Notre Shame FaithWreck

The Notre Shame FaithWreck continues: Father Jenkins has announced that he will go "dumpster diving" to replace Mary Ann Glendon on the dais at 17 May Notre Dame commencement:

Statement by Father John Jenkins on the Laetare Medal

The following statement from Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C., president of the University of Notre Dame, is in response to the decision by Mary Ann Glendon to decline acceptance of the University’s Laetare Medal:

“We are, of course, disappointed that Professor Glendon has made this decision. It is our intention to award the Laetare Medal to another deserving recipient, and we will make that announcement as soon as possible.” (University of Notre Dame Office of News & Information)

N.B. Be assured the replacement will be the only acceptable kind of Catholic: a pro-abort "faux" Catholic. Wear Black 17 May to stand with preborn babies at risk, embryos destroyed for government-funded research and in protest of all crimes against human life.

Mary Ann Glendon: The Great Refusal

Mary Ann Glendon wrote the following to decline the Laetare medal at Notre Dame:

Dear Father Jenkins,

When you informed me in December 2008 that I had been selected to receive Notre Dame’s Laetare Medal, I was profoundly moved. I treasure the memory of receiving an honorary degree from Notre Dame in 1996, and I have always felt honored that the commencement speech I gave that year was included in the anthology of Notre Dame’s most memorable commencement speeches. So I immediately began working on an acceptance speech that I hoped would be worthy of the occasion, of the honor of the medal, and of your students and faculty.

Last month, when you called to tell me that the commencement speech was to be given by President (), I mentioned to you that I would have to rewrite my speech. Over the ensuing weeks, the task that once seemed so delightful has been complicated by a number of factors.

First, as a longtime consultant to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, I could not help but be dismayed by the news that Notre Dame also planned to award the president an honorary degree. This, as you must know, was in disregard of the U.S. bishops’ express request of 2004 that Catholic institutions “should not honor those who act in defiance of our fundamental moral principles” and that such persons “should not be given awards, honors or platforms which would suggest support for their actions.” That request, which in no way seeks to control or interfere with an institution’s freedom to invite and engage in serious debate with whomever it wishes, seems to me so reasonable that I am at a loss to understand why a Catholic university should disrespect it.

Then I learned that “talking points” issued by Notre Dame in response to widespread criticism of its decision included two statements implying that my acceptance speech would somehow balance the event:

• “President () won’t be doing all the talking. Mary Ann Glendon, the former U.S. ambassador to the Vatican, will be speaking as the recipient of the Laetare Medal.”

• “We think having the president come to Notre Dame, see our graduates, meet our leaders, and hear a talk from Mary Ann Glendon is a good thing for the president and for the causes we care about.”

A commencement, however, is supposed to be a joyous day for the graduates and their families. It is not the right place, nor is a brief acceptance speech the right vehicle, for engagement with the very serious problems raised by Notre Dame’s decision—in disregard of the settled position of the U.S. bishops—to honor a prominent and uncompromising opponent of the Church’s position on issues involving fundamental principles of justice.

Finally, with recent news reports that other Catholic schools are similarly choosing to disregard the bishops’ guidelines, I am concerned that Notre Dame’s example could have an unfortunate ripple effect.

It is with great sadness, therefore, that I have concluded that I cannot accept the Laetare Medal or participate in the May 17 graduation ceremony.

In order to avoid the inevitable speculation about the reasons for my decision, I will release this letter to the press, but I do not plan to make any further comment on the matter at this time.

Yours Very Truly,

Mary Ann Glendon

[source: First Things - which appears to be inundated with traffic...]

Update: Expert commentary on Glendon's noble refusal

In reaction to this morning's breaking news story that Mary Ann Glendon has refused the Laetare Medal.

Fr. Raymond J. de Souza at NCRegister:

Father John Jenkins likely thought himself very clever. Professor Mary Ann Glendon just took him to school.

In declining to receive the Laetare Medal alongside President N.’s honorary doctorate of laws at next month’s commencement, Glendon has refused to participate in the shabby manipulation Father Jenkins attempted to engineer. It is a rare personage who could ennoble an award by refusing to receive it, but Professor Glendon has done just that. The Laetare Medal will now be known best for the year in which it was declined. Glendon chose, to use the apt words of Bishop John D’Arcy in this regard, truth over prestige.

The significance of Glendon’s refusal is enormous. The most accomplished Catholic laywoman in America — former ambassador of the United States to the Holy See and current president of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences — has refused to accept Notre Dame’s highest honor. It is a signal moment for the Catholic Church in the United States. It is a signal moment for the Church’s public witness. It is may even be a signal moment for Notre Dame. What Glendon will not say at Notre Dame will finally be a fitting response to what Gov. Mario Cuomo said there some 25 years ago. [Read on.]

(CNS Photo: Mary Ann Glendon. Story thanks to American Papist.)

America: Loss of moral direction?

'Tonight on my drive home from work I heard about how 'O' stated that America has lost it's 'moral direction' in the torturing of terrorists at Guantanamo Bay.

"America didn't lose it's moral direction in torturing terrorists. It lost it's moral direction in 1973 when it sanctioned the ripping and dismembering, the burning, the suctioning and the scraping out of millions of unborn babies. Now that's a loss of moral direction.

Some people simply have no sense of perspective."

-- Angel

Thanks to American Papist

Thanks to Thomas Peters of American Papist for a mention of the "Wear Black" campaign for 17 May in solidarity with unborn human life and in protest of all crimes against human life. Peters offers a comprehensive wrap-up of articles and news about the "Notre Shame" incident at the link.

Bishop Finn on Notre Shame: "wrong, scandalous, discouraging and confusing"

Bishop Robert W. Finn of the Kansas City-St. Joseph Diocese delivered a keynote speech entitled “Warriors for the Victory of Life” at the Gospel of Life Convention last Saturday, April 18. In his speech Bishop Finn characterized Notre Dame’s decision to honor N. as wrong, scandalous, discouraging and “confusing to many Catholics.”

During his speech, Bishop Finn said, “I suspect that, since Notre Dame will need a scapegoat for this debacle, and Fr. Jenkins will probably lose his job, at this point perhaps he ought to determine to lose it for doing something right instead of something wrong. He ought to disinvite the President, who I believe would graciously accept the decision. Notre Dame, instead, ought to give the honorary degree to Bishop John D’Arcy of the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend, who has supported and tried to guide the University, despite their too frequent waywardness, faithfully for 25 years.”

The Easter witness of Peter: "No salvation through anyone else"

Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, answered them, "Leaders of the people and elders: If we are being examined today about a good deed done to a cripple, namely, by what means he was saved, then all of you and all the people of Israel should know that it was in the name of Jesus Christ the Nazorean whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead; in his name this man stands before you healed. He is the stone rejected by you, the builders, which has become the cornerstone. There is no salvation through anyone else, nor is there any other name under heaven given to the human race by which we are to be saved."

-- Acts 4:1-12

The name "Jesus" signifies that the very name of God is present in the person of his Son, made man for the universal and definitive redemption from sins. It is the divine name that alone brings salvation, and henceforth all can invoke his name, for Jesus united himself to all men through his Incarnation, so that "there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved."

-- CCC 432

The Latin phrase Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus means: "Outside the Church there is no salvation". This expression comes from the writings of Saint Cyprian of Carthage, a bishop of the third century. The axiom is often used as short-hand for the doctrine, upheld by both the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church, that the Church is absolutely necessary for salvation (cf. "one true faith"). The theological basis for this doctrine is founded on the beliefs that (1) Jesus Christ personally established the one Church; and (2) the Church serves as the means by which the graces won by Christ are communicated to believers.

An Eastern Orthodox bishop has expressed this doctrine as follows: "'Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus. All the categorical strength and point of this aphorism lies in its tautology. Outside the Church there is no salvation, because salvation is the Church' (G. Florovsky, Sobornost: the Catholicity of the Church, in The Church of God, p. 53). Does it therefore follow that anyone who is not visibly within the Church is necessarily damned? Of course not; still less does it follow that everyone who is visibly within the Church is necessarily saved. As Augustine wisely remarked: 'How many sheep there are without, how many wolves within!' (Homilies on John, 45, 12) While there is no division between a 'visible' and an 'invisible Church', yet there may be members of the Church who are not visibly such, but whose membership is known to God alone. If anyone is saved, he must in some sense be a member of the Church; in what sense, we cannot always say."^[1]

The Roman Catholic Church also teaches that the doctrine does not mean that everyone who is not visibly within the Church is necessarily damned (see below).

Some of the most pertinent Roman Catholic expressions of this doctrine are: the profession of faith of Pope Innocent III (1208), the profession of faith of the Fourth Lateran Council (1215), the bull Unam sanctam of Pope Boniface VIII (1302), and the profession of faith of the Council of Florence (1442). Whether these expressions constitute dogmatic definitions is the subject of investigation by Catholic theologians. The axiom "No salvation outside the Church" has been frequently repeated over the centuries in different terms by the ordinary magisterium.

-- From Answers.com

Catholics believe in loving and living "the Word"

“Sanctify them in the truth.” Jesus adds: “Your word is truth.”

The disciples are thus drawn deep within God by being immersed in the word of God. The word of God is, so to speak, the bath which purifies them, the creative power which transforms them into God’s own being. So then, how do things stand in our own lives? Are we truly pervaded by the word of God? Is that word truly the nourish­ment we live by, even more than bread and the things of this world? Do we really know that word? Do we love it? Are we deeply engaged with this word to the point that it really leaves a mark on our lives and shapes our thinking? Or is it rather the case that our think­ing is constantly being shaped by all the things that others say and do?

Aren’t prevailing opinions the cri­terion by which we all too often mea­sure ourselves? Do we not perhaps re­main, when all is said and done, mired in the superficiality in which people today are generally caught up? Do we allow ourselves truly to be deeply pu­rified by the word of God? Friedrich Nietzsche scoffed at humility and obe­dience as the virtues of slaves, a source of repression. He replaced them with pride and man’s absolute freedom. Of course there exist caricatures of a mis­guided humility and a mistaken sub­missiveness, which we do not want to imitate. But there also exist a destruc­tive pride and a presumption which tear every community apart and result in violence. Can we learn from Christ the correct humility which corre­sponds to the truth of our being, and the obedience which submits to truth, to the will of God?

“Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth”: This word of inclusion in the priesthood lights up our lives and calls us to become ever anew dis­ciples of that truth which is revealed in the word of God.

-- Pope Benedict's Chrism Mass homily, 9 April 2009

( Photo: Pope Benedict XVI holds a candle during the Easter vigil mass in St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican, on April 11, 2009. Alberto Pizzoli/AFP/Getty Images)

Cardinal Zen believes in reverence for the Eucharist

And so do Catholics in Hong Kong.
Happy Easter.

The Right to Life: "inscribed in human nature itself"

As far as the Catholic Church is concerned, the principal focus of her interventions in the public arena is the protection and promotion of the dignity of the person, and she is thereby consciously drawing particular attention to principles which are not negotiable. Among these the following emerge clearly today:

- protection of life in all its stages, from the first moment of conception until natural death;

- recognition and promotion of the natural structure of the family - as a union between a man and a woman based on marriage - and its defence from attempts to make it juridically equivalent to radically different forms of union which in reality harm it and contribute to its destabilization, obscuring its particular character and its irreplaceable social role;

- the protection of the right of parents to educate their children.

These principles are not truths of faith, even though they receive further light and confirmation from faith; they are inscribed in human nature itself and therefore they are common to all humanity. The Church’s action in promoting them is therefore not confessional in character, but is addressed to all people, prescinding from any religious affiliation they may have. On the contrary, such action is all the more necessary the more these principles are denied or misunderstood, because this constitutes an offence against the truth of the human person, a grave wound inflicted onto justice itself.

-- Pope Benedict in his March 2006 address to the European People’s Party

Catholics believe in reverence for the Eucharist

And so does the Pope. Viva il Papa.

(Photo by Daylife.)

She Did It Anyway

Archbishop Naumann asked Governer Sebelius to not present herself for holy Communion. She did it anyway as reported by a priest in Topeka. Now he's gone public...the Archbishop has asked that Governer Sebelius do the following in order to become once again a member in good standing of the Flock:

1. a confession

2. a public apology and

3. a promise to undo the damage done by her “scandalous behavior that has misled people into dangerous behavior.”

The Archbishop was interviewed by the organization Catholic Action for Faith and Family. You can read the article here.

Here's the story according to WaPo.

Bishop Doran Blasts "Notre Shame": "Dismay and outrage"

March 31, 2009

Reverend John I. Jenkins, C.S.C.
President
University of Notre Dame
400 Main Building
Notre Dame, IN 46556

Dear President Jenkins:

I wish to express in my own name and on behalf of the Catholic community of this Diocese, my dismay and outrage at your decision to invite the current President of the United States to address the 2009 graduates of the University of Notre Dame and to receive an honorary degree.

This decision of your flies in the face of the expressed directive of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops in the year 2004, that Catholic institutions not so honor those who profess opposition to the Church’s doctrine on abortion and embryonic stem cell research.

I would ask that you rescind this unfortunate decision and so avoid dishonoring the practicing Catholics of the United States, including those of this Diocese. Failing that, please have the decency to change the name of the University to something like, “The Fighting Irish College” or “Northwestern Indiana Humanist University.” Though promotion of the obscene is not foreign to you, I would point out that it is truly obscene for you to take such decisions as you have done in a university named for our Blessed Lady, whom the Second Vatican Council called the Mother of the Church.

I sign myself

Very truly yours,
The Most Reverend Thomas G. Doran, D.D., J.C.D.
Bishop of Rockford

Readers: Stand with Bishop Doran and, on 17 May "Wear Black".

((((..))))

On 17 May, "Wear Black"!

Wear Black on 17 May in solidarity with unborn human life. For details, please visit Meeting Christ in the Liturgy.

Thank you.