The Strange Response of Fr. Jenkins
As everyone knows by now, Barack Obama’s invitation to give the commencement address at Notre Dame and to receive an honorary Doctor of Law degree has met with outcry among Catholics who care deeply about issues ranging from the defense of life, to marriage protection, to religious freedom, to educational freedom.
Fr. Jenkins, the president of the university, has responded, via the Notre Dame student newspaper, to this outcry. He argues that the invitation to Obama should not be taken to be a sign that Obama’s positions on abortion and stem-cell research are condoned by the university. Rather, he says, the invitation honors the president for his leadership.
Here’s how Jenkins puts it: President Obama is “an inspiring leader who has taken leadership of the country facing many challenges: two wars, a really troubled economy, he has issues with health care, immigration, education reform, and he has addressed those with intelligence, courage and honesty.”
“We want to recognize his very real and significant accomplishments and his leadership. At the same time, we want to engage him in the future, and I think this occasion will be a wonderful time to do that.”
It is strange to say of a man who has been in office for all of two months that he is being honored for his leadership. Indeed, what little Obama has managed to “accomplish” in his time in office has been a sign of incompetence, at best, and wickedness, at worst. These are hardly characteristics that one should want to honor. He has not exactly stood out as an inspiring and exemplary leader.
As for incompetence, Obama has had a terrible time with cabinet picks, with oratorical gaffes, and with diplomatic insensitivity.
As for wickedness, he has already committed to send tax-payer money for abortions world-wide (the “Mexico City Policy”) and for embryonic stem-cell research at home. He has brought radical abortionists into his cabinet. He has, through his decisions on the economy, set in motion a process of wealth transference to the federal government that will be destructive of intermediate social associations and economic freedom. Measures that he has already suggested will be taken in regard to school choice are deleterious to private, religious educational institutions. Surely, when Jenkins hints that Obama needs to address educational reform, he is not at all suggesting that a man who is as vulgarly scientistic as Obama is going to do anything good in that regard? After his election, Obama made the foreboding suggestion that he is going to restore science to its proper level of dignity. This was, of course, a shot at the Bush administration for placing limits on embryonic stem-cell research, and for other policies and attitudes in the Bush administration that were aimed at limiting, in the interest of the human good, wanton scientific exploration.
Jenkins also makes the claim that inviting Obama to Notre Dame is going to open up room for dialogue with him. His critics, Jenkins implies, are stuck in a ghetto-Church mentality: “You cannot change the world if you shun the people you want to persuade, and if you cannot persuade them, show respect for them and listen to them.”
This is an exceedingly perplexing comment, for at least two reasons. First of all, if Notre Dame had not invited Obama to speak at its commencement ceremony, and were not to offer him an honorary degree, that would not constitute a “shunning” of him. It would constitute, rather, a respect for the educational integrity of the university. It would constitute a shunning of his rank eugenicism, not of him. Jenkins is clearly stuck in an outdated, modernist epistemology of education. The university is not a “marketplace” of ideas, where all points of view are equally valid and worthy of being tested. In fact, most professors who, like Jenkins, are stuck in an outmoded modern picture of education, implicitly contradict their educational liberalism. Universities do not give an open platform to neo-Nazis, or klansmen. Some ideas, it is recognized, are intrinsically evil, recognized as such, and are not given consumer status in the ideological marketplace. Eugenicism, with the crimes against humanity to which it leads (mass abortion, scientific experimentation on the unborn, euthanasia, etc.), should likewise be shunned. Catholic universities have a special obligation to stand as exemplars in this regard, as secular universities, which were themselves quite good about rejecting eugenics after World War II, at least in Europe, have forgotten that the human person is not a natural object in the world to be disposed of at the whim of technocrats, whose uncultivated minds are the bane of education.
Second, Notre Dame is not inviting Barack Obama for the sake of persuading him. They are inviting him for the prestige that will be accorded to them in his addressing the students at their commencement ceremony. Jenkins is pushing worldly cynicism, not the evangelization of those who need the Gospel. He’ll get his thirty pieces of silver for his action, and secularized Catholics, who care more for worldly comfort and for the respect of the worldly than for living their lives in imitation of Christ, will disingenuously laud Jenkins for his fearlessness and tact.
.jpg)
It sounds as if Fr. Jenkins graduated with a degree in logic from a neo-Jesuit University.
Comment by dim bulb — March 23, 2009 @ 9:34 PM
I’m glad you did this post. It needed to be done. By the way, the interviews here in SA have gone well except for the language requirements. I have a language assessment exam tomorrow…I could use prayers.
Comment by David — March 23, 2009 @ 9:42 PM
Unfortunately, what hasn’t made the news is ND’s invoking of the secular arm to quell dissent. Maybe that’s an exaggeration, but at the Basilica mass on campus on saturday, a lector inserted his own prayer into the prayers of the faithful that Nd would rescind the invitation. The police were called and the man (a very old man) was roughly taken out of the church after mass was over. he fell or was pushed over a chair, was upset, shouting, etc. No one seems to care, it hasn’t made any of the news outlets in south bend dispite the obvious damage one could do (“ND invokes secular arm to quell dissent on campus” etc.)
Comment by lee faber — March 24, 2009 @ 1:32 PM
Lee, that is horrible. That in itself merits “Notre Shame”.
I had more to say, typed it, deleted it. I’ll suffice with this – having graduated from Loyola, none of this surprises me.
Comment by Monica Rafie — March 25, 2009 @ 11:00 PM
I think this Catholic militantism. I see no reason why Obama should not be allowed to give the commencement. Life issues are universal issues and not primarily of the Catholic Church. It is pertinent to engage those who hold dissenting views on these issues and not go about it militantly, the way the-so-called catholics are going about it. Catholics should stop this aggressive namebranding style of dialogue when engaging in life issues but create the opportunity to engage meaningfully and constructively with those who do not hold the same values as we do. It is by so doing we’d said to be advancing in the right direction on life matters. Militanism is not the solution! Obama should speak at Notre Dame!
Comment by Etido Jerome — March 28, 2009 @ 9:31 AM
Etido Jerome -
I see several paradoxes in your statements. First, the Catholic Church on earth is the Church militant, fighting against sin or the scandal due to sin. I am not sure what you mean by militantism. If you mean that dialogue demands open discussion, I agree. However, I think that you are mischaracterizing this event as I will shortly mention. Next you say that life issues are universal issues not primarily Catholic issues. I suspect I know your intention here, but Catholic issues are by definition universal issues. Nevertheless, because it is a matter of natural law non-Catholics of good will can be expected to be able to see the truth of them and so be held to account for their refusal to do so.
I do not disagree with your argument that civil dialog is necessary with those who are willing to engage in it, though BO has not indicated that he is willing to this point. Nevertheless, BO’s speaking at UND is not a matter of dialogue. There is no scheduled discussion about the issues of life that has been presented. Rather, the President has clearly said that this is a matter of honoring Barack Obama for his accomplishments. They are “honoring” him not only by inviting him to speak but they are also bestowing upon him an honorary doctor of law degree. What has he accomplished in not even one full term as a US senator, most of it spent campaigning for President and two months now in office, for which to honor him? Well, he has appointed the most radical, anti-life team to run his administration ever assembled. He has overturned the Mexico City policy, he has overturned the ban on federal funding of embryo destructive stem cell research, he has announced that he will overturn the health care conscience protection policy. I do not see much here to “honor.”
Honoring a politician is much different than engaging in dialog with him and this is what is happening at UND and so your first argument that he should speak for the sake of dialog, the same rationalization given by Fr. Jenkins, does not pass muster. The second issue is that this campaign is directed not against BO but against the universities decision makers. They are being brought to account for the scandal that naturally arises when a so-called Catholic institution chooses to honor a popular public figure who has made it his first priority to promote legislation and policies which actively deprive some human begins of their right to live based upon a flawed, bizarre philosophy. In honoring such an individual, UND is promoting the confusion among the faithful that abortion/life issues are not that important or are simply a matter of opinion. The culture already promotes this and that Catholics voted over 50% for BO shows that they are confused and continuing to be confused. Such public notoriety for such an event demands as much public response in order to try to overcome the potential scandal UND is now committing.
It is true that prudence and engagement are important methods in trying to convert the lost. However, in promoting the Gospel one cannot always be popular or non-confrontational, especially when it comes to the protection of innocent life. Recall the Jesus said that if the world hated Him, that His followers must expect that they will be hated as well. It is not always the case that one can avoid being caricatured as a zealot by an unbelieving world.
Comment by David — March 28, 2009 @ 10:07 AM