Notre Dame Commencement

Bishop D’Arcy and Doctor Glendon are boycotting Notre Dame’s commencement. With Glendon’s rejection of the Laetare Award, who will accept it? The award is intended for a Catholic whose “genius…illustrates Catholic ideals,” but anyone who shares Glendon’s loyalty to the bishops and protectiveness of unborn life will have to reject it. They will have to choose someone who is either pro-choice or so soft on the issue as to be tolerant of legal abortion. Is this illustrative of Catholic moral ideals?

What would I do if my daughter was graduating this year from Notre Dame?

Would I attend, listen politely and applaud as President Obama receives his award? No, I could not do that as I would be complicit in defiance of the bishop’s clear instruction and implicitly validating his abortion agenda.

Would I boycott or picket? Would I stand throughout his address with my back turned to him in protest? Would I join others in a few rousing stanzas of “We love babies; Yes we do; we love babies; How about you?” or chant with Dr. Seuss “A person is a person, no matter how small!” These actions are objectionable as they would spoil the joyous occasion and be uncivil and disrespectful to the President whom I respect as our leader and a decent person.

What if my daughter were this year’s valedictorian? Would she decline the honor rather than defy the bishops? Would she use the occasion to mount an attack on the culture of death and thereby openly condemn our President’s policy? Would the Notre Dame censors allow such an open challenge? Is commencement the proper situation for such Culture War bloodletting?

Notre Dame has done an injustice to all Catholics who respect Church authority and who cherish unborn human life. The parents and students are facing an unfair choice: to peacefully attend the commencement is to honor the abortion agenda and defy the bishop’s direction; but to do otherwise is to spoil what should be a joyous occasion.

Father Jenkins, along with usual cohort of liberal Jesuit colleges who are honoring abortion advocates, will bask in a self-righteous aura of diversity and tolerance as he implements what then-Cardinal Ratzinger called the “dictatorship of relativism.”

President Obama would save the Notre Dame family from intensified disgrace and polarization were he to graciously find a reason to miss the commencement.