We need to stop over-counting our numbers, our influence, our institutions and our resources, because they’re not real. We can’t talk about following St. Paul and converting our culture until we sober up and get honest about what we’ve allowed ourselves to become. We need to stop lying to each other, to ourselves and to God by claiming to ‘personally oppose’ some homicidal evil -- but then allowing it to be legal at the same time.”It's been true for some time, of course, but we have absolutely up-to-date evidence that the premier Catholic University in the country, eg, is not in fact Catholic. The President's been invited to give the commencement address and will be given an honorary degree. Let's ponder precisely what the erstwhile Catholic administration means to honor in conferring such an award.
In the comments of various blogposts I've seen a fair number of "shamefuls!" but I've seen the predictable defense that well, after all, he's the President and he's not Catholic and it's not as if the Republican party shares the Catholic view of social issues.
To which I respond: well, it's not as if the President invited himself, they lobbied for him. And if they think they made the cut of schools he'd visit for any reason other than that he intends to use the appearance to further undermine Catholic attachment to the so-called social issues, they're nuts.
Let us ask ourselves as well precisely what this erstwhile Catholic administration thinks it's honoring by conferring that honorary law degree on the man whose first act of foreign policy is to fund the abortion of brown people overseas; who makes us all complicit in embryo destruction no matter what we think of it; who moves to attack conscience protections for medical professionals who don't want to collude in abortion; and who has promised to sign a bill soon to be introduced that will nullify 35 years of hard-won consensus on a whole host of measures from parental consent for abortion to protecting infants born alive. Is it his power to enact unjust laws they are honoring? Or just raw power?
Archbishop Chaput puts it rather well:
Some Catholics in both political parties are deeply troubled by these issues. But too many Catholics just don’t really care. That’s the truth of it. If they cared, our political environment would be different. If 65 million Catholics really cared about their faith and cared about what it teaches, neither political party could ignore what we believe about justice for the poor, or the homeless, or immigrants, or the unborn child. If 65 million American Catholics really understood their faith, we wouldn’t need to waste each other’s time arguing about whether the legalized killing of an unborn child is somehow ‘balanced out’ or excused by three other good social policies.There's a petition of protest to Notre Dame's president, but at this point there is nothing that can undo the message Notre Dame just sent the world with respect to the truth of natural law that life begins at conception and the decree of our bishops that
The Catholic community and Catholic institutions should not honor those who act in defiance of our fundamental moral principles. They should not be given awards, honors or platforms which would suggest support for their actions."We don't care."
