As a few angry protesters were hauled away, President Obama was greeted with "thunderous applause" by "the vast majority" of the 12,000 people gathered at yesterday's commencement ceremonies at Notre Dame. Obama and Notre Dame's president, Rev. John Jenkins, both appealed to "faith and reason" and for opponents on both sides of the abortion/ stem-cell debate to use "fair-minded words" (Obama even chiding his own campaign web site for its choice of words in the abortion debate).
We would also like to quote extensively from the graduation ceremony remarks of Trinity Washington University president Patricia McGuire yesterday:
"The real scandal at Notre Dame today is not that the president of the United States is speaking at commencement. The real scandal is the misappropriation of sacred teachings for political ends. The real scandal is the spectacle of ostensibly Catholic mobs camping out at Notre Dame for the specific purpose of disrupting the commencement address of the nation's first African American president. This ugly spectacle is an embarrassment to all Catholics. The face that Catholicism shows to our new president should be one marked with the sign of peace, not distorted in the snarl of hatred.
The religious vigilantism apparent in the Notre Dame controversy arises from organizations that have no official standing with the church, but who are successful in gaining media coverage as if they were speaking for Catholicism....They have established themselves as uberguardians of a belief system we can hardly recognize. Theirs is a narrow faith devoted almost exclusively to one issue. They defend the rights of the unborn but have no charity toward the living. They mock social justice as a liberal mythology."
