Catholic academic ayatollah shows true colors

What power does the Cardinal Newman Society have to abuse?

Let's make a comparison:

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Sen. Joe McCarthy went after relative nobodies to make a name for himself and gain power.
Special Counsel for the Army Joseph N. Welch went after the striving power-hungry Sen. McCarthy to defend a relative unknown.

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Patrick Reilly is going after the power-hungry to protect the innocent.
Joe Feuerherd is going after a relative nobody to make a name for himself and defend his support of the power-hungry.

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Let us not assassinate Mr. Reilly further, Mr. Feuerherd.
You have done enough.
Have you no sense of decency sir, at long last?
Have you left no sense of decency?

I think he means "Catholics who are able to use the free will God gave them" and hear dissenting opinions. So hopefully...the vast majority?

God give strength to those not blessed with this understanding.

Either way, this article reeks of religious bigotry.

Why did a catholic university honor a man (bush) who clearly violated the catechismal principle on war, a man who ordered torture, a man who is guilty of numerous human rights violations, in addition to violating many other core principles of catholicism?

James 2:10 "For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it."

Abortion, murder, torture, deceit ... according to the apostle James all are the same. Honoring Pres Obama is no worse than honoring former President Bush. It is in effect, the same.

The error is not with Obama, not with Fr. Jenkins, the error is with those who try to deceive us into believing that one sin is worse than another. This is nothing more than grandstanding by a few bishops who are using their office, using their position, using you and others who believe as you do, and using the abortion issue to forward their own narcissistic agendas.

Bishop D'Arcy has given us the christian example to follow. Bishop Morlino is clearly demonstrating the antichristian example. Which one are you going to choose to follow?

The Cardinal Newman Society

The Cardinal Newman Society (or Newmanites - as some on this forum have called them) and NOT to be confused with various campus' Newman Societies - one wonders even if the is an attempt by the Newmanites to create that sort of confusion.

www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-rutten28-2009mar28,1,31493...

Obama and Notre Dame

Some Catholic groups are pushing to have the university withdraw its invitation for him to be commencement speaker.

Tim Rutten

March 28, 2009

These days, protests over college commencement speakers herald spring's arrival as surely as longer days and greening leaves.

The most interesting of this season's controversies involves President Obama's scheduled appearance at America's most prominent Roman Catholic institution of higher learning, the University of Notre Dame. The school traditionally invites a new chief executive to address its graduates, and Obama -- like Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush -- accepted. The president will travel to the school's South Bend, Ind., campus on May 17 to speak to graduates and to receive, as also is traditional, an honorary doctor of laws degree.

However, a small group of protesters is outraged that a Catholic university would extend such an invitation to a politician who is both pro-choice and willing to countenance embryonic stem cell research -- even if he is, as we used to say, the leader of the free world.

There are a couple of things about this culture-warfare-as-usual controversy that are fresh and consequential enough to be of interest. The first is the protesters and their connections. Many are part of a vocal, Internet-savvy lobby that has been agitating to coerce the church's prelates into denying Communion to Catholic officeholders who deviate from a rigidly "pro-life" line. Made up of a number of smaller groups, this lobby has campaigned to keep other pro-choice officeholders (of any religion) from speaking at Catholic schools. Its supporters also have been vociferously active in the movement to use abortion as a wedge to lever Catholics into the religious right.

The effort turns on convincing Catholics -- for decades now, the principal swing voters in presidential elections -- that they're obliged to vote on the basis of moral issues important to the right wing of the church, such as abortion, stem cell research and, more recently, marriage equality. The movement has attracted a handful of marginal figures among the country's Catholic bishops. Two of them -- the bishops of Phoenix and South Bend -- have weighed in condemning Obama's appearance at Notre Dame. The South Bend bishop, who usually attends the graduation, has said he'll boycott this year's ceremony.

The principal organizer of the Notre Dame protest is a group called the Cardinal Newman Society -- no, they're not the people who ran the Newman Centers you may recall from your college campus. This bunch came together in 1992 to enforce more stringent orthodoxy at American Catholic universities.

One of its projects is to publish essays by the Rev. C. John McCloskey, the Opus Dei priest who acts as a kind of chaplain to the GOP's neoconservatives and was influential in the conversion to traditional Catholicism of such prominent conservative commentators as Robert Novak and Larry Kudlow. In one of the essays disseminated by the society, McCloskey argues that "for a university to be truly Catholic," its faculty would have to be "exclusively" Catholic. Welcome back to the Counter-Reformation.

The Newman Society is linked to two organizations -- CatholicVote.org and the Fidelis Center -- whose programs are clearly geared toward bringing Catholics into the Republican Party.

Two vigorous spokesmen for the protest have been Southern California talk-show host Hugh Hewitt and Operation Rescue founder Randall Terry, who converted from evangelical Protestantism to Catholicism about four years ago. "The faithful Catholic world is justly enraged at the treachery of Notre Dame's leadership," Terry said. "Notre Dame will rue the day they invited this agent of death to speak."

Some people just won't be happy until the Inquisition has office space again and kindling is being piled up around the local stakes.

What's most interesting is the push-back they're getting. The publisher of the influential National Catholic Reporter newspaper has accused the Newman Society of trying to turn the church's universities into "Catholic madrasas." Father John Jenkins, the university's president, has said he has no intention of withdrawing the invitation made to Obama, whom he called "an inspiring leader."

According to Notre Dame's campus newspaper, student reaction to the invitation has been overwhelmingly positive, though the paper reports an interesting split: 70% of the letters it has received from alumni oppose the president's appearance, while 73% of current students and 97% of the graduating seniors approve of the invitation.

It seems that GOP activists are going to have to look elsewhere -- and to another generation -- for their single-issue voters.

timothy.rutten@latimes.com

Why Notre Dame Should Welcome Obama
By Kenneth L. Woodward
Monday, March 30, 2009; Page A17
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/29/AR200903...

But the bishops have a policy that says "Catholic institutions should not honor those who act in defiance of our [Catholic] fundamental moral principles." Upon taking office, Obama lifted Bush administration restrictions on funding for abortions and for embryonic stem cell research, as he had promised to do. Both actions violated fundamental Catholic principles on the protection of human life.

Although the bishops' policy is directed at dissident Catholic politicians such as Sen. Ted Kennedy, Notre Dame is being criticized for putting institutional prestige ahead of moral principle by allowing its graduating class to hear from the president of the United States, who is not a Catholic. And at least some Catholic bishops agree with the critics.

Already, Bishop John D'Arcy, in whose Fort Wayne-South Bend Diocese Notre Dame lies, has announced that he will not attend the president's speech, having failed to persuade the university to withdraw its invitation. Other bishops are likely to join D'Arcy in distancing themselves from the university. In 1992, when Notre Dame conferred its highest honor, the Laetare Medal, on Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a low-key pro-choice Democrat who opposed "partial birth" abortions, New York's Cardinal John O'Connor flew to South Bend for a meeting of the American bishops at Notre Dame but in protest refused to step on the campus.

I am an alumnus of Notre Dame. I am adamantly pro-life, independent as a voter -- and greatly pleased that Obama has agreed to speak at my alma mater. He joins six other sitting presidents going back to Dwight D. Eisenhower -- including George W. Bush -- who have addressed the university. Politically, I had disagreements with each of them. Yet I never supposed that by granting them the commencement podium the university was signaling its approval of their policies. Neither, now, should the bishops.

On the dais at Notre Dame, Obama will find a familiar face: Harvard Law professor Mary Ann Glendon, Bush's ambassador to the Vatican, who will receive this year's Laetare Medal in part for her peerless defense of human life. It's important that the president hear her message as well as deliver his own. It is equally important that this kind of engagement take place at a university devoted to both faith and reason. Where else but in a university setting should we expect this kind of principled presentation of issues?

No question, Notre Dame will pay a price for doing what a Catholic university can and should do. The Internet is smoking with protests from conservative Catholic bloggers and pro-life Web sites. One of them claims to have collected 206,000 signatures opposing the president's appearance. These pressure groups are aghast that "Our Lady's University" would welcome so resolute an opponent of the church's position on abortion. Some alumni, especially Republicans, are threatening to withhold contributions and bequests. The Vatican is receiving e-mail demanding disciplinary action.

Catholicism is not a sect that shuns the world as evil. As a body, the American hierarchy has usually been both principled and open to political engagement. The bishops have congratulated the new president on his victory and pledged to work with him on issues affecting social and economic justice. Do they now find him morally unfit to speak at a Catholic university?

Obama is not coming to Notre Dame to press a pro-choice agenda but to address issues that affect all American citizens, including Catholics. He will be speaking to students who, like other Americans, gave him a majority of their votes. He will receive an honorary degree because it is the custom, not as a blessing on any of his decisions.

American bishops should remember that it was only a few decades ago that a Catholic was considered unfit for the White House. Do they now believe that a sitting president is unfit to address a Catholic university? It's time the bishops gave a clear and principled response.

The writer is a contributing editor at Newsweek, where he served as religion editor for 38 years.

No. the step father DOES NOT remain a communicant in good standing. He remains in a state of mortal sin. So he can't by Church teaching present himself for communion without first sincerely repenting and going to confession. Exactly the same as being excommunicated. The canon law formally excommunicates for abortion not rape because of the controversy surrounding that issue makes it (they feel) important to be quite clear.