I visited Notre Dame last year at this time to meet with a few professors for the purpose of academic networking. My university was hiring and I hoped to hear about Christian doctoral students ready for their first job. As I walked across the snow-covered campus, I was a little in awe of how wonderfully the sacred space had been planned and laid out.
But when I met with one older professor who had been with the university for quite some time, he expressed a great deal of regret for how his student (the current president) was making decisions. Looking around his office, I noticed photographs of Martin Luther King, Jr. holding hands with priests protesting the injustice of segregation. I thought to myself, if this man feels something good has been lost at Notre Dame, it must truly be so.
When I heard about Notre Dame’s decision to invite President Obama to speak and receive an honorary doctorate, I could not believe it. I knew the university had liberalized. I knew many faithful Catholics felt ND had lost its way, but I also knew many fine, Christian scholars populated its offices and classrooms. How could it be that the university many of us point to when we aspire to building a great Christian academic institution would invite a president to speak and receive and honorary doctorate when he could not liberalize abortion laws quickly enough upon taking office?
Has the protection of unborn and newly born life not been a distinctive of the Christian church from the beginning? Did not the Catholic church act convincingly to remind evangelicals and others of their duties to protect life?
All I can think about as I watch this great university rushing to honor a president who considers the question of when life begins to be above his pay grade and yet who acts to liberalize the capacity to extinguish it is that Notre Dame is trading its heritage for the applause of the culture. Friend, Father Jenkins, I pray that you would consider the quality of the culture whose applause you seek.
As Walker Percy, a self-proclaimed bad Catholic who was actually a great one said, there is decline and fall and then there are the options. Choose life instead, sir. I say that to both of these presidents. One, the president of a university, and the other, a president of a nation.
