Bishop D’Arcy won't attend Notre Dame commencement featuring Obama (Boycott Alert!)

Fort Wayne, Ind., Mar 24, 2009 / 12:52 pm (CNA).- 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.

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.

Actually, he does not have that authority. Really, really, really. The university is incorporated under a board of trustees. The Holy Cross order, over which a bishop at best has only a very indirect authority, has no, none, nada, authority over the university. They ceded that to the lay board of trustees, with the proviso that the board have a certain number of Holy Cross members—but not a controlling number.

The only authority the bishop has is to deny the university the right to call itself Catholic. The bishop has authority over the use of the name Catholic, over parishes, over institutions directly under his authority. But religious order universities never, never were DIRECTLY under bishops, only indirectly. And Notre Dame is no longer a religious order university, legally speaking.

Bishop D’Arcy has fired the first shot in a game of chicken. He’s putting the ball in Notre Dame’s court. He has publicly stated that it has chosen prestige over Catholic faith. He has done what other bishops have done with the “excommunicate Catholic pro-abort politicians” issue: the first step is to tell them they ought not receive Communion and that they should not present themselves. If they stop coming up for Communion, they have effectively been maneuvered into self-excommunication without the bishop having formally to excommunicate them and become the villains in the eyes of the media. Of course, most of them do not refrain but continue to present themselves. At that point, if the bishops do not move to formal excommunication the bishops become paper tigers and the Catholic politicians win and continue to thumb their noses.

Up to now, Catholic universities have cultivated enough of a “Catholic” image with the local Ordinary so as to evade being point-blank denounced as uncatholic by the bishops.

D’Arcy has point-blank stated that Notre Dame is unCatholic. But he’s not used the formal canonical language forbidding themselves to call themselves Catholic. He’s stated it but in a circumlocution.

Now the ball is in Notre Dame’s court. If they just wave him off, continue the Obama honorary degree, the ball is back in his court—does he fire the last weapon in his arsenal or not? It is his last weapon (formal, canonical denial of the title Catholic). One wants to have figured out each future chess move before one makes the first gambit. Let’s hope the good bishop has done that.

Frankly, even if D’Arcy formally and canonically declares ND non-Catholic, I think ND will sidestep it. The market they operate in is such that they will go on calling themselves some sort of “historically Catholic” university, which will satisfy most of their market while at the same time technically avoiding what the bishop would have forbidden—the formal use of the title “Catholic University.” Some donors and alumni would stop giving, but enough of them would rationalize it in their minds and say, “historically Catholic,” that’s good enough for me. The bishop’s a doddering old anal-retentive fussbudget about what constitutes a Catholic university.

But in the name of Truth, he probably will be faced with fired the last weapon or otherwise becoming a total paper tiger.

>> Bishop D’Arcy - take this up another level. You have the authority to deny Obama the right to speak at ND. <<

Ouch! Not without going nuclear:

D’Arcy could deny the religious order which runs Notre Dame access to the diocese. And that would do little but force the transfer of Notre Dame into completely secular hands. There’s an argument to be made that that would simply clarify the situation that Notre Dame is already completely in secular hands, but one might say that having little influence over Notre Dame is better than having none whatsoever.

Unfortunately, the Catholic church institutes religious orders precisely in such a way as to prevent diocesan control over the orders. Historically, this kept the orders free from political influence that often corrupted dioceses. But the orders are so far gone in America, it’s having the opposite effect.

I don’t know if there’s anything the Pope could do to discipline the order.

No, the pope CANNOT do this. Ex corde ecclesiae makes this clear—and it was a papal document. Catholic universities have autonomy in making these sorts of decisions. They are supposed to make them in accord with Catholic faith. But the remedies available to the pope (and to the local bishop) do not include authority directly to reach in and tell the university that it cannot honor Obama.

What the pope and bishop can do is say, “if you do go ahead and honor him with a degree, I will canonically deny you the right to describe yourself as a Catholic university.” The pope will not reach in and interfere with the local bishop on this, however.

Stop looking to the pope to solve everything. Subsidiarity says that the point man here is the bishop. But he has less direct control over Notre Dame than do parents, alumni, students, faculty, trustees and donors. They, in law, have more power than the bishop does, except his power to threaten the university with denial of the label.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.