Posted on 04/08/2009 1:24:55 PM PDT by NYer
SOUTH BEND, Ind. (AP) — Ten priests in the Roman Catholic order that helps run the University of Notre Dame want the school to reconsider having President Barack Obama deliver this year's commencement address.
Notre Dame's invitation to Obama has drawn outrage from some Catholics because his stances on abortion and stem cell research are at odds with church teaching.
Ten members of the Congregation of the Holy Cross signed an open letter published Wednesday in the campus newspaper.
They ask Notre Dame's president — the Rev. John Jenkins, also a Holy Cross priest — and the university's board of fellows to reconsider having Obama speak at the May commencement and receive an honorary degree.
(Excerpt) Read more at google.com ...
And the list continues to grow.
Good... let’s keep the pressure on!
Finally we hear from decent Holy Cross Fathers! I was beginning to think of the order as a lost cause.
One of the signers is one of our Holy Cross priests who serves our parish. I’m very happy to see him taking this stand!
Hope they talk about the O-administration’s plan to rescind the Conscience clause. This really scares me!
“Of course, and the fact thatObama has ignored the storm means he wishes to divide the Catholic community permanently. To encourage the anti-clericalism that has come to the fore since the sex scandal.”
Do you really think that’s his motivation? I must say, it seems to be a distinct minority of hierarchs who are speaking out against the invitation, improperly in my opinion, and a majority of Latins voted for Obama his well known position on abortion to the contrary notwithstanding. Frankly, RS, it looks more like some of your more politically minded hierarchs are the ones seeking to divide and create division by intruding into a diocese where they have no canonical authority. Even if Obama is seeking to separate out the conservative minority from the not so conservative majority, is the Latin Church in America so weakly held together, its bonds so rotted by the lunacy which has dominated the Western Church since Vatican II, that a non Catholic, apparently agnostic at best, heretical at worst, president could fracture it?
Perfectly appropriate action on the part of these priests.
My bishop (Doran) has publicly invited Fr. Jenkins to change the name of Notre Dame to Humanist University so as to better describe the current reality.
We who are actual Roman Catholics are quite likely to remain so and to vote accordingly. Those who claim Catholicism while voting for Obama are quite likely to be the ones who seldom darken the door of our churches and think that baptism followed by a life of apostasy somehow leaves them in a position to call themselves Catholic. The AmChurch of Kumbaya is drawing to a close.
“Bishop D’Arcy, diocesan ordinary of the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend, was one of the very first to speak out against Obama appearing at Notre Dame and speaking at commencement and receiving an honorary doctorate in law.”
BE, aside from the pope and perhaps the ND president’s father superior, only Bishop D”Arcy has any canonical jurisdiction here to do anything substantive...and he chose not to act.
“View those bishops who are supporting him as showing solidarity with the diocesan ordinary and his authority.”
If you had a functioning synod, that’s where that support would be shown. What has gone on, from an ecclesiastical point of view, is appalling, the motivation notwithstanding.
“We who are actual Roman Catholics are quite likely to remain so and to vote accordingly.”
I don’t doubt that for a moment.
“Those who claim Catholicism while voting for Obama are quite likely to be the ones who seldom darken the door of our churches and think that baptism followed by a life of apostasy somehow leaves them in a position to call themselves Catholic.”
Possibly. They might also be Catholics who couldn’t stomach the idea of voting for a man who worked so hard to fund Mohammedan jihad against Orthodox Christians in the Balkans or for a party whose main goal was or ought to have been according to some, the dismantling of the social “safety net” in this country. From what I am reading here, those Catholics may well have their priorities fouled up, but to all appearances they seem to be otherwise good Catholics. I know some of them, including some monks and nuns who feel that way.
The danger, BE, is when politics begins to inform our religious opinions and/or when religion enters the political arena, something which seems to have been going on in this country for the past 30 years or so.
“The AmChurch of Kumbaya is drawing to a close.”
I sincerely hope you are right, but as that is happening, make sure your hierarchs come to a better understanding of and appreciation for proper ecclesiology and their role in both the “national church” with The Church and their own dioceses.
You should more time working out your own salvation in fear and trembling as St. Paul advised and less time fretting about what is taking place with the episcopacy of the Church you are in schism from.
A large number of “Latins” who voted for Obama were, I suspect quite ignorant of Obama’s position. As for intrusion, these other bishops are simply backing up D’Arcy, who therwise might be taken as a crank by the VIPswho make up the Board and, I migth add, are part of theruling class of the United States, our unhereditary nobility. We Latins do after all, have a history of political activity, going back to 476. as opposed to the east where all politics remained court politics, and the Church was subject to Caesar—except,or so I hear, the monks who were the wild card.
So I am talking about political unity. The Irish had politics in their bones, which is why until recently they were able to rule the Church in America. Germans, Poles and Italians simply knucked under. The Puerto Ricans they couldn’t handle. TheMexicans a little easier. But in the last forty years the Irish have become assimilated and have stopped having kids. So the Irish oligarchy is beginning to lose its grip. The pols turned against them beginning in 1968. It took the bishops decades before they realized that the Democratic Party no longer had room for them.
“...except,or so I hear, the monks who were the wild card.”
They still are, RS!
“We Latins do after all, have a history of political activity, going back to 476. as opposed to the east where all politics remained court politics, and the Church was subject to Caesar—except,or so I hear, the monks who were the wild card.
So I am talking about political unity. The Irish had politics in their bones, which is why until recently they were able to rule the Church in America. Germans, Poles and Italians simply knucked under. The Puerto Ricans they couldn’t handle. TheMexicans a little easier. But in the last forty years the Irish have become assimilated and have stopped having kids. So the Irish oligarchy is beginning to lose its grip. The pols turned against them beginning in 1968.”
Best explanation I’ve read of what is going on. Thanks. Your comment about the ancient nature of this fundamental difference between the Church in the West and the Church in the East is on the money, I think. Both courses of conduct have had their consequences and we are seeing one of those here. Another is the very real impact this is having on intra-Church relations.
My theosis, AAC, may very well be bound up in the political machinations of some of the hierarchs of the Latin Church for any of a number of reasons, secular and ecclesiological.
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