Posted on 05/15/2009 3:43:07 PM PDT by HowlinglyMind-BendingAbsurdity
Notre Dame’s Kabuki Dance with Obama and the Culture of Death:
The Keynesian Kenyan from Kansas Meets the Kantians
Notre Dame’s Kabuki dance with Obama and the culture of death moves into full swing this weekend. Everyone should watch the steps of this tango very carefully as the Keynesian Kenyan from Kansas boogies down with the Kantians for some Transcendental Twister on the South Bend campus. Although some students and professors will boycott the commencement lovefest and attend a prayer vigil at the Lourdes Grotto on campus instead, the damage to Notre Dame will still be done and observers of Catholic higher education will be debating this bizarre event for some time to come.
Dreams from My Modernist
Among the howling absurdities of this latest episode were talking points presented to board members to give the best spin on the decision to honor Obama at commencement. In a stroke of sophistry and hair splitting which must have come from theological training at Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch Seminary, Fr. Jenkins announced that the U.S. Catholic Bishops’ ban on honoring pro-abortion politicians at Catholic universities did not apply to Obama because, get this, Obama is not a Catholic. This casuistry, we were assured, was certified by modernist canon lawyers consulted by Notre Dame. Keeping a straight face while delivering this whopper must have taken some ascetic discipline. And it seems likely Fr. Jenkins must have had practice since it is a safe guess this seminary training involved extra helpings of Rudy Bultmann, Hans Küng, Enneagrams, Kumbaya folk guitars, and Jonathan Livingston Seagull theology.
While it is clear that Obama’s orientation is far removed from the Catholic faith and traditional Christian moral standards, Jenkins’ enthusiastic and groupie-like attraction to Obama raises deeper questions about what is really going on and who exactly is in charge of running Notre Dame. They need to be pursued and answered so that Catholic standards can be restored and honored as soon as possible.
At the center of this is the elephant in the room, the liberal modernist mentality which came out of Vatican II and the 1967 conference on Catholic universities held in Land O’Lakes, Wisconsin, which set the course for modernizing and secularizing Catholic colleges and universities. It will be a good time to reflect on this liberal agenda and the damage it has done to Catholic education. Contrary to the utopian romanticism of the 1960s and 1970s which Notre Dame’s Theodore Hesburgh and Georgetown’s Timothy Healy imbibed with wild abandon, the Land O’Lakes agenda for Catholic universities has been a disaster. This Obama episode is just the latest in a much wider freakshow afflicting the modernist priesthood. The infiltration of Catholic institutions and even the priesthood by anti-Catholics and morally-challenged malcontents has created an environment hostile to the Catholic faith and normal Catholic values. It is a situation that no Catholic should be forced to tolerate. A Catholic institution bending over to Moloch and Mammon. And for what? The vanity of liberal prestige and secular status. It should not end here. There needs to be a rigorous investigation of those directing anti-Catholic trends at Catholic universities.
The anti-Catholic liberalism which has possessed administrative leaders at Notre Dame was predicted. Some professors at Notre Dame and elsewhere may remember the 1965-66 Symposium in America magazine debating the future of Catholic philosophy in the Catholic university. In his 1965 book on the same topic, Professor Ralph McInerny warned that the inrush of faculty with a non-Catholic orientation would pose dangers to Catholic institutions.
For more on the anti-Catholic agenda at Catholic universities, you can read Professor Carroll Quigley’s 1967 article ( "Is Georgetown University Committing Suicide?" ) which discussed a similar loss of Christian foundations at Georgetown: “But, instead of being Catholic, or even Jesuit, Georgetown has rudely turned its back on its one chance of making any contribution to American education and has instead almost totally destroyed its opportunity for becoming an excellent Catholic university and a good American university, in its frantic drive to become a fifth-rate Harvard.” Notre Dame has followed down a similar path in a demented and trendy quest for this Golden Calf.
si·mo·ny (sī'mə-nē, sĭm'ə-)
n. The buying or selling of ecclesiastical pardons, offices, or emoluments.
[Middle English simonie, from Old French, from Late Latin simōnia, after Simon Magus, a sorcerer who tried to buy spiritual powers from the Apostle Peter (Acts 8:9-24).] si'mo·nist n.
The video of the priest being arrested on cable news was surreal and Kafkaesque. Orwellian.
Like something from a really bad science fiction movie.
Keyes was arrested yesterday and denied bail (as were the others who were arrested last week). As far as I know they are still in jail. EV can verify.
bump!
This is a big scarey issue for the democrats since the majority of Catholics are democrats. Finally the pro-life Catholics are going to take on the democrat hypocrisy head on. For many years the democrat leadership has played both sides of the aisle claiming to be personally against abortion but “pro choice”. Looks like it is going to hit the fan.
And all of the suave and worldly-wise liberals were just so sure that the social issues were going to go away. NOT!
There were students expelled from the Catholic university I attended for possession of illegal drugs. Abortion is more evil than recreational drug use. If Obama were a student at Notre Dame he would have to be expelled. So he doesn't deserve ANY degree.
What do you make of Keyes and even an 80-yr-old Catholic priest being led away from campus in handcuffs to be jailed?
Now I want the Bishop who has the authority to explain to Catholic why Jenkins in on PRO-ABORTION ANYTHING. And then to give that priest the authority to invite someone like Obama is lukewarm. And we all know what Jesus said about those lukewarm!!!!!!!!!
Obama bought face time at ND with his fame. ND isn’t a church, but the average Joe could be pardoned for regarding ND as an arm of the RCC.
Jenkins himself seems cold as dry ice.
si·mo·ny (sī'mə-nē, sĭm'ə-)
n. The buying or selling of ecclesiastical pardons, offices, or emoluments.
[Middle English simonie, from Old French, from Late Latin simōnia, after Simon Magus, a sorcerer who tried to buy spiritual powers from the Apostle Peter (Acts 8:9-24).] si'mo·nist n.
The RCC should really make it clear that ND isn’t an arm of it now, if it ever had been. God won’t let people get away with polluting the name of Christ forever.
Seen a lot of weird things in the Church, this was certainly one of the most embarrassing and disgraceful.
Strictly speaking, you would find more support for universal Christian causes in a lot of Southern Baptists than you would in the herd of CINOs that comprise ND.
It doesn't have to end here.
Alan Keyes was talking about filing a canonical suit in Church courts.
As a picky point, a lot of Baptists would bristle at being called Protestant, they prefer Evangelical. They never had an organizational nexus with the RCC to form the basis of a protest in the Lutheran sense.
I believe Keyes would do it, too. That ought to put some complacent feet to the fire.
It was good to see Baptists and Catholics uniting on the pro-life cause.
Alan was arrested for the second time on Friday. He intended to bond out to go on Hannity’s TV show, but the day before the St. Joseph County Superior Court judges had secretly changed the rules on bail, specifically to make sure that Alan would have to stay in jail until after the OBozo show had come to town and left.
Fortunately, some smart lawyers threatened them with a federal lawsuit over this abuse of power, and they let Dr. Keyes out yesterday. He came down to the State Theater and gave a barnburner of a speech.
Anyway, he’s out, and did Hannity tonight.
“It was good to see Baptists and Catholics uniting on the pro-life cause.”
I love that picture of the two burly Baptist Pastors supporting Fr Weslin.
He made a solid presentation and gave a good account of what has been going on, particularly with references to ND's Board of Trustees basically on the take via Obama's Chicago machine links.
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