, but if I had been, the odds would have been great that I would not have been Catholic on my way out. The Jebs, in fact, seemed almost embarrassed by the school's affiliation with the Catholic Church, and downplayed it at every opportunity. The desire for intellectual respectability amongst their secular peers trumps any fidelity to the Catholic Tradition.

It was a full twenty years before I was baptized into the Catholic Church, albeit as a Byzantine, not Roman Catholic. Since Byzantine Catholics are always treated as outsiders by the majority Church in the Catholic communion, I have a rather unique perspective on Notre Dame's l'Affaire Obama.

1. The same logic Mr. Thunder uses to oppose the invitation of President Obama is the same logic used by a variety of Catholic universities to oppose the invitation of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and other conservative figures to speak at commencement, though in their particular cases the salient issue was the war in Iraq. Taken to its logical conclusion, this line of thought means no political figure should ever be invited to speak at a Catholic school, because, at some point or another, he will have taken a stand contrary to Catholic doctrine (or whatever the USCCB says Catholic doctrine is this week). Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia, for instance, both support the death penalty, and our mitred overlords tell us that this is a sin (despite 19 centuries of Catholic teaching). Other Catholic politicians support enforcing American immigration laws, which we are also told is a sin. We can go on forever.

The ante-Nicene Fathers believed that government service was incompatible with Christian belief, and required Christians in office to abstain for communion for their term of service. Might be a good thing to bring back.

2. Asking someone to speak is not the same as endorsing their opinions. A university exists for the purpose of broadening minds, and one which only exposes its students to views compatible with those of its faculty or founders does them a disservice. As conservatives and Christians frequently denounce the systematic blacklisting of conservative and Christian speakers at colleges and universities, it is ironic that they would seek to impose similar blacklists of their own, rather than considering each speaker on his merits.

3. That said, better or worse, Barack Obama is President of the United States, and as such, a noteworthy speaker who ought to be heard, in person, by the graduating class of Notre Dame. If the school has done its job correctly, then the graduating students should have nothing to fear from what he has to say. A strong faith rooted in the Tradition of the Church can withstand contrary opinions. As Basil the Great (a graduate of the Athenian academy and classmate of Julian the Apostate) wrote to some young men, it is important for well educated Christians to be exposed to the pagan writings and pagan thought. Not only does this provide them with the armamentarium needed to counter their opinions and uphold Christian belief, but the pagans themselves have much to offer in the way of insights and teachings, for the Holy Spirit passes where He wills, and uses such instruments as come to hand--even pagans.

So let Obama come. And let the students of Notre Dame listen--critically. They should be none the worse for the experience, and if they are, then the problems of Notre Dame are far deeper than its choice of commencement speaker.

Dick Bishirjian| 3.23.09 @ 7:45AM

As a Notre Dame graduate, I was aware 44 years ago that things were not 'right' at Notre Dame. It has taken that long for the public to become aware of the decline of Catholic higher education. "The fish putrefies from the head" and that putrefaction begain in the post WW II era when novices became priests, brothers and nuns who should never have chosen a religious vocation. Social workers, sociologists, psychologists dominated and those with true philosophic and theological knowledge took second place. The end result is the departure of Catholic universities from Church doctrine and the secularization of Catholic higher education.
There is little that distinguishes Notre Dame from the University of Indiana; Georgetown from American University; Holy Cross, Boston College and all the Loyolas have capitulated to secularism.

drudge ette obama| 3.23.09 @ 8:11AM

So, who was asked first to speak? Obama or Father Phleger?

I agree with Stuart, above. Obama is the big fish.
So let him speak. I was raised Catholic, but the passivity, socialism and immigration policies disturb me.

But also let those students, their parents speak out about their disagreements with a man who supports abortion without limits.

I know that the Church condemns the death penalty and abortion, making the point that you can't ethically support one (death penalty) but not the other (abortion). I am surprised the Catholic Church doesn't condemn national armies, because they are sent to kill people. Better watch out, though, because there is probably a front there that does condemn the military. Personally, I have always viewed the death penalty as similar to the right to self defense, it keeps the bad boys off the streets permanently. And armies protect us in an efficient manner which could not be met by the individual effort. Abortion doesn't capture either of those societal benefits.

Anyway, I bet Obama stresses the merciful aspects of socialism, uhhh, I mean taxing to pay your fair share. The difference is this: taxing is taking and it is not voluntary nor charity.

Charity is done by free men, on their own volition, without the state having a knife in their backs.

TennesseeVolunteer| 3.23.09 @ 8:16AM

I am heartbroken.

I was an administrator at a Catholic college for 10 years. The college administration never understood the disconnect that they encouraged secularism and weren't embraced by the Catholic community. I look forward to the day when Notre Dame rebuilds, this is a grievous error.

Jeanette O'Toole| 3.23.09 @ 9:10AM

Thank you, Mr. Thunder, for your article. My husband, Tom O'Toole ('81) wrote a piece you or your readers might find interesting regarding this mess:

http://www.fightingirishthomas.net/2009/03/barack-at-notre-dame-our-lady-strikes.html

Jeremiah| 3.23.09 @ 9:16AM

Do you guys ever question your use of hyperbole. In the hands of a competent stylist, this figure can be quite useful.

However, if it forms the tenor -- the very basis -- of your style, it can become a problem.

The "destruction" of Notre Dame?

Come on. Toughen up a bit. Get a grip.

CarlPio| 3.23.09 @ 9:17AM

As a ND alumnus (66'), I am saddened by what Fr. Jenkins has done to my school. ND is THE premier Catholic University, not only in the US but in the world – or at least it use to be. The good Father has made it more of a secular university than a faith based institution of higher learning during his tenure as President. Poor Fr. Sorin must be turning over in his grave. Fr. Jenkins has quite a track record of allowing secular events to occur at ND which fly in the face of Catholic Doctrine - from the Vagina Monologues, the Gay Film festival to now allowing an extremely pro-abortion President to give the commencement address. I hope Fr. Jenkins realizes he is “leading” this great institution, dedicated to the Mother of God, down the shallow path of becoming just another “if it feels good do it” bastion of secular liberalism. My president, Father Hesburgh, was a God fearing priest first, and then a brilliant educator who lead ND in the way of the church while increasing university’s stature as a primer institution of higher learning. I fear Fr. Jenkins has lost his moral compass. I will pray for his soul.

Chris Manion ND '68| 3.23.09 @ 9:50AM

In 1967, Notre Dame took the lead in authoring the "Land'O Lakes" statement that called for federal aid to Catholic higher education -- made possible by LBJ's Omnibus Education Act.

Of course, there was a price to pay. Each institution had to adopt a lay board of trustees (instead of being run by the religious orders that had built them) and otherwise placate the myriad of secular demands. So they did. Money talks.

During the next forty years, Notre Dame has rolled over and played dead to get hundreds of millions in federal funds. It has also played Catholic to get more millions from nostalgic Catholic alumni.

Notre Dame will jump at the chance to please the federal government, but it takes really unique pleasure in giving the Pope the back of its hand, ignoring every possible moral teaching that might encumber its love affair with the feds and the Ivy Leaguers who sit on all those "peer review" committees that hand out those federal grants.

Canon Law (which governs the Catholic Church) requires any institution calling itself "Catholic" to have ecclesiastical permission to do so. Perhaps this latest travesty (hardly hyperbole) will finally signal the Vatican that the corruption is so deep that it is irreversible. Bishop John D’Arcy of Fort Wayne-South Bend, has already severed many connections between the university and the diocese – perhaps offering a telling preamble to the ultimate sanction.

Join thousands petitioning Notre Dame to reverse its decision, or at least to give Obama the treatment B16 gave Pelosi in Rome, by signing up here:

http://notredamescandal.com/

And here is the Canon Law cite:

Can. 216 Since they participate in the mission of the Church, all the Christian faithful have the right to promote or sustain apostolic action even by their own undertakings, according to their own state and condition. Nevertheless, no undertaking is to claim the name Catholic without the consent of competent ecclesiastical authority.

The Bishop| 3.23.09 @ 9:58AM

I am neither Catholic nor an alum of Notre Dame - and neither was Ara Parseghian - (although, as a resident of South Bend for the past 38 years I am not unaware of the importance of the university to the local economy and lore), but I do have a profound admiration and respect for the Catholic stance on abortion/life issues. I profoundly regret ND's compromise with agents of the abortion industry (no matter their job title) who will use the university's grandeur to to enhance their standing and "dialogue" with the gullible. As a local taxpayer, I'm also not too happy about the increased burden to the local economy for protection services that such a "presidential" visit will force upon us. Academia, it seems, is as often at odds with Mother Church as it is with good public policy. Shame!

Tony| 3.23.09 @ 10:11AM

I recently finished "God, Country, Notre Dame, " Father Hesburgh's autobiography, albeit 19 years after publication. It would be interesting to hear his views on this invitation. I suspect he might approve, since he approved the choice of Mario Cuomo in 1984 during his tenure as ND's President. Cuomo did more to legitimize the pro-choice position than anyone I know. Interestingly, we hear very little from Mario these days. Oh, if only the same result would ensue for Barack.

Stuart Koehl| 3.23.09 @ 10:33AM

"There is little that distinguishes Notre Dame from the University of Indiana; Georgetown from American University; Holy Cross, Boston College and all the Loyolas have capitulated to secularism."

And is there a problem in this? Why not just get the Church out of the higher education business in the first place? Then, at least, there would be truth in advertising. Moreover, a "Catholic education" really entails a liberal arts orientation, with an emphasis on Great Books. There are a number of independent Catholic liberal arts colleges that provide this very well. On the other hand, there is nothing particularly "Catholic" about polytechnical institutions, of which Notre Dame is one. The number of people who want or need a liberal arts education is severely limited, and such an education is in fact wasted on the majority of students who get liberal arts degrees. On the other hand, there is a tremendous demand for technical and vocational degrees, neither of which lend themselves particularly well to the model of Catholic liberal education.

Universities were started in the West to teach and train clerics; this was continued through the Reformation as Protestant institutions focused on training preachers. I don't think this is what universities do, anymore, so may be the whole idea of religious affiliation needs to be rethought.

As I noted in my first post, in the Patristic Era, the place to go was the Athenian Academy (Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory Nanzianzen, Basil the Great, John Chrysostom and a host of others), which was in outlook and curriculum an overtly pagan institution. The Fathers who attended knew this. They did not care--they merely wanted the best education they could get, knowing precisely who was teaching them and what they believed.

Stuart Koehl| 3.23.09 @ 10:36AM

"The "destruction" of Notre Dame?

Come on. Toughen up a bit. Get a grip."

Have you seen their football team in recent years? Destruction is hardly hyperbole. And I am sure most alumni consider it a greater crisis than Obama speaking at commencement. Do you remember your commencement address? On the other hand, football is really, really, REALLY important.

Bill Hussein O'Stalin| 3.23.09 @ 10:37AM

The article wasn't clear. Was his teleprompter invited also?

MangroveSwampEd| 3.23.09 @ 10:37AM

I see a "senior skip day" coming. And just what honorary degree is being bestowed? Doctor of Trickenology?

KC| 3.23.09 @ 10:44AM

I am a Notre Dame alumnus, and am proud of my University and Father Jenkins for not caving in to the demands of a faction of our country that, in growing increasingly more powerless, is becoming more and more brash in tone.

TennesseeVolunteer| 3.23.09 @ 11:22AM

KC Is the "increasingly more powerless" faction you speak about the innocent aborted children or the growing consensus of people who believe that abortion cannot be good or right?

Francis Beckwith| 3.23.09 @ 11:39AM

KC:

The unborn have always been powerless. So, perhaps those of us who stand for them are becoming more like them. But it's not clear why you would think that an item about which to brag.

One does not measure authentic faith by one's "tone" or "power," since neither carries with it the property of truth. Hence, today we name our children "Paul" and our dogs "Caesar."

Something does not become true because it is spoken by power; rather, one ought to speak truth to power.

CarlPio| 3.23.09 @ 11:41AM

Is there a problem with ND being indistinguishable from other Universities? Of course there is. Whether you are majoring in liberal arts, science, engineering or other disciplines the most important part of “you” is your core beliefs or how you will live your life. You should want a Catholic education because you want your faith nourished in addition to learning a skill. ND’s charter supports that. If you look at the statutes of the University (as amended March 28, 1967), Para V.F.1 states, “The intellectual life of the University should at all times be enlivened and sustained by a devotion to the twin disciplines of theology and philosophy. They are viewed as being central to the University's existence and function. Here the role of the priest-professor can and should be a vital one.” When I went to school, as a Catholic I was required to take 4 semesters of theology and 4 semesters of philosophy. What a novel idea – a Catholic University espousing Catholic beliefs. If you don’t want to get a Catholic education then go to another University. If you want to educate and strengthen your soul and mind then choose a Catholic school like ND – oh wait – I wonder how that’s possible when Fr. Jenkins is giving a forum to a man who is pro-death, which is anathema to what the Catholic Church teaches.

C.S.| 3.23.09 @ 11:49AM

I think that even more disturbing to me is that Obama chose Notre Dame - I would guess that many schools were vying for this "honor". As he managed to deceive some Catholic conservatives and some evangelicals that he was the choice that would reduce abortions, when he is the most pro= abortion absolutist president we have ever had, he is a master of deception. The same is true of Michelle's " outreach to military families" even as her husband tries to take away their medical coverage. He is an extremely cynical and manipulative man, even by politicians' standards.

MangroveSwampEd| 3.23.09 @ 12:03PM

While his "tone" was not brash, Obama's statement that well, ya know, "it was the mother's intention to have an abortion" so the BORN-ALIVE baby should be left to die (and by extension killed if necessary to complete the wish/choice), suggests malevolence.

Tim| 3.23.09 @ 12:32PM

The secularization of Notre Dame can be traced back to Fr. Ted Hesburgh's own hubris. In 1967, Fr. Ted convened all the leading Catholic university bigwigs in the U.S. at what was called the "Land O'Lakes Conference" on property owned by ND in Wisconsin. A key objective: to declare U.S. Catholic universities independent of any Church authority in the name of "academic freedom." Which they did. Thus, over the years, Hesburgh's vision and those of the participants (including the future Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick, last year's ND commencement speaker) has produced the bitter fruit forced upon us today. A theology professor, Cathleen Kaveny, served on Obama's National Catholic Advisory Committee. Much of that advice centered around how Obama could sell his abortion policies to Catholic voters. That Notre Dame and its faculty promotes the culture of death in this country is the ultimate unintended consequence of Father Hesburgh's vision of an independent Catholic university. "Catholic" is now simply a brand at Notre Dame, which it uses for fundraising and othe public relations purposes.

DM in MI, ND'93| 3.23.09 @ 12:36PM

As a conservative, non-Catholic attending Notre Dame I was comforted that the school I was proud to attend took great pains to honor human life despite its liberal leanings as most centers for higher leaning. Sounds like Fr Jenkins is more interested in what other’s think then his church and its doctrines.

Stuart Koehl| 3.23.09 @ 1:35PM

"You should want a Catholic education because you want your faith nourished in addition to learning a skill. "

Define "Catholic Education". Also explain how nourishing one's faith became a responsibility of the university, and not of one's parents, one's parish, and one's self.

“The intellectual life of the University should at all times be enlivened and sustained by a devotion to the twin disciplines of theology and philosophy."

My own experience of this at Georgetown was of unwilling freshmen and sophomores dragged by their pre-requisites into introductory theology and philosophy courses (six credit hours of each, mandatory) taught by bored and resentful professors. In any case, these classes were wasted on 90% of the students, who were either indifferent to the material or lacked both the emotional and intellectual maturity to grapple with it (not for nothing did the Fathers believe no one should study theology before the age of forty!). It was in these classes that I, non-observant Jew that I was, saw young and impressionable Catholic kids become suddenly disillusioned with the pieties of their youth, and by junior year, ready to join the ranks of the skeptical multitude. Had I been one of them, I might have followed suit. God led me in another direction.

labrialumn| 3.23.09 @ 2:22PM

Insofar as changing infallible Roman Catholic doctrine can be determined, abortion is an intrisic evil, where as capital punishment is not, is not a sin, but is considered to be a bad idea with the low levels of evidence required in contemporary jurisprudence.

Whether the American Catholic Church is part of the Roman Catholic Church in practice, is a debatable matter.

There is an authoritative document, ex corde ecclesia which requires what a Roman Catholic university is to be. Places like Notre Dame, Georgetown and Catholic University appear to fail the test. But the Vatican leaves things to local bishops in preference to acting. Local bishops are a very mixed bag with regards to oecumenical Christian orthodoxy, let alone fidelity to the Roman magisterium.

Andrew K. Cuddy| 3.23.09 @ 2:44PM

As a product of a Catholic College (Holy Cross), I am disappointed in N.D. giving Obama this platform, but N.D. abandoned many of its Catholic traditions long ago.

Stuart Koehl apparently did not have a positive experience at Georgetown with the Jesuits. I had the complete opposite experience at Holy Cross where the Jesuits were an integrated part of the college community and helped foster Catholic values not only in me but in those around me. Holy Cross introduced me to the Knights of Columbus, which through my travels has been a constant source of social connection with like-minded souls.

My three brothers also attended Catholic colleges (Siena, LeMoyne, and Niagara), and I have seen the positive impact of Catholic higher education on each of them.

Perhaps Georgetown is just located a bit too close to the securlar influences of D.C. politics.

Stuart Koehl| 3.23.09 @ 2:52PM

"But the Vatican leaves things to local bishops in preference to acting. Local bishops are a very mixed bag with regards to oecumenical Christian orthodoxy, let alone fidelity to the Roman magisterium."

Which is why I would just as soon drop the pretense of these schools being "Catholic".

Stuart Koehl| 3.23.09 @ 2:59PM

"Stuart Koehl apparently did not have a positive experience at Georgetown with the Jesuits. I had the complete opposite experience at Holy Cross where the Jesuits were an integrated part of the college community and helped foster Catholic values not only in me but in those around me. "

It would depend, I suppose, on the year and the school.

"My three brothers also attended Catholic colleges (Siena, LeMoyne, and Niagara), and I have seen the positive impact of Catholic higher education on each of them."

As I said, there are quite a few good, small Catholic liberal arts colleges. In my mind, Catholic higher education is inextricably linked with the liberal arts, and in particular, with a Great Books curriculum. To expect a university to offer the broad range of scientific, technical and vocational subjects far removed from Trivium and Quadrivium, while retaining any semblance of a "Catholic outlook" in my mind is expecting oil and water to mix.

I would also add, though, that as a Byzantine Catholic, I do not think I would find these Catholic liberal arts schools conducive to the further development of my faith. Most are exclusively Latin in their outlook, and at best ambivalent about Eastern Catholic approaches to theology, spirituality and doctrine. I'm very happy that my daughter is presently at a secular university that offers the best possible curriculum in her chosen field of academic endeavor. Her spiritual nourishment comes from the Orthodox Christian Fellowship there, something she would be unlikely to find in the Newman Society.

John II| 3.23.09 @ 3:07PM

Stuart K: My own experience with a Catholic college education was different from yours, almost certainly because I did my undergraduate work almost exactly ten years before you say you did yours. So I'm a little older--and, although not Jewish, I grew up in a secularist home untouched by the routines of a cradle-Catholic upbringing. I feel certain that what you say about the philosophy and theology requirements of Georgetown back in the seventies is largely true. And I am most definitely certain that I myself had no pieties to be "disillusioned with" when I went through the regimen of philosophy and theology requirements at my college in the early sixties.

But my experience was different. Those classes, although of varying quality, alerted me to ways of thinking that I would otherwise never have encountered, so that the loose skepticism you allude to simply became impossible for me (e.g., Aristotle makes hash out of that pose in his treatise On the Soul). The courses left me with an openness and eagerness to learn more about Christianity in general and the Roman Catholic thing in particular. So now my own kids and grandkids are indeed "cradle Catholics," gifted with an energetic piety that I had no opportunity to experience in my own youth.

This God that you and I believe in is really in charge, and in a way that we both hope we'll be able to spend eternity being amazed by. So, in a sense, it doesn't matter that a man like Obama is coming to Notre Dame, because Providence will fit the consequences into His divine plan--always subverting our rotten decisions to His own purposes.

But it does matter that the decision to invite Mr. Obama is a rotten one. It would be fine with me if he were invited to discuss and debate his sociopolitical views. But that's not what the invitation is about.

Mr. Obama is a power-wielding advocate of at least two modernist heresies of particularly heinous consequence to the human good. His advocacy of abortion and infanticide and his superannuated statism are both in direct and violent contradiction to the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church on the matter of human dignity. His shallow glibness and his mendacity should of themselves be reason to give a morally serious college administration pause. But his transparent contempt for human dignity, although not reason enough to decline to invite him to campus for discussion and debate, is more than sufficient reason to decline to extend to him ceremonious honors.

The term "destruction of Notre Dame" is not hyperbole, contrary to the asseveration of the poster called "Jeremiah"; it is rather an instance of the figure called "metonymy," in which "Notre Dame" is taken to mean "Catholic education." By honoring Mr. Obama, the administration of Notre Dame perpetrates a direct assault on Catholic education. As "Tim" points out, it started in the late sixties, and we seem now to have reached the foot of the slippery slope as the "dying light" flickers out among the majority of historically Catholic colleges and universities.

KC| 3.23.09 @ 3:15PM

Francis Beckwith:
Thank you for the non sequiturs. Of course having power is not a sufficient condition for being right.
The point is that the increasing shrillness on the right is a product of their increasing loss of power. They would do us all a favor by presenting public reasons for policy rather than blind ideology about abortion and homosexuality. "Barack Obama murders little babies" is not a reason. It's mere emoting.

Carl Pio| 3.23.09 @ 3:25PM

I sorry that some need definitions of what a "Catholic Education" is, in addition to what nourishing the soul means. If you don’t know then I certainly can’t convince you. What’s the old adage – When it comes to faith, for those who believe no explanation is necessary - for those who don't, no explanation will suffice. Chalk me up on the side of "no explanation necessary", while others – sadly – will fall on the side of “no explanation will suffice.” As for why some get something out of courses like theology and philosophy and some don't. If you go to a class and are bored then it shows a lack of maturity. Wasting the opportunity to grow in mind and spirit is sad indeed – the opportunity is there – take it if you wish. The responsibility of the faith based University, as ND professes to be, is to teach – in addition to secular studies - faith. It builds on what the student already knows which he or she, hopefully learned from their parents, parishes, etc. – isn’t that why one gets an education – to increase ones knowledge? If you don’t want a faith based education then go somewhere else. You know what you are getting into or should – all you have to do is look at the curriculum. But don’t waste the cost of tuition or take the spot of someone who is willing to work, learn, grow, and not be bored.

Helen Donnelly| 3.23.09 @ 3:32PM

Reply to KC:
You are the shrill and brass one. We as American's have every right to voice our opinion and stand up for what we believe in. If that doesn't fall in line with what you believe, than so be it. This is America. We can disagree. And we do....
Helen

Pete| 3.23.09 @ 3:34PM

KC, we'll sugar-coat it for you: Instead of " Barack Obama murders little babies", how about "Barack Obama supports the murder of little babies". Better, or still too "shrill"? We can still water it down some more. Maybe the "little babies" part. How about "viable human fetuses"? Still to shrill?

Pete| 3.23.09 @ 3:43PM

...It's the "murder" part, right?

Stuart Koehl| 3.23.09 @ 4:15PM

"The point is that the increasing shrillness on the right is a product of their increasing loss of power."

I haven't noticed much by way of shrillness on the right. On the other hand, KC's post appears to be the only example of shrillness here. Projection has always been a prominent coping mechanism among liberals.

Red Phillips| 3.23.09 @ 4:16PM

""Barack Obama murders little babies" is not a reason. It's mere emoting."

KC, you are right. That is not an accurate statement. Barack Obama thinks it should be legal for other people to murder their babies. There. That's better.

A University can not be Catholic or Protestant for that matter and "command respect" from its liberal academic peers. You have to choose. Either you are explicitly Christian or you are not. You can't have it both ways. I am more aware of the situation with certain Baptist colleges, many of which have gone the way of the Catholic colleges before them. Baylor, Wake Forest, Mercer, Furman, etc. (FB knows about Baylor.)

Notice I did not say that explicitly Christian colleges can not provide excellent, broad, liberal (in the original sense) educations. Just that they can not be committed to the teaching, defense and propagation of the Faith and command the respect of the modern secularistic academy. If they think they can they are fooling themselves. It is foolish to try.

Stuart Koehl| 3.23.09 @ 4:22PM

"I sorry that some need definitions of what a "Catholic Education" is".

I beg pardon. As an historian, I know the history of the university and its deep roots in the medieval Catholic Church. However, the meaning of Catholic education has changed substantially over the centuries, and continues to evolve, so it would be good to have a precise definition of what people mean by "Catholic education" right now.

Certainly, as a Byzantine Catholic, my perception of what such an education ought to involve is a bit different than that of, say, a Latin Catholic with deep Thomistic roots. What ought to be read, what ought to be taught, would differ between us because, though we are both Catholic, we belong to different particular Churches, with different spiritual patrimonies, and differing Traditions.

It is our frustration with the limitations of "Catholic education" to the Tradition of the Western Church that has caused a number of Eastern Catholics to begin work towards the creation of a uniquely Eastern Catholic great books college. As might be expected, our greatest hurdle is funding, followed closely by affordable facilities. Our plight is made worse by the fragmentation of the Eastern Catholic Churches into a number of different autonomous Churches following several different rites. If we could overcome our own internal differences, we would be farther along on this endeavor.

That said, I think the number of people who could really benefit from an Eastern Catholic liberal arts education is extremely limited, just as is the number of people who could benefit from a classical Catholic education. Like Charles Murray, I think far too many people go to college, in any case.

MangroveSwampEd| 3.23.09 @ 4:41PM

No, KC, a man who proclaims compassion and empathy for every hard luck story (orchestrated by his people), and in the same breath says it is OK to kill a LIVE baby, is a man with no conscience. A man with no conscience is capable of great harm.
There must have been a lot of logic and no "emoting" as the Germans methodically kept track of all the goodies and gold teeth they extracted from their victims. Oh, and the Germans had a program of FORCED abortions for those women carrying "handicapped" babies. Obama's Special Olympics "joke" is from the same mindset.

Anthony Sarro| 3.23.09 @ 4:49PM

If the Pope shows strength by not giving Pelosi a photo shot and sending a message to the world on Catholic beliefs then then Father Jenk9ins needs to follow the Pope and refuse Obama to speak. The Catholic Church must not let Obama's policies and liberal ways over shadow the Catholic beliefs.

Sherene| 3.23.09 @ 5:10PM

This article, and its opinions, are utterly ridiculous, overblown, and, for lack of a better description, ignorant beyond belief. I didn't need to go any further than the belittling of Obama's major achievement -- overcoming closemindedness and bigotry to reach the highest office in the land -- to realize that clearly, there remains quite a different type of bigotry and narrowmindedness that we still must fight to overcome. Citing to a fictional god does not make your religiously motivated hatred of others acceptable.

Thomas| 3.23.09 @ 5:29PM

Sherene you miss the point. It would be no less tragic if Notre Dame were to invite Joe Biden, Ted Kennedy, Nancy Polosi, or any other politician pandering to those that want the right to terminate life, much less provide federal funding to do so. Obama's skin color and historic accomplishment doesn't give him a pass. It is racially bigotted to expect less from Obama's morals because of his hue.

Carter| 3.23.09 @ 5:33PM

What a fine University that would be: one that only allows the podium to those that agree with its positions!

Sherene| 3.23.09 @ 5:40PM

I do not expect less. I think President Obama has his opinions, which he is perfectly entitled to hold, that he was duly elected by the people of this country to enact the principles upon which he based his campaign, and that his achievement in so doing is something worthy of deep acknowledgement and respect in light of this country's racially divided history. That you disagree with him on some, or even all, of those opinions is no excuse for a nationally recognized university, heralded as a place of intellectual pursuit and growth, to demand in the shrill tones of the author and others commenting on this list, that he be shunned rather than acknowledged as a man whose accomplishments and thoughts are worthy of hearing, if only so that his opponents will be able to mount a coherent and rational argument against his positions. It is not Father Jenkins' job to "protect" the thoughtful and intelligent adults who attend Notre Dame from hearing the words of individuals who have accomplished great things and who, for better or for worse, will affect the political and social environment of this country and the world for years to come. If Father Jenkins thought that was his job, he would be betraying the highest goal of education and the very definition of a university as a place to promote honest and intellectual discourse on every topic. So, no, I am not a racial bigot. I would, however, suggest that some of the comments on this list are nothing short of religious bigotry.

Red Phillips| 3.23.09 @ 5:48PM

Sherene, it is Father Jenkins' job to protect his institution from being used for the furtherance of evil.

Carter, I answered your objection in the pingback above.

"I don’t think Notre Dame necessarily needs to ensure that their commencement speaker agrees with ever facet of Catholic doctrine, but the symbolism of this is just so obvious and bad. It is one more instance of the further co-opting of nominal Christianity by the “religious left.” This is the same reason I opposed Obama’s invitation to speak at Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church. There is nothing wrong with dialogue per se, but it was another photo and press release opportunity that sent a horrible message.

And don’t think Obama doesn’t understand this. I am sure he got many commencement invites. By picking Notre Dame he is consciously sticking a thumb in the eye of an institution (the Catholic Church) that ought to be providing resistance to his transformative program."

John II| 3.23.09 @ 5:49PM

The mindset on display in the "Sherene" and "Carter" postings sums up the degraded intellectual condition of Notre Dame's administration: missing the point and ignoring dissenting arguments and specific distinctions. The technical term for such illogic is "ignoratio elenchi"--a term doubtless unknown to contemporary college administrators, who are merely practiced in the mental dodges to which the term refers.

Robert S. Rosencrans| 3.23.09 @ 5:52PM

When you pay for someone's murder, it's usually referred to as a Mob hit.

Sherene| 3.23.09 @ 5:56PM

John II, what is the issue in question, dissenting argument, specific distinction, whatever Greek term you choose to use, that I have missed?

Sherene| 3.23.09 @ 6:04PM

Red Phillips --
Allowing Obama to speak is NOT the furtherance of evil. This is what I meant by overblown -- bringing a President, one who holds MANY views and represents MANY positions to speak at a graduation to ADULTS, who are, for the most part, not impressionable idiots who believe everything that they are told, is decidedly not the "furtherance of evil." Father Jenkins has already said, to anyone who cares to listen, that the University does not endorse Obama's positions on abortion and stem cell research. I objected to President Bush's positions on torture, the death penalty, foreign policy... more items than I care to list here. I had, and still have, ZERO objections to his presence and speech at a University commencement a few years ago. Giving a president of this country the podium is not the furtherance of anything but discourse and discussion. Unfortunately, those things seem to you to be the very deathknell of all things religious. If one's religious beliefs cannot withstand hearing them talked about by someone of another opinion, they are probably not worth too much, are they?

gregorbo| 3.23.09 @ 6:08PM

I interviewed an ND grad for a job once. I asked him--"What made you choose Notre Dame?" He said, "Well, I was in high school and I wanted to continue in my Catholic formation and so wanted to go to a Catholic school."

"Well, why didn't you then?" I asked. . . .

John II| 3.23.09 @ 6:12PM

Hi Sherene. Actually, it's a Latin term, although the Romans from whom we get it swiped it from Aristotle. And I didn't "choose to use" it. I applied it correctly to the situation. If a barn is painted red, I don't choose to call it red.

Several postings following the article (excluding some, such as your own) present real arguments directed to the issue. If your own choice is to ignore or skim them (and the shrillness of your own tone suggests that that's all you've done), I can't be of service. But if your question isn't merely rhetorical, try reading the article and the responses (ALL the responses, Sherene) for answers to your question. Then, if you don't agree with the answers, say so and explain why, with or without the ad hominem ranting to which you so far have exhibited a fondness, if not a preference.

Sherene| 3.23.09 @ 6:21PM

Or, John II, you could just tell me what YOUR issue is that you think I'm ignoring, and I can respond to that. There are a great number of comments on here touching on numerous topics, not all of which I am concerned with (such as the benefits of Eastern Catholic approaches to theology) and so chose not to address. So, just let me know when you can articulate the position you claim I am ignoring, and I'll get right to it. And you did "choose to use" the term, and chose to use it inaccurately. Claiming that my response to one, or two positions that I found most egregious was a failure to address the one you have apparently designated as the "real" one, is a snide waste of a comment. But at least you got to display your Latin skills.

gregorbo| 3.23.09 @ 6:59PM

Hi Sherene--

For serious Catholics, the issue hear is not really President Obama's speech--heck, I don't think it's really his policy positions on abortion or embryonic stem cell research. (Then again, I'm not speaking for Catholics for whom the issue is his positions and policies). It's not Obama at all. It is, for Catholics, about the Catholic Church (Roman, Western).

For many, the Catholic Church, especially in the U.S., has failed in its pastoral duty not only to defend the teachings of the Magestarium, but to even pass them along to the next generation. Thankfully, the appearance during JPII's pontificate of the Catechism of the Catholic Church has acted quickly as an antidote for lay catholics over and against the theological, doctrinal, and liturgical rot that has been substituted for geniune orthodoxy for 40 plus years.

So, Notre Dame is a different kind of contradiction here: It is a "Catholic" university only up to the boundary between the religious and the secular. At that threshhold, it sets its Catholicism aside in deference to those who believe things contrary to Church teaching--thereby signalling its unwillingness to offer a vigorous defense of the faith.

I would agree with you regarding academic freedom and the liberal virtue of making our universities places were open debate is allowed and encouraged. In that case, I would applaud Notre Dame's invitation to the President to come to the University in order to debate members of the faculty on the questions of the dignity of human life, abortion, and stem-cell research.

But Notre Dame is not doing that. It is offering Mr. Obama a prominent, public platform from which he will espouse whatever views he wishes to espouse--and this gives the appearance of support of those views (not just the idea of his right to express them). Furthermore, the conferring of an honorary degree seems to confirm that Notre Dame's lip-service to "not honoring" all of Mr. Obama's views is just that--lip-service.

Whyn't split the baby--invite him to speak but refuse to grant him an honorary degree?

John II| 3.23.09 @ 7:06PM

Hi again Sherene. But your response wasn't to "one or two" positions. Your energetic broadside was explicitly addressed to the whole kit-and-kaboodle.

Okay, let's see . . . try reading Thunder's piece more carefully . . . then read the 12:32 posting of "Tim" and then read the 3:07 posting of some dude who calls himself "John II" (whatever that means--probably to distinguish himself from John the Evangelist or something: geez, what an ego).

Anyhow, I hope you're as young as you sound, Sherene, and will eventually grow out of the habit of projecting snideness and the kind of certitude that inspires expressions like "fictional god." I also hope you're not a college administrator. I really, really, REALLY hope you're not THAT! As Napoleon Dynamite would say, Gosh!

Sherene| 3.23.09 @ 7:47PM

Hahaha :) I think you are pretty funny, John II. I think it's pretty amusing that you say I am "projecting" snideness when you mock my apparent age and cite to none other than Napoleon Dynamite to express your disdain for my youthful opinions. I actually have not seen the movie, so apologies if I misconstrue your reference. In return, I hope you are not as old and contemptuous of people with younger and, I guess, more radical opinions than you hold.

Point 1: I am certain that there is no god, that the god mentioned in this article and comments over and over again is fictional. Since I am certain, I see no reason to beat about the bush.

Point 2: I read Thunder's piece. In fact, I directly quoted it in my first posting. I disagree with his position that Father Jenkins miscalculated the benefits of inviting the President to speak on campus, for the reasons I have already discussed (the fostering of debate and discussion, Obama's position and role in shaping the world in which we live, etc). In fact, in deference to your posting, I took the time to read it AGAIN. Lo and behold, my opinions have not changed.

Point 3: I also read Tim's post. I did not respond to it because I see absolutely no problem with the "secularization" of Notre Dame. I think it is a good thing. I think, as another poster alluded to, that the institution must choose between being a place of intellectual pursuit or a place of Catholic indoctrination. The two ARE incompatible. Wherever religious doctrine and dogma has honestly and solidly come up against intellectual discovery, it has failed. An unrelated point -- how Tim can describe Professor Kaveny of the law school as one who "promotes the culture of death" is kind of beyond me. I know Professor Kaveny, and as a result I also know that Tim 12:32 has no idea what he is talking about.

Point 4: Finally, to the opinionating of the oh-so-modest John II. I actually have no problem with your position, and the one articulated by Gregorbo, that Obama not be granted an honorary degree. I disagree with you, but I have no problem with your argument. And if that precise issue made up the bulk of the mass protests I have read about online today, then I would not be posting. In fact, you may have noticed that I chose to primarily address the article, which mentions the issue of the degree only tangentially and instead rages on about platforms and Obama's perniciousness, rather than your worthy posting. Again, I disagree. I do not think an honorary degree from Notre Dame to a man who has accomplished much and inspired many need indicate a wholehearted approval and sanction for everything the man thinks and does. Father Jenkins has already said that, and I agree.

Looking forward to more quotes from the inane movies you apparently watch...

Regards,
the "Young (GASP!" one.

Jack Hughes ND '59| 3.23.09 @ 7:48PM

In 1924, Notre Dame students, faculty and alumni threw the KKK out of South Bend - it's time for Jenkins and his ilk to go!

Stuart Koehl| 3.23.09 @ 8:16PM

"I am certain that there is no god, that the god mentioned in this article and comments over and over again is fictional. "

How can you be so sure? It always struck me that atheism required a much greater leap of faith than any sort of theism, particularly in light of the catastrophic consequences of being wrong.

"I think it is a good thing. I think, as another poster alluded to, that the institution must choose between being a place of intellectual pursuit or a place of Catholic indoctrination. The two ARE incompatible."

Appreciate not having you put words in my mouth, thanks. Or perhaps my thought is too subtle for the sledgehammer that passes for your intellect? What I actually said was, it is not possible for a school to be both a center of traditional Catholic liberal arts education and also a polytechnical/vocational university. I said nothing at all about Catholic indoctrination, and at its best, traditional Catholic teaching approaches are as far from indoctrination as one can get. In fact, all of Western science, all institutions of higher education, trace their roots to the medieval Catholic university. To be crude, one should not crap in one's own nest, which is what you are doing.

"I do not think an honorary degree from Notre Dame to a man who has accomplished much and inspired many need indicate a wholehearted approval and sanction for everything the man thinks and does. "

This is quite funny. I underestimated your wit and sense of humor. Please enlighten us all--what has the Big O actually done in his life, other than show up, look cool, talk suave and walk off?

John II| 3.23.09 @ 8:18PM

Hi even yet again, Sherene. Well, I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree.

But if you haven't seen "Napoleon Dynamite," how do you know it's inane? Gosh!

Professor Obama got elected President of the United States by spending $600,000,000 dollars and running against a tired old war hero. What else has he "accomplished"? Or it that all you mean by "much"?

"Oh, sometimes I think I will just go mad!" (Groucho Marx quoting Greta Garbo, 1929: bet you haven't seen that one either.)

And now back to my regular fix of Abbott and Costello.

Stuart Koehl| 3.23.09 @ 8:35PM

"But if you haven't seen "Napoleon Dynamite," how do you know it's inane? Gosh!"

It's enough to make ya use a flippin' 12-gauge, whaddya think!

Gino| 3.23.09 @ 8:41PM

No matter how you say it; Obama is for abortion during all nine months, letting aborted babies die if the abortion does not work, is for destroying embryonic stem cells, is for gay marriage so yes it makes sense that Fr. Jenkins would invite him to ND. ND is NOT a "CATHOLIC" College any longer and should just stop the travesty and no longer call itself "OUR LADY".

John II| 3.23.09 @ 8:43PM

Hey, Stu. I think, I think . . . I think I'd rather be in Philadelphia. I hate arguing with kids! They just treat me like I'm some kinda old idiot or something. And then I get all snide and they call me on it because they expect more out of old idiots, or something.

As Lou Costello would say, "I'm a baaaaaad boy!"

Sherene| 3.23.09 @ 8:59PM

The "sledgehammer that passes for my intellect," eh? I appear to have struck a nerve :).

No, atheism does not require quite the leap of faith that religion does. I think it takes a far greater leap of faith to pick one story out of the thousands produced by human history and believe it as slavishly as truly religious people do, unwavering despite the mountains of scientific evidence emerging every day that proves it is just plain nonsense. And it is particularly offensive to hear that I should believe it just in case the impossible turns out to be true. If one's religious faith is based purely on the terror that comes from bedtime stories, then it is a pretty pathetic faith indeed. I choose not to base my life or my choices on a "just in case" philosophy based on fear. Religion is an artifact of times when we had nothing to explain our universe or our presence on this planet. I have considered the question thoughtfully, and I do not see the existence of a god, particularly the versions of him adopted by the world's most prominent religions, as a necessary element of the world that I experience (or, for that matter, even a desirable element).

Second, I was not quoting you, or putting words in your mouth. Hence my use of the word "allude."

Finally, I do agree with you that technical and vocational degrees (or, as I like to call them, scientific degrees) do not lend themselves to the model of Catholic education. This is because science, and facts, have succeeded far better than religion has at explaining our universe and finding useful applications for it. Religion cannot compete with science, because science is not dogma and is forever open to new information and newly discovered truths, while religion is based on the absence of those things. Religion depends on things being unexplainable. That is why it does not "lend itself" to that type of learning. You're quite right; a Catholic liberal arts education is one
that belongs in a curriculum of Great Books, surrounded by the fiction that so religion well represents.

Best,
Sherene (a liberal arts major)

Sherene| 3.23.09 @ 9:08PM

One thing I forgot -- if you don't think that the son of a Kenyan father and a white mother has accomplished anything of real significance by uniting people of diverse backgrounds and ethnicity and culture on the path to the presidency of the most powerful country on earth, where I believe he is exerting a real and sincere effort to make the United States a better place to live.... your kids are going to have some serious problems pleasing Daddy. It takes money to run for president, yes. It also takes something more than that when you are the most unlikely candidate in a nation with a history of slavery, Jim Crow and economic class warfare. Otherwise, we might have a President Romney.

vatvince37| 3.23.09 @ 9:34PM

Three years ago on this webzine, in response to an article about Father Jenkins allowing The Vagina Monologues to be shown at ND, I questioned that university designation as a "Catholic" school. I still do. It is thoroughly tiresome to read many of the tracts submitted, for they lack any idea of what it means to be "Catholic." Clearly, Sherene's responses fall into that category. Please allow this clarification: the fact that abortion has been condemned since the Church's origins - despite what Pelosi, Biden, et al. say - and then to conflate it with capital punishment is an exercise that must have the Church's Doctors spinning in their respective graves. None other than Justice Scalia has commented that if the death penatly were forbidden by the Magisterium, he would have no recourse but to resign. Finally, I find it of interest that, despite the hand wringing, few cite the real, proximate cause for the Church's decline. No, the Land-of-Lakes Conference was symptomatic of a Church in decline, but the damage done by Vatican II lives on, more than forty years after it ended. Truly, the smoke of Satan has entered the sanctuary!
Factum est.

gregorbo| 3.23.09 @ 9:45PM

Sherene--

Thanks for engaging in this debate. It's what we need. And thanks to John II and others as well.

Sherene--you wrote, categorically, "Wherever religious doctrine and dogma has honestly and solidly come up against intellectual discovery, it has failed."

This is plainly not true. Take the case of Galileo and Copernicus. Briefly, Copernicus posited a theory that flew in the face of Catholic theological doctrine rooted in Biblical tradition about the make-up of the physical universe. He wrote his treatise, and fearing repercussions, it was only published after he died (with a disclaimer that it was only theory and made no pretense to theology or doctrine).

Galileo, experimenting independently, was aware of Copernican theory and, after inventing the telescope, proved Capernicus to be right.

Popular historical revisionism holds that Galileo was put under house arrest for his proof of Copernican theory. But this is factually not true.

Galileo was actually related to the Pope (one of the Urbans, if memory serves) who warned him not to pick theological fights based upon scientific theory--which properly seeks to answer the question "how?" not "why?", which is the province of philosophy, not science.

But Galileo persisted and persuaded a publisher to imprint a treatise in Italian with the Papal Imprimator--it was for this he was charged and placed under house arrest and it was for this he recanted at the end of his life. He did not recant his theories, he recanted (if that's the right canonical term) his defiance and lie (in violating the law in convincing a printer that he had Papal approval when he did not).

Be that as it may--I realize that since you are an atheist, this all seems a bit silly, and I respect that--the Catholic Church, after much reflection, realized the error of her ways in terms of Galileo's ideas about the makeup of the physical universe and removed his works from the list of books that were "anathema" to the faith.

Okay. But--intellectual disagreements regarding certain topics that are illucidated by science are a fair cry from an argument about abortion or stem-cell research. Why? Because scientists are in complete agreement about when human life begins--it begins at the moment of conception, at which point it is scientifically verifiable that the bundle of fetal material is genetically unique and can do no other, without being molested, become anything other than a fully developed human being.

Catholic moral teaching has remained consistent on this moral issue throughout the entire history of its teaching. And it is science that has only recently verified that the Catholic Church's stance, morally, actually rests upon firm scientific grounds. When a person decides to abort a developing embryo from the worm--or creates one in order to subject it to death for the benefit of scientific progress--the material that is sacrificed is genetically individual and unique. A person, in that case, is not making a "choice" about her own body, but about someone else's body (according to the entirely consistent Catholic and scientific view).

Modern scientific progress does not contradict the Catholic intellectual tradition vis-a-vis truth--it actually confirms it.

So your categorizing all "religious" thought as "losing" in the arena of dogma versus science is wrong as a matter of fact (not faith).

And, finally, the major logical "leap" that is made as a result of scientific experimentation, a process of theory tested against consistently repeated results, is called induction (not deduction, which is abstract knowledge, as in math, and is demonstrable). Induction requires, *surprise* a leap of faith--just like in religion. That is, I know the sun will rise in the East tomorrow because the cumulative experience of mankind throughout its history has observed that that's what it always does.

Except, as you know from your Copernicus and Galileao, the sun does not rise.

And, besides, it might not--as Al Gore has been preaching for some time now . . .

gregorbo| 3.23.09 @ 9:46PM

Sherene--

Thanks for engaging in this debate. It's what we need. And thanks to John II and others as well.

Sherene--you wrote, categorically, "Wherever religious doctrine and dogma has honestly and solidly come up against intellectual discovery, it has failed."

This is plainly not true. Take the case of Galileo and Copernicus. Briefly, Copernicus posited a theory that flew in the face of Catholic theological doctrine rooted in Biblical tradition about the make-up of the physical universe. He wrote his treatise, and fearing repercussions, it was only published after he died (with a disclaimer that it was only theory and made no pretense to theology or doctrine).

Galileo, experimenting independently, was aware of Copernican theory and, after inventing the telescope, proved Capernicus to be right.

Popular historical revisionism holds that Galileo was put under house arrest for his proof of Copernican theory. But this is factually not true.

Galileo was actually related to the Pope (one of the Urbans, if memory serves) who warned him not to pick theological fights based upon scientific theory--which properly seeks to answer the question "how?" not "why?", which is the province of philosophy, not science.

But Galileo persisted and persuaded a publisher to imprint a treatise in Italian with the Papal Imprimator--it was for this he was charged and placed under house arrest and it was for this he recanted at the end of his life. He did not recant his theories, he recanted (if that's the right canonical term) his defiance and lie (in violating the law in convincing a printer that he had Papal approval when he did not).

Be that as it may--I realize that since you are an atheist, this all seems a bit silly, and I respect that--the Catholic Church, after much reflection, realized the error of her ways in terms of Galileo's ideas about the makeup of the physical universe and removed his works from the list of books that were "anathema" to the faith.

Okay. But--intellectual disagreements regarding certain topics that are illucidated by science are a fair cry from an argument about abortion or stem-cell research. Why? Because scientists are in complete agreement about when human life begins--it begins at the moment of conception, at which point it is scientifically verifiable that the bundle of fetal material is genetically unique and can do no other, without being molested, become anything other than a fully developed human being.

Catholic moral teaching has remained consistent on this moral issue throughout the entire history of its teaching. And it is science that has only recently verified that the Catholic Church's stance, morally, actually rests upon firm scientific grounds. When a person decides to abort a developing embryo from the worm--or creates one in order to subject it to death for the benefit of scientific progress--the material that is sacrificed is genetically individual and unique. A person, in that case, is not making a "choice" about her own body, but about someone else's body (according to the entirely consistent Catholic and scientific view).

Modern scientific progress does not contradict the Catholic intellectual tradition vis-a-vis truth--it actually confirms it.

So your categorizing all "religious" thought as "losing" in the arena of dogma versus science is wrong as a matter of fact (not faith).

And, finally, the major logical "leap" that is made as a result of scientific experimentation, a process of theory tested against consistently repeated results, is called induction (not deduction, which is abstract knowledge, as in math, and is demonstrable). Induction requires, *surprise* a leap of faith--just like in religion. That is, I know the sun will rise in the East tomorrow because the cumulative experience of mankind throughout its history has observed that that's what it always does.

Except, as you know from your Copernicus and Galileao, the sun does not rise.

And, besides, it might not--as Al Gore has been preaching for some time now . . .

gregorbo| 3.23.09 @ 10:10PM

oops---"womb" not "worm." And plus, not exactly sure how I managed to post that missive twice. My apologies. I beg forgiveness.

Sherene| 3.23.09 @ 10:16PM

Hi Gregorbo,

Many thanks for your thoughtful response. I appreciate it.

To clarify, when I said that where religious doctrine has come up against intellectual discovery it has failed, I did not mean to say that religion has never given ground to science. Forgive me if I am misreading you, but you seem to be saying that because the pope eventually conceded that Galileo and Copernicus had a point, religion deserves some kind of credit for that. Religion has been pretty much dragged, kicking and screaming, into the universe as we now know it, thanks to science and discovery. Yes, the church has admitted that it was wrong. I'm glad it has done so, but doesn't this demonstrate quite precisely the opposite of what Catholic teaching holds to be absolute truth -- the infallibility of the church? Where through the scientific process we have identified a cause for some phenomena that contradicts with established religious doctrine, science pretty much universally (at least, I cannot think of a single contrary example) has been battled and fought by religion, until the latter is forced to eventually give way.

On the other hand, I do not find the fact that occasionally, religion has been on the right side of science, to be a factor advocating for its truth. I have no issue with the entirely consistent position that if we can agree life begins at conception, then terminating such a life is murder. There is a clear scientific basis, as you said, for determining the beginning of human life. Religion seems to be an utterly unnecessary element in the equation. The fact that the church has remained consistent on the position adds absolutely nothing to the issue, since there are numerous examples of the church's remarkable consistency with regard to moral concerns that we would today plainly acknowledge as flat-out wrong. If you mean to say that science cannot disprove god, that is true. Science is particularly inept at proving the absence of pink fairies flying around the room as well, but I don't think the fairies have won out against science as a result.

Finally, to your point about a "leap of faith." I am not a scientist, and am not extremely well-versed in the appropriate terms to use. However, I don't think it is accurate to define my belief that I will perceive the sun rising tomorrow as a leap of faith. I think it will happen because I have seen it happen and the contrary has, to our knowledge, never occurred. I do not know that it will happen, and I don't claim to. If it doesn't happen, I will adjust my views on the planet, gravity, the solar system, etc., accordingly. I don't think that qualifies as a leap of faith, particularly as compared to the mental gymnastics one has to go through to conclude that Christianity, or Islam, or Judaism, flawed and incorrect and historically inaccurate as they have been shown to be, is the one true path to "heaven."

Best,
Sherene

Stuart Koehl| 3.23.09 @ 10:33PM

"One thing I forgot -- if you don't think that the son of a Kenyan father and a white mother has accomplished anything of real significance by uniting people of diverse backgrounds and ethnicity and culture on the path to the presidency of the most powerful country on earth, where I believe he is exerting a real and sincere effort to make the United States a better place to live.... your kids are going to have some serious problems pleasing Daddy. "

I've known people who have accomplished much, much more while overcoming far more serious obstacles, sorry. I am not impressed at all by a man whose only accomplishment to date is barely winning an election that almost anyone else would have won by a landslide. Moreover, I do believe that, when it comes to actually accomplishing something substantive, his resume is a bit thin, and his actions in office so far don't show much evidence of underlying competence.

John II| 3.23.09 @ 11:24PM

Even again hi, Sherene. Sorry I didn't get back earlier, but I was studying a Laurel and Hardy movie.

I knew it. I KNEW IT! And I get credit for knowing it. Your beautiful response to the good "Gregorbo" charmed me almost witless. But I KNEW it. I knew the passion that was coming through your rants. (Heck, I'm a parent, a grandparent, and a teacher: I've seen it a hundred times.) Have a care, Sherene, or you might wind up becoming a Christian.

One point to keep in mind, please. The really distinctive thing about the Christian/Catholic faith, among all the "religions of the world" (to use a particularly fatuous expression found in such fields as anthropology) is its apostolic character. More than any other faith of my acquaintance (and I did the usual searching thing many, many years ago) Christianity depends for its viability on example. Christ himself is an example--God made intelligible to human understanding. And the Church Christ has given us depends on the example of its stewards. Which is why the Church practically goes ballistic over matters of scandal, which Church history is peppered with.

When you say, for example, that you are certain there is no "god," I suspect that what you're really certain of is that x-number of Christians you've met are jackasses.

So add Walker Percy and Flannery O'Connor to your own reading list, and quit interrupting me. I have to get back to Laurel and Hardy.

Don L| 3.24.09 @ 4:49AM

Abort one for the gipper?

Stuart Koehl| 3.24.09 @ 5:36AM

"No, atheism does not require quite the leap of faith that religion does."

Keep telling yourself, and someday you might believe it. But it will never be true.

CarlPio| 3.24.09 @ 6:11AM

Sorry I left - sounds like things got pretty interesting-

“I beg pardon. As an historian, I know the history of the university and its deep roots in the medieval Catholic Church. However, the meaning of Catholic education has changed substantially over the centuries, and continues to evolve, so it would be good to have a precise definition of what people mean by "Catholic education" right now.”

Well as a practicing Roman Catholic I am unapologetic. I live my faith (sometimes not as well as I should – thank God for the sacrament of Reconciliation) and also continue my studies of my church. The core values of the Catholic faith has not changed over the millennia – Love God and your neighbor (Matthew 22:34-40). Even the murder of the innocence has been Catholic doctrine since the early days (DIDACHE APOSTOLORUM - 90 A.D - You shall not kill by abortion the fruit of the womb and you shall not murder the infant already born). I could go on but I will leave that up to the theologians in the crowd. The infallible God, I and others on this blog worship, made the church; however, fallible man runs it so we see “sea changes” down through the years – I guess some Catholic Universities, as mentioned here have become like the Church of Laodicea – neither hot or cold but lukewarm. I don’t know what they tough at other universities but I do know what the use to teach at ND – a good “Catholic Education” one where the core values of the Roman Catholic Church are taught to those who are open minded and willing to learn. P.S – thanks for those who mentioned what Fr. Hesburgh was into after I left ND (66). Very enlightening.

Stuart Koehl| 3.24.09 @ 7:03AM

Mr. Pio has not really answered my question. Moreover, his attempt at a definition essentially makes Catholic education an extension of catechesis, which I am pretty sure it is not. At its best, Catholic education is or ought to be a continuation of classical education informed by a Catholic worldview--something which certainly goes far beyond "one where the core values of the Roman Catholic Church are taught to those who are open-minded and willing to learn". I point out that the core values of the "Roman Catholic Church" are the common patrimony of all Christians, and could be found, e.g., at Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, Yale and other distinctly non-Catholic schools well into the last century.

Regarding the "Roman Catholic" label, I do hope Mr. Pio is not implying that "Roman Catholic" = "Real Catholic", because, as I mentioned, the Catholic Church is a communion of twenty two particular Churches (Ecclesiae sui juris), of which only one is Western or Latin. We Eastern Catholics share in the "kata holon" of the Church, through our own unique liturgical, spiritual, theological and doctrinal Traditions, which, according to the Vatican II Decree on the Oriental Churches (Orientalium ecclesiarum) are equal in grace and dignity to the Latin Church. That's one more reason why linking too closely the notion of Catholic education with the Latin Church just won't do.

CarlPio| 3.24.09 @ 7:24AM

Mr. Koehl - I believe you are missing the point entirely - a Catholic Education is just that - educating one in the Catholic faith. You, Sir, are making something so simple - complicated. Or are you doing that on purpose? I don’t know what your agenda is but I know what I and my fellow classmates at ND got – a good, strong, Catholic Education. I’m sorry that where you matriculated that wasn’t the case, as you so wrote. I also suggest you try not to put words into someone else’s mouth - very impolite and not very Christian or would you prefer not very Roman Catholic.

Stuart Koehl| 3.24.09 @ 8:43AM

Mr. Pio,

It is not that I do not understand, it is that I reject your definition as being too narrow by half. An education in the Catholic faith is, at best, just half of a Catholic education, which is, or ought to be, an immersion in Catholic culture. A culture, by the way, that encompasses a great deal more than the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

thoms| 3.24.09 @ 8:58AM

Every pro-life conservative person who is against social tax policices must be willing either to take a developmentally disabled person into their home or a single mother and her child into her home. Otherwise, our words are empty rhetoric and hypocrisy.

CarlPio| 3.24.09 @ 9:05AM

Mr. Koehl,

I think you and I are starting to be in violent agreement on this issue. The University of Notre Dame du Lac was founded by Roman Catholic Priests. So you would guess that Roman Catholic religion would be stressed – which is true. A chapel in every dorm, Mass celebrated daily, a priest on every floor, confessions heard, there is even a seminary (Moreau Seminary) on Campus if one wants to study for religious life. Talk about immersion. However, that was only part of the ND experience. The theology classes I was required to take spanned whole spectrum of Catholic religions, in addition to other faiths. Also, admission to ND was/is never based on religion but rather academic excellence (or whether you are a 4 or 5 HS football star-I wish) so a number of my friends at school, in addition to being football fanatics were, Jews, Protestants, Buddhist, and even some Greek Orthodox thrown in. What a marvelous experience – again it sounds like you didn’t enjoy the same theological education and religious immersion I did. After I graduated I entered the AF (flew fighters) and traveled the world over. I never thought the very broad religious education I got while at ND would every play a functional part in my life, but I was so wrong. Besides helping me through some pretty rough combat experiences, that background helped me in a number of different countries around the world where I had a better understanding of the people I met.

yo| 3.24.09 @ 9:12AM

you guys are nuts.
ND already has the "vagina monologues" and 'queer film festival".
ND is already gone and you just don't know it.

RBertinelli| 3.24.09 @ 9:12AM

The "Premier Catholic" Institution is personifying what Bishop Joseph Martino of the Diocese of Scranton, PA calls "Cafeteria Catholicism." Perhaps "Father" John Jenkins should look to Bishop Martino for guidance.

My husband's hopes for our boys to be graduates of Notre Dame have forever been dismissed by this decision. There are plenty of other fine "Catholic" Universities that are willing to stand by their faith!

Rosemary Bertinelli

Fred| 3.24.09 @ 9:52AM

"(Frankly, there is no other achievement in his biography.) "

That's an interesting POV - first black editor of Harvard Law Review, Il. state legislator, US Senator, Constitutional professor, Civil Rights Lawyer, author of two best selling books - sounds like nothing - right?

Steve | 3.24.09 @ 10:31AM

As an '84 Notre Dame graduate, it is sad to see how far the university has strayed in the last 25 years.

My question is, How will Obama's presence or speach enhance the '09 graduates' ability to adhere to and uphold the Catholic faith and traditions?

Rather than offering an honorary degree, Fr. Jenkins should offer an invitation to RCIA, so the duped one might be saved from perdition for his essentially evil policies.

Unfortunately, such policies will bring the nation to ruin for how can the Blessed Trinity protect our nation if our nation fails to protect the unborn.

Obama's invitation to speak at a Catholic university despite his clearly immoral policies epitomizes the signs of the times.

gregorbo| 3.24.09 @ 10:45AM

Sherene--Wow, things really have picked up. My point re: scientific induction is that at the end of the experiment, we can only infer that what has happened for x number of times will continue to happen, all things remaining equal (which means that there's always a caveat tacked on to any scientific conclusion--that is "except when it doesn't."

But it is not accurate to generalize too broadly regarding the relationship between the Church and scientific and intellectual inquiry. St. Thomas Aquinas made Aristotle literally available to the West by studying him and realizing that the truth was the truth regardless of whether it was produced by a pagan or a christian.

This is the essence of the catholic liberal arts understanding of intellectual inquiry in all disciplines. That man is endowed with a reason that can come to know the truth about things.

The Church does not deny that it may become true that it is possible to develop medical therapies from human embryos. It states categorically (and quite logically) that to do so is immoral, since embryos, by definition, are persons and as persons they deserve to be treated with dignity. From an ethical point of view, according to the Church's position, it is immoral to perform experiments on people without their consent and if the procedure cannot benefit them in any way.

Further, and I don't know that this has occured to the promotors of embryonic stem-cell research, but even if therapies are developed that worked (none have been developed as of yet), such therapies would be unavailable for Catholics, since they come from the destruction of another person. That is, literally, millions would be morally prohibited from availing themselves of such treatments (not that all Catholics would follow the Church's teaching here--but you see my point I hope).

As a Catholic institution, ND has promised to uphold in its words and actions, the moral teachings of the Catholic Church, even while it sponsors unfettered intellectual inquiry and debate.

To honor President Obama is against a standing policy in the Church that says that Catholic institutions are not to invite or sponsor or honor speakers whose views are contrary to the Church's teaching on faith and morals.

So--that's why alot of us Catholics think that ND is not doing right by her Church. It's nothing personal regarding Barack Obama.

Sherene| 3.24.09 @ 10:50AM

John II:

"I knew it. I KNEW IT! And I get credit for knowing it. "

What on earth are you talking about?

"Have a care, Sherene, or you might wind up becoming a Christian."

Been there, done that.

"Christianity depends for its viability on example."

I'm not sure what this means. What religion of the world (not to be fatuous, so forgive me) does not rely on its own worldly manifestation of the one true god (or many gods, as the case may be) as the source of ultimate truth and example? I fail to see any distinctiveness at all.

"I suspect that what you're really certain of is that x-number of Christians you've met are jackasses. "

Wrong again. I actually don't have a problem with Christians. I have a problem with religion in general, as I would with any mindset that requires people not to THINK or question. I think most of the people I know are good people. Of those that are religious, they clearly do not get their goodness or politeness or humanity from their religion -- they would be just as good without it. On the other hand, of those people I know who are decidedly not good people and are religious, I find that they DO, most decidedly, derive their backwards opinions about the world from their religion. And you can't argue with them, because "God says so" is a conveniently blunt ending to any sort of rational discussion. I have a problem with religion, not simply because I think it is nonsense, but because I think in its true form, it is dangerous.

M. Forrest| 3.24.09 @ 11:12AM

To "Drudge et Obama"

You write: "I know that the Church condemns the death penalty and abortion, making the point that you can't ethically support one (death penalty) but not the other (abortion)."

This is false. The Church does not unequivocally condemn the death penalty in the same way that it does abortion. The Church unequivocally condemns the direct, intentional killing of all **innocent** human beings. This is why abortion and euthanasia are unequivocally condemned. There is no such thing as a "just" abortion. There is no such thing as "just" euthanasia.

Conversely, there is such a thing as a "just" war and the "just" application of the death penalty. Recall, God Himself commanded the Israelites to carry out the death penalty against those who committed certain grave offenses. Therefore, the death penalty cannot be inherently unjust. The Church has always taught this.

While the Church strongly discourages the use of the death penalty (if it is possible to use other reliable means to protect populations from the violent), it is not strictly prohibited. This is a canard thrown out by liberals to try to confuse voters.

Catechism of the Catholic Church #2266-2267

2266 The State's effort to contain the spread of behaviors injurious to human rights and the fundamental rules of civil coexistence corresponds to the requirement of watching over the common good. Legitimate public authority has the right and duty to inflict penalties commensurate with the gravity of the crime. the primary scope of the penalty is to redress the disorder caused by the offense. When his punishment is voluntarily accepted by the offender, it takes on the value of expiation. Moreover, punishment, in addition to preserving public order and the safety of persons, has a medicinal scope: as far as possible it should contribute to the correction of the offender.

2267 The traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude, presupposing full ascertainment of the identity and responsibility of the offender, recourse to the death penalty, when this is the only practicable way to defend the lives of human beings effectively against the aggressor.
"If, instead, bloodless means are sufficient to defend against the aggressor and to protect the safety of persons, public authority should limit itself to such means, because they better correspond to the concrete conditions of the common good and are more in conformity to the dignity of the human person.
"Today, in fact, given the means at the State's disposal to effectively repress crime by rendering inoffensive the one who has committed it, without depriving him definitively of the possibility of redeeming himself, cases of absolute necessity for suppression of the offender 'today ... are very rare, if not practically non-existent.'[John Paul II, Evangelium vitae 56.]

M. Forrest| 3.24.09 @ 11:27AM

Now-Pope Benedict XVI on abortion, euthanasia, death penalty and just war, etc:

WORTHINESS TO RECEIVE HOLY COMMUNION — GENERAL PRINCIPLES

"Not all moral issues have the same moral weight as abortion and euthanasia. For example, if a Catholic were to be at odds with the Holy Father on the application of capital punishment or on the decision to wage war, he would not for that reason be considered unworthy to present himself to receive Holy Communion. While the Church exhorts civil authorities to seek peace, not war, and to exercise discretion and mercy in imposing punishment on criminals, it may still be permissible to take up arms to repel an aggressor or to have recourse to capital punishment. There may be a legitimate diversity of opinion even among Catholics about waging war and applying the death penalty, but not however with regard to abortion and euthanasia."
http://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?id=6041&CFID=819064&CFTOKEN=43405701

Catechism on abortion and euthanasia:

CCC #2271 "Since the first century the Church has affirmed the moral evil of every procured abortion. This teaching has not changed and remains unchangeable. Direct abortion, that is to say, abortion willed either as an end or a means, is gravely contrary to the moral law."

CCC #2277 Whatever its motives and means, direct euthanasia consists in putting an end to the lives of handicapped, sick, or dying persons.
It is morally unacceptable.

Thus an act or omission which, of itself or by intention, causes death in order to eliminate suffering constitutes a murder gravely contrary to the dignity of the human person and to the respect due to the living God, his Creator.
The error of judgment into which one can fall in good faith does not change the nature of this murderous act, which must always be forbidden and excluded.

J. Bob| 3.24.09 @ 11:35AM

Sherene
In reading your dialog, one question does stand out. Just what did our new president do before his election, in terms of legislation? As a US Senator he helped kill reform of Fredie & Fannie. He did say the Iraq war was lost. He did approve killing black babies born alive ( infanticide). So just what has he done besides getting us more into debt to foreign countries?

cthemfly25| 3.24.09 @ 11:36AM

I wish not to be critical of Father Jenkins but his decision is so disheartening to many of the faithful who have worked hard through prayer, through action and through giving of their treasure to stop or at least make strides at abating abortion and embryonic experimentation. I have two words which forcefully respond to ND and to Father Jenkins: “born alive”. Of course that is the touchstone title of legislation stridently opposed by then Mr. Obama legalizing the murder of a child “born alive” as a survivor of (mostly chemical) abortions.

A commencement speech is not an “engagement” (as Father Jenkins euphemistically describes his apologia) between the Church Militant and this anti-life, anti-liberty president. Father Jenkins has granted this president a homilitic prop to be used against us; a propogandist’s tool. No one can excuse this action who believes solemnly in the cause of life

Finally, this decision saddens me as the Church is the witness to the world on issues of morality and liberty. Many outside the Church are looking upon this with an “I told you so” disdain toward what they now justify as calling our dogmatic hypocrisy. And, of course, within the Church, many are applauding this “progressive” decision as it promotes a different and more insidious agenda regarding Church teaching. How is it that Father Jenkins does not see this? How is it that the Bishops now are to be seen as having the moral authority to act decisively against catholics who vote for and support the culture of death? How is it that this campus, consecrated to “Our Lady”, be allowed to promote a most hideous agenda? I will pray that the Holy Spirit guide us all.

CarlPio| 3.24.09 @ 11:37AM

Mr. Forrest, Cogent, factual, and well stated. It’s amazing what you can find in the Catechism.

Tommy Boy| 3.24.09 @ 11:48AM

Sherene:

I never fail to be amused by people like you. You dismiss all religions out of hand, claiming adherents are small minded and intellectually challenged for believing such tripe. Yet you fail to see how very small your own mind is. You believe only what you have decided is true (or what your atheistic gurus- i.e. your profs and celebs like Dawkins- have spoon fed you as true): that there is no "god" and that anyone who believes there is has been duped. Allow me to pull the adolescent veil from your eyes: you are a FUNDAMENTALIST. A fundamentalist atheist, but a fundamentalist none the less. You are no different from Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, or the people who carry those “God Hates Gays” signs. You hate religious people. You consider yourself better than them. You want to silence them. You want them out of political and public life. You want their institutions (such as Catholic universities) to stop teaching what they believe to those who VOLUNTARILY attend them. You mock their beliefs (like little Paulie Z. Meyers- the atheist professor in MN who claims to have defiled the Eucharist). You abandon your vaunted commandments of diversity, tolerance and freedom in the case of religious people because they are so stupid as to merit none of the respect that you claim everyone deserves. You treat them like blacks and gays were treated 60 years ago. Wake up am realize you are the daughter of Torquemada. Here is a piece of evidence of you blind hatred (although there are many others in your postings):

"On the other hand, of those people I know who are decidedly not good people and are religious, I find that they DO, most decidedly, derive their backwards opinions about the world from their religion. "

You generalize. You dismiss. You insult. You and your “New-Atheist” ilk are as bad as gay-bashers.

Have a nice day.

Sherene| 3.24.09 @ 12:06PM

Tommy Boy,

I've been called a fundamentalist before, and the short answer to your little rant is -- no, I'm not. I do not consider myself better than anyone. I think I'm right, just as you do; I hardly think that's the same thing as thinking I'm better or somehow worth more than another person. You, on the other hand, clearly think you are better than me. You, after all, are going to heaven, and I am on my happy way to eternal damnation. You want to tell me how to live my life, while I really don't care how you live yours as long as you keep it to yourself. But religion is not kept to itself; its very nature is one that threatens the freedom and individual choice of people like me who do not agree with its ridiculous rules about what I can and can't eat and when, or who I can and can't marry. You're right -- I am intolerant of your intolerance of me and my lifestyle. You think I am spoon-fed?? I really can't think of a more egregious example of spoon-feeding than religious education, which purports to claim divine truth and unchallengeability, and which regards rational skepticism as satanically derived despite the fact that really its just you using the brain that "god" apparently gave you and then demanded you leave at the door.

Also, have a nice day.

Dr. Mugwump| 3.24.09 @ 12:10PM

The writing is on the wall. Remember the history of the Israelites? First they broke the Convenant. Then they refused to listen to the prophets. Then they were overcome by their enemies and finally, God allowed them to be run into exhile and enslaved. This is the story of the US Catholic Church.

Orthodoxy is a minority today. That is true - but following Christ in Truth was never a numbers game to begin with. Remember, the Lord gave Himself for the Salvation of ALL - even when only one of his followers stood with His Mother at the Cross. The Remnant exists, but will suffer just the same as those who have lost the taste for Truth and only seek to have their ears tickled.

Today it is no different from any lesson of history. America now departs from her authentic religious roots. America breaks Covenant with God. Catholics follow this secularization path with great gusto. We did not listen to the modern prophets (John Paul II, Mother Teresa, Pope Benedict) and we are now being taken over by the enemy "within". Exhile from our own Promised Land and enslavement is next - and why shouldn't it be? America is the Land of Milk and Honey ... and the blessing of living "In God We Trust" has been betrayed. Now watch all the milk dry up fast!Keep your rosary beads in hand and get the blessed candles. It is going to be a bumpy ride for the fallen nation of America.

Watch and learn boys, watch and learn!

CLM| 3.24.09 @ 12:10PM

President Obama should not have been invited to speak at Notre Dame. The university is courting worldly favor by doing so, and Jesus said we are to be in the world but not of the world.
That being said, far more dangerous to the university is the likes of Father McBrien, who remains a faculty member of the THEOLOGY dept. despite his very vocal heretical views.

Sherene| 3.24.09 @ 12:16PM

"The writing is on the wall. Remember the history of the Israelites? First they broke the Convenant. Then they refused to listen to the prophets. Then they were overcome by their enemies and finally, God allowed them to be run into exhile and enslaved. This is the story of the US Catholic Church."

Aside from the fact that the story is clearly fictional, why would anyone even WANT to believe that this stuff is true?? That you worship a genocidal god who apparently has no problem with slavery (I guess that's why the church was ok with it til unforgivably recently in its history) and mass slaughter?

Dr. Mugwump| 3.24.09 @ 12:23PM

Thanks for sharing Sherene. Your comment is evidence that there is no dialogue possible with you. In times like this it is better to simply pray than carry on a non-conversation - it seems like you have too much time on your type-writing hands. I know that based on your other posts I do not have the venom in me to keep this up with you. God bless -

Sherene| 3.24.09 @ 12:30PM

Fair enough, Dr. Mugwump, you may lack the energy to respond and I may well be falling behind in work by taking time to post on this website, but I don't think you've got any shortage of venom. You've pretty much just threatened, or foretold, mass exile, slavery, defeat, etc. etc., mostly because of people like me -- the "enemy within," as you put it. And my repeated comments are clearly not evidence of the impossibility of dialogue with me and people like me, since I am evidently posting (and far too often, according to you) in the interest of maintaining dialogue with the people who respond to me.

Stuart Koehl| 3.24.09 @ 12:31PM

"I'm not sure what this means. What religion of the world (not to be fatuous, so forgive me) does not rely on its own worldly manifestation of the one true god (or many gods, as the case may be) as the source of ultimate truth and example? I fail to see any distinctiveness at all."

Quite a few, as it turns out. All forms of paganism, for example, tend to be entirely devoid of expansive truth claims, which is what allows them to be so syncretistic and inclusive. All gods are equally true, therefore all gods are equally worthy of veneration (at least if you want to stay on their good side). In paganism, it is the cult that counts, which means as long as you offer sacrifices, the gods don't really care too much what you do.

Monotheism, on the other hand, by its very nature must be exclusive. If my god or your god is the only god, then all other gods are either delusions or demons, take your pick.

But among the monotheists, there are many different ways of expressing truth claims. Judaism points back to the covenants with Abraham and Moses, which are not universal but specific to one people in one place. Islam makes a universal claim for Allah, but it is not based on the behavior of the faithful; rather, it is based on the precepts written in the Quran that instruct followers of Allah to bring the entire world into submission to Islamic law. Muslims do not really care if the whole world becomes Muslim or not, as long as Muslims are on top everywhere.

Christianity, on the other hand, makes universal truth claims that are not backed by force. Nothing in the Bible instructs the followers of Christ to convert the heathen by the sword, or by any sort of compulsion for that matter. The Fathers are unanimous on this: true belief cannot be compelled, and even to this day, forced conversions are not valid. What does Christ command at the end of the Gospel of Matthew? That we make disciples of all nations, baptizing int he name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. What does Christ say in the Gospel of John? That we love one another, so that the whole world will know who sent Him into the world. It is by their behavior that Christians spread the Gospel most effectively, as St. Francis of Assisi told his followers: "Constantly proclaim the Gospel; speak if you must".

Tommy Boy| 3.24.09 @ 12:35PM

Sherene,

I never once said you were going to hell, nor that I am heaven bound. I never once said I am better than you- for indeed my temper getting the better of Christian charity shows how flawed I am. I merely called a spade a spade: you are as flawed as any religious person and as close minded. And by preening over your rejection of the "ridiculous rules" of my faith, you are implying your intellectual superiority over me and my fellow believers. An intellectual ability that fails you when you attack phantoms in my posting.

Sunshine and bluebirds to you.

Dr. Mugwump| 3.24.09 @ 12:43PM

Sherene - The prohesy is not my own. It is a part of real human history. Salvation history works within human history. FACT.

You are not the enemy. Please accept my apology for any offense. You are the one whom Christ died for while he was alone and mocked by those who did not believe in His Eternal Love. You are the beloved of God himself - just as you are with Him calling to your heart more deeply than you know. He longs to bring you into a profound and everlasting Communion of Love. It is a failure of people such as myself, who believe this, to not communicate this adequately. Again, may you be blessed - and no more animosity be exchanged on my part.

Stuart Koehl| 3.24.09 @ 12:44PM

" I really can't think of a more egregious example of spoon-feeding than religious education, which purports to claim divine truth and unchallengeability, and which regards rational skepticism as satanically derived despite the fact that really its just you using the brain that "god" apparently gave you and then demanded you leave at the door."

Well, you've never been in any religious education class I've ever taught, that's for sure--though I have gotten more cogent arguments from the seventh graders I used to instruct, which says much for the depths of your theological and philosophical foundation.

So, just which of the Fathers have you read? Athanasius? Basil the Great? Gregory Nanzianzen? Augustine? (I realize that far more people cite Augustine than have actually read him, but then, far more people quote the Bible than have actually read it--and I suspect that I should include you in that bunch).

I was baptized when I was forty years old. I did so after long and hard deliberation and discernment. I did so because I became convinced that Christianity was true, a conclusion I reached using my training and reading as an historian. I believe that the claims Christianity makes about Jesus of Nazareth are quite literally and historically true.

Christianity, you see, is a faith based on an historical fact--that the man Jesus of Nazareth was the incarnate Son of the almighty God, that he took on the form of a slave and was like us in all ways save sin, that, through his death on the Cross and his Resurrection from the tomb, He might deliver us from captivity to sin and death. The Apostle Paul realized this at the very dawn of the Church, when he wrote that "if Christ is not risen from the dead, then your faith is in vain".

I happen to have joined a Church whose members suffered terribly under the Communists who taught that Christ was not risen. For sixty years, they met in secret, risking imprisonment and death, to affirm the words of the Paschal Troparion that we shall sing joyously two weeks hence:

Christ is risen from the dead,
Trampling down death by death,
And to those in the tomb bestowing life!

A faith that destroyed the power of the Soviet Union, a faith that could not be crushed by the Gulag, that resists domination by all worldly powers, is more convincingly true than any alternative you can offer.

Stuart Koehl| 3.24.09 @ 1:00PM

"That you worship a genocidal god who apparently has no problem with slavery (I guess that's why the church was ok with it til unforgivably recently in its history) and mass slaughter?"

See what I mean about puerile arguments? How old are you, anyway? Twelve? What do they teach in the schools these days?

The Christian Church neither approved nor disapproved of slavery; it accepted it as part of the "world", which would be transfigured through the Parousia. In other words, in the eschatological worldview of the early Christians, slavery was irrelevant, a fact of life.

That said, understand that for the first few centuries, the majority of Christians were probably "unfree"--either slaves or freedmen, just because that's how the demographics of the ancient world were. For that reason, the Church insisted upon humane treatment of slaves by their (Christian) masters, who were also encouraged to manumit their slaves. As early as the Epistle to Philemon, St. Paul is writing about slaves as something more than Pliny the Elder's "talking tools". It's no coincidence that slavery in the ancient world began a precipitous decline after Constantine legitimized Christianity within the Roman Empire. It should therefore come as no surprise that it was through the efforts of devoted Christians that slavery was stamped out everywhere in the 19th century, save for a few pockets in decidedly non-Christian regions such as Arabia and central Africa.

Neither is it a coincidence that the status of women increased markedly with the rise of Christianity, of all the ancient religions, recognized the ontological equality of women. Greco-Roman paganism did not. Judaism did not. Christianity did. Women were in the forefront of the Christian movement, and the number of women honored as "Isapostolos" (Equals of the Apostles) bears witness to the authority wielded by women, beginning with Mary the Theotokos and Mary Magdalene, "Apostle to the Apostles".

It's laughable for an atheist to speak of "genocidal gods", when a cursory examination of the history of mankind since the end of the 18th century shows the most murderous regimes in history--from the French Directory to the Khmer Rouge--were precisely those that denied the existence of God and attempted to enforce its own secular religion upon the world by force.

As compared to the 40 million slain by the Soviets, the 60 million by Mao's Chinese Communists, the 10 million exterminated by Hitler's crypto-pagan Nazis, the 3 million by the Khmer Rouge, and countless others in lesser cesspits around the globe, that the sins and crimes of the Christian Church pale to insignificance. Moreover, these were committed in contravention of the central teachings of Christianity, whereas the butchery of the secularist tyrannies was entirely consistent with their doctrines. Likewise, while Christianity tolerated slavery, but tried to mitigate its effects (and eventually managed to suppress it), the secular religions simply made slaves out of whole nations and peoples. Certainly, a citizen of the Soviet Union or the PRC, or the Third Reich did not wear a slave collar, but he was worse off than any slave. Given the choice, I think most people would choose to be the chattel of an enlightened pagan or Christian master, than to be subject to the unenlightened whims of a Joseph Stalin, Mao Tse Tung or Pol Pot.

Your fatuousness disgusts me.

Stuart Koehl| 3.24.09 @ 1:07PM

"Interloper" writes:

"For example, consider Stuart Koehl. His contempt for the President is rooted in racial bigotry. "

I see someone is following the example of Woody Allen cheating on his metaphysics exam by looking into the soul of the student sitting next to him.

If Interloper had an ounce of intellectual integrity, he would foreswear idiotic screen names and stand behind what he has to say. Of course, I might be inclined to sue his sorry ass for slander, but that's the kind of risk one takes when one decides to toss around terms like "racism" in a manner that makes a mockery out of those who have suffered because of their race.

Tommy Boy| 3.24.09 @ 1:16PM

Interloper:

Thank you! You have figured it all out so astutely. You read “these people” as accurately as a laser read a barcode. To peg Koehl (the "Jew" you so refreshingly put it) as a racist was courageous. I am sure his racism comes from his Jewocity, don’t you?

And those tiny-brained “pro-lifers”. Too bad their moms didn’t squeeze them just enough out of their vaginas so that a doctor could stab them in the head, suck out their brains, and crush their skulls like a Dixie cup! That is the kind of “change” we could live with, huh, buddy? But they didn’t partially-bear them, so I gess we’re stuck with “those people”, so thank G-, umm, well thank no one, that they are so easy to manipulate. Maybe we could manipulate them over to our side, you know the right side, well not right, but left. Right? But is’s kinda funny how they don’t grasp biology but they breed like rabbits. Good thing folks like you know how to wrap that rascal and save mother earth, yes-siree!

And thank G-, oops, almost did it again, thank no one, for our President, he’s going to fix it all up for us.

Note from author: that was SARCASM. I really think you are pathetic, and I pray that God has mercy on us all.

tommy Boy| 3.24.09 @ 1:20PM

Stuart,

Thanks for answering the slavery and sins of Christianity canards. It saved me from doing it.

Yours in simple-minded manipulation and backward orthodoxy,

TB

Red Phillips| 3.24.09 @ 1:59PM

Interloper, you are so predicable. Here we are having a discussion that is clearly religious in nature. Whether a Catholic school should hand over its platform to a baby killing and stem cell farming advocate. The nature of Catholic education. Etc. And then you come along and interject race in the first paragraph of your first post. Couldn't you have wait a post or two for the sake of appearances so you wouldn't look like such a cartoonish fanatic?

You clearly have serious issues. As I told Jeremiah, your obsessive posturing on race probably masks your own insecurities over your unegalitarian thoughts. And your posts here serve as your ritualistic self purge. Get help, please.

Also, you don't have a clue about conservative nomenclature. American Spectator is not paleo-conservative. It is mainstream and movement conservative, and it is probably fair to say that it has never been quite as identifiably neocon as National Review or the Weekly Standard.

In my experience paleos tend to prefer American Spectator to the other mainstream movement magazines because it is perceived to have some people writing for it that are "paleo-sypathetic."

Chronicles Magazine, TakiMag, and American Conservative are generally considered paleo or paleo friendly.

The wiki entry on paleoconservatism is very well done (at least it was). Read up and educate yourself somewhere other than the latest press release from Morris Dees.

Tommy Boy| 3.24.09 @ 2:04PM

Interloper what are you smoking? I give the President full credit for running a brilliant campaign and for being extremely intelligent, far more intelligent, I might add than the previous occupant of the White House. I have no issues with his race; I have issues with his morals and his politics. Plain and simple. You can slander us all you want, but you merely prove do not know a rat’s ass about “these people”. I think you and your cronies a merely projecting the terror and hate in your own hearts on to the other posters. You feel completely helpless in the big bad universe so you lash out at those who have found the Truth. Do the world a favor; accept God’s call. You know it is there, He wants you to know He loves you. He’s calling, just listen.

taad| 3.24.09 @ 2:20PM

Is Obama trying to divide the Catholic Church? Look at the list of appointments, and who he uses for his defense? Catholics. And his first acceptance speech, a so called Catholic U. Why? What's the end game here?

CarlPio| 3.24.09 @ 2:23PM

Wow - I can feel the love here - from ND inviting the President to speak - to an all out verbal bar room brawl about religion, racism, atheism, abortion, pro-life, etc. I guess when you can't give a cogent, intelligent argument and get involved in a spirited discussion then the mudslinging begins and nothing constructive comes out of it except verbal venom and name calling. If someone doesn’t like the President he is a raciest? I don’t like the President, not because he is black but because of his policies, his politics, his stand on abortion, and his handling of foreign policy, which, in my opinion, will increase our vulnerability to international terrorism. Does that make me a raciest? In addition, I have been crossing intellectual foils with Mr.Koehl for the last day – it has been stimulating and interesting, at least for me. I have also read his other inputs and see nothing that would indicate to me any assertion that he is a raciest. I find it intellectually dishonest to say he is and is owed an apology. P.S. – I acknowledge the high achievements of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, Mr. Michael Steele, Dr. Condoleezza Rice, and Bill Cosby, all blacks. How about you?

Sherene| 3.24.09 @ 2:35PM

No, I am not twelve.

I have read the Bible, multiple times.

No, I have not been in a religious class taught by you, although I would be interested to hear the arguments posited against your opinions by your seventh graders, since they are so much more cogent than mine. Please provide an example, as I am intrigued.

Christianity is not a faith based on historical fact. It is full of inconsistencies, inaccuracies, and terrible reporting which took place well after the fact and which has clearly lost a great deal through transmittal – and yet you perceive it to be perfect and without fault. I presume you believe that Mary ascended into heaven, as your church teaches? Tell me how you know that, since Christianity is based on historical fact. Tell me how you actually know that fact to be true, without just citing to revelation.

In terms of approval or disapproval of slavery, that the stewards of god’s faithful merely accepted the travesty for centuries does not seem, to me at least, to be particular praiseworthy. But then, why should they have disapproved of slavery, since it was just one of the many tools adopted by god to punish humans who went astray, along with slaughter, rape and pillaging, exile, plagues, etc. It is also no surprise to me that because the Bible is sorely lacking in what could have been a really useful pronouncement from god or Jesus to the effect that owning and enslaving other human beings is wrong (but no, instead we have pronouncements about gay people and witches), Christianity has been used throughout the ages as an excuse for colonizing and enslaving other regions of the world under the guise of bringing these poor abandoned people the “true” faith (along with disease, the slave trade, and occupation).

As for your claims about women, I find them ridiculous. According to your book, I am a product of some guy’s ribcage, placed here for his enjoyment and companionship. I am also tormented by pain in childbirth because the guy I was placed on earth to pleasure ate some fruit. And actually, Islam really outpaced you guys on the whole women’s liberation front, by giving females the right to own property, seek divorce, and inherit a hell of a lot faster than early Christians did. Again, there’s something that could have been helped by a mere footnote in the Bible – “women are equal to men.” How on earth does the Bible or Christianity reflect a principle of sexual equality? Because Jesus actually (gasp) spoke to women? How radical. Tell me again why the Catholic church won’t ordain female priests? You are right – the Bible, and early Christianity, were a product of their times. The book reflect nothing radical beyond the narrow and ignorant times in which the stories were invented.

And as for it being “laughable” for me to speak of genocidal gods, I really don’t understand your reasoning. I don’t worship atheist or secular mass murderers, or claim them to be divine. If I ascribed the deeds of your god, recorded in your historically accurate and literal Bible, to any individual, that person would probably belong in the dock at the Hague along with Hitler and Mao. But… you voluntarily and knowingly worship and PRAISE that entity.

Finally, as for your praise of the humanity of the enlightened Christian slave owner, try reading Frederick Douglass.

Ronald Flores| 3.24.09 @ 2:42PM

Fr. John O'Connor. Ever since Our Lord gave us the signs to look for that would identify the time of the coming of the Antichrist, Christians throughout history have pondered whether or not the time they were living in was the time that Christ had forewarned would come. In this two hour presentation Fr. O'Connor leaves no shadow of a doubt that all of the signs that God gave us to look for that would tell us that the time of the reign of Antichrist has near been fulfilled, and that we need to prepare for that dreaded event. Every Pope in this century has warned us that we are in the last days of the world. We proclaim this belief in the ending of the world each time we recite the Creed when we say that "Christ will come again to judge the living and the dead." This second coming of Christ is at the end of the world after the reign of Antichrist, and if the end of the world is near, the reign of Antichrist is even nearer. Scripture tells us that the Antichrist will be accepted by the Jews as their Messiah. In 1948, David Ben Gurion, the first Prime Minister of Israel, stated that this was the "beginning of the Messianic era." Fr. O'Connor begins by telling us that the signs that will precede the second coming of Christ will be identified by unprecedented war, revolution, drought, famine, pestilence, plagues of the most hideous kinds, earthquakes, violence, death and especially crime and sin unparallel in human history, and that Christ warned us that in those days sin and evil will abound in the world and that the love of truth will grow cold. In the mid-fifties, Pope Pius XII said that there was more sin being committed then than at any other time in human history, even before the Great Flood. This statement was made before abortion, homosexuality and child abuse which is so rampant today. Father O'Connor then goes on to quote hundreds of proofs to back up the urgency of his message, especially Scriptural references, Papal statements, etc. 2 hr

CarlPio| 3.24.09 @ 3:16PM

Bishop D'Arcy will not attend Notre Dame graduation. Finally a Bishop who will stand for his beliefs - may God Bless him! Suggest you read the article linked below: http://southbendtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090324/News01/903240115/1129/News

Black| 3.24.09 @ 3:19PM

The Death keel was administered In The American Election when two thirds of the Roman Catholic Clergy refused to speak out against Obama - We are all called witness - to stand and take action for those that cannot speak for themselves - we are Christians and as Christians we must act and respond as Christians - Make no mistake we are all called to Holiness and the day will come and we will be asked 'What did you do to defend my Little Ones' -- As Catholics Turn to Our Holy Mother Pray Her Holy Rosary and Ask for Her help in situations that are beyound Us - Ask for Her - Help in the defence of the Little ones - God Bless

KyMouse| 3.24.09 @ 3:53PM

Thoms, you said that we pro-life conservatives who are against social tax policies must be willing to take a developmentally disabled person or a single mother and her child into our home, or be guilty of empty rhetoric and hypocrisy. Well, there are plenty of pro-life conservatives who don't have a home that's big enough, or the skills needed to care for a person who has disabilities. I support Christian churches/institutions that care for the needy quite well, and are fiscally responsible; in addition, they supply love and spiritual care. I don't think the government does nearly as good a job, but I do think it wastes a lot of taxpayer money trying. I'm also all for helping those single mothers and disabled people get jobs, so they can live as independently as possible.

Sherene, it sounds to me as if you think Christians believe what they believe without thinking. I thought long and hard about the claims of Jesus -- that He is God, Messiah, sole Savior of all who put their faith in him -- before putting my faith (obedient trust) in Him. Before then, atheism seemed great to me, because denying God made me think that I could live any way I pleased with impunity. And since I still have my sin nature, I sometimes have doubts. We are said to die with Him, and crucifixion is a long, slow process! Faith is often tested. Fortunately, my salvation isn't based on my feelings, which often change, but on His promises. That probably doesn't make much sense to you, and I'm probably not explaining it very well. C. S. Lewis's book "Mere Christianity" helped me wrestle with a lot of questions. I do understand the appeal of atheism, but now I see that the "freedom" it promises is an illusion and a trap. You probably feel the same way about Christianity, so I'll just say, God bless you.

John II| 3.24.09 @ 4:07PM

Hi again Sherene, if you're still around. The answer to your question, posted hours and hours ago ("what are your talking about?"), was already answered in my last posting, and others have beat me to the draw with responses to your response.
I don't really have much else to say--except to suggest that the expression "been there, done that" is a little disheartening. When someone my age uses the expression, it sounds merely jaded; coming from someone your age, it sounds rather smug. Gosh.

Anyhow, I just wanted to get the last word in, for a change.

Whoa, this is the longest series of responses I've ever seen on this site.

And now back to Jeeves and Wooster.

Sherene| 3.24.09 @ 4:13PM

No.. it wasn't answered. And I'm still unsure as to what you were so excited about knowing. And you have no idea how old I am, other than that I am younger than you. Sorry for sounding smug, but I meant it literally. I used to believe in god, and upon careful consideration, decided it was a waste of my time and a betrayal of my common sense.

Anyway, since the last word is important to you, feel free to mock my age or whatever in your next posting -- don't worry, I won't respond, and you can get back to watching TV.

As for the last word,

John II| 3.24.09 @ 4:49PM

LAST WORD:

Okay, I'll try to make my excitement clearer. Most of the atheists I know (which is to say, almost everyone I know, since I work in academia) are just downright icy--about the religious sensibility and, by extension (I believe), about much else in their personal lives. Their mode of expression is oblique, and their humor never advances beyond irony.

Not so with the one called Sherene. I KNEW there was something different, but I couldn't put my remote channel-changer on it until your response to "gregorbo." It wasn't so much the content, which struck me as rather callow; it was the passion: that's what I'm not used to among soi-disant atheists; I'm used to the ice.

And that's what "I KNEW IT" meant. Yes, you "used to believe in god," I've no doubt of it. And I'm certain that the lowercase is appropriate, because the "god" you believed in could not possibly have been the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, and the rest, nor the more precisely revealed Triune God of Jesus, Paul, Augustine, Aquinas, and the rest--otherwise, you'd still believe, because the sure-enough God-God, once known, is irresistible.

So you're already about three-quarters of your way toward the Judaeo-Christian thing, unalloyed. And I'm about half-way through Miss Marple and Midsomer Murders, so stop interrupting me.

P.S. When your journey has brought you home, pray for me. LAST WORD.

Sherene| 3.24.09 @ 5:00PM

Your taste in books and television is improving, I see... although Poirot is my favourite Christie detective, and Midsomer appears to have the highest murder rate of any county in Britain. Nonetheless, it is a great tv show, and you've got lots of episodes to keep you company while you're waiting on my prayers.

Sorry, I couldn't help it.

KDA| 3.24.09 @ 5:00PM

This could be a blessing in disguise if President Obama is required to deliver his commencement address without a teleprompter?

Terik Ororke| 3.24.09 @ 5:05PM

Grow up! Even the Pope's have "entertained" enemies of Catholicism. You know what? We are still here.

youbetcha| 3.24.09 @ 5:53PM

If the school has done its job correctly, then the graduating students should have nothing to fear from what he has to say. A strong faith rooted in the Tradition of the Church can withstand contrary opinions. As Basil the Great (a graduate of the Athenian academy and classmate of Julian the Apostate) wrote to some young men, it is important for well educated Christians to be exposed to the pagan writings and pagan thought. Not only does this provide them with the armamentarium needed to counter their opinions and uphold Christian belief, but the pagans themselves have much to offer in the way of insights and teachings, for the Holy Spirit passes where He wills, and uses such instruments as come to hand--even pagans. -
Yes, I agree with the above comments by Stuart Koehl, HOWEVER, leave it to the secular universities to give platform to the most anti-life president this country has ever been burdened with, and not give him a platform under Our Lady's mantle.

Francis Beckwith| 3.24.09 @ 7:14PM

"The point is that the increasing shrillness on the right is a product of their increasing loss of power. They would do us all a favor by presenting public reasons for policy rather than blind ideology about abortion and homosexuality. `Barack Obama murders little babies' is not a reason. It's mere emoting."

That's not true, KC. There's plenty of sophisticated defenses for the positions you claim have none. You just need to exercise a little bit the charity you find lacking in others.

BTW, referring to those who disagree with you as following "blind ideology" is emoting as well. As you no doubt know, many of us have thought long and hard about these issues, and we've published on these matters as well. Again, you should employ the principle of charity and not presume that those with whom you disagree must be blind. Perhaps they see, and you are blind. That is possible, you know.

Stuart Koehl| 3.24.09 @ 7:55PM

Sherene writes:

"Christianity is not a faith based on historical fact. It is full of inconsistencies, inaccuracies, and terrible reporting which took place well after the fact and which has clearly lost a great deal through transmittal – and yet you perceive it to be perfect and without fault. "

I believe you have a very faulty understanding of what historical truth actually means. Inconsistencies and inaccuracies are evidence of authenticity, not invention. As an historian, I would be far more suspicious of accounts that corresponded in every detail, than I would be of those that differed in detail coming from different witnesses or reporters. Even today, dealing with modern history, we face the same conundrum: we can never know with 100% certainty exactly how a particular event unfolded, even if we have video of the event. We can come close, but our understanding is always filtered through the lens of the observer and the analyst.

If you read ancient history (by which I mean Herotodus, Thuycidides, Tacitus, Suetonius, Josephus, Procopius and the like, you can begin to understand ancient historiography (i.e., the ancients' conception of history, and the rules for writing it), and thus have a basis for judging the reliability of the Gospels.

And, as a number of non-Christian classicists have noted, on that basis, the Gospels are quite remarkably honest and straightforward history, fully comparable to the best pagan and Jewish historians of the period. The secret is knowing how to read the material, and how far to carry it.

The Church has never really gone in for an absolutely literal understanding of Scripture. As early as Origen, writing in the third century AD, there has been an understanding that parts of scripture are NOT meant to be taken literally, while other parts are cold, literal truth. Archaeology, rather than disproving the Gospel accounts, has tended to confirm them (as it has various aspects of the Old Testament as well).

Did the Evangelists write with a perspective? Most certainly. Show me an historian who does not. Does this mean they were dishonest, or invented things out of whole cloth? Again, most certainly not. But their epistemology is not yours.

"I presume you believe that Mary ascended into heaven, as your church teaches? Tell me how you know that, since Christianity is based on historical fact. "

The doctrine of the Dormition and Assumption of the Most Holy Theotokos (as we call it in my incredibly backwards part of the Church) is part of the inner life of the Church, not its outward proclamation (kerygma). You are free to believe or not believe it, but either way, it isn't in the Gospel, but is part of the Tradition of the Church. I choose to believe it because it manifests deeper truths that do not need extrinsic proof (much the way, for instance, Interloper and you need to believe in the monumental (but fictitious) accomplishments of Barack Obama, Community Organizer).

On the other hand, the Gospel, the Euangelion of Christ, is just this: Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God, took the form of a man, died, and rose from the dead to redeem the entire world. Even you. I believe that to be an historical fact, and am always prepared to go to the mat with anyone who would deny it.

"In terms of approval or disapproval of slavery, that the stewards of god’s faithful merely accepted the travesty for centuries does not seem, to me at least, to be particular praiseworthy. "

Kind of stuck on that one, aren't you? For literally tens of thousands of years, human beings had been enslaving each other (and still do in some places--none of which are Christian). Yet not until the rise of a movement based on the teachings of Christ does anyone begin to think that perhaps this is wrong. Socrates had no problem with slavery. Ditto Plato, Aristotle and all the rest of the pagan philosophers. Confucius accepted slavery, as did the Buddah. Mohammed reveled in it. And, of course when we get down to the modern era, it is precisely those who exalt the rights of man who become the largest slave drivers of all. As I said, your argument is fatuous.

"As for your claims about women, I find them ridiculous."

You are entitled to your own opinions, but not your own facts.

" According to your book, I am a product of some guy’s ribcage, placed here for his enjoyment and companionship. I am also tormented by pain in childbirth because the guy I was placed on earth to pleasure ate some fruit. And actually, Islam really outpaced you guys on the whole women’s liberation front, by giving females the right to own property, seek divorce, and inherit a hell of a lot faster than early Christians did."

Your understanding of what Judaism and Christianity teaches is woefully deficient, as is your remarkably blinkered view of the lot of women under Islam. Just what books or authorities do you cite as evidence for these strongly held but amazingly ignorant views of yours?

Writing in Galatians, Paul lays out the relationship between man and woman in Christ: that women obey their husbands, and in return husbands love their wives, "as Christ loved the Church" (which is, after all, the Bridegroom of Christ). Do you understand the implication here? Probably not, so I will lay it out simply.

The relationship between husband and wife is a typos of the the relationship between Christ and the Church, as well as among the three Persons of the Holy Trinity. The Trinity, like the Church, like marriage, is a hierarchy without subordination; it is a true and perfect communion, in which each member defers to the other according to his status and gifts. In the Trinity, is the Father somehow superior to the Son? The Son to the Spirit? All are equally God, being of one essence, yet each has a distinct hypostasis: the Father is not the Son is not the Spirit is not the Father.

In marriage, the wife defers to the husband, but the husband, in his Christ-like love of his wife, defers to her and does nothing that would harm her. In fact, like Christ, he is prepared to lay down his life for her. In the Byzantine Orthodox marriage ceremony, both husband and wife are given crowns--of kingship, priesthood, and martyrdom. If the husband in marriage is given a crown to wear, consider it very much a crown of thorns, one he takes on willingly for the sake of his wife.

"Tell me again why the Catholic church won’t ordain female priests? "

Because while equal, the sexes are not identical. And because the sacerdotal ministry is one of service, not of power. Nobody, man or woman, has a right to be a priest simply because they feel they have a "calling". The Church calls out men to serve at the Holy Table, and always has.

And in its day, that was a very radical thing. There were, in the time of Christ, dozens of cults which had priestesses; some, in fact, like Bona Deia, were exclusively female (no men allowed--ask Publius Clodius Pulcher). Of all the religions of the ancient world, only two eschewed female priesthood--the Jews and their cousins, the Christians. Now, as the Book of Hebrews points out (and as you should know, because you've read the Bible so many times), the Jews had the Aaronic priesthood that offered blood sacrifices in the Temple of Jerusalem, but Christians have but one high priest, who is Christ himself, "the offeror and the offered, the priest and the sacrifice", who by laying down his life for the life o the world, obviated the need for further blood sacrifices. Those whom you (and most others) call priests (hieroi) are in fact mere elders (presbyteroi), who merely stand in the place of the true High Priest, because someone must preside at the table of offering.

By the way, just about every keystroke you make merely confirms me in my opinion that liberal arts degrees are not for everyone--certainly not the willfully ignorant and stupid.

As for atheism not being a religion, what would you call it? You take on faith the non-existence of something simply because you have never seen or experienced it. And, like most atheists, you are far more intolerant of dissent than the vast majority of theists. As C.S. Lewis noted, the atheist is always looking over his shoulder at what might be gaining on him, and is deathly afraid of being caught by it. So the venom with which atheists denounce Christians and other believers (who, if they were true to their principles, they would merely pity as delusional fools) can be considered the way in which atheists buck up their courage, though don't you think a good shot of whiskey straight up would be more efficacious and enjoyable?

Stuart Koehl| 3.24.09 @ 7:59PM

"Yes, I agree with the above comments by Stuart Koehl, HOWEVER, leave it to the secular universities to give platform to the most anti-life president this country has ever been burdened with, and not give him a platform under Our Lady's mantle."

I would say, by all means, let him have his say. But the President of the university also gets to have a say, as does the Chaplain in his invocation, as does the Valedictorian and the Salutitorian in their addresses. Here, if anywhere, is an opportunity to rebuke Obama to his face, to provide a "teaching moment", to give him the opportunity to confront his errors and hear the truth--something he seldom gets to hear.

Of course, it takes some courage to do this, but if the President, the Chaplain, the Validictorian and the Salutitorian all lack the gumption, then it really doesn't matter that Obama speaks at commencement--the Catholic faith is already dead there.

Red Phillips| 3.24.09 @ 8:42PM

It is important when arguing with a liberal atheist who uses the Bible's illiberality as an indictment to not take the bait. The Bible does many things that are praiseworthy for liberals (the worth of the individual, fairness in business transactions, rule of law, etc.), but the Bible is not the wellspring of Enlightenment Liberalism, and it is harmful to the Faith to pretend that it is. (And harmful to our civilization as well.)

For example on gender, men and women are equal in the same way that all men are equal. We are equally guilty of sin and equally in need of a Savior. But the Bible takes for granted and specifically endorses traditional gender roles. This is a fact that should be asserted, not massaged or hidden from.

Because Sherene doesn’t like what the Bible says she rejects it. This is the fundamental error of the Garden. “Hath God said?” Well yes indeed He has said. If she has a problem with that she needs to take it up with God, and at some point she will have the chance.

Philip Saenz| 3.24.09 @ 8:54PM

Barack Hussein Obama voted for infanticide three times. That man is satanic. Why invite Satan to Notre Dame?

m johnson| 3.24.09 @ 8:58PM

i hope notre dame never wins another football game. shame on you for degrating our lady!!!!

John II| 3.24.09 @ 9:12PM

Hey, Stu. Not to get into a beef with my alter ego, but I think you're possibly intellectualizing the situation a tad more than necessary (rather shocking too, coming from an eastern Catholic: we western Catholics are supposed to be the over-cognitive ones). It would be downright rude for the various functionaries of ND to use their invitation to Professor Obama as an opportunity to lecture the idiot on his ethical and metaphysical shortcomings. Don't forget what the Donald Meek character says in "Stagecoach" (1939): Show a little Christian charity.

Besides, the imbecile president of Columbia or whatever was plainly grandstanding when he used the opportunity of the visiting cretin Ahmadinejad to lecture the creep on human rights. He should never have invited Ahmadinejad in the first place.

The point is: (and is anybody listening, or am I wasting my time interrupting my movie-watching?) . . . the friggin' point is: Obama should not have been invited to be HONORED by ND. If he had to be invited at all, he should have been invited as a star speaker (with teleprompter and attendant handlers) at ND's debate club, or something analogous.

Why won't anyone listen to me? Why am I doomed to be an academician without respect? Why do I keep letting myself be distracted from my Laurel and Hardy collection?

And another thing, Stu. I agree, of course, with your response to the energetic Sherene's cliched yammering about women priests. But I think the REAL reason Christ restricts the priesthood to males is that He knows better than anyone the basic fecklessness of males. If they didn't have SOMETHING prominent and exclusive to do in the Church, they'd all be lost to the dart-games at the pubs. Has anybody among the feminists ever noticed that the one human being chosen as an exemplar of God's plan for humanity . . . is a woman?

And now back to Poirot--I mean, the earlier episodes with Hastings, Miss Lemmon, and Japp. Seems as if we humans can't sustain a good thing without help.

Stuart Koehl| 3.24.09 @ 9:47PM

"Hey, Stu. Not to get into a beef with my alter ego, but I think you're possibly intellectualizing the situation a tad more than necessary (rather shocking too, coming from an eastern Catholic: we western Catholics are supposed to be the over-cognitive ones). It would be downright rude for the various functionaries of ND to use their invitation to Professor Obama as an opportunity to lecture the idiot on his ethical and metaphysical shortcomings. Don't forget what the Donald Meek character says in "Stagecoach" (1939): Show a little Christian charity."

Point taken, but I have as my example St. John Chrysostom, he of the Golden Tongue who took it upon himself, as Archbishop of Constantinople, to upbraid the Emperor Honorius and his wife the Empress Eudoxia, to their faces, in homilies at the Great Church of Hagia Sophia. Apparently, their Imperial Majesties were too caught up in luxurious living and were not paying due heed to the less fortunate subjects of their realm. After one homily on the nature and fate of Jezabel, delivered while pointedly gazing at the Empress' box in the mezzanine, the good Archbishop was deposed--ostensibly for "Origenism", but actually for lese majeste. Fortunately, we do not have either of those offenses on the books in this country--though I imagine Obama the Magnificent would dearly love to add the latter.

Anyway, to finish that story, Chrysostom's followers (i.e., the common people of Constantinople) rioted in the streets until he was reinstalled. A couple of years later, the Emperor managed to stage a kangaroo synod to again depose Chrysostom, who was hustled off into exile in the dark of night. Even in exile, he continued to have influence in the capital through the letters he wrote to his protege, St. Olympias, Proto-Deaconess of Hagia Sophia (who said the Church did not put women in positions of authority?), so he was moved to a more remote location in the dead of winter, in the course of which journey, the great Saint fell asleep in the Lord. Today, St. John Chrysostom is loved and revered almost above all other saints in the Eastern Churches. Who remembers Honorius and Eudoxia, aside from history geeks like me?

Stuart Koehl| 3.24.09 @ 9:54PM

"And another thing, Stu. I agree, of course, with your response to the energetic Sherene's cliched yammering about women priests. But I think the REAL reason Christ restricts the priesthood to males is that He knows better than anyone the basic fecklessness of males. If they didn't have SOMETHING prominent and exclusive to do in the Church, they'd all be lost to the dart-games at the pubs. "

There is that. Also, my wife notes that men are essentially clueless and tend to forget things, which is why she feels able to confess her sins to our priest. On the other hand, according to her, women never forget anything, but rather file it away in the recesses of their minds to be pulled out when most needful, and thus, even if the Church did ordain women to the presbyterate, she would never, ever confess to one. Who am I to dispute her unchallenged knowledge of feminine nature?

"Has anybody among the feminists ever noticed that the one human being chosen as an exemplar of God's plan for humanity . . . is a woman?"

There is that, too--but I notice a lot of women who like to claim female superiority recoil at the example the first and most perfect disciple has set. I mean, it's hard to be "Champion leader of all Christians, intercessor before the throne of the Creator" and "more honorable than the Cherubim, and beyond compare more glorious than the Seraphim"--not to mention the greatest Jewish Mother of all time.

Perhaps it is that her glory is obtained through the fulfillment of her role as mother--of God, and of the Church, and of us all--that renders her odious to feminists who believe motherhood is an imposition at best, a curse at worst.

Stuart Koehl| 3.24.09 @ 9:56PM

"For example on gender, men and women are equal in the same way that all men are equal. We are equally guilty of sin and equally in need of a Savior. "

This is true, but beyond that, we are all made in the image and likeness of God, and are all called to fullfill our destiny to become partakers of the divine nature, becoming by grace what Christ is by his nature.

John II| 3.24.09 @ 10:14PM

Stu: Well--okay, right. But who at ND has the grace and the authority of St. John Chrysostom? Or of St. Ambrose, for that matter, when he cooked the Arian goose of the Empress Juliana? Nope. They shouldn't have invited the Prophet to the graduation ceremony--they're not up to it.

Funny: my wife has said the same thing. It's occurred to me that no man married to a tough woman (and smart enough to know who's really in charge) can possibly regard feminism with anything more elevated than bemusement.

But I need to get back to Poirot. My wife's calling me--and there is no gainsaying She-who-must-be-obeyed.

Interloper| 3.25.09 @ 1:06AM

Whew! Stuart Koehl's picture should be next to windbag, blowhard and yammerer in the dictionary. All that blather and he hasn't said squat. One must feel for schoolchildren forced to listen to Koehl produce verbal flatulence hour after hour, day after day.
Notably, he ceded my point that his opposition to President Obama is rooted in his racism and his own ludicrous sense of self-importance, not religion.
As I said above, the references to opposing changes that occurred at Catholic colleges in the 1960s and 1970s by their alumni are at least partly about racial integration. Doubtlessly, the sort of people who frequent the American Spectator are none to fond of co-education either.
Perhaps the president of Notre Dame intends to send a message to these alumni by inviting President Obama. They're like barnacles weighing down a boat that has moved on in the current of history. Father Jenkins could be saying that their efforts to hold back the vessel of Catholic education are futile. There's no better symbol of our societal progress than President Obama.

Stuart Koehl| 3.25.09 @ 5:53AM

Interloper loses his grasp on reality:

"Notably, he ceded my point that his opposition to President Obama is rooted in his racism and his own ludicrous sense of self-importance, not religion."

I did? When? In fact, my opposition to Obama is rooted neither in racism or in religion, but in (a) opposition to his political philosophy; (b) serious misgivings about his character; (c) his utter lack of executive experience of substantive accomplishment; and (d) his manifest incompetence.

"As I said above, the references to opposing changes that occurred at Catholic colleges in the 1960s and 1970s by their alumni are at least partly about racial integration."

Hardly. You overlook the impressive number of conservative blacks who happen to be Catholic (indeed, you seem to overlook conservative blacks altogether; are they not sufficiently "authentic" for you?), or that one of the fastest growing areas of the Catholic Church is that from which Pope Benedict just returned--Africa (I should also note that all Christian confessions seem to be doing remarkably well there, including Eastern Orthodoxy and Protestantism, and that the Christianity of the Dark Continent is both traditional and conservative).

It may have escaped your notice, but most Catholic colleges were integrated long before the 1960s and 70s, and that the Catholic Church was in the forefront of the civil rights movement. With regard to Notre Dame itself, as someone else mentioned, the school was instrumental in running the Ku Klux Klan out of South Bend. There is a book about that--you should read it (you do read, don't you? or do you merely pull your opinions out of your nether orifice in true Po Mo fashion?).

One can have reservations about coeducation without being either racist (talk about non-sequitur) or sexist--witness the number of feminists who call for all-female schools, not just in higher education, but K-12 as well. And, increasingly, educators both conservative and "progressive" have come to recognize that single sex education ought to be one of many options open to people based upon their unique educational needs. What a novel, "liberal" thought--treating people according to their needs, instead of in accord with some rigid, dogmatic, ideological principle. No wonder liberals hate it.

Interloper, in his desire to castigate any and all, tends to ignore facts, reality, and every other objective standard. After all, this is his narrative, not ours, and all narratives are equally valid. Or, as I like to say, "A story like his could be true if it wanted to be".

For instance, Interloper ignores that my original intervention here was in support of the invitation, a position I have maintained consistently throughout this discussion (at least it is a discussion as long as Interloper stays out of it). Ideological purist that he is, however, this is not sufficient: I am "right" but for the wrong reasons, and thus must be hurled into the outer darkness for my thought crimes.

Interloper's invocation of immutable historical forces makes me nostalgic for the good old days of the USSR and the immutable logic of the dialectic. A lot of people a lot brighter and more powerful than Interloper have predicted--even actively worked towards--the demise of the Church and its Tradition. They are gone--but the Church and the Tradition continue, as they shall, until Christ comes again.

Stuart Koehl| 3.25.09 @ 5:57AM

" But who at ND has the grace and the authority of St. John Chrysostom?"

Well, that we do not know--yet. But as long as the Church is inspired by the Holy Spirit, as long as the Gift of the Holy Spirit is conferred upon all believers through the Mysteries of Baptism and Chrismation, there will always be such people. It may not be the President of the University of Notre Dame. It may not be the Chaplain. It may very well be the young man or woman who gets to address the graduating class, who, inspired by the Spirit, finds the eloquence and moral authority to say what needs to be said. As the Psalmist wrote, "O Lord, Thou shalt open my lips and my mouth shall declare Thy praise".

Stuart Koehl| 3.25.09 @ 7:14AM

Regarding what could be said to Obama in response to his commencement address, I was listening to Mussorgsky's masterpiece Boris Godunov and was struck by the scene where Boris encounters the Holy Fool. Now, in Eaatern Orthodox Christianity, the Holy Fool, or Fool for Christ, is someone who, precisely because he is either simple minded or deranged, can truly (to use the trite phrase) "speak truth to power".

The scene begins with the Fool, bearing an icon of the Theotokos, tormented by a pack of street urchins, who take away his last kopek. Along comes Tsar Boris, who sees the Fool wailing in the street. He asks what is wrong, and the fool replies, "The boys have taken my kopek. Kill them, as you killed the other boy", by which he means the young Tsar Dmitri, who Boris murdered to usurp the throne.

Everyone freezes, expecting Boris to cut down the Fool where he stands. But this does not happen. Instead, Boris gives the Fool a gold ruble, and says, "Pray for me, brother".

But the Fool shakes his head. "It is not permitted to pray for a Tsar Herod. Bohorodice (the Virgin Mary) will not allow it". Crushed, Boris goes off in silence and begins his descent into madness.

It is time some Holy Fool took our own Tsar Herod to task.

Joellen| 3.25.09 @ 8:15AM

If Ft Jenkins does not have the wisdom or courage to rescind this invitation to Obama, then I pray that there will be thousands of people outside this ceremony praying for both Jenkins and Obama. We cannot let this go unchallenged. What Obama perpetuates is EVIL, the destruction of innocent life, and what Jenkins is perpetuating is indifference to EVIL. As for allowing Obamam's voice to be heard - it will be a captive audience of impressionable young minds. Hopefully the students will be blessed with right judgement and wisdom and have the courage to challenge Obama either by walking out or yes, by verbally challenge his decisions on destroying more and more life.
IN GOD WE STILL TRUST!

Wicked Dickie-Virginia| 3.25.09 @ 11:07AM

I watched the University of Our Lady of the Lake move farther and farther away from a Catholic Identity through the Alumni Magazine. Finally, in 1999, I stopped contributing. I urge all alums to take this same step. Notre Dame is no longer a Catholic University when it endorses a baby-murdering megalomaniac who would be king. Find a real Catholic institution (Christendom College, Front Royal, Virginia comes to mind) and send your Notre Dame bucks their way.

Stuart Koehl| 3.25.09 @ 11:50AM

"Finally, in 1999, I stopped contributing."

My wife and I have refused to donate anything to Georgetown University for a number of reasons, including:

1. Its attempt to remove all visible evidence of its Jesuit roots from campus and classroom (good thing that statue of John Carroll is too big to move).
2. Its closure of its outstanding dental and nursing schools, despite the fact both were making money for the university.
3. Its consolidation of the School of Language and Linguistics, the only institution of its type in the country, into a mere "faculty" of the College of Arts and Sciences, and with it the end of the BS/MS program for language studies.
4. Its shameless sucking at the teat of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which donated the funds for Georgetown's Arab-Islamic Studies Center, for which we are expected to believe there is no quid pro quo.
5. Its poor financial oversight and Scrooge-like approach to financial aid, that ensures GU will continue to raise most of its revenues from tuition, which will remain needlessly high, and which will largely be paid by students in full because they are too cheap to give reasonable grants in aid even to truly needy students.

"Find a real Catholic institution (Christendom College, Front Royal, Virginia comes to mind) and send your Notre Dame bucks their way."

A nice enough place, but still essentially a liberal arts college. If you want to get a degree in the hard sciences or any other specialty, my advice is find the best possible school, regardless of its affiliation. Do not look to colleges and universities for the spiritual formation of you children. That's your job. Do it well, and you can send you children anywhere without fear for their souls.

John II| 3.25.09 @ 1:41PM

Stu: Good list of sound reasons for keeping your wallet in your pocket vis-a-vis Georgetown. But I would argue that each one of those reasons is more or less directly the consequence of Georgetown's abandonment of its Catholic identity.

I liked your response to the Obama shill called "Interloper" as well. But what interloper really means by claiming that Koehl "hasn't said squat" is that you haven't said squat about anything Interloper is interested in, which appears to be very little. Nor would Interloper be interested in the following, although you might want to chew on it yourself.

The Land O' Lakes travesty of 1967 doubtless had as its proximate motivation the liberal giddiness which followed in the wake of Vatican II. But I would estimate that the rather more remote motivation traces back earlier. The 240-plus historically Catholic colleges in North America always had one hidden weakness in their own raison d'etre. Although the Catholic grade-school and high-school system was explicitly started (in the 1880's) to counter the soft-Protestant and secular proselytizing of the expanding public school system, the Catholic college system very soon (by the late 19th century) was motivated principally by the desire to get roughneck ethnic Catholic immigrants (Irish, Germans, Italians, Poles, etc.) into the American mainstream: the bishops wanted Catholics to be counted in far greater numbers among the nation's doctors, lawyers, engineers, businessmen, and, God help us, politicians: the doers and the shakers rather than the barbers and the broom-pushers and the factory workers and the cops.

By roughly 1960, this principal de facto reason for the Catholic colleges' existence had reached the point of mission-accomplished, and the colleges in effect discovered (if only subliminally) that they really had no other mission. But in the several decades preceding 1960 (my date is rough-and-ready, and may actually be a bit earlier), the colleges and especially the colleges which had morphed into "universities" (i.e., predominantly business schools, law schools, and schools of engineering--with the liberal arts playing third trombone to the dominant brass) . . . I say in those several decades preceding 1960 the Catholic institutions of higher education imperceptibly became de facto secularized, with the standard requirements in philosophy and theology becoming, well, standardized--and often shabbily taught.

However bold and visionary the Land O' Lakes enthusiasts may have imagined themselves to be, they were merely formalizing what had already evolved by habit and inattention. (Which explains, by the way, the loose-witted and jargon-clotted composition of their gaseous public declaration.)

Contrary to Interloper's addled and uninformed interpretation of the objections to Land O' Lakes (which he's obviously never taken the time to read, much less study), the shakers and movers of the Catholic institutions by this time--i.e., the well-heeled glad-handers and back-slappers--didn't care about the implications of Land O' Lakes because the issue of "Catholic identity" meant nothing to them that wasn't merely sentimental. Their real concern was to be accepted fully into the secular mainstream: they wanted some of that chic which they had already attached to the historically Protestant universities that had already shed their religious identities much earlier in the century.

Interloper's lame interpretation is thus doubly off the mark, since the scholars and thinkers and serious liberal arts types who started objecting to Land O' Lakes were already perfectly fine with coeducation and racial integration; the Catholic faith they took seriously had been miles ahead of the secular mainstream in its social teachings on issues of political economy and racial justice. The dissenters knew what was at stake. The eager-beaver self-styled (and self-important, as now seems obvious in retrospect) "reformers" didn't, any more than did the rah-rah alumni, who were eager for it to "mean something" that one had graduated from a (historically) Catholic college.

And now, of course, it means less to graduate from most historically Catholic colleges, which have made themselves indistinguishable from the secular institutions.

Stuart Koehl| 3.25.09 @ 1:53PM

John II makes excellent points, particularly concerning the role of Catholic colleges and the agenda of both the Catholic hierarchy and elites in this country during the century spanning the middle of the 19th through the middle of the 20th centuries, which was precisely to jam the square peg in the round hole, to both mainstream Catholics into American society while simultaneously retaining a distinctly Catholic identity.

Their effort, however, is very much a mixed bag, and many of us who are familiar with the Catholic culture of Europe have little choice but to agree with Samuel Huntington, who once remarked that American Catholics are simply Protestants who attend Mass and like Mary. That is to say, aside from the specifics of worship and piety, the values, opinions and thought processes of American Catholics have largely assimilated those of the mainstream Protestant culture around them. And as that Protestant culture becomes more dilute and secular, Catholic culture, such as it is, follows suit. If it is so for society in general, it cannot be any different for the university.

7horsemen| 3.25.09 @ 9:57PM

Actually one has to accept that God exists and that human life is in fact a unique creation to accept any aspect of civilized society. There is no basis in science to endow human beings with "rights". There is no such concept in the cold darwinian world of natural selection. A truly scientific godless world would be ruled by the powerful, enslaving the weak, procreating massively. The more "civilized" a society is, as we recognize that term, means-- quite frankly--- the more Christian in it's outlook. Science says that the weak get crushed and the powerful take what they want. The Christian model (established at a time and place where it was the last thing that people wanted to hear), was proclaimed around helping the poor, equality and loving our neighbor (unscientific concepts all). Subordination of our worldly selves and love for neighbor are christian virtues. Every concept of civilized society is in fact based on the Christian world, not the scientific one.

And for good measure, any study of quantum mechanics will only further underscore our lack of real understanding of the universe. Sure, the Catholic Church resisted a more complete understanding of the universe. So did the Newtononians when Einstein came around....

Stuart Koehl| 3.26.09 @ 5:43AM

"There is no basis in science to endow human beings with "rights"."

An excellent point, and all systems that have attempted to do so absent either implicit or explicit acknowledgment of God's existence have collapsed into tyranny. Take, for instance, the French Revolution, which attempted to establish an earthly paradise based on the principles of Rousseau's Social Contract. As enunciated in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen, all human rights are the product of a social contract between the state and the people; the sovereign people cede power to the state, and in return, the state endows the people with certain rights. But these rights, unlike those enumerated in the Declaration of Independence, are not inalienable, and do not proceed from the Creator. That which the people give, the people can retract; more critically, that which the state bestows, the state can abrogate. This is a recipe for majoritarian tyranny on the one hand, and authoritarian dictatorship on the other; it is not a recipe for a stable, lasting democracy.

Stuart Koehl| 3.26.09 @ 5:44AM

C.S. Lewis put it another way: "A man who does not acknowledge God as his Father is not likely to recognize his fellow man as his brother".

7horsemen| 3.26.09 @ 8:01AM

Good points SK. This is definitely a concept that our athiest friends will in fact need to at least ponder. It does strike me as odd when commenters such as Sherene can be so sure in their disbelief. The more we understand about the universe, from the big bang to quantum mechanics, to the very physical laws of nature, the less surety anyone would have that there was no force behind it. If, in fact, life is nothing more than a random collection of amino acids and protiens that happened to organize themselves after a few lightning bolts, then there would seem to be no need for any social structure that does not benefit reproduction and domination of the species. This is, in fact, the natural law that guides every living thing on earth from the wolf pack to ant colony. The only creature who is at counterpoint to this is man. There can be no evolutionary explanation for man's concern for the less fortunate, the weak, the infirm, and the old (as no other species demonstrates this concern except for its own well being), and yet it is the spiritual element that supports these things.

CM| 3.26.09 @ 11:51AM

As a recent Notre Dame alumnus, and an Obama supporter, I will be doubling my previous year's donation to the University. Via the social networking website Facebook, I will be mobilizing my fellow young alumni to do the same. You can be sure that there are a lot of us. Like the majority of the under-40 crowd, we voted for Obama. Unlike the majority of the over-40 crowd, we well mobilized politically through the internet. We will have an impact.

Stuart Koehl| 3.26.09 @ 2:37PM

"You can be sure that there are a lot of us. Like the majority of the under-40 crowd, we voted for Obama."

Don't worry--wisdom comes with age.

"We will have an impact."

So does a turd falling from great heights.

Thomas| 3.26.09 @ 5:47PM

CM: May I suggest that instead of doubling your donation to the ND, you consider cutting out the middle man and make the donation directly to Plan Parenthood, and have the courage to admit your promotion of the destruction of life.

CM| 3.26.09 @ 6:19PM

In one sentence, Stuart Koehl claims that wisdom comes with age. In the next sentence he makes a poop joke.
So am I to believe his claim, or his self-refuting behavior?

Stuart Koehl| 3.26.09 @ 7:08PM

"In one sentence, Stuart Koehl claims that wisdom comes with age. In the next sentence he makes a poop joke."

You seem to think wisdom and poop jokes are incompatible. If you had a classical education, you would know better.

CM| 3.26.09 @ 8:00PM

You're really plumbing the depths of history, Stuart. If I didn't know better, I would think that you were full of poop (jokes).

Stuart Koehl| 3.26.09 @ 8:20PM

Plumbing. Depths. Poop.

I get it! I so get it!

But that joke is not nearly as funny as the thought of you and your puerile peers thinking that Barack Obama is a harbinger of the eschaton.

gregorbo| 3.26.09 @ 8:33PM

To Stu & John II--Thanks for the commentary.

Specifically to John II (unless I've lost track and it's really Stu):

"Why won't anyone listen to me? Why am I doomed to be an academician without respect?"

Well, as an academic myself, I'll tell you that most folks think that your query is redundant . . .

But I mean this attempt at humor as a compliment to both you and Stu--this has been a quite enlightening and erudite thread.

Thanks.

CM| 3.26.09 @ 11:39PM

Stuart Koehl, the man who enriched this debate by introducing poop jokes into it, is now calling my peers "puerile."
Perhaps one day, Stuart, my generation will be mature enough to giggle over farts like you do.

Stuart Koehl| 3.27.09 @ 5:42AM

"Perhaps one day, Stuart, my generation will be mature enough to giggle over farts like you do."

Given the rate at which human life expectancy continues to increase, it is a distinct possibility.

Stuart Koehl| 3.27.09 @ 5:45AM

To Gregorbo:

Having the unique experience of being in Academe without being of Academe, I have to say I don't even respect the majority of the people with whom I work. Listening to them in seminars and conferences, it doesn't take long to realize they may live and work in ivory towers, but their real passion is building sandcastles in the air. All of them should be required to take "real" jobs before receiving tenure, and should be required to return to a "real" job every other sabbatical.

Fred| 3.27.09 @ 11:00AM

CM Don't sully the University of Our Lady by your contributions. Give the money directly to Planned Parenthood.

R. De brey, '55| 3.27.09 @ 12:58PM

This Obama event at ND should be no surprise, gentlemen. The University has been on a strongly secular track for over 10 years. Did any of you object? It is a little late to be bemoaning the demise of Our Lady's image in the academic world. Sorry to say but it all started with the pride of a priest named Theodore Hesburg. Fr. Jenkins is simply an extension of that philosophy and we will see more of it as long as he is there. It is time for him to go.

CM| 3.27.09 @ 4:17PM

"CM: May I suggest that instead of doubling your donation to the ND, you consider cutting out the middle man and make the donation directly to Plan Parenthood, and have the courage to admit your promotion of the destruction of life. "

"CM Don't sully the University of Our Lady by your contributions. Give the money directly to Planned Parenthood."

I know that it is characteristic of the thinking of brutes that they lump essentialy diverse entities into the same class. Yet, somehow I'm still surprised that the anti-Obama side considers planned parenthood and Notre Dame to be essentially the same entity. I guess when one is so far on the fringe, it's simply a rule governing perception that objects at a distance blur together.

Stuart Koehl| 3.27.09 @ 8:57PM

"Yet, somehow I'm still surprised that the anti-Obama side considers planned parenthood and Notre Dame to be essentially the same entity."

Au contraire, CM. We consider Obama and Planned Parenthood to be the same entity (although Planned Parenthood is usually more moderate in its pro-abortion stance), and therefore an endorsement of the one is an endorsement of the other.

The main difference between me and the people who do not want Obama to speak at Notre Dame, and between me and you, is I would have Obama speak, and then use the opportunity to ream him another orifice over his morally repugnant opinions and equally abhorrent attempts to legislate on abortion, embryonic stem cell research and other bioethical issues.

J. R. Mc Grath| 3.29.09 @ 7:58PM

It is my understanding that the President met with Cardinal George several weeks ago. Remember that N.D. asked the President to attend the graduation ceremonies and not the other way around. Perhaps during the Presidents meeting with the Cardinal the subject of the graduation ceremony came up and did either one suggest to the other that perhnaps the President should, or would he, accept an invitation. Remember the good Cardinal presides over the diocese where we have many, many Catholic politicans who hold top political positions in the city and the state and wouldn't this be a feather in their cap to have him there. Also remember that Chicago and the State of Illinois are known for their political corruptness.

Just an opinion and like navels, everyone has one.

Mark| 3.30.09 @ 2:47PM

CM: You've indicated that your an Obama supporter and that you are going to double your contribution to ND. Presumably, you are electing to do so because they are honoring Obama with the commencement speaker's platform and giving him an honorary doctorate degree in law.

You presumably understand that Obama is the most pro-abortion president in U.S. history. You presumably know that three times, while serving in the Illinois state senate, he voted to allow doctors to kill a baby outside the womb who survived a botched abortion. You likely know that one of his first acts as President was to provide federal funding of abortions. You also presumably understand the Catholic Church's teachings on abortion.

It's not that "the anti-Obama side considers Planned Parenthood and Notre Dame to be the same entity". If so, they wouldn't object to Obama being honored by ND despite his active promotion of abortion using your tax dollars.

If you want to promote abortion, do so directly by giving your money to Planned Parenthood. That way, your political objectives can be accomplished directly without involving Notre Dame.

Is ND promoting abortion by granted to Obama an honorary degree? A large segment of the population seems to think so. Consider, for example, what is worse, funding the killing babies or making a racial slur? Do you think that ND would give an honorary degree to a racist? Certainly not, (nor should it) that wouldn't be politically correct. Nor, or course, would it be politically correct to preclude Obama from getting an honorary degree simply because of the troublesome issue of his promotion of abortion. The problem, of course, is that our faith requires us to place our prinicples above political correctness. The issue of abortion is fundamentally different than other policy issues such as tax policy. To many, the very public honor which ND is bestowing on Obama suggests that Fr. Jenkins considers the Catholic Church's teachings on matters of life to be no more consequential than views on tax policy.

For this, you wish to reward ND?
My, how far ND has already slipped.

CM| 4.2.09 @ 11:32AM

Is it any wonder that conservatives are becoming more and more marginalized? According to them, our president is guilty of mass infanticide. Why would anyone possibly believe such a view? How is this any different from saying that the government slaughtered its own citizens on 9/11, in terms of it being a claim grounded in pure emotion? If you want to talk about whether abortion is right or wrong, then there can be a rational debate. If you want to accuse our highest elected official of being a baby killer and being guilty of mass infanticide, then you're just being shrill.

mark| 4.3.09 @ 9:39AM

CM: Who said that our president is guilty of mass infantcide? Is that your characterization?

Regardless, it is indisputable that he is the most pro-abortion president in U.S. history. It is indisputable that in the first week in office, he executed an executive order allowing for the federal funding of abortions. It is indisputable that, while in the Illinois Senate, he voted to allow doctors to kill outside the womb babies who survived abortions. This is all a matter of public record. There is nothing shrill about citing public record. (It wouldn't even be shrill to cite his comment about not wanting his daughter to be "punished" with a child).

The issue is whether ND should be honoring an individual who actively promotes abortion, and includes your tax dollars to fund it. You apparently want to reward ND for honoring an individual who is actively promoting what the church teaches is evil.

As to a debate about whether abortion is right or wrong, the fundamental point is that, for the Catholic church, that debate is over.

Paragraph 2271 of the Church's catechism reads:
"Since the first century, the Church has affirmed the moral evil of every procured abortion. This teaching has not changed and is unchangable. Direct abortion, that is to say, abortion willed eitehr as an ends or as a means, is gravely contrary to moral law . . . "

The inconsistency between the Church's clear teachings and the election by ND to honor an individual who actively promotes direct violation of such teachings should be readily apparent to you. If not, ND has failed in both its academic as well as religious mission.

George P McAndrews| 8.13.09 @ 5:30PM

Obama gives women freedom of choice: (1) dissection of their baby; (2)chemical dissolution of their baby and (3) crushing of their baby--all followed by vacuuming the parts. Is that what is meant by "Let the little children suffer and send them to me " or was it"Suffer the little children to come unto me."

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xionel| 11.30.11 @ 12:33AM

I do believe all the ideas you’ve introduced on your post. They are very convincing and can definitely work. Still, the posts are very short for novices. May just you please lengthen them a bit from subsequent time? Thank you for the post. www.itunes.com/download. The instructions to download it and install it are below.itunes.com is needed in order to sync your device, and also to download or sync applications or music from the App Store.