Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Bishop Murry, SJ, of Youngstown the Latest to Speak on ND/Obama

This comes from His Excellency's diocesan newspaper, The Catholic Exponent.

Mr. Obama’s policies of expanding the availability of abortion at home and exporting that availability overseas have demonstrated that he does not believe that the life of the unborn is very important. As a result, I cannot but be deeply disturbed by the decision made by the president and board of Notre Dame.

The emphasis there is mine, as it resurrects a point I made here previously. Is Obama a hypocrite or just incredibly reckless?

Notre Dame is a Catholic university. Universities are places where there is a free exchange of ideas for the purpose of learning. Notre Dame is also a Catholic university, which means that its intellectual foundation is built on fundamental moral principles. Remove those moral principles and you remove the word “Catholic” from an organization’s self-definition.

As a Catholic university and the premier Catholic university in the nation, Notre Dame should be in the forefront of protecting all human life in word and deed. It is not sufficient for the university’s administration to issue a statement that they do not agree with President Obama’s positions on life issues while at the same time giving him an opportunity to stand before the graduates and receive a prestigious honorary degree. That is the contradiction Notre Dame has failed to resolve and what, I believe, is at the heart of this controversy.

And this seems, to me at least, a nice way of calling out the ND administration for its own hypocrisy.

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