Tag Archives: Catholic

Obama’s Notre Dame visit continues to rankle


THE WASHINGTON TIMES

The University of Notre Dame said Thursday that it will not award its Laetare Medal for the first time in 120 years, after having the first recipient reject the award over the university’s decision to honor President Obama and its subsequent defenses of its actions.

Instead, the university will have Judge John T. Noonan Jr., a previous Laetare recipient and noted legal scholar, “deliver an address in the spirit of the award” at the May 17 commencement ceremony, said the Rev. John Jenkins, university president.

Because Judge Noonan is a previous winner of the Laetare Medal, “we have decided, upon reflection, to not award the medal this year,” Father Jenkins said in a statement.

Harvard law professor Mary Ann Glendon, a former U.S. ambassador to the Vatican, said Monday that she was rejecting the medal because of Mr. Obama’s pro-choice actions as president and because the university cited her presence as justifying the Obama invitation. Father Jenkins said then that “it is our intention to award the Laetare Medal to another deserving recipient.”

Judge Noonan, a Notre Dame law professor from 1961 to 1966, received the Laetare Medal in 1984. He also has been a visiting law professor at Harvard, Stanford and the Angelicum in Rome. He was appointed by President Reagan to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 1985 and has served there since.

The Laetare Medal, approved by the university’s founder, the Rev. Edward Sorin, was first awarded in 1883 and had been given every year since that time. It is the university’s most prestigious honor, given to Catholics “whose genius has ennobled the arts and sciences, illustrated the ideals of the church and enriched the heritage of humanity.”

Its past recipients include President Kennedy and sainthood candidate Dorothy Day.

Holy See: Vatican and Arab League to work together to promote peace, justice in world


By FRANCES D’EMILIO, Associated Press

VATICAN CITY – The Holy See and the Arab League have agreed to work together to promote peace and justice in the world, the Vatican said Friday, after a meeting between Pope Benedict XVI and the league’s secretary-general.

In a separate meeting, Amr Moussa and the Vatican’s foreign minister, Archbishop Dominique Mamberti, signed a memorandum of understanding between both sides, a Vatican statement said.

“During the cordial meetings, emphasis was placed on the importance of the agreement, which is intended to foster increased cooperation between the parties with a view to promoting peace and justice in the world. Particular importance was given to the role of intercultural and interreligious dialogue,” the Vatican statement said.

The meetings allowed for an “exchange of view on the international situation, especially in the Middle East, and on the need to find a just solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and to the other conflicts which afflict the region,” the Holy See said.

The pope travels to the Middle East next month on a Holy Land pilgrimage. Benedict will visit Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian territories.

Benedict’s envoy to Egypt, Archbishop Michael Fitzgerald, told Vatican Radio that besides appreciating the pope’s interest for peace and development in the region, the Arab League “takes into account also the situation of Christians in Arab countries.”

The Vatican has long shown concern for the Christian minorities in the Middle East.

As part of its interest in looking after its flock in the Holy Land, the Vatican and Israel have held periodic talks over several years to resolve long-standing differences over tax and property matters.

The Holy See and Israel said in a joint communique that a session between both sides in Jerusalem on Thursday yielded “meaningful progress” toward resolving these differences.

The latest meeting of the Bilateral Permanent Working Commission was characterized by “great cordiality” and a spirit of cooperation, the statement said.

Without describing the progress made, it said both sides want to reach agreement as soon as possible and will meet again next week at Israel’s Foreign Ministry.

Israel and the Vatican established diplomatic ties in the early 1990s, but they still must resolve the status of expropriated church property and tax exemptions.

On wider issues, tensions between both sides have sometimes marked their relations. Earlier this year, Benedict’s lifting of the excommunication of a bishop who had denied the Holocaust caused anger among Jews as well as Catholics and others worldwide. Last month, the pope made an unusual public acknowledgment of Vatican mistakes of turmoil caused by his reaching out to the renegade, ultraconservative prelate.

The Vatican has said that Benedict did not know that the British-born bishop was a Holocaust denier.

Who Speaks For American Catholics?


There seems to be a battle going on between the Catholic Right and Democratic Party-aligned groups such as Catholics United as to who truly speaks for American Catholics. On issues such as war and economics, while Catholics United usually stands where I do, on issues such as abortion, and stem cell research they do not.
So who speaks for me?

Abortion reduction; Overturning Roe v. Wade; Homosexual marriage; Embryonic stem cell research. These are all issues where I stand in polar opposition to the hierarchy of my Catholic faith. And while I stand in opposition to orthodox teaching on these matters, I still am a Catholic.

On some issues (artificial birth control, embryonic stem cell research and LGBT rights) I believe that Church teaching is incorrect and must be revisited. On abortion, while I have qualms with abortion for any reason beyond the first trimester, I also recognize for a woman it is quite often not a simple black-and-white, good-versus-evil decision. Beyond that, I still don’t know of any Scriptural authority that declares that abortion is murder. If anything,, most Judeo-Christian thought on the subject treat it as a matter subject to equitable calculation.

More often than not, the circumstances surrounding an abortion are filled with grey. Case in point: the nine-year-old Brazilian girl impregnated in an incest rape. Unlike the Brazilian archbishop who attempted to stop the victim’s abortion, most American Catholics would recognize abortion as the lesser of two evils.

This bring me to some observations on groups such as Catholics United and Catholics Democrats, and Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good. They do differ from the Catholic Right in that they understand that abortion is not the sole definer of a pro-lifer and that a pro-life perspective infuses economic liberalism.

I must disagree with my good friend Frederick Clarkson that the presence of these groups represents “creeping Religious Rightism in the Democratic Party.” Based upon my personal experience, these folks are drawing on a particular teaching on their faith (more on that below) known as Consistent Ethic of Life or “the seamless garment;” the notion that all life is sacred. When we talk about a Bill Donohue or a Robert Sirico opposing abortion at all costs, they are clearly illiberal cultural warriors. A strong case can be made that these icons of the Catholic Right are using abortion and LGBT rights as wedge issues primarily to elect laissez-faire economic conservatives.

Both Catholics United and Catholic Democrats have called out the hypocrisy of the Catholic Right on economics, war and torture. And although they ultimately oppose abortion and are using the idea of abortion reduction as a means to its elimination, that does not make them illiberal. A better description of their point of view clashing with pro-choice liberal was put forth by former Notre Dame President Theodore Hesburgh as one school of liberalism versus another.

But despite the fact that Catholics both Right and Left, see abortion as an evil to be eradicated, there are many other Christians both Catholic and non-Catholic who view abortion differently than Bill Donohue or Chris Korzen. For their rest of us, it is a matter of freedom of conscience. All things being equal, who am I to dictate to them how to follow their consciences?

As I said above, these groups are drawing upon certain Catholic teachings on abortion and related issues. But with that said, they fail to recognize the full measure of their positions with regard to non-Catholic America. I wonder if my good friends at Catholic United and Catholic Democrats understand that they are embracing a form of religious supremacy? While they most likely don’t see it that way, that is the only way to describe their desire to eliminate abortion. Because of this, they too do not speak for me as a Catholic.

While I’m uncomfortable with an abortion under any circumstance, I am even more uncomfortable with using the state to impose the tenets of any given theology. This is antithetical to the religious pluralism that is foundational to our constitution and to the common sense of a democratic society. Put another way, if my faith can do it to others, then someday another faith can do the same to mine.

Here is how I (and most of the Catholics I personally know) feel about issues such as abortion: these are matters of conscience best left to individual citizens to decide. Yes, I personally would like to see a reduction in the number of abortions performed in the United States, but I do not want to see access to the procedure limited in any way whatsoever. Beyond that, while abstinence-only education may be the desire of many religious folks, especially among the Catholic Right, it just isn’t realistic. The best approach is comprehensive, medically accurate sex education.

A few months ago I was discussing abortion with my uncle who is about eighteen years older than me. Like me he attends Mass regularly, but unlike me he is a conservative Republican. And yet he is pro-choice. He recalled the time before Roe — when women were found dead in sewers and back alleys from botched abortions. My uncle concluded that as much as he may not like abortion, he said he never wants to go back to those days.

So, once again the question must be posed: As a pro-choice Catholic, who speaks for me?

By Frank Cocozzelli in Talk to Action