Check it out: http://www.catholicmessenger.org/articles/2009/05/06/opinion/editorials/doc49f86e1e25e9c775751029.txt

Peace and greetings. I happened across your blog thanks to Bro. Thomas. We went to undergrad together.

Yo,

Interesting thoughts. I have my own post on the issue here. I will try to come back reply to you more specifically sometime soon. Specifically, check out the first comment to my post and let me know your thoughts.

Hope all is well.

Paxh

1) Preventing President Obama from speaking at Notre Dame is not an impingement on his freedom of speech by any means or measure. Notre Dame is a private university, it is not the public square. He is the President of the United States, he has plenty of platforms of his own. This is not, fundamentally, a matter of free speech, and I think one does the bishops a disservice by painting it that way. No one is trying to silence the President, his rights would not be taken away.

1a) Corollary to this, President Obama was invited by the university. It is not as if, by virtue of his office, he is expected to give the commencement speech at ND’s graduation. Thus, saying that he would be “prevented” from speaking at the University’s Commencement is a misnomer. He should not have been invited to speak at this event, under the circumstances, in the first place.

2) A University commencement speech is not the proper environment for a “disputatio” of any kind. Is there a question and answer session afterward? When exactly does the “discussion” begin? When do you get to make “objections”? In the line for shrimp at the co-ed mixer the night before? The commencement speaker at a university is given a considerable amount of time to impart whatever kind of information he wants to the graduating class and whoever may happen to listen, all under the auspices of his words being appreciated and supported by the university. There’s no rebuttal. There’s not even a “sed contra”. When is the follow-up?

3) But, content of the speech aside, he is receiving an honorary degree of Doctor of Law from the most prestigious Catholic university in the country. This is the one in which really there’s no argument to be had: the bishops were clear in their statement some years ago that Catholic institutions should give NO MORE HONORS to those who oppose the Church’s teachings. The president of Notre Dame, whether he did it knowingly or not, has openly disregarded this request.

4) I would hope that no one would be opposed to having President Obama come and speak to an audience at the university and to engage the student body and faculty in a real debate or discussion about the issues in which he disagrees with the Church—or even other issues. But it is important to recognize and to admit that a commencement exercise is not, by any means, a legitimate place for a “dialogue” to take place. It is also important to recognize and admit, again as mentioned before, the president is receiving an honorary doctorate in law from Notre Dame—a law degree, the very thing—U.S. Law—he is using to promote the destruction of unborn life. What is that saying? Really? How would one feel, for instance, if Aquinas Institute gave an honorary Masters in Theology degree to Bishop Williamson, or even the preacher of the year award?

5) I know it’s more enticing to say we are shutting ourselves off from the world, insulating the Church, so on, and as good Dominicans in the spirit of that dialogue that St. Dominic would certainly have supported, we should “dialogue” with the President… but I think it’s important to realize what has already been achieved under this banner of “dialogue”. The President got a lot of votes with his unifying-speak before the election when he promised to listen to us and all those who oppose him. But, did that stop him from overturning the Mexico City Policy? One can listen to someone, one can even dialogue with them, and still completely ignore them.

6) This is not an all-or-nothing debate. By rescinding the invitation to the President, ND would not be giving a green light to firing by the scores all the professors who are not Catholic, or even Christian, nor would they be shutting down the lines of communication in ecumenism.

There are really only a couple of issues on the table here:

a) are the bishops to be obeyed in the moratorium on honors to those who oppose the Church’s moral teachings?
b) what is the proper setting for a dialogue between the Church, its supporters, and those who oppose it?

At St. Mark’s in Monticello, I have taught religious education to the children of immigrants and am always impressed at their desire to learn and to share their culture with others as well as their language.

Our community that lacks the workers needed to accommodate the needs of an aging state population are blessed to integrate them into our area.

Bishop Taylor’s first pastoral letter, “I Was A Stranger And You Welcomed Me…”
and our study group in the parish have spurred me to join the immigration discussion in this nation and to do what I can to see that national policy does is established on fact and not fiction.

Also, the USCCB put stuff up on their website about the bishops, etc. who are appointed to go: http://www.usccb.org/synod/