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April 29, 2009

STEPHANIE SALTER: OK with Obama at Notre Dame? There’s a place for you and it’s not Hades

By Stephanie Salter

Editor's note: This is a complete version of Salter's column with corrected Web site address for wesupportnotredame.org.

The Catholic University must have true autonomy and academic freedom in the face of authority of whatever kind, lay or clerical, external to the academic community itself.

— The Rev. Theodore Hesburgh, 15th president of Notre Dame

TERRE HAUTE — Have you heard about the online petitions for people to speak out against what’s happening at Notre Dame over President Obama’s commencement speech?

No, I don’t mean the angry, vitriolic petitions demanding that Notre Dame withdraw its Graduation Day invitation, that the university president be fired or that donations to Notre Dame be withheld until both these actions are taken.

I am talking about the petitions of support for the Rev. John I. Jenkins, for Notre Dame’s academic integrity and for the tradition of inviting sitting U.S. presidents to deliver the commencement address in South Bend.

The petitions I’m talking about can be found at wesupportnotredame.org, a site that was co-created by a young, grassroots group called Catholics United. So far, more than 30,000 people have e-signed their names in solidarity with Father Jenkins and in favor of Obama’s graduation speech.

One reason you’ve probably never heard of Catholics United or wesupportnotredame.org is because the people associated with them aren’t vitriolic. They don’t call news conferences and condemn. They don’t reduce complex sets of human values — let alone a person — to one stand on one issue.

They aren’t Catholics United Against Anybody Who Disagrees With Us. They’re just Catholics United.

“As an organization, we’re committed to upholding the moral teachings of the church,” said executive director Chris Korzen in a phone interview.

That means you won’t find Catholics United challenging the church’s teachings about abortion and birth control, women’s ordination, same-sex marriage and other hot-button issues that tend to divide Catholics and Christians into conservative and liberal camps.

“Where we draw the line” said Korzen, is when upholding church teachings turns into “calling people bad Catholics” and “waging war on other Catholics and Americans.”

Catholics United’s idea of nourishing and protecting Catholicism does not look like that of replacejenkins.com, a group that is lobbying people on Facebook to punish Notre Dame into submission by denying the university donations from alumni and other supporters. It does not look like the Cardinal Newman Society’s notredamescandal.com, the largest and angriest of the anti-Jenkins/speech organizations. According to recent postings on that site, more than 330,000 petitioners have e-signed against Obama’s commencement appearance.

To all these folks (including 46 U.S. bishops), Barack Obama is made up of only two elements — and they are not his values on war, peace, the economy and social justice, the global environment, the quality of public education, feeding and sheltering the poor, caring for the ill and elderly or guaranteeing religious freedom.

No, President Obama is nothing more to these people than his support for access to safe, legal abortion and for government-aided stem-cell medical research.

For those two policies — which happen to be legal in the United States and shared by a majority of U.S. adults — Barack Obama is not fit to address the 2009 graduates of Notre Dame or to be awarded an honorary doctorate as have eight presidents before him.

Anyone who says Obama is entitled to speak — Father John Jenkins, for example — is a bad Catholic, a bad Christian and an insult to God and country.

Korzen does not buy that line of thinking. To the contrary, he and the other members of Catholics United see such reductionism and division as damaging to the Catholic community and the nation.

“This effort just reeks of politics,” said Korzen of the Obama/Notre Dame assault. “These groups like the Catholic League, the Cardinal Newman Society, have a political bone to pick; their primary objective is to make the president look bad.”

Korzen’s primary objective is to see Catholics work with one another and with the leaders of this and other nations to promote “the message of justice and the common good found at the heart of the Catholic Social Tradition.”

A Catholic since birth, Korzen was an altar boy and educated in Catholic schools. He graduated from the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass., and received his master’s in theology from the Weston Jesuit School of Theology in Cambridge, Mass.

Korzen and James Salt, the director of organizing for Catholics United, are determined to present a different Catholic face from that of the angry, limited-issue judges and executioners. They view as inaccurate (and dangerous) the notion that “being Catholic means subscribing to a certain partisan agenda.” They believe that “being a Catholic is more than picking a handful of litmus tests.”

“The church isn’t monolithic,” Korzen said, adding that his favorite description of Roman Catholicism is that of the great Irish writer, James Joyce:

“Here comes everybody.”

If you agree that President Obama is only his stand on abortion and stem cells, do check in on the aforementioned Web sites and add your name.

If, however, you agree with the faculty senate of Notre Dame that Obama “holds views both consistent and inconsistent with the teachings of the Catholic Church” and that his commencement invitation “reflects the University’s tradition of honoring our nation’s leaders and encouraging dialogue with them on issues important to the extended University community and to the nation” — here, again, is the place to say so:

wesupportnotredame.org.

And tell your friends. Especially the Catholics you know who are united for … unity.

Stephanie Salter can be reached at (812) 231-4229 or stephanie.salter@tribstar.com.

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