Notre Dame reappoints Fr. Jenkins [Addeneum]

The Notre Dame/Obama uproar helped marginalize the Catholic Right, polling data showed at the time. Yet failure of that broadly unsupported exercise in wedge politics has not chastened the right, which can be expected to greet without applause the Rev. John I. Jenkins reappointment Friday as Notre Dame chancellor.

Commenters like Joseph Lawler at the American Spectator have persistently attempted to recover by arguing that Obama's appearance and acceptance of an honorary degree at commencement was a "debacle" or "fail" for Notre Dame rather than for the political right.

Undeterred, Fr. Jenkins followed the commencement with launch of several campus pro-life initiatives and attendance of the the March for Life in Washington D.C. He has simultaneously been firm in his resistance to pressure to drop trespass charges associated with the commencement protests.

The broad debate continues, as was evident in the mixed reaction to Senator Edward Kenndy’s passing. Fr. Jenkins' reappointment suggests that simple shrill persistence on the right is persistently unproductive.

Addendum: Get Religion wants to know

Where is the mainstream press mainstream coverage of this important, symbolic win on the left? Don't be shy, and tmatt isn't the only one who wants answers.

Catholic debate over church political role continues

Debate over the University of Notre Dame's awarding of an honorary degree to President Obama in May continues in conservative Catholic reaction to the announcement that Obama will deliver a eulogy at Senator Edward Kenndy's funeral mass at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Basilica in Boston.

Not that the debate ever quite stopped.

Archbishop John R. Quinn argues in the Aug. 31 issue of America magazine that had Notre Dame refused to award Obama an honorary degree, it would have done harm to the church's and its mission by fostering "false messages" about itself. He argues instead for "a policy cordiality:"

It proceeds from the conviction that the integrity of Catholic teaching can never be sacrificed. It reflects a deep desire to enshrine comity at the center of public discourse and relations with public officials. It is willing to speak the truth directly to earthly power.
Yet the Holy See shows great reluctance to publicly personalize disagreements with public officials on elements of church teaching. And the approach of the Holy See consistently favors engagement over confrontation. As Pope John Paul II put it, “The goal of the Church is to make of the adversary a brother.”

Bishop John D’Arcy of Fort Wayne/South Bend, writing for the same issue, "restates his case against inviting the president to speak at commencement and awarding him an honorary doctor of laws."

Grant Gallicho of dotCommonWeal writes:

While one might disagree with Bishop D’Arcy’s version of events, it’s tough to take much issue with the way in which he has voiced his displeasure. In other words, he’s never approached the unhinged shenanigans of some of the protesters at Notre Dame. (Speaking of, I never thought Randall Terry could jump the shark. Wow, was I wrong.)

Bishop Sheehan of Sante Fe in an interview with the National Catholic Recorder this week said:

I don’t feel so badly about Obama going [to Notre Dame] because he’s our president. I said we’ve gotten more done on the pro-life issue in New Mexico by talking to people that don’t agree with us on everything. We got Governor Richardson to sign off on the abolition of the death penalty for New Mexico, which he was in favor of. ... We need to be building bridges, not burning them.

Expect more of this debate.

Notre Dame/Obama uproar marginalizes bishops & right-wing activists

Uproar over President Obama's upcoming commencement address at Notre Dame is, Gallup Poll data suggests, a right-wing organizing ploy.

Most Catholics don't share the views of the angry Catholic bishops and right-wing activists who created and are sustaining this apparent confligration, as Gallup explains:

The argument of those who protest the extension of the invitation to Obama is that Catholics have a distinctly conservative position on these moral issues. That is certainly the case as far as official church doctrine is concerned, but not when it comes to average American Catholics. The new Gallup analysis, based on aggregated data from Gallup's 2006-2008 Values and Beliefs surveys, indicates that Catholics in the United States today are actually more liberal than the non-Catholic population on a number of moral issues, and on others, Catholics have generally the same attitudes.

Frequency of church attendance is an almost unerring predictor of American political conservatism. Yet even Catholics who regularly attend church are more liberal than non-Catholics who go to church regularly:

Regular churchgoers who are Catholic are significantly more liberal than churchgoing non-Catholics on gambling, sex before marriage, homosexual relations, having a baby out of wedlock, and divorce. Committed Catholics are at least slightly more likely than devout non-Catholics to say that abortion and embryonic stem-cell research -- the two key issues highlighted by those protesting Obama's appearance at Notre Dame -- are morally acceptable. Only on the death penalty are committed Catholics more conservative than regular churchgoers who are not Catholic.

Lacking sufficient support among those for whom they speak, Bishops who in the name of being prophetic seek to call down fire on Notre Dame's invitation to Obama, and right wing activists who seek to energize and add to the number of their followers, are both further dividing themselves from the majority of U.S. Catholics.

They can expect to see themselves less well-heeded after this conflict than before. The opposite of their intentions.

Catholic University of America student newspaper endorses Obama at Notre Dame

The Tower, the student newspaper at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., wrote Friday:

If Notre Dame has done their job right, students will already be sound in their Catholic beliefs. It should not be an issue where the President stands on his ideas of life. He is coming to speak to students about their role in the world, what they will face when they embark on the next chapter of their lives. More than anything, it is the students’ first test of maintaining a Catholic identity in light of someone who does not share some of their beliefs. There is a way to still maintain a Catholic identity, to reconcile faith, and still listen to the Commander-in-Chief of this great nation.

Read the entire piece here.

Fact-fixing CNN on Notre Dame

One myth-besotted CNN paragraph preoccupied Mollie at GetReligion.

She was addressing the story of South Bend, Indiana Roman Catholic Bishop John D’Arcy's boycott of the Notre Dame graduation ceremonies at which President Barack Obama will be honored.

Let her help you substitute legislative fact for fiction and filter spin out of science here.

Honesty is also a Catholic value

Richard Viguerie brings a refreshing clarity to the Notre Dame uproar refreshingly by combining high dudgeon with fiction:

Barack Obama is a pro-abortion extremist. He supports elective abortion at any point during pregnancy, and even afterward; he opposes protecting children who survive abortions. He supports using U.S. taxpayers' money to pay for elective abortions in our country and in other countries. He is working to strip medical professionals of their right not to perform abortions.

After the word "pro-abortion," everything he said was a distortion and calculated to inflame his audience.

Viguerie echoes arguments made elsewhere and closely examined by Beth Dahlman.

Update

Dan Gilgoff notes that Notre Dame's president is unwavering in his defense of the invitation.

As for the student body, Notre Dame campus newspaper, the Observer, reported "in an Oct. 8, 2008 article that Obama led the student body with 52.6 percent of the vote in a mock election held by student government, in which 2,692 undergraduates and graduate students voted."