Free Republic

Embattled Notre Dame coach Charlie Weis is saying NFL teams already have contacted him regarding offensive coordinator positions, Adam Schefter reports. As Sporting News contributor Mike Florio points out on ProFootballTalk.com, the first teams to come to mind are the Chiefs and Patriots. Browns coach Eric Mangini also might want to tap Weis, who worked with Brady Quinn during the quarterback's record-setting career at Notre Dame.

On yet another surreally beautiful November day in South Bend, the Notre Dame sliding Irish completed the hard-to-believe scene by falling to yet another inferior opponent at home, losing to Connecticut by the final score of 33-30. For although Senior Day had the senior captains coming out of the tunnel with arms interlocked with Charlie Weis' to show their unwavering support for their embattled coach, this embarrassing performance most certainly buried Charlie, and assured he would be exiting the campus with them, if not before. Still, if Saturday's loss meant Charlie would no longer be roaming the sidelines, it also...

BALTIMORE (AP) -- Fallout continues from the spring controversy over the University of Notre Dame awarding an honorary degree to President Barack Obama, who supports abortion rights. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops went behind closed doors at their fall meeting Wednesday to discuss, among other issues, what action they should take to increase oversight of the nation's more than 200 Roman Catholic colleges and universities. Chicago Cardinal Francis George, president of the bishops' conference, revealed this week that he had formed a task force charged with reviewing the issue. Its research included a look at what church law says...

SOUTH BEND, IN - Notre Dame Greets a New Pro-life Bishop While Father Jenkins Continues to Serve on a Pro-abortion Board. Father Jenkins declared that Notre Dame “engaged with” President Obama because “we care so much” about abortion and embryonic stem cell research. We will from time to time examine the nature and degree of this professed concern. We recently recounted Father Jenkins’s refusal to suggest the dropping of the trespass charges against the so-called “Notre Dame 88,” as well as the reasons for skepticism about his action in setting up a task force on life issues. Here, we...

The new bishop of the Indiana diocese in which the University of Notre Dame is located is a critic of the university’s decision to award President Barack Obama an honorary degree. Bishop Kevin Rhoades, the one-time rector of Mount St. Mary’s Seminary in Emmitsburg, Md., had served as bishop of his native Diocese of Harrisburg since 2004 before being transferred to the Diocese of Fort Wayne - South Bend on November 14. Bishop Rhoades, who recently declared a diocean Marian year and has a strong track record of attracting vocations to the priesthood, issued a statement in March condemning the...

When Notre Dame Head Football Coach Charlie Weis showed up for his first day on his new job under the Golden Dome, there was a short letter waiting for him in the middle of his desk. It was from Charlie's predecessor, Ty Willingham. The letter read as follows: Dear Coach Weis, Congratulations on being named as Notre Dame's football coach. It is truly an honor and a privilege to represent this University and coach these outstanding young men. You have a wealth of experience that has prepared you for the challenges you will face, but I suspect that you may...

It was an eerily warm November morning when I arrived in South Bend yesterday with my son, Gary, to attend the Notre Dame-Navy battle. "What a beautiful day for a game!" I exclaimed to my son as we listened unsuspectingly to the band's pre-game rendition of the Notre Dame Victory March. Little did we know that we were not about to witness a football game, but a funeral. For not only did the Naval Academy's efficient yet stunning 23-21 victory, their second in three years against the Irish after Notre Dame had defeated them 43 years in a row,...

"The only mistake in life is not to become a Saint." When I first heard the above quote (perhaps a FIT reader will recall who said it) as a student at the University of Notre Dame, it really made me think. It was at a time when, after falling away from my child-like enthusiasm for Catholicism, I was coming back to the Faith but struggling to accept it as a man. But just as those too-perfect pictures of the Saints had hooked me as a youth, the realistic struggles of the Saints to follow Christ was what sealed the...

South Bend, Ind., Oct 19, 2009 / 04:48 pm (CNA).The Board of Trustees of the University of Notre Dame has elected Fr. John I. Jenkins, CSC, to a second five-year term as university president

If you plunged your family into hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt to send your son or daughter to Notre Dame thinking your hard earned money would get your child a truly Catholic education this will disappoint and infuriate you. If the knot in your stomach from Barack Obama’s selection as last spring’s commencement speaker is just now beginning to loosen up hang on to your blood pressure medicine here comes another anti Catholic stunt from Father John Jenkins the school’s president. Notre Dame, the University of Our Lady mind you, has used student organization funds to finance a...

Recent events at the University of Notre Dame are creating a great deal of moral confusion. Ever since the university decided to honor our pro-abortion president at its commencement ceremony earlier this year, it seems the institution is on a direct collision course with its long-standing Catholic identity. URGENT petition to Notre Dame: Please drop the chargesFor example: Notre Dame funded a student trip to the National Equality March in Washington, D.C, held on October 11. The pro-homosexual march demanded same-sex “marriage” and the abolition of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. Notre Dame’s Gender Relations Center announces troubling activities...

The University of Notre Dame gave financial assistance to five students to participate in Sunday's national gay rights demonstration, which was organized in part to advocate homosexual "marriage," a campus newspaper has reported. The "National Equality March" on Sunday, October 11, in Washington, D.C., was sponsored by Equality Across America, which aims to build a national grassroots network asserting homosexual couples' "right to marry" as well as other demands. The Catholic Church believes that marriage is possible only between a man and a woman. "Faithful Catholics will ask whether Notre Dame has learned its lesson from the scandalous commencement ceremony...

NEW YORK (CNS) -- Mary Ann Glendon was "the heroine of the Notre Dame commencement tragedy" in May, an official of the National Right to Life Committee said as the Harvard law professor and former U.S. ambassador to the Vatican received the organization's Proudly Pro-Life Award Oct. 6. Anthony J. Lauinger, vice president of the pro-life organization and the father of eight University of Notre Dame alumni, said Glendon's "principled refusal" of the Indiana university's 2009 Laetare Medal led the National Right to Life Educational Trust Fund to honor her at its awards dinner. The Laetare Medal, established in 1883,...

I just recieved an email about a petition drive in the Notre Dame pro life activist arrest. The peolpe at TFP are asking that all who can, sign their pettion to Father Jenkins (President of Notre Dame) asking him to drop the charges on the peaceful activists. They made a peaceful march on Notre Dame protesting President Obama's speech there. This not only goes against the priciple of life and aid for the unborn that the Catholic Church holds as a main teaching. But it also borders on violation of the First Ammendment's protect of free speech and free gathering.

American Catholics have endured internal polarization for many years, but lately the split has become more visible, vocal, and vitriolic. For this we largely have Barack Obama to thank.   Before Obama's admirers start screaming -- itself a sign of the polarization -- I hasten to say I don't particularly blame the president. Obama has only been doing what politicians always do, seeking allies and votes where he can get them. In the process, however, the divisions among already divided Catholics have unquestionably grown wider and deeper.   Now even bishops have taken to advertising their differences. Maybe it's...

INDIANAPOLIS – A woman who worked catering events for the University of Notre Dame says it was her lucky day when the school tipped her $29,000 in her check. But now the university is suing to get back the money she says she's already spent.

In many places where perpetual, or even frequent, Eucharistic Adoration has been made available, there have been great benefits. But Richard McBrien of Notre Dame is again Eucharist Adoration. In his latest piece for the dissenting, ultra-liberal National Catholic Reporter McBrien wrote this with my emphases and comments: ... The practice of eucharistic adoration began in the 12th century, when the Real Presence of Christ was widely rejected by heretics or misunderstood by poorly educated Catholics. The church saw eucharistic adoration as a way of reaffirming its faith in the Real Presence and of promoting renewed devotion to it. However,...

SOUTH BEND, Indiana, September 4, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The president of a pro-life public interest law firm has issued an open letter to University of Notre Dame president Rev. John Jenkins, insisting that the school seek to drop the charges against 88 pro-lifers who await sentencing of up to one year in jail and a $5,000 fine for protesting the school's honoring pro-abortion President Obama last May. "[Notre Dame] should honor all who dare to speak out for the dignity of all human beings - born or unborn, wanted or unwanted, humble or exalted - not prosecute them!" wrote Thomas...

Lou Holtz discusses the AP Top 25 poll and then defends his choice of Notre Dame for the BCS title game

Bishop John M. D'Arcy Fort Wayne, Ind., Aug 25, 2009 / 11:35 am (CNA).- Bishop John M. D'Arcy, whose diocese encompasses the University of Notre Dame, is not letting the issues raised by the university's honoring of President Obama lie dormant. Instead, the Bishop of Fort Wayne-South Bend has penned a poignant article for the upcoming edition of America magazine that calls on the renowned university to evaluate the consequences of its failure to respect the authority of the bishops. In an article that will be the cover story of the Jesuit-run America magazine on August 31, bishop D’Arcy...

SOUTH BEND, Ind. -- So a couple of years ago Charlie Weis was sitting on a beach in Puerto Rico when a USC grad, of all people, approached the Notre Dame coach and asked whether Albert Pujols, who was sitting a shovel pass away with his family, could stop by and say hello. Pujols, the best baseball player on the planet, wanted to talk to him? Weis, a baseball guy who adores the New York Yankees, said yes. Pujols and Weis hit it off. They talked ball. They talked family. They talked charities. (Both are heavily involved in special-needs fundraising.)...

Health Care: Lost in the kerfuffle about a pro-choice president being honored at the University of Notre Dame was the damage the Freedom of Choice Act might do to the nation's health care.Specifically, how many Catholic hospitals will close and how many Catholic doctors will quit if it becomes law? According to the Catholic Health Association, Catholic institutions make up 13% of the nation's nearly 5,000 hospitals, and employ more than 600,000 people. CHA says one of every six Americans hospitalized in the U.S. are cared for in a Catholic hospital. A lot of federal funds flow through the nation's...

Well, the long-awaited commencement chez Notre Madame is past, God be thanked, with the father of the college and the father of our country fairly falling into one another’s arms in an ecstasy of mutual admiration and relief. I’ll leave it to the right people to express their feelings of betrayal—I mean the Catholics who have spent many years praying in front of abortuaries, passing out literature on abortion to their students in Catholic schools, donating time and goods and money to homes for unwed mothers, and fighting the patient and frustrating political fight one fence-sitting politician at a time....

Editor: David Schindler, provost/dean of the John Paul II Institute for Marriage and the Family at Catholic University and editor of the quarterly theological review, Communio, took the rare step of writing an editorial in the front of the Spring, 2009 issue, an issue that arrived in subscribers’ mailboxes mid-July.) (1) In its invitation to President Obama, Notre Dame started a controversy it surely could have anticipated would exacerbate divisions among Catholics in America. The controversy was not necessary: it did not come to, but was brought about by, the university. To say that the university went ahead with the...

Orlando, Fla. - Former Notre Dame football coach Lou Holtz is mulling a run for Congress in Florida as a Republican, a GOP strategist said Tuesday. Holtz could decide in the next several weeks whether to seek the central Florida congressional seat held by Democrat U.S. Rep. Suzanne Kosmas, said the strategist who requested anonymity because he is not authorized to talk about the matter. The 72-year-old Holtz has never run for office. He has worked as an analyst at ESPN since retiring from his last coaching stint at the University of South Carolina at the end of the 2004...

HONOLULU -- Hawaii coach Greg McMackin was suspended for 30 days without pay and has volunteered to take an additional 7 percent pay cut from his $1.1 million salary for making a derogatory comment while describing Notre Dame's chant before last year's Hawaii Bowl. In a room full of players, assistant coaches and boosters, a tearful McMackin addressed reporters late Friday after meeting with school officials for several hours. "I just want to say I made a big mistake. I want to apologize to everyone and anyone that I offended with my remarks," he said. "I'm committed to do whatever...

During his highly publicized commencement speech to Notre Dame, Obama pleaded that we must find common ground on abortion, and pointed out that both the pro-life movement and the pro-choice movement care equally about women. Mr. President, it isn’t about the woman, it’s about the unborn child. This is not even to point out that it’s impossible to find common ground between a group that wants a child to be born, and a group that wants to stop that from happening. But, as pro-lifers growing up in the first generation to be able to see our brothers and sisters on...

In response to Joe Feuerherd’s question about whether the president might “write off the bishops,� President Obama had this to say. He said that he would not “write off the bishops,� and gave his reasons. “Number one, one of the strengths of our democracy is that everybody is free to express their political opinions, and I take people’s opinions seriously. I’m the President of all Americans, not just the Americans who happen to agree with me,� said the president. “The American bishops have a profound influence in their communities, in the church, and beyond,� he continued. “What I will...

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- In a Thursday afternoon interview with members of various Catholic publications, President Barack Obama defended himself from criticism over his pro-abortion record. He said he supports a conscience clause on abortion but gave a joking response to a question about Notre Dame.According to a National Catholic Register report, Obama talked about his upcoming visit with Pope Benedict XVI and said he looked forward to taking with him about unrelated political issues.Father Owen Kearns, editor in chief and publisher of the Register, said each member of the Catholic press was allowed to ask one question and...

Nearly a year has passed since Pope Benedict XVI's visit to the United States and his speech to more than 200 leaders of Catholic colleges and universities at the Catholic University of America. Much has happened, both on campus and off. There is the historic election of Barack Obama, a politician described by Archbishop Charles J. Chaput as "the most committed abortion rights presidential candidate of either party since the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision." His election can be viewed in the context of that papal visit, for many Catholic college professors and administrators helped make his victory possible. On...

Monday June 22, 2009 U.S. Bishops Issue Statement of Support for Notre Dame’s Bishop D'Arcy By Kathleen GilbertSAN ANTONIO, Texas, June 22, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Following their spring meeting in San Antonio last week, the U.S. bishops today issued a statement of support for Fort Wayne-South Bend Bishop John D'Arcy's "pastoral concern" for the University of Notre Dame. The bishop made national and international headlines earlier this year after he publicly rebuked Notre Dame's decision to honor President Obama. "The bishops of the United States express our appreciation and support for our brother bishop, the Most Reverend John D'Arcy," reads the brief statement...

Friday June 19, 2009 Bishops Curry, Kicanas Dismiss Sanctions, Stress Virtue of “Dialogue” in Wake of ND Scandal By Kathleen GilbertSAN ANTONIO, Texas, June 19, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Two bishops questioned on the U.S. prelates' response to the Notre Dame scandal have suggested that the correct attitude to pro-abortion politicans at Catholic universities is unclear, and agreed with University president Fr. John Jenkins' emphasis on the paramount need for “dialogue.�Auxiliary Bishop Thomas Curry of Los Angeles told John Allen of the National Catholic Reporter during the USCCB's spring meeting that he suspected the bishops would bring up the unprecedented...

VATICAN CITY, June 17, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Archbishop Raymond Burke, the highest ranking American prelate in the Vatican has given an interview in a Catholic magazine, in which he says that Notre Dame’s decision to honor President Barack Obama was not only “profoundly shocking,” but also underscores a grave situation requiring action to ensure the incident is never repeated.Burke is the prefect of the Apostolic Signatura, the highest court of appeal in the Church next to the Pope, and an outspoken advocate for life and family values. He has made headlines repeatedly for his insistence that ministers of communion...

In the wake of the Notre Dame commencement scandal, Catholic college leaders representing some of the worst violators of the U.S. bishops’ 2004 ban on honoring public opponents of fundamental Catholic teachings are lobbying the bishops to withdraw their policy. Yesterday the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities (ACCU), which represents more than 200 Catholic institutions, released its summer 2009 newsletter, including a report on the ACCU’s board of directors meeting last week. The ACCU directors concluded “that it would be desirable for the [U.S. bishops] to withdraw” their 2004 policy, according to the newsletter. The policy in question is...

Wednesday June 10, 2009 ND Prez Jenkins Has "No Interest" in Asking for Leniency for ND Protesters Despite Calls for “Dialogue” By Kathleen GilbertSOUTH BEND, Indiana, June 10, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The president of the University of Notre Dame has "no interest" in interfering with the fates of over 80 peaceful pro-life protesters arrested on campus while protesting President Obama's May 17 commencement speech, says the pro-lifers' attorney. One of the arrestees, Lambs of Christ founder Fr. Norman Weslin, issued a statement Monday calling on University president Fr. John Jenkins to heed the arrested group's requests to meet, which Weslin...

Theground shifted under liberalism last week, and even as President Obama appeared to seize a moment of culture war triumph over his pro-life detractors through his conciliatory and, by all immediate indications, well-received commencement address at Notre Dame, a metaphysical quake was reverberating unseen beneath and beyond the audience's applause, at a far more profound wavelength. The Notre Dame speech was delivered in the midst of four eventful days that may come to be seen as a pivot point on which our national political direction was ultimately realigned. On May 15, two days before Obama stepped on stage in South...

I just don’t think I am guilty for witnessing about abortion on the campus of a Catholic university," explained Dr. Monica Miller, one of the 40 individuals arrested for trespassing while protesting at Notre Dame’s graduation on the weekend of May 17. Miller and members of a pro-life organization pleaded "not guilty" in court on June 3. The protestors objected to pro-abortion President Obama being honored as commencement speaker and awarded an honorary doctorate in law during Notre Dame’s commencement exercises. Miller, who is a professor of Sacred Theology at Madonna University in Livonia, Mich. believed that she and other...

Letter to the Editor of The Island Packet: On June 5, you printed a letter that reflected only one side of what Catholics believe about abortion. It used emotive language that really does damage to the pro-life cause. This letter said: "With pro-abortionists, you are compromising the truth" ... "legalized abortion kills babies." I don't know any Catholic who is "pro-abortion." I do know a lot of Catholics who, unlike our bishops, do not think that contraception is "intrinsically evil." We Catholics use contraception to increase love in our marriages and want it to be available to the public to...

Notre Dame Not Seeking Leniency for Arrested Pro-Life Protesters: Thomas More Lawyers Now on the Case SOUTH BEND, Indiana, - Thomas More Society attorneys appeared in St. Joseph County Criminal Court to defend two prominent pro-life advocates against trespass charges brought this morning by local prosecutors in the wake of protests at the University of Notre Dame. The attorneys join the fight with pro-life attorney Tom Dickson, who is representing dozens more pro-lifers arrested at the campus. Laura Rohling and Jane Brennan went onto the Notre Dame campus to educate students about the after-effects of abortion, based on their own...

On March 22, a number of the world’s media outlets reported something along the lines of “ Far-right youths carrying placards reading ‘leave my Pope alone’ clashed with left-wing activists outside Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris after the latter had thrown condoms on the square as worshippers were leaving Sunday mass.” The Associated Press, AFP and Reuters were among the news-wires which used the term “far right” to describe the young people protesting in favour of the Pope. A group of about 30 demonstrators belonging to a group called Act Up had chosen a major Sunday Mass at Notre Dame Cathedral...

MANY WHO read this piece will probably say I'm being excessively cynical. I plead guilty. But merely because they're right doesn't mean that I'm wrong. So here goes: I strongly suspect that President Obama's speech at Notre Dame's commencement was an attempt to separate Catholics from the teachings of their church. Many in the Catholic community and church hierarchy expressed outrage at the school's invitation to Obama to speak, and to award him an honorary degree. For them, it was highly inappropriate for a Catholic university to honor someone whose support for abortion is so contrary to the position of...

I spent a lot of time watching news coverage of President Obama’s recent speech at Notre Dame. I couldn’t help but be reminded of my sister Terri’s two-week ordeal that took place at the hospice facility where she was killed in March of 2005. The was so much that was eerily similar—from the amount of media present and the pro-lifers who were there in prayer, to the dozens of people who were arrested for protesting against what was taking place. Along with so many other Catholics, I found it profoundly disturbing that President Obama was not only invited to speak...

Forty years ago the major Catholic universities in the U.S. decided that the Catholic Church needed to reform her teachings, especially that of sexual morality, to conform to the times, and that they should lead that reform. In 1967, at Land O'Lakes, Wisconsin, they declared their independence from the Church, exchanged the faith of their founders for an evolutionary heresy, proclaimed themselves to be an alternate magis­terium, and transferred control from their founding religious orders to secular boards of trustees. Not coincidentally, by these actions they qualified themselves for lucrative financial grants from foundations controlled by leaders of the Culture...

"The question, then, is how do we work through these conflicts? Is it possible for us to join hands in common effort? As citizens of a vibrant and varied democracy, how do we engage in vigorous debate? How does each of us remain firm in our principles, and fight for what we consider right, without demonizing those with just as strongly held convictions on the other side?" President Barack Obama, Commencement Address at the University (formerly) of Notre Dame. As sad a sight as it is, having a pro-abort socialist honored at a school built to honor Our Lady, we...

Notre Dame University went ahead with both the honorary degree and the commencement speech for pro-abortion President Barack Obama despite a multiplicity of protests. Seventy Catholic bishops sharply criticized the decision, 360,000 persons signed a petition opposing the invitation, and 1,400 Notre Dame supporters even indicated their intent to cease donating a combined $14 million to the school. Many outraged Catholics have called for the resignation of Father John I. Jenkins, the school's president. They blame him for soiling the school’s supposedly unsullied commitment to Catholic beliefs. The truth, however, is that Notre Dame went off course long ago, taken...

A pro-life organization that serves as a watchdog for Catholic colleges and universities says the number of commencement scandals involving pro-abortion graduation speakers and honorees rose in 2009. The Cardinal Newman Society says 11 Catholic colleges joined the University of Notre Dame in violating the guidelines of the nation's Catholic bishops. The pro-life group says the figures mark a "troubling reversal" of the recent decrease of Catholic commencement scandals form the seven that took place in 2008, which itself was down from 24 in 2006. “It is a very sad development, to see so many Catholic colleges and universities joining...

“It’s beyond our capacity as human beings to know with certainty what God has planned for us or what he asks of us. And those of us who believe must trust that his wisdom is greater than our own,” said Obama.... It was hard not to connect this pronouncement with the renewed abortion debates that followed Notre Dame’s decision to grant Obama an honorary doctor of laws degree. In the end, 80-plus bishops publicly criticized this action, arguing that it violated the 2004 U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops policy that stated: “Catholic institutions should not honor those who act in...

Fighting Irish Faux Catholicism by: Malcolm A. Kline, May 28, 2009 The president’s celebrated appearance at Notre Dame marked the university’s most advanced occasion of giving a platform to a high-profile pro-choice speaker but practicing Catholics are starting to notice. In the 1980s, Notre Dame provided a podium to New York Governor Mario Cuomo and Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, both Democrats. Arguably, the “personally opposed but…” positions that these politicians took put them to the “right” of the current chief executive who can’t seem to bring himself to personally oppose abortion, at least publicly. In fact, Sen. Moynihan voted for...

This coming Sunday, May 31, is the 50th day of Easter, Pentecost Sunday. As the Easter season draws to a close, the church universal celebrates the gift of the Holy Spirit, first poured into the hearts of the Lord’s disciples gathered in that upper room so long ago, and now extended to all baptized and confirmed believers in support of our communion and our evangelizing mission. Every Pentecost before the gospel is proclaimed, a beautiful Sequence prayer of praise is sung, “Come, Holy Spirit, Come!” In that prayer we ask the Holy Spirit to “shed a ray of light divine…...