Posted on 03/07/2013 3:28:39 PM PST by NYer
.- Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan of New York will deliver the commencement address and receive an honorary degree at the University of Notre Dame’s graduation ceremony on May 19.
Cardinal Dolan is “a man of great intelligence and personal warmth, and a dedicated shepherd of the Church,” said Notre Dame president Father John I. Jenkins, C.S.C.
He explained in a March 6 statement that the university is “grateful” that the cardinal has accepted its invitation to celebrate the students’ graduation and to “provide them with words of wisdom as they set out into the world.”
The invitation to Cardinal Dolan comes four years after the university’s intensely controversial invitation to President Barack Obama to deliver the commencement address and receive an honorary degree at the May 2009 commencement.
Many pro-life advocates objected to granting university honors to a president deeply committed to legal abortion, and numerous bishops spoke out against the invitation.
In April 2009, then-Archbishop Dolan said the invitation to President Obama was a mistake and sent the wrong signal to students that the president is to be held up as a model. However, the archbishop also stressed the need to engage with politicians and others who support abortion.
Former Vatican ambassador Mary Ann Glendon declined the university’s Laetare Medal, which was to be awarded to her at the 2009 commencement. She cited the controversy between the university and the U.S. bishops, as well as her concern that honoring the president would encourage other Catholic institutions to ignore the bishops.
Opponents of the invitation to the president cited the U.S. bishops’ own instructions in a 2004 document on Catholics in political life. The bishops said that Catholic universities should not honor those who “act in defiance of our fundamental moral principles” and should not be given honors or platforms that would “suggest support for their actions.”
Following the controversy, Notre Dame launched several pro-life initiatives. It created a paid position of coordinator for university pro-life efforts and sought to expand support for pregnant women.
The university will now prepare to welcome Cardinal Dolan, who has been Archbishop of New York since 2009. Pope Benedict XVI made him a cardinal in 2012, and he is presently in Rome for the conclave to elect the next Pope.
The cardinal is also the current president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. During his time in this position, he has worked to defend the religious liberty of individuals and institutions from the recent federal contraception mandate.
Issued by the Department of Health and Human Services, the mandate requires employers and schools to offer health insurance plans covering sterilization and contraception, including some abortion-causing drugs. Those who violate the requirement face stiff fines.
Last May, Notre Dame became one of dozens of plaintiffs to file a lawsuit challenging the mandate on the grounds that it forced the university to violate its religious convictions.
In December, a federal judge ruled the lawsuit was premature because the Obama administration has promised to formally amend the mandate in the coming months to accommodate religious freedom.
If he is elected pontiff, do you think he will keep this appointment?
Leader of the United States Conference for Catholic Bishops, Cardinal Timothy Dolan, age 63, is known for his strong defence of Christian values and religious freedom in the US.
Cardinal Dolan has served as archbishop of New York since February of 2009. Just two months after his installation as archbishop, he was created cardinal by Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI. He previously served as archbishop of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, having been appointed to that position by Blessed John Paul II in 2002. Ordained bishop of St. Louis, Missouri in 2001, he chose for his Episcopal motto the profession of faith of St. Peter: Ad Quem Ibimus, "Lord, to whom shall we go?" (Jn 6:68).
Life and ministry
The oldest of five children, Cardinal Dolan was born on February 6, 1950 in St. Louis, Missouri to Shirley Radcliffe Dolan and the late Robert Dolan. He was ordained to the priesthood on June 19, 1976 after having received his seminary training at St. Louis Preparatory Seminary South in Shrewsbury, Mo., Cardinal Clennon College, and the Pontifical North American College (PNAC) in Rome. Cardinal Dolan holds a License in Sacred Theology from the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas – also known as the Angelicum which – he received during his formation at the PNAC.
Following his ordination, Cardinal Dolan served as associate pastor at Immacolata Parish in Richmond Heights, Mo. for three years. In 1979, he pursued a doctorate in American Church History at Catholic University of America, writing his doctoral dissertation on the life of Archbishop Edwin O'Hara, one of the founders of the Catholic Biblical Association.
Cardinal Dolan returned to St. Louis where he worked in parish ministry for four years, starting from 1983. In 1987 he was appointed as the Apostolic Nunciature in Washington, D.C., fulfilling the five year term. He returned to St. Louis in 1992 where he was made vice rector of Kenrick-Glennon Seminary, where he was the director of spiritual formation and a professor of Church history.
Cardinal Dolan returned to Rome in 1994 where he served as the rector for the PNAC until 2001. During this time, he was a visiting professor of Church history at the Pontifical Gregorian University, and served as a faculty member in the department of Ecumenical Theology at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas
On June 19, 2001, the then Fr. Dolan was named auxiliary bishop of St. Louis by Blessed John Paul II. In 2009 he was named archbishop of New York by Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI.
Cardinal Dolan served as chairman of Catholic Relief Services from January 2009 – November 2010. He is currently a member of the Board of Trustees of The Catholic University of America. He is also a member of the Pontifical Council for Promoting New Evangelization and the Pontifical Council for Social Communications.
On November 16, 2010, Cardinal Dolan was elected president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, succeeding Cardinal Francis George of Chicago.
In February of 2012, the archbishop of New York was elevated to cardinal.
Timothy is going to descend into the belly of the Beast!
It will take more than this for Fr. Jenkins to live down his invitation to Obama to speak at Notre Dame and be awarded an honorary doctorate in law—which he did ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to earn.
But at least it’s a step in the right direction.
I suspect that Fr. Jenkins has suffered more than a little pain from alumni for that huge and sinful mistake of his.
I suspect that Fr. Jenkins has suffered more than a little pain from alumni for that huge and sinful mistake of his.True! He's lost a lot of $$$. ND is a beautiful college well worth saving of course; Fr. Jenkins needs a conversion though. And as far as Dolan being a step in the right direction, I don't know about that: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQEmO07DpaI
I doubt that the creature Jenkins has suffered in the way you seem to imply.
As my son said when he rejected their offer of admission with generous scholarship money, ND is for (mostly) well-off white Catholic kids who don't want to study too hard but do want to get blitzed while partying at football games.
It's not a serious institution, neither in terms of its alleged Catholicism nor academically.
sitetest
Infinite improvement over the embarrassing debacle of just a few years ago! Congrats, notre dame!
Add Georgetown to that list.
One of the Italian papers was pushing him for Pope today.
Long shot...but I can only imagine how peeved Obama would be if that happened. He’d arguably no longer be the most prominent American on the world stage.
Most of the Italians (the curial old guard, at least) hate Dolan because I think they suddenly see him as a real threat. Other Italian cardinals, however, who may be Italian but were devoted to BXVI, seem to be trying to distance themselves from their aged and probably in more than one case corrupt confreres. So the latter must be the group that has spoken favorably of Dolan.
I must admit that I’m a bit surprised, because I didn’t think he had any chance and actually I didn’t like him very much (as Pope) because I didn’t think he had the gravitas or sense of authority to carry it off. However, he has really been revealing a different side of himself during this stay in Rome, and I must say that he’s looking more and more papabile all the time.
Today he started a Novena to St Joseph for the work of the conclave and invited everybody to join it. I’m doing it! St Joseph never fails.
My nephew was the Navy ROTC instructor there for a tour of duty. He said his students were extremely intelligent. He also noticed that they were very white and naive. But they were not unserious. But perhaps they were the exceptions because they would have been mostly engineering majors, and because, being ROTC, they were motivated to work to maintain their scholarships.
I'm sure there are some serious students at Notre Dame. And I imagine, if one were going to actually find any, they'd be in ROTC, LOL.
As well, I haven't said anything about the intellect of the student body. We come from a homeschooling community where several members have went off to Notre Dame. Very bright students. Interestingly, not real party animals upon their arrival at South Bend. But even these rather studious, serious, previously-homeschooled students, by sophomore or junior year, succumbed to the overall party culture of the institution.
They also report that although there are some truly serious students, large numbers are there to get a degree from a school with a good reputation (and among the distaff population, the most earnestly sought-after degree is a MRS), and not have to work all too hard while obtaining it. This is the self-report from students who were previously homeschooled, and previously, quite serious students.
Our own first-hand experience with the school comes from my son's participation, as a high school student, in an academic conference geared to grad students and the more intellectually well-equipped undergrads. It was a conference on secularism.
We were astonished by several things:
- The relative poor quality of the papers presented by Notre Dame undergraduates and graduate students;
- The level of denial concerning the very existence of a general culture war in our society;
- The overwhelmingly oppressive nature of the Catholic ghetto that prevails at Notre Dame;
- The intellectual unseriousness of the whole affair.
My son's presentation, which fully acknowledged the existence of the culture wars, and laid out battle plans on how to win it, often by taking secularists’ own intellectual weapons and turning those weapons back on them, brought fierce resistance from the Catholic players at the conference, but sad affirmations from the continuing Anglicans who had already been dispossessed of their own patrimony by the secularists within the Episcopagan ecclesial community.
The attitude of most of the Catholics present was, “Can't we all just get along?”
After that weekend, I assured my son that no matter how sweet a deal they presented to him, I wouldn't pressure him to attend Notre Dame.
Fortunately, he received two better offers, and took one of them.
To those who say Notre Dame is worth saving, my own view is that ALL our cultural institutions are worth saving. We have CEDED THE BATTLEFIELD TOO OFTEN in the last century, and WE MUST STOP IT! We must reclaim our cultural heritage, and take the battle to the enemy's territory.
But in terms of cultural institutions that need reclaiming, Notre Dame is perhaps about 13,244th on the list.
Maybe in another few centuries.
These things take time.
sitetest
It’s so nice to see you, friend.
Thanks! You, too!
If he does not get elected to be Pope first.
I would have thought that the Cardinal would rather speak at a Catholic university, not a secular one that has such low moral standards that it let the Obamadork speak.
And have no doubt, Catholicism left ND long ago.
Uncover the crosses this time...
What, Van Jones was busy?
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