Bishop John D'Arcy
Posted on 03/24/2009 11:28:08 AM PDT by NYer
.- Bishop John M. D'Arcy has issued a statement saying that he won't be attending Notre Dame's commencement exercises, which will feature President Obama as the keynote speaker and honor him with a doctor of laws degree.
The full statement of Bishop D'Arcy follows.
Concerning President Barack Obama speaking at Notre Dame
graduation, receiving honorary law degree
March 24, 2009 On Friday, March 21, Father John Jenkins, CSC, phoned to inform me that President Obama had accepted his invitation to speak to the graduating class at Notre Dame and receive an honorary degree. We spoke shortly before the announcement was made public at the White House press briefing. It was the first time that I had been informed that Notre Dame had issued this invitation.
President Obama has recently reaffirmed, and has now placed in public policy, his long-stated unwillingness to hold human life as sacred. While claiming to separate politics from science, he has in fact separated science from ethics and has brought the American government, for the first time in history, into supporting direct destruction of innocent human life.
This will be the 25th Notre Dame graduation during my time as bishop. After much prayer, I have decided not to attend the graduation. I wish no disrespect to our president, I pray for him and wish him well. I have always revered the Office of the Presidency. But a bishop must teach the Catholic faith “in season and out of season,” and he teaches not only by his words — but by his actions.
My decision is not an attack on anyone, but is in defense of the truth about human life.
I have in mind also the statement of the U.S. Catholic Bishops in 2004. “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.” Indeed, the measure of any Catholic institution is not only what it stands for, but also what it will not stand for.
I have spoken with Professor Mary Ann Glendon, who is to receive the Laetare Medal. I have known her for many years and hold her in high esteem. We are both teachers, but in different ways. I have encouraged her to accept this award and take the opportunity such an award gives her to teach.
Even as I continue to ponder in prayer these events, which many have found shocking, so must Notre Dame. Indeed, as a Catholic University, Notre Dame must ask itself, if by this decision it has chosen prestige over truth.
Tomorrow, we celebrate as Catholics the moment when our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, became a child in the womb of his most holy mother. Let us ask Our Lady to intercede for the university named in her honor, that it may recommit itself to the primacy of truth over prestige.
“He’s a good man.”
I don't think I disagreed with that assessment.
My comments regarding Bishop D'Arcy have been confined to the current scandal.
sitetest
I would like to see Ralphie with the therapeutic psychobabble talkshow.
LOL, lily. You are right.
Dignitas Super Verum
Thanks, lily, but Phil makes me reach for the MAALOX!
hmmmm...I don’t know. I think Ralphie grew up to be a conservative and an avid member of the National Rifle Association.
Not a public speaker warning of the dangers of gun accidents?
Interesting that Ralphie handles the "You'll shoot your eye out, kid" turf
while Phil has always wallowed in the "You'll go blind" territory.
Phil went blind long before he divoeced his wife and mother of his 5 kids to marry that awful harridan, Marlo Thomas, the Wicked Witch of Ridgefield, Connecticut.
“Thomas’s favorable public image came under severe attack in 1990 when her former butler Desmond Atholl wrote a book called That Girl and Phil. This was an expose of sorts of the years he worked for her. Atholl claimed that contrary to her public image, Marlo Thomas was cruel and foul mouthed towards her staffers, and servants.”
Diract Qoutes from Phil Donahue:
Donahue to Catholic Church: If only you were pro choice
then you surely would have more members. [This is the kind of tripe Phil Donahue serves up these days.]
Fox brought Phil on to debate Father Jonathan Morris on President Obama speaking at America’s premier Catholic University, Notre Dame ... But Phil didn’t want to talk about why a Catholic college would honor a man who has no respect for a child at any point in the womb (and in some cases just outside).
Instead you will notice he never addresses that. Phil wanted to argue the Church itself. .It’s a 3 and a half minute whimper on his divorce, why he can’t go to communion, why the church is out of date and why it would have so many more members if it was just a little more hip. Blah, blah, blah.
Donahue: (paraphrased) “If it’s members you’re looking for … why stop there? My guess is if the Church dropped that crazy stance on adultery, theft and coveting your neighbor’s stuff, and maybe even dropped that silly attend church on Sunday thing … wow then you might really have something.”
They just shift the guilt complex, shaming, scolding, and counting of sins to other issues. Liberal ones. A LOT of liberal modernist Catholics fall into this. Down to counting GNPs of Third World countries and how much Americans spend on pet food per year. Phew!
Thankfully some in the church have reached their limits.
The distinquished canonist Ed Peters has the refutation of your call for an interdict on the University of Notre Dame:
http://www.canonlaw.info/2009/03/breviter-two-things-bp-darcy-couldnt-do.html
1. The local bishop cannot put Notre Dame under a local interdict, even for a brief period, if for no other reason (and there would be other reasons) than that local interdict is not a penal option under the 1983 Code. While local interdict (and community interdict, its cousin) were possible under the Pio-Benedictine Code (see 1917 CIC 2268-2277), today, interdict is a purely personal penalty, meaning that only specific individuals, convicted of a canonical crime, can be interdicted (1983 CIC 1332).
2. The local bishop cannot forbid the celebration of Mass in campus oratories and chapels by a precept under 1983 CIC 1225. While the argument here rests more on scholarly opinion than does that above, I think the weight of that opinion would not support a bishop’s using a precept to forbid Mass on campus during graduation weekend.
Mind, nothing in Bp. D’Arcy’s statement today suggested that he was considering either option, but my advice to folks who have been considering suggesting them would be to save your time: neither action would be supportable under 1983 Code.
Salvo sapientiorum iudicio.
Easy enough to get around the first problem - name names in one's interdicts. That was more of what I was getting at anyway. Interdict is a less severe action than excommunication (although, as best as I can understand it, under the new code, there isn't a lot of practical difference between excommunication and interdict for laypersons), and thus is a tool of the local ordinary that isn't quite as “nuclear.”
As for the second issue, from what I've read in the Companion to the Catechism, the ordinary specifically has the authority to regulate public worship in his diocese, and even clergy who are members of religious orders are subject to his jurisdiction.
In any event, I went back and read the wimpy words that Bishop D'Arcy offered up when Notre Dame permitted the Vagina Monologues on campus. No wonder Fr. Jenkins didn't think twice to invite the anti-Christ Obama. He knew he could roll the bishop, no problem.
* sigh *
And again, it appears that Bishop Martino in Scranton has acted much more practically and forcefully in dealing with Misericordia. So, even if my own suggestions are for naught, Bishop Martino shows us that there are steps between denying the Catholic identity of the school and basically saying a few contrary words and otherwise doing nothing.
sitetest
Okay, so you’re not only know better than the bishop but also a canon lawyer who most definitely is on our side. Since you’re willing to throw Ed Peters under the bus, I expect soon to hear you giving advice to Benedict XVI about what he ought to do to solve the Church’s problems.
I leave you to your own counsel of which you are so fond.
I may not know better than anyone else in the world, but I know enough to know when I'm being snowed. I know enough to be able to see that the actions of this bishop are ineffectual. He will have mouthed a few words, and the president of Notre Dame will commit the objectively grave evil of further scandal by hosting the anti-Christ Obama for the reception of his honorary degree. Without consequences (at least any that come his way from the bishop of his diocese - perhaps the hundreds of thousands of ordinary, individual lay Catholics protesting this stinking pile of dung of a priest might have some effect, but as usual, that will be without the aid, assistance, and especially without the leadership of the bishop of the diocese).
I know enough to see a small number of other bishops who have acted more effectively to counteract scandal in the face of pseudo-Catholic pro-aborts, a group which clearly includes the current president of Notre Dame. I know enough that when I see mountains of horse manure, that doesn't mean I'm getting a pony.
As for “throwing [folks] under the bus,” well, oh dear me! LOL! So, if I disagree with someone, I'm throwing them under the bus? Wow.
I'd rather think that suggesting that someone who is on the front lines is, instead, an “REMF” is closer to throwing someone under the bus.
I know that you think I'm uncharitable to our poor wittle itty-bitty bishop-people for noticing how bad a job they generally do, but I suggest, first, that recognizing and facing up to reality isn't uncharitable, and second, that your own posts to me might be a little lacking in the charity department.
sitetest
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