The Spirit Of Obama Lives On At Our Lady’s University
By CHRISTOPHER MANION
Twelve years ago, university president Fr. John Jenkins welcomed Barack Obama to Notre Dame as a commencement speaker and honorary degree recipient. At the time, Obama was the most pro-abortion president in history. In fact, among world leaders, he was one of the most radical enemies of life in the civilized world.
Fr. Jenkins’ Obama Welcome Mat included a side entrance to Notre Dame’s own “Irish Gulag,” reserved for dozens of peaceful pro-life demonstrators that Jenkins had handcuffed and arrested for “trespassing” on campus.
A lot of bad publicity followed — one member of the administration had even been fired merely for attending the prolife vigil the night before commencement. But it was worth it: Obama’s appearance was followed by a generous federal grant that made 2009 the “best ever” for fundraising, according to one development officer.
Later that year, Notre Dame Law School’s Charles Rice, a longtime friend and contributor to these pages, chronicled the run-up to and consequences of the Obama invitation in What Happened to Notre Dame?, a study so important that it is still in print from St. Augustine Press (available on Amazon for $15.00).
As we wrote at the time, “Over the years, Notre Dame has built a very expensive house of cards designed to serve two masters — the modern secular world of the intellectual, political, and cultural elite, on the one hand, and traditional Catholic faithful and alumni, on the other. With Obama’s appearance, those cards came tumbling down. One by one, Rice lays them face up on the table.”
Notre Dame was now “a small Purdue with a Golden Dome,” he wrote, that had collapsed into the arms of modernity, driven by a longing for money, influence, and worldly success. Philosophy Professor Ralph McInerny blamed it on “the vulgar lust for prestige.” We wrote then that the only honor that Jenkins forgot to confer was a Fighting Irish medal for his bosom buddy, “O’Bama.”
Well, ideas have consequences, and those cards keep turning up from the bottom of the deck. Not only has Notre Dame prospered from the betrayal of its Catholic character, but the modern secular world has also cashed in on Notre Dame’s decaying but still useful status as a religious seal of approval.
And the most prominent figure to profit from that today is Joe Biden.
“Genius Joe”?
Please Hold Your Applause
The Sycamore Trust, a group of Notre Dame alumni devoted to preserving the school’s Catholic character, has chronicled events at Our Lady’s University for several years. One incident that sticks in the craw to this day is Fr. Jenkins’ 2016 decision to confer upon Joe Biden the Laetare Medal.
“In 2016, Fr. John I. Jenkins, Notre Dame’s president, unaccountably selected then Vice President Joe Biden as the Laetare Medal honoree notwithstanding his support for abortion and same-sex marriage and the objection of Notre Dame’s bishop, the Most Rev. Kevin C. Rhoades,” Sycamore’s bulletin reported.
The university clearly views the Laetare Medal as a superlative honor that is uniquely Catholic, and advertises it as such on its website: “Established at Notre Dame in 1883, the Laetare Medal was conceived as an American counterpart of the Golden Rose, a papal honor that antedates the 11th century. The medal has been awarded annually at Notre Dame to a Catholic ‘whose genius has ennobled the arts and sciences, illustrated the ideals of the Church and enriched the heritage of humanity’.”
Fr. Jenkins insisted at the time that Biden was not being honored for policy positions but for his public service and dedication to civility in public discourse.
So supporting the killing of the unborn is a “policy position,” right up there with taxes or zoning ordinances.
Curiously, “Genius Joe’s” name and picture no longer appear on the website’s page featuring prominent previous recipients — but that doesn’t go far enough.
Biden has now surpassed Obama as the most pro-abortion president in history. He is pirouetting down the aisle to the Communion rail of Holy Trinity Church in Georgetown, where the pastor has the personal approval of the local cardinal-archbishop to admit him to the reception of the Eucharist.
Joe Biden is the poster boy for politicians who, in the words of Canon 915, “obstinately persist in manifest grave sin.” His callous support of abortion, of forcing Catholic medical personnel to assist at abortions, and his denial of religious exemptions from his illegal vaccination mandates all carry the secular imprimatur of a “devout Catholic” president.
It’s time for a change.
Two years ago, Notre Dame’s PR department made the following announcement:
“The Vatican has announced the conclusion of the adjudicatory process against former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, finding that he transgressed his vows, used his power to abuse both minors and adults and violated his sacred duty as a priest. In accord with University President Rev. John I. Jenkins’ statement of August 2, 2018, the University of Notre Dame is rescinding the honorary degree conferred in 2008.”
Biden’s radical anti-life record offers ample precedent for Notre Dame to rescind the university’s award of the Laetare Medal to Joe Biden in the same fashion.
And while they’re at it, that 2009 honorary degree to Obama has brought only dishonor to Our Lady’s University, no matter how many millions in taxpayer dollars it has brought in.
It’s time for Notre Dame to take the lead. In recent years, that “vulgar lust” has turned to rot. And like a dead fish on the beach, it smells.
Let’s Hear It For The Kids
While we’re on the subject, the old saying goes that “the fish rots from the head,” and, while Charlie Rice criticized Notre Dame’s administration when it was called for, he insisted that “the kids are the best thing about the place.”
Indeed, a few of today’s undergraduates are swimming against the tide and standing up for our Lady in the midst of Notre Dame’s continuing collapse into moral chaos.
Mary Frances Myler, a member of the class of 2022, edits the Irish Rover, an unofficial but widely read campus newspaper. In a Rover article published last month, Myler confronts Notre Dame’s duplicity that has increased significantly since 2009.
“No Man Can Serve Two Masters,” Myler writes in her “foray into the university’s treatment of LGBT issues.”
“Notre Dame has been swept along by the tides of secularism. Ever-shifting societal mores threaten Notre Dame’s Catholic identity. Increasingly, the university conforms to dominant secular narratives surrounding contentious cultural issues. Particularly on issues of gender and sexuality, the university’s stance regarding Church teachings raises concern.”
“Discussions surrounding the nature of marriage as a union between one man and one woman have gone extinct from the public, including at the University of Notre Dame; now, debates rage regarding the definitions of ‘man’ and ‘woman.’ The university may believe that she navigates the issue well, but she in fact simultaneously professes Catholic teaching and espouses a secular movement in opposition to the Church’s position. The result? Incoherence.”
Myler calls the roll: Notre Dame’s “pastoral” call for all students to be “allies” of the LGBTQ community; its extension, without any government requirement, to extend employment benefits to legally married same-sex couples; its celebration this past June of “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Pride Month, 2021” (Joe Biden’s embassy in Kabul made a big deal about that too. One wonders, whom did it offend more? Afghanistan’s Moslems or Notre Dame’s Catholics?).
The list goes on, and so do the tirades. While unexpected accolades followed, some fellow students castigated Myler’s divisive “hate speech,” as well as her abuse of gender pronouns. Undoubtedly, some of her classmates would stick her in a reeducation camp before she could graduate if they were in charge.
And some day they might be in charge. And someday Notre Dame might turn that card face up too, with a statue of “Catholic Joe” Biden in the middle of the campus gulag.