GoldenDomeUSCapitol Obama:DoubleDomer?By Larry Marsh, Kansas City Star Midwest Voices columnist 2009
Notre Dame has a long tradition of awarding honorary degrees to people with a wide range of religious beliefs and political positions. Why should it break with its traditions now?
Non-Catholics have always played important roles at Notre Dame. As early as the late 1970s a team of five non-Catholic Notre Dame faculty members worked to assist the Catholic Diocese of Cleveland with their high school enrollment and financial problems. Notre Dame's previous provost, Nathan Hatch, was a non-Catholic and served Notre Dame for many years with great distinction.
Awarding honorary degrees to non-Catholics who hold beliefs at odds with most Catholics is nothing new. President Obama is certainly not the first to be so honored.
In 2002 as a Notre Dame faculty member, I served on Notre Dame's College of Arts and Letters Honorary Degree Committee with two other faculty members to recommend honorary degree recipients for the 2003 commencement. I was glad to recommend a Jewish scholar for an honorary degree. The Committee and the University agreed.
My recommendation was well within Notre Dame's tradition of occasionally awarding an honorary degree to someone whose beliefs were contrary not only to most Catholics, but in some cases, contrary to all Catholics. How can it be okay to award an honorary degree to a person who does not recognize the divinity of Christ, but not okay to award one to someone who might have a different conception about conception? Why should Christ's divinity have to take a back seat to the disagreement over when a fetus becomes a child?
Notre Dame should continue its tradition of awarding honorary degrees to people who have made important contributions even if they happen to hold some beliefs entirely contrary to those of the Catholic Church.
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If you don't believe in
If you don't believe in abortion, don't have one. If you do believe in it and wish to obtain one, don't ask the taxpayers to foot the bill. While I believe a woman has the right to choose, I must stand with the anti-abortion crowd when I insist that we the taxpayers should not pay for women to have abortions.
May I repeat: While I do not agree with the anti-abortion position, as long as taxpayer funding is involved, they are absolutely in the right to protest. I don't believe the right to privacy extends to those on the dole.
Is this permanent?
Is this topic to be listed permanently under the heading of Midwest Voices in the online Star Opinion section?
It has been at the top of the list for at least two weeks.
Howsabout let's MoveOn?
In solidarity with the protesting Notre Dame graduates
If I were graduating from Notre Dame today I would be quite confused, dismayed and angered by the leadership of my university choosing to honor a man who deliberately and with forethought increased world-wide access to American tax-payer funded abortion and put into a position of national prominence and leadership a woman known for her approval and sanctions of the heinous crime of late term abortion. I would be heart-sick. I would be frustrated. I would protest. Obama talks the talk but he refuses to walk the walk. One is either pro-life or one is not. There is no in-between. Of all the issues we face as a nation, economics, immigration, same-sex marriage, off-shore drilling, wind energy, health care, social security...NONE of these matter if we allow the indiscriminate murder of human beings in the womb. Notre Dame, our mother, is crying for the 40 million productive, innovative, loving, creative humans that have been murdered. Mary, queen of heaven, pray for us.
You are either a follow of
You are either a follow of Christ or an observer. One cannot be both. As a Catholic, if you support Obama, you are an observe of Christ, not a follower.
Easy for the living to say
The Catholic Church stands for human life.
Obama stands for abortion for any reason at any time.
These two don't mix. And now that the latest Gallup poll shows that a great shift has occurred that a majority of Americans are pro-life, Jenkins and his cohorts on the Board of Trustees are on the wrong side of the fence.
The life of a human being may not be important to some, here in this country the majority believes otherwise.
Lighten up! He's the
Lighten up! He's the President, he's making a speech. I'm certin that not every speaker they have had at graduation has always agreed with Catholic policy.
This has to do with human life!
Obama is one of the most pro-abortion politicians around. He even believes that babies that survive botched abortions should be killed!
The Catholic Church which Notre Dame is directly affiliated with believes in life. They should not be honoring a politician with such radical views that are in direct opposition to the Catholic Church!
And we have a right to speak against this travesty!
This is all much ado about
This is all much ado about nothing. It is an honorary degree and a speech to graduates by the President of the United States. There is nothing in the bible that says listening to someone you do not agree with will damn you to hell.
Give it arest...Save the bible thumping, pro-life, BS debate for his first so massively left wing SCOTUS appointee.
As for the teleprompter comment. Yes every major politican uses a teleprompter for major addresses. It is virtually impossible to memorize a 30-2 hr address.
But few politicans or speakers need a prompter for EVERY event, every occasion they speak at. President Obama uses one at press conferences, campaign stops (something i have rarely if ever seen other than major speeches), town hall meetings, etc.
One would expect Bush to use a teleprompter and many of us DEMANDED he never speak a word not written.
But Obama is packaged as this great communicator and wonderful orator ala Kennedy or Reagan. Yet neither of those two used prompters for every event. And both of them could think on their feet and speak without help and sound great. The President when off the cuff (read: no prompter) he is many times no better and on rare occasions WORSE than Bush was.
The whole point doesnt boil down to anyone saying his use of the device makes him a bad person or president. It boils down to stop calling him and selling him as this great speaker...great speakers give wonderful addresses without having every word pre-written and scrolling in front of them. Think of MLK at the lincoln memorial for the I have a Dream...ive seen video and do not recall him ever even looking down at notes...THAT'S A GREAT SPEAKER.
Obama is, essentially, a GREAT READER same as almost any network news anchor.
The teleprompter line of
The teleprompter line of attack is such hackwork. Bush is out of office, we don't have to talk about his poor public speaking abilities anymore.
Last i checked obama was a christian (though some wackos insist he's muslim), regardless of whether he agrees with every official position of the Catholic church on which many Catholics also may disagree. should notre dame undergrads who are pro-choice be denied real degrees, because real degrees are well, REAL?
Amusing another BS Comment
From BS.
teleprompter
Was IS with the harping on the teleprompter? You think Bush never used a teleprompter? You think everyone who gives a speech should do so extemporaneously? Give it a rest.
And you don't want the president to give his speech, huh? So I guess what you said in another comment here about "the only freedom of speech & expression that is allowed is when it's the same as yours" applies to you.
BigSteve - he's THE TELEPROMPTER PRESIDENT
The liberals and the media (same thing) called him the next great communicator, but when he's off the teleprompter, it's uh uh uh uh.
And I cannot remember ever, a President using a teleprompter at a press conference. I guess he must stay on script - but isn't that what press conferences are for - answering questions off of script?
You see, conservatives wouldn't criticize stuff like this as much if the media hadn't fallen in love and tried to make him out as some kind of god. I sure wouldn't. So, in many cases the criticism isn't directed so much to Obama, but to the media and the worshipers they created.
Notre Dame students to protest
According to the student news, The Observer online, students intend to hold a 24 hour constructive and prayerful event. Some seniors will boycott their graduation.
See:
http://media.www.ndsmcobserver.com/media/storage/paper660/news/2009/05/15/News/Nd.Response.Organizes.Demonstration.On.Campus-3741285.shtml
Tom Ryan
The Crossroads
Kansas City
http://crossroadscurrents.blogspot.com/
Fine, Larry - give him the honorary decree
Have his motorcade pull up in front of the main office of the college - have the dean standing there with the degree in hand - and hand it through the window of his car as they are driving by. Obama got his degree and the students didn't have to listen to him give his teleprompter speech.
Please do not associate yourself with the catholic church
Dear Mr. President:
There is nothing to be honor about this "degree" from the Catholic Church. The one that was responsible for the crusaders? the one that hesitated to honor Mother Teresa even at 20th centure? Not mentioning about the gangship that trushed a great scientist who think the earth is rounded and it actually circle aroung the Sun for centuries. What is there to be honoable about a piece of paper from these organization anyway? You can not even use it in the toilet.
Myths about Medievals
There is nothing to be honor about this "degree" from the Catholic Church. The one that was responsible for the crusaders?
Let's not forget that the Muslims were the original crusaders and that the Crusades were by and large defensive. Are you famimilar with the Hospitallers by the way? Yeah. Good medical care went on in that war. Of course, not everything done in the Crusades is justifiable, but it's hardly what modern historians make it out to be.
Ignore the fact that Galileo had a huge ego as well as the Pope at the time and that Galileo's main problem was with the scientists of his day, the Aristotleans. The church was open to what Galileo said about the Earth going around the sun. They just wanted it to be treated as a hypothesis. Galileo's arguments were also terribly weak for the time. His strongest one was the rising of tides which no one at the time would accept. He did convince people of sunspots and other moons around planets, but the other was still a theory and the question of Obler's paradox wasn't answered until centuries later which was the main objection. Remember, Geocentrism was Aristotlean. The science at the time was Aristotlean. They just brought in the church since the church had more political power and the egos of the Pope and Galileo would face off.
By the way, there was no debate that the Earth was round. Aristotle wrote about that in "Da Caelo" and it was accepted. You can find the early church fathers saying it's round. You can find Aquinas saying it's round. You can read about Virgilius, an Irish astronomer and missionary wanting to go witness to the antipodes, people who lived on the other side of the Earth, in the 7th-8th century. The idea that the ancients and medievals thought the Earth was flat is a modern myth.
Moderns really need to learn about history.
By the way, I'm not Catholic and I don't support a degree being given to Obama, but I just have a problem with people stating all these ideas that are "common knowledge" that are simply wrong.
As for Mother Teresa, I have no interest in that debate. Again, I don't condone all the RCC does, but I don't condemn all either.