Archbishop Fulton Sheen once said, "If we do not behave as we believe, then we will believe as we behave." The American error of “I’m Catholic, but …(fill in the dissident view here)” is alive and well in the USA.

I wondered why so many of the bishops' residences, especially back east, are so opulent, and was told that at the time they were built, it was a visible sign that US Catholics had arrived -- had established themselves first-class, mainstream Americans. But now-a-days for many US Catholics, FAITH that God can be trusted in what He has revealed has been eclipsed by faith in public opinion polls (read - if 65% of Americans think women ought to be ordained in the Catholic church, then it’s okay for me to support priestesses too); HOPE in the promise of the Gospel has been replaced with hope that all US Catholics can be accepted into the club (read - it’s an honor that the VP, the Speaker of the House, and a majority of the SCOTUS are Catholic, regardless of how their actions advance the culture of death); LOVE of Christ and His Church has been superseded by the love of convenience (read - yeah, I’m Catholic, but I won’t let all that dogma and Catholic guilt stop me from having myself sterilized).

God’s plan is for us to be with Him in heaven, not to have prosperity in this life nor more Catholics at the hand of government power. We are selling our inheritance for a bowl of new and improved, vitamin fortified pottage -- and a set of Ginsu steak knives for the first fifty callers!

Excellent article.

Of course it's all about money. Research money, grant money, you name it. The ultimate example of sucking up and selling out, at the expense of their faith, at the expense of the unborn.

Who controls all the money in DC now ultimately?

Obama appointees.

And Notre Dame wants their piece.

This is perhaps the only point in Mr. Shaw's article with which I disagree. The Obama invitation is not so much a turning point as it is a signpost, offering not a choice of which way to go in the future but showing us how far we have already gone. It may well be that the street will turn more steeply down hill from this point but this event represents only a change in velocity, not in direction.

I have encountered some who believe that the term "Catholicism" means (not, "is sometimes sadly associated with," but actually means):

- Ignorance of the Bible and of doctrine in general
- An inherited cultural identifier, not a voluntarily selected loyalty
- Proclivity to foul language and abuse of alcohol
- Empty ritualism

...and so on.

This is, of course, false. Those who believe it are excused, if only slightly, by the fact that such attributes probably can be found amongst some Catholics of their acquaintance.

But they remain partly culpable because, had they looked at Catholicism (as opposed to certain Catholics) with due diligence, they'd have quickly discovered that the Catholics they were using to define Catholicism were in fact, not good Catholics, according to Catholicism's definition of itself.

It looks to me like you're making a similar error about Americans and "Americanism": Taking a collection of bad behaviors of certain distasteful Americans and saying, "these things are the sum total of what it means to be an American, therefore they should be termed 'Americanism'."

And that's dishonest or at least prejudiced use of the language. One wouldn't write a history of the Borgia popes and title it, The Essence of Catholicism.

Now "Catholicism" is already a word with a meaning, so to define it tendentiously is not too harmful: The real definition is available as a corrective.

But "Americanism" is sneakier. It is a non-word; Americans do not take what they think makes them Americans and say, "and that is what we call Americanism." They do not use the term at all; it is an artificial term. It is only synthesized into being by those who wish, in the process of describing something they think bad, to make the listener think that bad thing defines America as a whole. And because it is a new word, one can't easily say, "now waitaminute, that's not the real definition of American, here's the real definition, right here in Webster's."

Anyhow, I don't see that this misuse of the lexicon is intrinsic to your argument; you could easily do without it.

Ror those of us following the course of Catholic higher education since the mid 1960's, the Notre Deme brouhuha should come as no surprise.

After all, didn't N.D. take the lead in the secularization effort by putting together the Land O'Lakes statement which in effect divorced the university from the magisterium in return for Federal funds?

And wasn't Fr. Hesburgh appointed head of the Rockefeller Foundation which then as now supports eugenic programs which encourage and provide intellectual ammunition for abortion programs?

It's only natural that a pro=abortion President be honored by this institution which has been going through a half century of gradual apostasy!

I want to encourage everyone who is as (justifiably) angered by the University of Notre Dame's actions as I am to turn that anger into positive support for the faithful, orthodox students and alumni of the University.

As a somewhat recent graduate, I can state that Notre Dame is still in the grip of the faith, more so than many other "Americanist" Catholic universities. The administration and the majority of the student body are not faithful to the Church in word or deed, yet it is a campus that is still haunted by an inescapable and deep love for the Faith. Even Notre Dame's apostasies are usually defended by weak appeals to orthodoxy, however lame those appeals may be. Living and studying at the University, one gets the sense that ND continually attempts to merge the latest heretical fads into Catholicism, and is genuinely, if nonetheless stupidly, astonished when it doesn't work.

Notre Dame may be a prodigal son; but the prodigal son came home. The University can be salvaged; there is a very strong and vibrant orthodox and faithful community of students and alumni. They need the wider Church's support, not abandonment. Notre Dame was once a great Catholic University in the US; it can be again if we support those trying to make it so.

Should not our bishops be asked the question, as a matter of truth, whether they continue to recognize Notre Dame as a "Catholic" university in accord with Church teaching in Ex Corde Ecclesiae? Bishop Bruskewitz, for one,[color=#000080] has publicly said he does not.[/color]

It appears that ND President Fr. Jenkins has painted himself into a corner. If he rescinds the invite to Obama he catches flak and if he goes through with it, he catches flak. Perhaps he is now wondering if it would have been better not to invite Obama in the first place? In his zeal to pull off a "coup" he appears to have shot himself in the foot.

Perhaps this is an opportunity for Ft. Jenkins to "engage" Obama regarding abortion? I doubt it. I suspect Ft. Jenkins may be in hot water with his Fathers of the Holy Cross superiors? The irish may need both a new President and a new football coach?

It is a turning point. Notre Dame stands for progressive Catholicism, not the one -issue hate filled fanaticism of the Catholic right wing. By sticking its finger in the eye of all those who equate Catholicism with criminalizing abortion, it is the standard bearer for the vast majority of American Catholics (and Catholics world-wide and American bishops who have remained silent). It's Catholicism for grown ups.

Oh the Jeremiads that will follow this posting!

Poisoning the well, Guy? Let's keep such cheap debate tactics off this forum, shall we?

Guy's post illustrates the problem with how this issue is perceived at large. Knowledgeable Catholics may understand what orthodoxy is, what it entails, and why abortion is one of the touchstone issues of our day. However, there are many nominal Catholics who don't know their faith; who have compartmentalized the Church into a spiritual corner subordinate to their wants and desires, their wills and their whims. It is those who are stymied by appeals to "dialogue," to an illusory "academic freedom," and the siren-song of "progressive" Catholicism. Let all good orthodox Catholics use this as a teaching moment for those around us who don't know what we have.

It seems to me that the Notre Dame scandal is using abortion as a red herring. There is something else that must be discussed.

A Catholic University must engage the world from its knees. That is, the Catholic University must examine the world from its unique perspective as a participant in the Catholic intellectual and religious tradition. The Catholic University must examine the world through Faith (fides quaerens intellectum). Unfortunately, the Notre Dames of the world view their Catholic identity as a stumbling block (unless it is used to raise donations from old alumni who went to the University during a more Catholic phase). Instead of dialoguing with the world from a Catholic position, they ape the world and its positions. Notre Dame trips over itself to deny its Catholic roots and unique perspective. I would have loved to see Notre Dame invite Obama for a debate over abortion. Of course, Obama would never have accepted.

Let's say that the president of ND revoked his invitation of Obama. The right would be happy, but the problem at ND would remain -- the University dislikes its Catholic roots. ND is indicative of the problems of Catholicism in American during the 1950s and 1960s. Catholics hungered for acceptance as real Americans. In seeking secular legitimacy, an understandable desire given the context of anti-Catholicism in the US, they sold thier birthright. ND might have a minority group of professors and students who are committed to orthodoxy, but the problem remains: the institution as a whole rejects Catholicism as a path to understanding the world.

Rick, yes, even if Fr. Jenkins rescinds the invitation to Obama, we still have the issue of what does ND think? Where are they? We know what Obama thinks, but unfortunately, ND seems to agree with him in ares where they should not.

Fr. Jenkins says he wants to "engage" him: I don't think so. Ditto Georgetown. Our two most famous and powerful unversities seem to have dropped the ball. There is more to being a university than football and basketball. It would have been nice for them to speak truth to power, but they won't.

Since there is close to nothing traditionally "American" about Barack Obama's world view, I think his invitation to Notre Dame puts them into the category of "Globalist University"

What all these people understand, but the academic bureaucrats running Notre Dame do not, is that opposition to abortion and the defense of unborn life have supplied much of the glue holding American Catholicism more or less together in the last 40 years…
- Russell Shaw

Here Mr. Shaw supplies precisely the thought that was ruminating in my mind as I was reading his article. Yet I differ in that I find nothing laudable about opposition to abortion providing “glue” to hold “American Catholicism” together. One principle I was taught at Notre Dame is that the Eucharist makes the Church, and a reversed understanding of that causal relationship is false. So I’m not sure if I want to celebrate the role that political opposition to abortion played in holding together “American Catholicism.” Moreover, whatever “American Catholicism” is, I’m not too sure I want to be a part of it. The term “American Catholicism” is already troubling, and yet how ironic that commentator Mark derisively puts Notre Dame in a “Globalist” worldview instead of the preferable “American” one when “global” is indeed synonymous with “catholic.”

The problem, then, is that for a number of Catholics in this country their identity in faith has become so tightly bound to a single political solution to abortion that, like Mr. Shaw, they can begin an article denouncing “Americanism” and embrace it before they are finished. These Catholics view society and all members of their faith solely through the lens of a single political solution to abortion and often become uncharitable to all they find wanting. They find themselves worthy of passing judgment on institutions of which they have never been a part and individuals they have never known. In the end, this “glue” that they faithfully embraced has bound them so profoundly to Americanism that towards those they find different from themselves they behave very much like other Americans.

Dear B Thomas,
I never knew Adolph Hitler and I won't presume to judge his soul but the actions of Adolph Hitler were genocidal and his ideology. Condemning his actions and his ideology just calling sin sin. In the same way I condemn the pro-choice ideology. It is sin. Notre Dame has consistently promoted abortion by honoring those that have promoted it. To talk about the Eucharist as the unifying force is right. But when you choose to butcher babies for personal or political gain, as St Paul says, you eat your condemnation. It is not hate that causes Pro-Lifers to speak out against the blasphemies against the Eucharist perpetuated by abortion supporters, rather it is love for the Eucharist and hope that their brothers and sisters who are eating their condemnation may repent and place themselves again in union with the Church.
It is a shame that the Pro-Life movement has had to keep the Church together. It is even more a shame that the slaughter of babies is now dividing it because some of the Church's members boast about being progressive instead of faithful. Progressive being a euphemism for promoting mortal sin.
Finally Mr Thomas it is you who judge. The Pro-Life movement has NEVER been about a single political solution to abortion. Of coursing adding "some" gets you off the hook but in reality you are making a sweeeping generalizaiton about the Pro-Life Movement that "many progressives and liberals" often make that borders on calumny. The Pro-Life Movement has always been about prayer, about helping women in problem pregnancies and about helping those who have undergone the brutal murderous tortures of abortionists. The Pro-Life movement has always been about the whole problem. It is the "progressive" Catholics who are single issue people: they seek single political solution of murdering babies as a solution to difficult pregnancies.

May God have mercy on the soul of all who promote the killing of babies starting with Notre Dame's administration and our President. Perhaps the celebration of Divine Mercy this weekend will break hearts toward repentance.

I think that Mr. Shaw is right. This will become a turning point for the church as will the investigation and apostolic visitation into the women religious communities. Institutions, universities, religious groups who operate under the name of Catholic will be forced to choose: fidelity to the Church in all of her teachings (and loyalty to His Holiness, the Pope) or schism.

I wonder what Fr. Jenkins and Notre Dame would choose? Unfortunately, in my view, Fr. Jenkins has become the face of the American Martin Luther who just nailed his 95 thesis to the door of Notre Dame. The question remains whether or not his followers will have the courage to admit that there is a schism within the American Church and accept the fact that they are its new leaders.

The time is overdue to speak the TRUTH.
Bishop D'Arcy should announce that Notre Dame is not now, nor has it been for some time, a "Catholic" university in accord with Church teaching. Therefore, the university should not make the claim that they are a "Catholic" institution.
(Please prayerfully read "Ex Corde Ecclesiae" before arguing that Notre Dame is Catholic.)
We should continue to pray for their conversion and for their return to the fold.

Yes to Tom. And it is time for the Newman Society to start collecting signatures requesting Bishop D'Arcy to declare the truth on this matter.