• If you are having problems logging in please use the Contact Us in the lower right hand corner of the forum page for assistance.

Notre Dame's Egregious Error

Mike

Well-known member
The University's Egregious Error
Chicago Tribune | 3/29/09 | George Weigel



When a university invites a prominent personality to deliver a commencement address and accept an honorary degree, a statement is being made to graduates, students, faculty, parents, alumni and donors: "This is someone whose work is worth emulating."

The invitation, in other words, is not to a debate, or to the opening of some sort of ongoing conversation.

The invitation and the award of an honorary degree are a university's stamp of approval on someone's life and accomplishment.

Which is precisely why Notre Dame, which claims to be America's premier Catholic institution of higher learning, made an egregious error in inviting Obama to address its May commencement and accept an honorary doctorate of laws degree.

Since Inauguration Day, Obama has made several judgment calls that render ND's invitation little short of incomprehensible.

He has put the taxpayers of the U.S. back into the business of paying for abortions abroad.

He has expanded federal funding for embryo-destructive stem-cell research and defended that position in a speech that was a parody of intellectually serious moral reasoning.

His administration threatens to reverse federal regulations that protect the conscience rights of Catholic and other pro-life health-care professionals.

And the administration has not lifted a finger to keep its congressional and teachers' union allies from snatching tuition vouchers out of the hands of poor inner-city children who want to attend Catholic schools in the nation's capital.

How any of this, much less the sum total of it, constitutes a set of decisions Notre Dame believes worth emulating is not, to put it gently, easy to understand.


(Excerpt) Read more at chicagotribune.com ...
 
Top