BISHOP D'ARCY: stop Obama: put Notre Dame under interdict (Vanity)

Anger, Love, and Pain | March 23, 2009 | Mrs. Don-o

[Mrs. Don-o]

“We have invited the president and he's honored us by accepting," Jenkins said. "We are not ignoring the critical issue of the protection of life. On the contrary, we invited him because we care so much about those issues, and we hope for this to be the basis of an engagement with him."

Dear Bishop D’Arcy,

Does Fr. Jenkins think you, and the USCCB, and the Church --- all the rest of us --- are total idiots?

You don’t “engage” with a person who is embroiled in massive, murderous moral wrong by inviting him onto a floodlit, nationally-televised public platform and giving him an honorary Law Degree.

You “engage” by dialog, by debate, by challenge, by confrontation.

You use right respect, right reason, and right judgment.

Censure is called for.

Reprobation is called for.

“Judgment” is called for.

Fr. Jenkins’ defense of his decision to honor Barack Obama is simultaneously so smooth and so stupid, that I am convinced it expresses an underlying contempt.

How does this add up?

The selected man: the most consistent proponent of state-sanctioned killing of the innocent ever elected to public office in the United States. (*See accompanying list.)

The acts: comprehensive immediate material cooperation with unjust killing on a catastrophic scale *

The consequence: the highest honors a Catholic University can bestow.

The decision to an honorary Law Degree upon Barack Obama means at least two things:

• Obama’s record of advancing the practice of abortion, infanticide, and euthanasia means nothing so very dishonorable in the eyes of the leadership of the University of Notre Dame, and

• Notre Dame’s identity as a Catholic University means nothing that makes a dime’s worth of difference in its most public, identity-defining acts.

The defiance: Everyone knows that the “Parent-Teacher Organization” at the parish of “St. Otilie the Obscure” would not be allowed to invite an unrepentant Klansman, or anti-Semite, or pornographer, or abortion-promoter to accept a public honor.

Everyone bets, however, that President Obama is too big to disinvite, and Notre Dame is too big to discipline.

It’s bigger than the Diocese. It’s bigger than the Church. It’s bigger than God.

Bishop D’Arcy, if Notre Dame University pulls this off, it will mean to the hundreds of millions who are watching, Catholics and non-Catholics alike, that when push comes to shove, being Catholic doesn’t mean a goddamn thing.

---

But what can you do? God help us, what can you do?

Bishop D’Arcy, this is well within your authority as a Successor to the Apostles:

Require that the USCCB rule
be respected,
and that Notre Dame University must not give a
platform or honors to Barack Obama.

If they defy you,
put Notre Dame University under interdict.

I’m no canonist and I'm no Catherine of Siena – just an ordinary over-talking and under-performing sinner like the rest of us. But I beg you to take this suggestion seriously. This is as serious as a heart attack --- in the heart of the Church in America.

You have the ring, the mitre, and the crozier. The crozier means you are to protect the lambs and seriously dismay the wolves, and not the other way around.

As God’s most unworthy servant, I beg you.

[signed]

---

*Material cooperation with unjust killing and other intrinsically immoral acts.
A partial--- not a comprehensive --- list.

Infanticide (2002) The Induced Infant Liability Act would have protected the right to humane medical treatment and palliative care for babies that survived late-term abortions. As an Illinois legislator, Obama voted against it and finally killed it in committee.

Abortion: As a U.S. Senator, Barack Obama received the following scores on NARAL Pro-Choice America’s Congressional Record on Choice:

2007: 100 percent
2006: 100 percent
2005: 100 percent

Euthanasia: a deadly paradox: voted in 2005 (along with a unanimous U. S. Senate) in favor of the right of a brain-injured woman (Mrs. Terri Schiavo) to a Federal judicial review of a lower court’s decision that she should be starved and dehydrated to death. Subsequently, Obama repeatedly stated (e.g. during the first televised presidential primary debate on MSNBC) that that was the ONE vote he regretted during the time when he served in the U.S. Senate.

As President: among his first acts as U.S. President were his decisions to:

• Rescind the “Mexico City Policy” and restore funding to organizations which promote abortions worldwide
  
• Restore funding to the UN Fund for Population Activities despite research confirming UNFPA’s participation in China’s forced abortion program.
  
• Choose an aggressive “Catholic” abortion advocate (Kathleen Sebelius) as head of the HHS and his highest advisor on healthcare policy
  
• Move to stop all funding for abstinence education and replace it with funding for federal programs that emphasize contraception increasing Title X family planning programs by at least $1 billion annually.
  
• Endorse the Freedom of Choice Act, repealing all national/state abortion regulations passed over the last 35 years, including the ban on partial birth abortion.
  
• Repeal the Hyde Amendment, which bars federal taxpayer funding for most abortions.
  
• Require insurance companies to cover birth control, require pharmacists to fill contraceptive prescriptions, and remove the age restriction on over-the-counter so-called emergency contraception (abortifacient drugs).
  
• Approve funding for embryonic stem cell research that requires killing embryos.
• Promote abortion programs, services and advocacy in other countries by spending at least $1 billion for population control.
  
• Rescind the HHS "conscience" regulation which protected doctors’ and other health care workers’ right to refuse to perform acts contrary to their moral, ethical, and professional judgment.

THIS --- AND THE LANDSLIDE OF LITIGATION THAT IT INVITES --- THREATENS THE ENTIRE CATHOLIC HEALTHCARE SYSTEM AND EVERY CONSCIENTIOUS HEALTHCARE WORKER IN AMERICA.

[Frantzie]

Notre Dame can go to h*ll. It is not a Catholic university but a sports business.

The American Catholic Church is becoming a libtard church that loves Obama. Don’t tell me there is NOT a American Catholic Church. They support ACORN, La Raza and other anti American and pro-abortion groups. Rome needs to clean house.

[defconw]

I lived in Bishop D'Arcy’s Diocese until after I got married two years ago. I know Bishop D'Arcy. He will not threaten unless he has the authority. This is not the first time this has come up. Last time he did not attend the Graduation. So you can yell all you want, but I recall that a group of us talked to him about it at the time. I spent two years studying for “The Education for Ministry”, in Fort Wayne. I graduated that program. I do know what he said at the time. It's not up to him, were it, it would not have happened.

[utahagen]

The person who would be to blame for the interdict would be the President of Notre Dame, not the Bishop imposing the interdict. There are Catholic churches in South Bend that will pick up the slack until Jenkins and his cronies repent.

[utahagen]

The innocent people at Notre Dame will be inconvenienced by an interdict, but they can attend churches within a short walk of campus. I imagine there are many good people at Notre Dame who will be glad to accept the inconvenience for the sake of the message being delivered to Jenkins. The Bishop must take decisive action in this case.

[utahagen]

Where did you get the idea that going off-campus is such a hardship? I often go to Mass during the week and I walk much farther to get there than Notre Dame students will have to walk to attend mass off-campus. (I've visited the school.) Your view that it would be a nearly unbearable hardship for students to have to walk a few blocks to go to Mass and confession is wacky.

[don-o]

bump

[Ann Archy]

WHY make it difficult for INNOCENT people to receive Holy Communion?? My GOD, you people really do want to throw out the baby with the bathwater.

Now, if they want to RE-NAME Notre Dame and De-Sanctify the Chapel or Chapels and turn it into a TOTALLY SECULAR college, then fine.

[utahagen]

Adjust your meds.

[Ann Archy]

Did you even bother to read my second sentence?

[utahagen]

Yes, I did. I think suspending Notre Dame's right to have Masses said on campus for a period of time, giving ND’s President a chance to rescind the invitation of Obama, would be a good idea. Likewise, if they go through with giving Obama an honorary degree, the Bishop should suspend the right say Mass on campus for a period of time, giving ND’s President a chance to publicly repent for having done that. If ND doesn't rescind or repent, the Bishop can consider taking the next step and stripping the school of its Catholic status. My earlier point was that it would be an inconvenience, but not a hardship, for students to have to go off campus for Mass. I think your reaction to the prospect of students’ having to walk a few blocks was overly dramatic.

[Ann Archy]

You have no idea if a Church is just a FEW blocks away....do you?

[utahagen]

As I wrote in an earlier post, I’ve been to Notre Dame. I lived on campus for a week. There is a church within walking distance of campus.

[Ann Archy]

Ok fine....kick Holy Communion and Mas off the campus...let them walk.

[ethics]

You need Bishop Martino!

[Mrs. Don-o]

"Don’t tell me there is NOT a American Catholic Church. They support ACORN, La Raza and other anti American and pro-abortion groups. Rome needs to clean house."

True, all true, my friend: but it won't happen without a hellzapoppin crisis. And guess what? That's our job: to make the crisis.

To you, myself, all: lead, follow, or get out of the way.

[Mrs. Don-o]

Thank you, utahagen. My thoughts exactly.

Are we people of Faith? People who love Our Lord in the Eucharist and the image of God in the unborn baby? Then let us be the first to insist that the honor of Huitzilopoxtli be renounced, and the blood of human sacrifice cleansed from the place, before we dare invite Our Blessed Lord back to our altars.

[Frantzie]

God post. I have been criticized by some here that I am trashing the Church. I just get mad at liberals in the Church tearing things down. Obama at Notre Dame, ACORN, La Raza - a all people who will support tyranny and baby killing.