Time to Address the Notre Dame Scandal

Obama with a useful idiot.

In 2009, when the University of Notre Dame gave an honorary law degree to the tyrannical thug who illegitimately occupies the White House, this blog, along with more than 80 bishops and hundreds of thousands of American Catholics, loudly protested the outrage.  Less than two years into the current administration, there was already ample evidence of Obama's contempt for the Church and all that it stands for.  No administration has ever embraced the culture of death with more enthusiasm.  In response to the irrational decision by Notre Dame to honor Obama, men and women poured into South Bend to protest the scandal.  More than 80 went to jail because they could not, in good conscience, be silent as a flagship of American Catholicism honored the helmsman of evil, who not only has contempt for our beliefs, but would trample religious liberty.

We thought at the time that University President, Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C., and the Chairman of the Board of Trustees, Richard C. Notebaert, were simply too proud to back down in the face of the national firestorm.  Surely now that what Obama is about has been fully revealed, now that raw evil has decided to use the power of the state to make Catholics not only violate their consciences, but to pay for the slaughter of innocent human life, those at Notre Dame, we assumed, must have recognized what practically all Catholics -- liberal and conservative, Democrat and Republican -- have now acknowledged about the Obama regime.  

But that is not the case.  

This past week, after Bishop Daniel R. Jenky of Peoria gave a courageous and brilliant address affirming that "no Catholic institution, under any circumstance, can ever cooperate with the intrinsic evil of killing innocent human life in the womb,” 49 Notre Dame faculty members denounced Bishop Jenky and called for his resignation from the University's Board of Fellows.  The reaction points up serious apostasy at a university that calls itself Catholic.  Once in the thrall of the father of lies, good becomes evil and truth becomes deceit.

It has been said that Obamacare is responsible for one extraordinary medical miracle -- across America Catholic bishops have grown spines.  We attribute that remarkable fact not to Obamacare, but to the moral and intellectual clarity of Pope Benedict who has appointed many of them.  But whatever the source of new-found moral courage, the sleeping giant of American Catholicism has roused from its slumber.  American Catholics strongly support the leadership of Cardinal Dolan and faithful shepherds like Bishop Jenky.  It is time to use the clarity, courage and commensurate public support to restore to the light of truth heterodox cesspools like Notre Dame.