Catholic Culture This Week: The Dialogue that Doesn’t Exist
[This article was written on Wednesday, May 20. In the interim, I have shopped it for publication, but to no avail. Here it is in its original form.]
The events that took place in South Bend, Indiana on Sunday afternoon have created a state of confusion, disappointment, and even anger (to greater or lesser degrees) all across America. In the immediate aftermath of President Obama’s visit to the University of Notre Dame, several media outlets allowed their pundits to comment. During the two days interim, many other commentators have offered their opinions as well. This article is a bid to offer the perspective of an intellectual Catholic who is loyal to the Church’s magisterium; to focus on a few things not yet analyzed and, hopefully, offer new and fresh insights.
The thoughts contained herein were created while viewing the event on Sunday and reading a variety of perspectives during the ensuing two days. Most importantly, the opinions expressed here have only been developed to their fullest extent after much time spent in prayer and meditation. This article is not political, per se. Rather, it is an attempt to expose Notre Dame’s commencement exercises to the Light of Truth; to allow individuals’ perspectives to be clarified and enlightened by Divine Revelation, the natural law, and logic.
According to many, including the university’s president, there were two primary and valuable reasons to invite President Obama’s to give a commencement address. Those were: the integrity and importance of the office he holds; and the opportunity for dialogue between two groups who disagree on the best ways to protect and foster human life in every phase. The first reason is acceptable, given that several other Presidents of the United States have been invited to give such addresses. The second reason is not acceptable at all.
Anyone who has sat through an average commencement address at a university knows that the norm to spend a few minutes trying to provide humor followed by generally vague platitudes about going into the world and making it a better place. Fine.
However, a commencement address at a university is not a setting for true dialogue. Dialogue happens when both sides have an opportunity to speak and defend their positions. Such a thing did not happen on Sunday at Notre Dame. Pro-life students were ostracized, de facto, from their own graduation, and protestors (including one aged priest) were arrested.
“Fr. Jenkins had an opportunity to speak,” some detractors might say. Indeed, he spoke, but his speech was not nearly as long as the President’s. Also, the majority of his remarks served as feeble justification for his decision to invite a controversial speaker. Only briefly did Fr. Jenkins articulate the teaching of the Catholic Church, a part of which his university claims to be. Further, while he articulated the Church’s teaching on the dignity of every human life, he seemed less passionate than when he gave justifications for inviting Obama. He seemed to speak less from his head and heart than from the page on the podium before him. Alas, it is impossible to judge a man’s intentions, so that point will be left alone.
Let us now approach President Obama’s attendance at the graduation ceremony and his words to the graduates and to Americans. The bestowal and reception of the honorary degree was scandalous (in the sense of the term as defined by the Church). The invitation to speak was inappropriate, and the speech, although it may have been inspiring to some graduates, created another example of a dichotomy between word and action.
Many people have very clearly articulated why the honorary degree created scandal, and it would be useless to redouble their efforts. Fewer people have dealt with why the President’s presence in a keynote capacity was inappropriate. The University of Notre Dame is a Catholic institution, and its commencement exercises should be a venue to present the Church’s teachings about faith, hope, and charity for a final time before graduates must translate those virtues into actions. It is an opportunity for catechesis, not “dialogue.”
“But people of all faiths attend the university, and some of them may not believe what the Church teaches,” some say. Catholic institutions of education must not bow to pressure to water-down the Gospel, or leave out portions of the Church’s teaching. At every moment, including the graduation, the full teaching of Christ must pervade Catholic education. Additionally, the objection above works in the opposite way. People of all political party affiliations, or no affiliation at all, attend the university. So, those who do not agree with President Obama should not have to listen to his diatribes. Again, not a single person had the opportunity to rebut anything that Mr. Obama said. In effect, he was able to give a speech outlining his “position” on human rights issues without having any contrary evidence presented. Why is it more appropriate to have a polarizing political figure than to have non-Catholics listen to Catholic teaching?
So the President was there, and he gave a speech. Some segments and phrases were, in fact, inspiring for young adults moving from academia to the world. In fact, the first third of the speech proposed a very Catholic agenda for meeting the problems of the world. A thorough reading of Gaudium et Spes and Nostra Atatae (documents from the Second Vatican Council) would show people that the Catholic Church has been teaching these principles for centuries, nay, millennia!
However, there were other phrases that, at best, were stated because of a lack of memory. At worst, they were outright un-truths used to mask a politician’s blatant anti-life policies. Several come immediately to mind.
The President stated: “So let’s work together to reduce the number of women seeking abortions by reducing unintended pregnancies, and making adoption more available, and providing care and support for women who do carry their child to term.” Surely his goal of reducing the number of abortions would be furthered and reached if he refused to give government funding to America’s largest provided of abortions, Planned Parenthood. He went on: adoption should be more readily available; people and governments should work at “providing care and support for women who do carry their child to term.” Again, such things would be more possible and available if adoption agencies and life-protecting women’s help agencies received more funding than abortion mills.
Another passage of the speech: “Let’s honor the conscience of those who disagree with abortion, and draft a sensible conscience clause, and make sure that all of our health care policies are grounded in clear ethics and sound science….” President Obama must have forgotten that he pledged support of the Freedom of Choice Act, which would deny protections of conscience to health care professionals who oppose abortion. Moreover, he called for a foundation of “sound science.”
Maybe Mr. Obama hasn’t read the statistics on how much more sound is adult stem cell research than embryonic research, both ethically and for finding cures. Maybe he doesn’t understand that medical research has conclusively proven that a baby has a heartbeat and is developing lungs and eyes before the mother ever knows she is pregnant. Must we go any further to prove that abortion and embryonic stem cell research cut off life at vital phases of its development?
On the topic of embryonic stem cell research, Obama said: &ld
quo;Those who speak out against stem cell research may be rooted in admirable conviction about the sacredness of life, but so are the parents of a child with juvenile diabetes who are convicted that their son’s or daughters’ hardships can be relieved.” That phrase sounds like our President wished to convey a falsity: that people who are opposed to embryonic stem cell research do not sympathize with a parent of an ill child. Another example: the President stated that “we can still agree that this is a heart-wrenching decision for any woman to make, with both moral and spiritual dimensions.” Every person in America who is pro-life already knows that. The President came perilously close to “demonizing” those of us who will not do evil to bring about good. Quite simply, he made pro-lifers sound unsympathetic to the physical and emotional needs of other people.
Our president couldn’t have been more incorrect. Catholics do sympathize with the parents who are facing the daunting task of raising a child with juvenile diabetes, and with the young parents who may not have the means to support a baby. Catholics, however, cannot be Machiavellians. The good end of treating a child with diabetes does not justify the denial of life to a fertilized embryo who will one day become another child worthy of care. The good end of allowing a young woman to continue with her life’s path does not justify the intentional killing of that innocent life inside of her.
“President Obama has so many great policies about protecting the poor and allowing people to organize their labor rights,” other critics say about the focus on his policies that violate the dignity of human life at its earliest stages. Some of that is certainly true. Answer these questions, though. Are poor people alive? Do the rights of laborers matter if they do not exist on this earth? Quite simply, the right to life is the essential and first inviolable human right. We cannot begin to protect other rights unless we first protect the right of a person to exist on this earth. A politician (president, senator, governor) who does not protect life in its earliest phases is, quite possibly, susceptible to making errant decisions in other matters of human dignity.
That is why embryonic stem cell research, abortion, and euthanasia (among a couple of other issues) make up the “one issue” on which most pro-lifers vote for politicians. Without that “one issue,” all of the other issues become irrelevant, and efforts to fix problems are misguided. Make no mistake about it: pro-lifers seek to protect human diginty at every stage of life: immediately after conception, in the third trimester of pregnancy, in the toddler year, in adolescence, in conditions of sickness and poverty, in moments when torture might yield “acceptable results,” in times when the death penalty may be used unjustly and unnecessarily, in old age and everywhere in between. The social teaching of the Catholic Church, which is the teaching of Christ, comes to us in exactly this order. (See the Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraphs 2258 to 2330 and 2419 to 2425.)
This brings up, once again, the preeminent claim of this article. There was no dialogue on Sunday at Notre Dame, and it is fully possible that Mr. Obama does not intent to enter into any dialogue with groups of people who disagree with his positions. Presumably, he went back to the White House and the speech-making trail while pro-lifers will wait for opportunities to present their case to him, his administration, and Congress. Will he listen? Will he receive them to the White House for a summit? It would be a great day for the pro-life movement if such a thing were to take place.
