Posted on 09/28/2009 3:51:18 PM PDT by wagglebee
SOUTH BEND, Indiana, September 28, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The attorney representing the pro-lifers arrested while protesting Obama at Notre Dame today repeated his request that the judge in the case, who is married to a pro-abortion Notre Dame professor, be removed from the case.
Attorney Tom Dixon's motion provides detailed support for his assertion in a previous recusal motion that there exists sufficient actual and perceived bias that Judge Jenny Pitts Manier, the judge assigned to the "ND 88" case, is required by Indiana state law to recuse herself in the matter. Dixon states that ever since Judge Manier has known her husband, Professor Edward Manier, he has been a well-known and outspoken advocate of the pro-abortion position.
As his views were well-known and have largely defined his identity at Notre Dame, Dixon argues, it seems implausible that Judge Manier could claim to be unaware of his views on the "ND 88" case, which stem from "the single biggest controversy in the history of the University of Notre Dame."
The case surrounds the arrest of 88 pro-lifers from across America who were charged with trespassing after peacefully witnessing against the presence of President Obama at Notre Dame The university awarded Obama with the commencement speech and an honorary law degree on May 17 of this year. Arrestees were singled out for carrying pro-life messages onto campus - including images of aborted children, a large cross, and images of Mary - while several other trespassers with pro-Obama or pro-Notre Dame signage were allowed to roam the campus.
Dixon argues that the career of Judge Manier's husband at Notre Dame was largely defined by the very same controversies which prompted the pro-lifers to travel across America to ultimately land in the St. Joseph County court room. In Indiana, a judge must recuse himself or herself from a case in the event of actual or perceived bias.
In the original recusal motion in August, Dixon says that Judge Manier refused to answer whether her husband had ever written on the topic of abortion, saying only, "I'm not my husband."
Dixon highlights several ways in which actual and perceived bias exists in the "ND 88" case. In addition to several writings revealing his pro-abortion beliefs, the professor donated "a significant sum of money" to Barack Obama's 2008 Presidential campaign, as well as additional donations to other pro-abortion rights candidates in the United States.
Manier, a supporter of the production of "The Vagina Monologues" on Notre Dame's campus, also attacked Pope John Paul II's pro-life encyclical Humanae Vitae as "intellectually stillborn."
"When one analyzes Edward Manier's political contributions to pro abortion candidates and Political Action Committee, when one reads Edward Manier's writings referencing members of the Christian right, calling them 'fundamentalist mullahs' and 'jackleg preachers,'" Dixon writes, "it is hard to comprehend how Judge Manier could derive from her husband's writings the notion that he has no interest in the outcome of these cases."
Last week, University of Notre Dame law professor emeritus Charles Rice issued an open letter to University president Fr. John Jenkins, saying that the school's attempts at reconstructing a pro-life image were a "mockery" while yet refusing to request leniency for the 88 pro-lifers awaiting trial.
See related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:
Notre Dame Pro-Life Efforts a "Mockery" While Pro-Life Protesters Continue to Face Charges: ND Law Prof
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2009/sep/09092405.html
88 Pro-Lifers Arrested at Notre Dame Still Facing Jail Time: Thomas More Lawyer Again Asks Fr. Jenkins for Leniency
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2009/sep/09090405.html
ND Prez Jenkins Has "No Interest" in Asking for Leniency for ND Protesters Despite Calls for "Dialogue"
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2009/jun/09061007.html
The left doesn't care about the law.
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Boy talk about conflict of interest on this case
CONFLICT OF INTEREST.
What a disgrace that Notre Dame would have and retain such a person on its faculty.
The left sees no conflict - they both believe the same thing. To them that's a cohesive application of the law.
Maybe this is a politically odd couple like the Governator and his wife, but it stinks.
Is Manier a Rat?
Any church that lets Notre Dame use its name should be ashamed of it.
I personally sent my ND hat back to Father Jenkins and told him to sell it for 30 pieces of silver.
Here are some Collins Report essays on Notre Dame. There are more.
http://www.collinsreport.net/2009/05/19/obama%e2%80%99s-jenkinsist-catholics-scheme/
I wonder what the real Notre Dame would have to say about the University that carries her name.
Balls. Big ones. Why does she need to have this pointed out?
Prayers for all these unjustly jailed Patriots!
later
It's very strange and a deep mystery why they continue to allow the infiltration of heretics, perverts, and anti-Catholic liberals to control and ruin these colleges and universities. And it causes great scandal and shame for the entire Catholic community. It's a criminal act. Theft. They have stolen these campuses and church property.
I know Rome believes in subsidiarity (sp?) and all that good stuff, but if there were a time and place for the Roman church’s top guy to step in and say Notre Dame, you are no longer going to get to be Notre Shame, this would seem to be it.
BTW, and I know this is going to raise some theological hackles, but I believe Jesus never wanted a sluggish bureaucracy like this to be carrying His name.
The Protestant system has worked out real well in this country. None of the mainlines will stand up and say killing an unborn baby is morally wrong. At least that is the official and authoritative teaching of the Church, however evil the heretics currently occupying Notre Dame.
I love your new tagline!
Notre Dame no longer merits the title of a “Catholic University” Rockne and the Gipper are very sad, very sad indeed.
To the point, ain’t it.
Pro-life has been an undeniable good coming out of the Roman institution. Too bad it has let itself get hijacked by its enemies such that according to one admittedly controversial report more Catholics-by-name voted Obama than McCain. This makes the Roman church look more like a bureaucracy than anything else.
Wherever the Protestant mainlines have gone (I don’t argue for them), Southern Baptists are closest to the evangelical ideal in America today. It was a Southern Baptist church that kicked Judge Greer out during the Terri Schiavo tragedy.
It certainly is.
I would argue that what is going on at Notre Dame is a liberal and socialist bureaucracy of American academia. When they stop following the teachings of the Church and practicing the faith in full communion with those teachings, they are no longer Catholic but apostates and heretics.
Yes, and I wish that Notre Dame would have the decency to confess that it’s not a Christian institution any more. But, the ball is in Rome’s court to spew this one out of their mouth, so to speak.
Jenkins should be de-frocked.
At the very least he should be silenced.
What a disgrace that Notre Dame continues to prosecute these people!
Excellent post!
That’s why I described the situation as “hijacked.”
Something has put a stupor into the Roman church. It shouldn’t be behaving this way. There’s more fuss in the international Episcopalian/Anglican church over the ordination of gay bishops in some lands, than we see in the international Roman church over Notre Dame situations and pro-”choice” Catholics.
I mean, U.S. based pro-”choice” Catholics. (Obviously international Roman congregations have their own local battles.)
Humanae Vitae is an encyclical of Pope Paul VI.
Notre Dame's Kabuki Dance with Obama and the Culture of Death
You are correct.
The Bureaucracy calls anything presumptuous that it wants. Except, apparently, the flouting of its name.
Where ignorance is bliss, ‘tis folly to be wise.
I’m sure Notre Dame’s flouting and flying of the Catholic flag is creating a large informed hubbub in Rome with the Pope about to pounce.
I can assure you that Catholic universities have indeed been infiltrated by sworn
enemies of the Church whose agenda is certainly malevolent and anti-Catholic.
Population control is part of that agenda and if you google Father Theodore
Hesburgh and Rockefeller Foundation you will find hits for the evidence.
Anti-Catholic organizations took a keen interest in Catholic universities in the
early 1960s. They have devoted great resources to suppressing the Catholic faith
and Catholic teachings at Catholic colleges and universities. And they found
plenty of unbalanced perverts willing to help them just as surely as Judas sold out
for thirty pieces of silver.
Many local congregations are also hurt. It ain’t just colleges.
From the original article:
http://www.freethend88.org/?q=node/34
Judge Manier’s marriage to Professor Manier is not that of a political odd-couple like that of Democratic political strategist James Carville and Republican political strategist Mary Matalin where he publicly advocates liberal points of view and she advocates conservative points of view. Quite the contrary, they appear to be two peas in a pod. Judge Manier owes her current position largely to riding the coattails of one of Indiana’s most ardent pro-abortion politicians, former South Bend Mayor and Indiana Governor Joe Kernan who is so pro-abortion that South Bend Bishop John D’Arcy banned him from giving the commencement address at Saint Joseph’s High School, South Bend’s largest Catholic school. In a 2004 interview in The Observer in 2004, Professor Manier described his decision to leave the Catholic Church and how Judge Manier later encouraged him join the ultra-liberal Little Flower Church in South Bend, IN.
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