The United States government must not undertake to run the Churches. When an individual, in the Church or out of it, becomes dangerous to the public interest he must be checked.
~ Abraham Lincoln
It has been common, perhaps even tradition, for new presidents to give the commencement speech at Notre Dame. That won’t happen this year.
Joe Biden, the self-described devout Catholic, won’t be present. He has a scheduling conflict. Only that’s not the story. The story is that 4300 members of the “Notre Dame community” don’t want him there since he is opposed to everything they stand for as Catholics.
Notre Dame would have awarded Biden an honorary degree, as is customary for commencement speakers. That was the sticking point.
More than 4,300 “members of the Notre Dame community” and others signed an open letter to the Rev. John I. Jenkins, the university president, asking him not to invite Mr. Biden over his “pro-abortion and anti-religious liberty agenda.”
“He rejects Church teachings on abortion, marriage, sex, and gender and is hostile to religious liberty. He embraces the most pro-abortion and anti-religious liberty public policy program in history,” said the letter. “The case against honoring him is immeasurably stronger than it was against honoring President Obama, an action that alienated countless Catholics and brought upon Notre Dame the harsh criticism of 83 cardinals, archbishops, and bishops.”
In the letter, opponents said that “the university should be free to invite speakers who disagree with Church teachings, but this is beside the point.”
“It has nothing to do with honoring them, which should be governed by the injunction of the nation’s bishops that ‘Catholic institutions should not honor those who act in defiance of our fundamental moral principles,’” the letter said.
Biden’s also corrupt, but that’s for another story.
In 2009, the Catholic Bishops came out strongly against Obama’s mandate. In a letter to the Catholic faithful, they wrote in part:
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced last week that almost all employers, including Catholic employers, will be forced to offer their employees’ health coverage that includes sterilization, abortion-inducing drugs, and contraception. Almost all health insurers will be forced to include those “services” in the health policies they write. And almost all individuals will be forced to buy that coverage as a part of their policies.
In so ruling, the Obama Administration has cast aside the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, denying to Catholics our Nation’s first and most fundamental freedom, that of religious liberty. And as a result, unless the rule is overturned, we Catholics will be compelled to either violate our consciences, or to drop health coverage for our employees (and suffer the penalties for doing so). The Obama Administration’s sole concession was to give our institutions one year to comply.
Mr. Obama gave the commencement address in 2009, four months after his inauguration. Also speaking at graduation ceremonies in their first years in office were President George W. Bush in 2001 and Vice President Mike Pence in 2017.
C.J. Doyle, executive director of the Catholic Action League, said there was “unprecedented opposition to Obama receiving a degree from Notre Dame, so much so that the President of Notre Dame, Father Jenkins, actually walked in the National March for Life in DC afterwards.”
This was after the 79-year-old activist priest, Father Norman Weslin, now deceased, who peacefully protested Obama’s abortion stance just prior to Obama’s arrival on the campus, was tagged, tied up, and carried off in a carpet singing a hymn.
Upon hearing the good news of Biden’s ‘scheduling conflict,’ Mr. Doyle told The Washington Times, “I believe there would have been even more intense outrage if Biden was given a degree. The issue of nominally Catholic politicians who support abortion is, 48 years after Roe, finally reaching critical mass.”
How could they even consider giving an honorary degree to the man who makes American Catholics fund abortions throughout the world?
After his commencement speech at the Coast Guard Academy, no one should invite him to speak.
Subscribe to the Daily Newsletter
