I realize no story has ever dominated this blog like this one, but why shouldn't it?  I can think, let alone write, about little else.

The speeches by Fr. Jenkins and Obama on Sunday were, as expected, about as bad as it can get.  Jenkins still desperately attempted to defend himself, but did nothing but embarrass himself further.  How he had the audacity to quote Vatican II documents and JPII encyclicals is quite shocking.  His selective application of a few one-liners completely distorted the message of these writings - a message Jenkins full well knows.  My fourth graders could read these documents and tell you that Jenkins' decision clearly defies these mandates for Catholic universities. 

Obama was his typically "brilliant" self.  His speech was very smart, but shockingly predictable.  I am kicking myself for not writing a "predicted" speech beforehand.  His soothing rhetoric combined half-truths with bold-faced lies and Clinton-esque word manipulation to sound eloquently very Christian - even Catholic at times.  However, any honest assessment of what he really said reveals his message could not have been more anti-Christian, and certainly anti-Catholic. 

In some future time, I think these speeches will be required reading for scholars.  Call it:  Relative Truth, Propaganda, and Hypocrisy 101.  Watching ten thousand Catholics cheer this evil rhetoric, one can almost wrap his mind around how people actually bought into the ideas of Nazi Germany or American slavery. 

Did anybody else notice the baby crying in the audience while Obama spoke about abortion?  Wow!  As Jill Stanek wrote, perhaps the baby had objections to Obama's call for "fair-minded words,"  Or perhaps he/she was just frightened!

I don't have time to go through the speeches point by point right now (not sure I have it in me emotionally anyway).  So here's a sampling of the best articles I've read in the aftermath of this sad day for America, the Catholic Church, and Our Lady's university.

My Day at Notre Dame
by Fr. Frank Pavone, Priest for Life, National Director
Keynote Speaker at the "Alternative Graduation"
Everyone can imagine people they would protest speaking at a commencement: an avowed racist, anti-Semite, or advocate of terrorism. So the failure to object to one who is unwilling to call for an end to abortion is the failure to see that abortion is as bad or worse than those other evils. We have to stop trivializing abortion. [READ MORE]

Heaven Gives Priest Thunderous Ovation
by voicescarryblog.com

While the millstone of Notre Dame is placed around President Abortion's neck and 12,000 at Notre Dame stand giving a thunderous ovation, all heaven stood to honor an 80 year old priest as he received heaven's high honor for peacefully taking a stand for life and the plight of the unborn.  [READ MORE]

A House Divided
by Ralph McInerny, Notre Dame Professor
Of course the administration has tried to call black white and portray its betrayal as somehow a statement of its largely muted pro-life outlook. 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. [READ MORE]

On Notre Dame and the Issues that Remain
by Archbishop Charles Chaput, Denver
There was no excuse – none, except intellectual vanity – for the university to persist in its course. And Father Jenkins compounded a bad original decision with evasive and disingenuous explanations to subsequently justify it.  These are hard words, but they’re deserved precisely because of Father Jenkins’ own remarks on May 17: Until now, American Catholics have indeed had “a special expectation, a special hope for what Notre Dame can accomplish in the world.”  For many faithful Catholics – and not just a “small but vocal group” described with such inexcusable disdain and ignorance in journals like Time magazine -- that changed Sunday. [READ MORE]

Saruman at Notre Dame
by Thaddeus Kozinski, Wyoming Catholic College Professor
What did he actually say?...Allow me to change the anecdote a bit to help discover the connection. The year is 1834, and the issue is slavery, not abortion. There is a law that allows a slave to be killed by its master for any reason whatsoever, and thus thousands of innocent slaves are killed every year. The “pro-life” doctor opposes this law, but his senator advocates it. The doctor, after mystically hearing Obama’s future Notre Dame speech in a prophetic dream, is mesmerized by Obama’s “fair-mindedness,” and recognizes that the “demands of the new age” require that he and every other opponent of the murder of slaves refrain from asking pro-slave-murder persons to change their views, but ask only that they improve their rhetoric. The senator has the same dream, which causes him to recognize that his highest obligation is being fair-minded when he supports the murder of slaves so as not to “caricature” any opposing views. [MORE]


An Honorary Degree in Hypocrisy
by Christopher Stefanick, Campus Ministry, Archdiocese of Denver
There is a difference between hypocrisy and a failure to live according to one’s ideals.  Hypocrisy is pretending to live up to standards that you are not, or have no intention of meeting.  Failure, on the other hand, is striving for but not meeting your standards.  Oftentimes, I am a failure.  I speak about the saints and I know how to become one, yet I am not one.  But I am no hypocrite.  I’m just a failure who is undeservedly happy because he is loved and blessed by God despite himself. Tthroughout the New Testament, Jesus was gentle with failures like me.  Hypocrisy, he couldn’t stand.  The most pro-choice president in American history being honored by the most renowned Catholic university in America is not a failure; it is a lesson, par excellence, in hypocrisy.  [READ MORE]


How Notre Dame Drifted Away from the Catholic Church
by Paul Shlichta
A second possibility is that we may really have reached one of Malcolm Gladwell's "tipping points" [8], like the Boston Tea Party. The Obama invitation might be perceived as Notre Dame spitting in the face of the pro-life movement, Catholic voters might finally have become fed up with being manipulated, and Notre Dame may become widely regarded as a "formerly Catholic" university, just as Harvard was originally a Puritan college. [READ MORE]

Notre Dame's Useful Service
by Bevil Bramwell, OMI
Facilitating the killing of babies or earmarking more money for killing babies, not only here but around the world, are actions that cannot be put in the balance with anything else (and by the way, say something about your view of justice and peace). Every baby’s life is of incalculable value. That is the reality. Honoring the man means participating in the trade-off of a specific human life – tragically and often enough a poor, black life as well – for something of far lesser value. It says: We have found something (his presence on our campus, his aspirations towards some aspects of social justice) that all but eliminates what should be our repugnance towards the wholesale taking of innocent human life. This is seriously flawed thinking, and in a civilized society, worthy of the name, is unconscionable. [READ MORE]