Archbishop Raymond Burke

Quick – can you name the Roman Catholic college in Indiana? If you guessed St. Joseph’s College, you are correct. If you guessed another institution located in South Bend, I submit you are mistaken. Sadly enough, there is no college or university supporting Roman Catholic ideals in South Bend, Indiana.

Archbishop Burke minced no words in decrying Notre Dame University’s decision not only to ask President Obama to speak at the school’s Commencment on May 17 but to grant him an honorary doctorate as well. Perhaps in his speech the President will repeat his famous words regarding the recent National Day of Prayer, the text of which is reprinted below: “

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Archbishop Burke continued with his pointed rebuke: “The path of violation of the most fundamental human rights and of the integrity of marriage and the family which our nation is traveling is not accidental. As Catholics, we cannot fail to notice with the greatest sadness the number of our fellow Catholics who cooperate fully to the advancement of a national agenda which is anti-life and anti-family.”

And therein lies the rub. 57% of Catholics, according to a recent poll, support the manner in which the President is doing his job, while only 33% disapprove. My question is – what are those in the approval category thinking?

How can any Catholic in good conscience support a President and an administration that consistently supports legislation and executive orders (Freedom of Choice Act, government-funded abortions, embryonic stem cell research and partial birth abortions, to name just a few) that are antithetical to long-standing Church doctrines regarding the sanctity of life? No amount of disingenuous spin by “ardent, practicing” Catholics like Nancy Pelosi can obscure the fact that the Church supports – and has traditionally supported - life from conception through natural death. In an area of moral choice so clearly set forth by bishops across the United States (and, of course, in the Vatican) there can only be one reaction to the onslaught of anti-life, anti-family policy that is endemic to the Obama adminstration – peaceful resistance to each and every such policy and education of the country on their emotional, moral and economic cost.

How can Catholic politicans like Kathleen Sebelius be put in charge of Health and Human Resources when they are all too ready to sanction and encourage the abortion (and, apparently, for Governor Sebelius, very, very later term abortions) of 3,700 Americans each and every day?

Perhaps the answer to this question is that some traditional leaders in the Catholic community – like Notre Dame University – are not standing their ground. Caught up in whatever wave of Change Hysteria that has gripped the United States, or in false pride of being a center of the academic dialectic, Notre Dame has succumbed to the siren song of the secular.

It is up to the rest of us (no matter our particular faith tradition) to overcome Notre Dame’s arrogance and the current administration’s dangerous moral path. Opportunities abound to petition the president of Notre Dame, Father John Jenkins, to change course. Take one of those opportunities at notredamescandal.com. Talk to your friends in support of life. Receive the sacraments. Pray.

And be hopeful for a change of heart.

Not all recent poll results have been discouraging. In fact, a recent Rasmussen Reports telephone survey reported that most Catholics and Americans know at least partly what needs to be done. 60% of U.S. Catholics (versus an adverse number of only 25%) say that Notre Dame should obey guidelines issued by the U.S. bishops and not award an honorary degree to President Obama. As a whole, 52% of national respondents supported that position and only 25% opposed it.