I haven’t really commented much on the controversy around Notre Dame’s bestowal of an honorary degree on Barack Obama, and hosting him to give a commencement speech for their graduates. As a pro-life Catholic, of course I found it disappointing. The thing is, though, that even though Notre Dame is a Catholic college, it’s still in the realm of academia, which automatically leans far to the left. I’ve just looked at Notre Dame as the same as a lot of Catholics in the United States: not very serious about their faith. They’re what we called “closet Catholics” in my church. They’re the Catholics that don’t go to church every Sunday, the ones who know all the words when they’re at Mass but forget everything that being a Catholic means as soon as they walk out the door. They walk around and call themselves Catholics, but they don’t really mean it. “Catholic” is nothing more than a title to them, and definitely isn’t anything deeper than that.

Sadly, the Catholics who do take their faith seriously are the ones being maligned for this, which is sad to me. I don’t necessarily begrudge Notre Dame inviting Barack Obama to speak there. He is, after all, the president, a position that deserves respect even if I don’t agree with his politics. Had Notre Dame just issued a statement saying that they invited him because of the honor of his presidency, even though they didn’t agree with or condone his positions on abortion and refused to give him the honorary degree, that probably could’ve been an acceptable compromise for all. But no, there had to be all of this talk about inclusiveness and tolerance and blah, blah, blah. No matter that according to Catholic doctrine, those who defy fundamental beliefs of the church should not be given awards, honors or platforms which would suggest support for their actions. Notre Dame is a liberal school, and a Catholic one as well, so what can you expect? The speaking platform I can get behind, because Notre Dame is a university where open debate should be allowed. However, there’s no excuse for the honorary degree.

I give a lot of kudos to the students and alumni who have had the guts to stand up to the university. I never thought it would make much of a difference to Notre Dame itself, but that didn’t mean that taking a stand wasn’t the right thing to do. Unfortunately, rather than getting support from other Catholics in academia, they’re being sneered at.

Take Catholic university president Patricia McGuire (Trinity Washington). Before we get into her remarks on the Notre Dame controversy, a look at her background made me realize it probably isn’t surprising in the least that she said what she did.

Patricia McGuire is a pre-eminent advocate for women’s education, most notably women’s colleges, colleges which give priority and a place for women to discover and develop their individual voices in the presence of other women and to discover and develop appreciation for the possibilities and power of the voices of women in and for the world in order to make it more hospitable for women, children and families.

Patricia McGuire’s life gives witness to the value of women’s education through her person and her actions.

… Serving on these various boards, she is often the only woman present. As such she reminds women and those who would prepare them for leadership that it is still the case that the higher a woman goes, the closer she gets to the glass ceiling where its size and breadth and thickness become ever more apparent and what one suspects has occurred on the other side really indeed has. These experiences have taught her why it is so vitally important for women to be in those places, to be party to the decisions large and small that shape our society and its institutions. Her commitment to the development of young women as future leaders has made her an important presence to the National Capital Girl Scouts and their leadership training.

… It is her view that the way to make young girls and women truly powerful is by the example of women leaders who know themselves and proclaim confidently their values, their unique quirks and distinctive creative genius. In this way a leader shows a woman how to be herself. The role of women’s colleges where women learn together in the presence of other women is not simply to be a rehearsal of the women’s chorus for a future part in a mixed chorus concert, rather it is the opportunity for the women in the chorus to discover their own song, to develop it and to add this song to the repertoire of great music enriching and broadening human possibility and humanizing the world.

She sounds a lot like a feminist to me, but what do I know? Maybe I’m just reading it wrong. But if I’m reading into her background correctly, I’d wager that she’s probably vehemently pro-choice. And that would explain her reaction to the Notre Dame controversy perfectly.

Speaking on Trinity’s campus in Northeast Washington, McGuire said that “a half-century of progress for Catholic higher education is at risk of slipping back into those insular, parochial pre-Vatican II days” when academic freedom was not valued within the Catholic Church.
“The real scandal at Notre Dame today is not that the president of the United States is speaking at commencement,” McGuire said. “The real scandal is the misappropriation of sacred teachings for political ends. The real scandal is the spectacle of ostensibly Catholic mobs camping out at Notre Dame for the specific purpose of disrupting the commencement address of the nation’s first African American president. This ugly spectacle is an embarrassment to all Catholics. The face that Catholicism shows to our new president should be one marked with the sign of peace, not distorted in the snarl of hatred.”
McGuire continued, “The religious vigilantism apparent in the Notre Dame controversy arises from organizations that have no official standing with the church, but who are successful in gaining media coverage as if they were speaking for Catholicism. . . . They have established themselves as uber-guardians of a belief system we can hardly recognize. Theirs is a narrow faith devoted almost exclusively to one issue. They defend the rights of the unborn but have no charity toward the living. They mock social justice as a liberal mythology.”

Here’s a video of the people that Patricia McGuire and her ilk are sneering at. Do they look like “religious vigilantes” to you?

There are also at least 55 American Bishops protesting Obama’s visit to Notre Dame. Are they snarling, hateful religious vigilantes as well, President McGuire? These protestors are the ones standing up for Catholic doctrine, and yet Catholic intellectual leadership is pissing all over them for it.

Hat Tip: Hot Air