Background
Welcome in the name of Our Lady, Mother of God, Notre Dame, to this ecumenical coalition site. We seek to serve as a public clearinghouse, collaborative organizing headquarters, and central news site for all lovers and protectors of innocent human life, during the on-going scandal of America's beloved University of Notre Dame illicitly seeking to honor the radically pro-death Barack Obama with her 2009 Commencement address and an honorary degree.
We are Catholic, Protestant and simply lovers of the God-given blessing of life who believe, as Notre Dame parent and physicist Stephen Barr has noted, and as Ambassador Alan Keyes has eloquently explained, abortion is the defining moral issue of our nation in this time. This is true just as slavery was in the 19th century, and segregation was in the mid-20th century. Abortion is a human physical and ethical holocaust. We ignore the issue and its consequences at our gravest moral peril as individual souls and as a national people.
To ignore Barack Obama’s notoriously anti-life views ("I don’t want my daughters punished with a baby"), and radically pro-abortion public policies (go here for the shocking list of his record) is logically to also excuse those who deemed slavery a positive good in 1860, and those who enforced segregation in 1964. Indeed, although it is the case, for example, that Notre Dame invited George Wallace to speak at the Old Fieldhouse in the mid-1960s, she did not honor that segregationist with a Doctor of Laws degree, implying endorsement of his morally corrupting views, as they intend to do with Abortionist-in-Chief Obama at Commencement May 17, 2009.
Abortion is nothing more than the murderous and unlawful taking of innocent human life for sheer convenience. It is a mortal sin, as is support for those in public authority who advocate and advance its heinous practice. For Notre Dame to mock the Blessed Mother of God by honoring an unrepentant advocate of utterly unrestricted, death-dealing abortion such as Obama, is an unprecedented scandal against the Faith. It dishonors faithful Catholic graduates and their families, as well as all the nation who love the school that are watching this spectacle, in the special month of Our Lady. It is an act, as Notre Dame graduate William McGurn has wisely said, "to promote moral incoherence." It is to empower and enable the killing agenda of this aggressively and unrepentant pro-death politician.
This scandal is a flagrant violation of the U.S. Bishops’ 2004 mandate in "Catholics in Political Life": "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."
Human life begins at conception in the mother’s womb. For God tells us, "Before I formed you in the womb I knew thee, and before you were born I consecrated you." (Jeremiah 1:5). Abortion is therefore murder. Among the oldest Christian books is the Didache, a book composed by the twelve apostles or their disciples. The Didache proclaims the ancient teaching of the Catholic Church, "You shall not kill the embryo by abortion and shall not cause the newborn to perish" (Didache 2,2). All Catholics who procure a completed abortion or participate in execution of an abortion are automatically excommunicated from the Catholic Church (CCC 2272 and CIC Canon 1314).
Fr. Jenkins and Fr. Hesburgh of the Notre Dame administration crave "the good opinion of the New York Times" more than they seek any semblance of Catholic orthodoxy, or to honor Our Lady, and "woe unto you, when all men shall speak well of you." Luke 6:26
Should the Obama "honors" not be rescinded by the Notre Dame administration, they invite revocation of its charter as a Catholic institution of higher learning, by having finally completely repudiated the once-vaunted Catholicity of the school, and having brought unadulterated harm and indisputable charges of betrayal, unorthodoxy and hypocrisy upon the university.
President Obama is coming solely to shamelessly exploit the vain ambition for "prestige" evinced in this invitation by the school's administration. It enables him to promote his political fortunes, and by Notre Dame's tacit endorsement of his "leadership" helps him advance the illicit "legitimization" of abortion on demand. By honoring him, Notre Dame is sacrificing in words and deeds the integrity of the Church’s moral witness on the central moral crisis of our time.
We seek to persuade, exhort and to compel the University of Notre Dame to honor God and Our Lady of the Lake, by disinviting the morally wayward Barack Obama.
We also seek to preserve the integrity of the United State’s foremost Roman Catholic university, from the Faustian bargain Fr. Jenkins and Fr. Hesburgh are striking with Caesar. We ask Notre Dame to render only to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and most importantly, to render unto God what is God’s, by preserving the sanctity of human life.
Moreover, since he cannot seem to do so on behalf of the innocents in the womb, we call upon Mr. Obama to show a decent respect for the institution of Notre Dame and Our Lady whom it honors, and withdraw from her children's Commencement day.
Please join us. You can sign up here to PETITION PRESIDENT OBAMA TO AT LEAST SHOW PROPER RESPECT FOR THE STUDENTS, PARENTS AND ALUMNI OF NOTRE DAME, AND ALL THOSE WHO REVERE THE SANCTITY OF INNOCENT HUMAN LIFE -- AND DECLINE THE UNIVERSITY ADMINISTRATION'S ILLICIT INVITATION.
