Posted on 05/20/2009 1:02:00 PM PDT by Salvation
May. 18, 2009 (CWNews.com) -
President Obama's appearance at the Notre Dame commencement exercises produced an enormous outpouring of journalistic coverage.
Prior to the event, the atmosphere was so feverish that when Duncan Maxell Anderson concocted a story based on the idea that Obama had donated his speaking fee to defray lost alumni contributions, many readers failed to recognize that it was a satire.
On the GetReligion site, Terry Mattingly continued to insist that reporters should get their facts straight. That was, alas, a losing battle.
USA Today provided live blogging on the event, with a panel of experts (including Joseph Lawler, son of CWN editor Phil Lawler) offering their perspectives.
When he addressed the commencement audience, Father John Jenkins, the president of Notre Dame, was in effect making his own observations on the controversy. Father Jenkins let his enthusiasm for President Obama show through clearly; it cannot be a coincidence that he used the word "hope" five times in his first five opening paragraphs.
Father Jenkins clearly implied, in his plea for civil dialogue, that opponents of the President's speech were guilty of intolerance, while "President Obama is not someone who stops taking to those who differ with him." The Jenkins speech did not impress Ralph McInerny, longtime Notre Dame philosophy professor, who commented for The Catholic Thing. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say that McInerny was impressed--negatively:
The fallacious defenses on the part of a once stellar philosopher, Father John Jenkins, continued in his introduction of the president, exhibit how corruptive of clear thinking holding high office can be. Not since the local lands were wrested from the Indians has a white father spoken with such forked tongue.
Another Notre Dame faculty member, law professor Gerald Bradley, asked a rhetorical question in his analysis for National Review: "Prestige or Truth?" Bradley's answer to that question can be summed up in one sentence: "Notre Dame chose prestige."
Not everyone saw things that way. Predictably enough, some of the President's political allies felt that his appearance had been a coup. E. J. Dionne, writing for the New Republic, put the emphasis on Obama's willingness to confront criticism:
By facing their arguments head-on and by demonstrating his attentiveness to Catholic concerns, Obama strengthened moderate and liberal forces inside the church itself. He also struck a forceful blow against those who would keep the nation mired in culture-war politics without end.
Father Tom Reese, SJ, gave a Washington Post audience an even rosier view of the occasion, suggesting that Obama's message to the Notre Dame audience-- the same message that he has trumpeted for months-- was a brilliant new strategy that all pro-lifers should adopt. In fact, while others including Father Jenkins said that pro-life activists were wrong to "demonize" the President, Father Reese took the first step to demonize the pro-lifers. First he announced that "pro-life people should join with Obama in doing everything possible to reduce the number of abortions." (Implicit there is the assumption that in fact Obama is doing everything possible.) Then Reese added: "Not to do so is to put politics above the life of the unborn." So there you have it: anyone who fails to support the President is showing contempt for unborn human life: a neat reversal of the reality most people perceive here.
If Father Reese has become a cheerleader for the Obama administration, he is merely continuing down the path that he has followed throughout his journalistic career. But it is truly sad to see Douglas Kmiec, once a thoughtful pro-life analyst, acting the same way. Kmiec told his new friends at the National Catholic Reporter that both presidents, Obama and Jenkins "were there in splendid form" at the Notre Dame commencement, but the bad guys in the drama were the American bishops who questioned the wisdom of honoring an advocate of unrestricted abortion.
Not every liberal voice joined the chorus of praise for President Obama. Michael Sean Winters of America gave the President a grade of C-minus for his effort, saying that his speech "did not help his cause."
These analysts, however, were concentrating on the influence that Obama's speech would have on the political world. In a perceptive National Review critique, George Weigel looked at the event from the opposite perspective, and noticed the influence that the President was having on the internal affairs of the Catholic Church.
Debates are not uncommon within religious groups, Weigel observed. "Yet never in our history has a president of the United States, in the exercise of his public office, intervened in such disputes in order to secure a political advantage.?? Until yesterday, at the University of Notre Dame."
The key point of the presidential address, Weigel argued, is that he--Obama--was setting himself up as judge, to pronounce on which side of the intramural Catholic debate was correct:
Rather like Napoleon taking the diadem out of the hands of Pope Pius VII and crowning himself emperor, President Obama has, wittingly or not, declared himself the Primate of American Catholicism.
“They claim to have a different and extremely liberal interpretation of the canon regarding honoring politicians, but they are not openly disobeying that canon.”
A canon? Really? Adopted by what council or proclaimed, in your system, by what pope? Is the USCCB now a national synod empowered by Rome to establish disciplinary canons?
As for a schism, you’ve got one, de facto if not yet de jure, and the right wing will be the ones viewed as the schismatics.
I don’t think God wants schisms. I think the pressure will be applied on Fr. Jenkins &Co, but unless they get really obdurate, there will be no excommunication, and therefore no schism.
Sitting on a board does not in itself constitutes agreement with everything the organization does. Jenkins says he is pro-life; he can probably weasel out of that one by saying that he sits there to exert proper influence.
He did not openly oppose USCCB. He camouflaged his shameful acts by offering an interpretation of their — what’s the word, again, pastoral letter? To openly oppose it would be to say: I understand the letter and I disagree with it, and I do as I please. That he did not do, poor weasel.
You know what I mean, the position stated by USCCB regarding honoring or giving platform to anti-Catholics.
I think we have an internal schism that has not broken into the open yet, and I think USCCB will try their best to avoid it.
Naturally I would prefer the entire dreck of leftwing Catholicism to be anathemized, from the lavender bishops to the clown masses to Fr. Jenkins, but I don’t think the future developments will be as dramatic as that. We’ll see.
“You know what I mean, the position stated by USCCB regarding honoring or giving platform to anti-Catholics.”
OK; but words are important Alex...and I didn’t know that’s what you meant.
“I think we have an internal schism that has not broken into the open yet, and I think USCCB will try their best to avoid it.”
I suspect you are correct.
“Naturally I would prefer the entire dreck of leftwing Catholicism to be anathemized, from the lavender bishops to the clown masses to Fr. Jenkins, but I don’t think the future developments will be as dramatic as that.”
Before the ND thing, I’d have agreed with you. But now I think it will be the right which will leave, not the left, and what the right will become is something akin to the Old Calendarists in Greece or HOCNA here in America; noisy and thoroughly marginalized. I think the Latin hierarchy here could have handled the Obama/ND thing effectively and canonically. It didn’t and that is even now having massive consequences.
ND may not be under the direct purview of the Holy See, but the priests sure are.
I agree that the American Church as a whole handled the controversy badly. The bishops should have worked out some common position before one third of them going public with condemnations only to get stared down by the intransigent left. There was time to do that.
I do not agree with you that any canons were violated in the process, simply because d’Arcy was in concert with the critics of ND.
The difference with HOCNA (obsessed with two minor points, false ecumenism and the calendar) is that the Catholic right wing is also orthodox in theology and liturgy. It is the same movement that restored the Latin Mass, purged the liturgical abuses that also insists on consistency in political life, and, by the way, is closest in liturgical outlook to the Eastern Orthodox. We are by definition, core and not margin.
His servility to the temporal power is surely shameful and scandalous.
“also insists on consistency in political life”
That’s part of the problem, Alex. Confusion of the institutional Church with politics is always trouble.
“We are by definition, core and not margin.”
I agree, but you will be marginalized and eventually in de jure schism if the both the conservative laity and the right wing hierarchs continue down the secular path they have chosen over one obsessive issue, no matter how important it is. Great, great damage has been done, Alex. You know, the East had confidence in your more conservative hierarchs. Trust me when I say that from the Synod in Constantinople on down, that’s completely gone. There is only one way for Rome to restore that confidence and it will take a long time, namely quietly punish the hierarchial ringleaders. At least then the East could trust the Pope, if not the liberal American hierarchy.
You don’t understand, Alex.
The East has had 2000 years of dealing with heretics. Do you think that Origen was any less well meaning than some of the bishops we have seen?
***I agree, but you will be marginalized and eventually in de jure schism if the both the conservative laity and the right wing hierarchs continue down the secular path they have chosen over one obsessive issue, no matter how important it is.***
I doubt that the right wing will head on out, at least not most of them, but the thing that the Latins do not understand is that the METHOD of going about this is wrong, not the thing itself.
***You know, the East had confidence in your more conservative hierarchs. Trust me when I say that from the Synod in Constantinople on down, that’s completely gone.***
And from my sources, I have to agree. The USCCB totally mishandled this and did not manage their outraged bishops. The problem is that the American Catholic Community does not have clue one as to the responsibility or the duties of the bishop. They just think that he is the boss of the diocese and so on. The orthodox bishops needed to speak out; that is what should have been and did not happen. But the responsibility lies with the superior of the formerly Catholic Holy Cross Order and the formerly Catholic Jesuits and that goes right to the top. I see the chess game that BXVI is playing with the rancid USCCB right now and the time is against him. I’d be tempted to sack the whole useless lot of the Jesuits right now, but the Pope has other ideas.
***There is only one way for Rome to restore that confidence and it will take a long time, namely quietly punish the hierarchial ringleaders. At least then the East could trust the Pope, if not the liberal American hierarchy.***
I think that this will happen. The liberals are still being weeded out. We just cannot replace the conservatives with liberals. We must replace them with Catholics who are Faithful. Do you understand? Faithful.
Did you read the article about the shameful connections and interconnections represented by the Board of Trustees of Notre Dame? If Fr. Jenkins did not agree with them, he should have resigned. Crimanals, ebryonic stem cell profiteers, etc. This is akin to Pilate washing his hands and blaming the Jews for crucifying Christ.
No, He wants perfect unity. But no honest reading of the scripture can reveal any hint that such unity EVER can come at the expense of the truth and of righteousness. For His people to unify with those things is at best a VERY temporary false peace, one which results in the destruction of bodies and souls.
Yep, that started under John Paul II, and is continuing under Benedict XVI. This new group of Bishops are tending to be much more faithful to the Church.
Thanks!
Things were handled badly because good Catholics who follow the teachings of the Church and are loyal and faithful aren't accustomed to having to think like a dissident in order to defend Her. That's what it's going to take and it's not going to be pretty. Truth is truth and there is no nuance to it.
I've been reading up on some history surrounding the protestant revolt and exactly the same thing happened. The clergy, not used to confronting apostasy and dissent on a huge scale, don't know how. In the last few months history repeated itself.
And what I find really interesting is that the speechwriter used the name Bernardin over and over again as if he was the be all and end all. Well, there won't be any causes for his canonization any time soon. And what was the crap about Catholic saints being congenial and not making waves? HELLO! St. Francis of Assisi, St. Jerome, St. Catherine of Siena anyone????? St. Thomas More? St. Jerome, St. Augustine - and they argued with each other.
You know what, the problem is that this is too much of an intellectual argument. Regular Catholics - those of us in the pews (or the choir risers) - don't think in those terms.
Viewed by whom? We're Catholics. What matters is who God, and his vicar, views as schismatic. Do you see any evidence that the Pope considers Bishop D'Arcy schismatic? Bishop Martino? Has he fired Abp. Burke yet from his position as head of the highest judicial organ in the church?
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