A Roman Scene We Might Consider

All consciences may not be formed the same, but Truth is inviolate.

Let us imagine.

It is the height of Roman power, when Ceasars are at their zenith, and thus all manner of "entertainment" is allowed at the Colosseum. Some citizens within the Empire, object to the feeding lions with renegade Christians as a form of entertainment, claiming to be "pro-life."

The centurions and aristocracy and government that are in power find these claims laughable, as these rebels bring it upon themselves by not being willing to be reasonable and see the nuances of the real world. If they would have open hearts and open minds and be willing to accept the equal nature of Zeus and Hera and the Ceasar himself to Christ, there would be no quarrel. If they would just give a bit of "respect" to those who disagree, they wouldn't find themselves in this situation.

Some of those arguably on the Christian side, have counseled that their fellow members ought to be more fair minded. They have said, "Debate about this issue is not about to close. Differing consciences on such a matter should be met with love no matter how vexing they may be." and that to argue by refusing to show deference or by shouting or getting upset, to "satisfy that furstration by shunning or denouncing your unseeing companion will accomplish little beyond expressing your exasperation."

Maybe, but when the lions are being sent routinely to rip apart the innocent, it might be time to satisfy some of that frustration.

And Now for a Catholic Commencement...

If you want a funny alternative to my piece, I highly recommend:
http://ironiccatholic.blogspot.com/2009/05/ironic-catholic-alternate-notre-dame.html.
Otherwise...

My brain is fried from all of this, and I need to attend to the domestic church that is my home, instead of the ivory twin towers of academia and politics. But I do have an alternative suggestion for next year's commencement speaker.

First, we must discern what would constitute a good nationally prominent figure, known to all. The individual must be historic, life changing, a person who inspires real hope and real change.

Second, the person must be known for good works, dedication to the sick, the poor, and to ending injustice and suffering in general.

Third, the person must be a good speaker, with a riviting charismatic personality that speaks to both the rich and the poor, the educated and the simple.

Fourth, the commencement speaker must invite each gradutate to go out and be more loving, more humble and more grateful for the gifts they have received. The speaker must envoke the new graduates to go out and be lights to the world, to engage it with their wisdom, their service and all their hearts.

Fifth, the person's example as embodied in written and spoken words, actual work and whole life, must be perfect and subject to intense scrutiny. Personal character witnesses and testimony about these works, words and deeds must hold up and show that they have endured the test of time.

In light of all these qualities which must be non negotiable, there is only one candidate who could meet the entire criteria. Hold Commencement, and at the point where the speaker would get up, present the Blessed Sacrament.

Ask for prayerful sober reflection for the hour, and invite all to adore Him.

And let this be the tradition at Notre Dame and all Catholic institutions of Higher Learning from now on.

Yes, I'm Still Mad, and I know it.

Back in 1993, I took a course on Epistemology; that is the study of knowing ways of knowing. There was a woman’s way of knowing, an African-American way of knowing, and emerging gay and lesbian ways of filtering the world that were based on collective norms gathered from within the designated strata or population being scrutinized.

The problem with epistemology is two-fold.

1) If one is not a member of the designated group’s way of knowing, one is presumed either to not be aware of how things might be filtered, or unable to comprehend fully what they might mean. Thus, truth is only discreetly revealed to those in the specific filtered class of people, and it is not necessarily able to be transferred.

2) The line which creates the filter by which one knows something –male/female, gay/straight, is to this middle aged Catholic educated Texas female mother of nine’s mind, arbitrarily set by those who wish to draw the lines, but maybe I’m just limited that way.

The question, how does defining one’s reality by one’s collective experience and as unknowable to someone not of that experience, not slip into defining reality only by one’s own individualized experience? How does epistemology not simply collapse into solipsism?

The professor thought I was trying to be cute with the question.

But either truth is knowable or it is not Truth. If it is not Truth, it is merely perception. If reality is merely perception, then the demarcations by which one filters one’s perceptions are almost without limit, such that no one can claim to know what another experiences or comprehends.

Knowledge is not transferable because no one can be certain of what knowledge is, or what should be conveyed, or how much of it is comprehended by the recipient.
Language eventually breaks down in this radically individualized filtering of the world. “You wouldn’t understand,” becomes the natural barrier and explanation for any disagreements.

One’s gender, religion, economics, orientation, I.Q, geographic location, all can be applied to create an impasse from one human being to another as a means of negating any validity in opposing viewpoints. “You’re from the south so you wouldn’t understand.” The accusation of “Lack of comprehension” connotes to the other side, an innate unworthiness to be part of the discussion. The accusation renders any criticism by the side not able to sport a more sympathetic demographic epistemology, impotent by sheer lack of specialized status. Everyone’s argument for their point of view has been reduced to NIMBY status, save the one with the most momentum behind it. (Think loudest and most organized voice).

To get an “A” in the class, one had to come to embrace the concept of epistemologies as legitimate representations of whole groups of people. One had to also identify one’s own misconceptions, biases and intellectual scaffolding that impeded comprehension of other epistemological templates. It also helped to have a thesaurus handy.

“We see but through a glass darkly, but then, when the perfect comes, we shall see face to face.” I think sums ups all epistemologies fairly accurately, but then I simplistically believe that we are understandable and knowable to each other. I’ve since discovered St. Augustine and love his take on things in City of God, wherein he talks of the difference being not what we suffer, but the way in which we suffer.

So we come to today. I have to say, I’m starting to comprehend something of how an epistemology works to convey a sense of import and validity of feeling, without discerning or declaring truth. I must admit freely, I do not understand how it is that President Jenkins can authentically reconcile his Catholic faith and the Catholic identity of the University, with honoring President Obama, (despite his explanations), I only know it is spiritually wrong to honor a man who supports the antithesis of Mary’s Yes in all forms. I know it is not Catholic to honor a person whose policies deny the fundamental humanity of some people based on their level of physical development, and who supports the willful destruction of some people at the hands of others, in the name of research.

I only know this platform weakens the Catholic voice of the faithful to say clearly, Embryonic Stem Cell Research is deliberative destruction of nascent human life for the satisfaction of scientific curiosity. It is wrong. I don’t care if it turns lead into gold and brews the elixir of life, the cost is too high. Catholicism is not about “my way of knowing,” it’s about following HIS WAY, and knowing that is the way, the Truth and the Life.

I also do not understand declaring via a letter to the alumni, that he is not honoring President Obama’s policies by honoring the man, but merely the office and thus the man in the office. If President Fr. Jenkins were to disinvite the man holding the office as a matter of honoring Catholic faith over political policy, perhaps then Fr. Jenkins could say to the media that he wasn’t dishonoring the man holding the office, merely the policies held in firm conviction by the man in office. But I don’t think that would sell with the media any better than the current spin is selling with me.

But then, epistemologically speaking, what do I know?

Perhaps Why

The honoring of President Obama with a law degree at commencement has confounded those who love the ideals embodied by Notre Dame.

I have been pondering for several days, why would the President of the most celebrated Catholic University in America remain so resolute when so many people of the faith and leaders of the Church were counseling otherwise?

Through various websites like ndresponse.com and the Cardinal Newman Society and the Sycamore Project, over 350,000+ signatures were placed on Fr. Jenkin’s desk, alongside countless other letters, messages, emails, phone calls and specific recommendations by fellow priests and bishops, including the Bishop of SouthBend. The outcry was clear. It was passionate. It was prayerful, anguished and spontaneous. Still, Father Jenkins and the University persisted.

On April 27th, the response was then augmented and echoed by the slated recipient of the Laetare Medal, Mary Ann Glendon, when she opted to decline the opportunity in light of the pain this scandal has thus far brought.

So I wondered. Was Father Jenkins losing his faith? Was he beholden to an increasingly secular faculty? Was he hungry for recognition for a school that had not had a shining moment on the football field in a long time? Was it a personal weakness for power or fame? Was it a combination of some or all of these things?

In the most benevolent of interpretations of the events, Fr. Jenkins thought of his beloved university and saw the prestige of having another President come to speak at a commencement. He probably anticipated there would be some people upset by the invitation, but nothing more would come of it than that he might receive a few irritated phone calls, and some angry letters and emails.After all, the President of the United States was a popular President, who received more votes than any other candidate in history, and a majority of the Catholic vote.

Surely people wouldn’t demand that he rescind the invitation to the President of the United States; this was their president too. This was a commencement, not a campaign. The moment would not be an endorsement or a plug for any particular position. It was an honor for the school and would showcase Notre Dame as being a place for both parties, in case any prospective students with liberal or democratic tendencies were put off by the misconception that only red meat Republicans attended.

Additionally, Notre Dame had a long and storied history of supporting civil rights and here was part of the fruit of the school and its students’ labors in that struggle. The first African American president of this country that had once held slaves, segregated children and denied equal opportunity to people because of the color of their skin, was coming to speak.

The President had shown he was willing to be a moral voice for good. He had declared torture to be always wrong. Saying something that obviously morally correct and yet controversial, took courage. There was much about the President and the current party sitting in power, both in the executive and legislative branch that fit with Catholic social teaching. Service to the poor, healthcare for the sick, room in the inn for the immigrant, all of these causes reflected issues that should transcend the parties’ labels of “R” and “D” in the individual lives of Americans, of Catholics and the whole body of Christ. The vast plurality of Congress reflected the general public’s desire to champion these worthy causes.

So I could almost see how Fr. Jenkins came to think that inviting this particular President to speak was an acceptable action.

Almost.

But then I went and reread the United States Council of Catholic Bishops’ 2004 statement concerning “Catholics in Political Life,” and Fr. Jenkin’s interpretation of that statement. Fr. Jenkins’ defense parsed cannon law to indicate that honoring someone who was not Catholic who acted in defiance Catholic teaching was not a violation.And then I thought about what this President has actually done in a few short weeks not withstanding his dulcet tones. And I remembered how the confluence of executive orders, the shift in power in the legislative branch, and current events have created an environment hostile to the unborn, and thus to the moral teachings of the Church. Fr. Jenkin’s interpretation of USCCB law could not be interpreted by the public or by the faithful as anything but spin.

So although I can sympathize a little bit with how lonely it must feel now for Fr. Jenkins to be so scourged by his own school’s people, the alumni, and no small number of the Catholic community at large, I still come back to the firm reality that the University created in honor of the most holy woman on Heaven and Earth, is giving applause and a stage and an award to a man who advocates the very opposite of Mary’s humble “yes.”

Notre Dame shall honor a man whose policies demand that the faithful “Render unto Caesar” money that will be used by organizations to promote abortions abroad and finance experimentation on frozen embryos at home.

Fr. Jenkins should have used better judgment.

These days, the unborn have only tangential representation in the form of a few outspoken legislators. They live in limbo. They are created and then frozen. Some are sentenced to await experimentation and then death. Others are simply sentenced to wait. The unborn are burned with acid. They are dismembered. They are destroyed within their mother’s womb by the thousands. They stockpile outside of any womb, waiting. The unborn remain the poorest of the poor, without refuge save the grace accepted by each individual woman who imitates Mary by saying “Yes.”

So it is now that institutions like the University of Notre Dame must be the fiercest advocates for the unborn. It is now that those in power must be reminded daily of their duty to all citizens, including the most defenseless, most voiceless, the most vulnerable. The University of Notre Dame is an institution of higher learning; but it must also be a light to the world. That is what all Catholics and therefore, all Catholic institutions are called to be.

Fr. Jenkins may be the University President, but he should also be God's man first.

Notre Dame may be a University, but it should be Mary's first.

And thus I come back to “WHY?”

It may be only a coincidence but ND1, the Notre Dame plane used to woo coaches and others, filed a flight plan to and from Washington DC on April 22nd. The University said Fr. Jenkins did not go there to meet with the President, but it also has not said why the plane went to Washington. If it had been to recruit a hot prospect in the off season, this would probably have been made public.

Just a few short days later, on April 29th, the SouthBend Tribune ran a story that the University of Notre Dame will be one of the recipients of funds from the stimulus bill for research “on elements that are the basis of nuclear energy.”The funding for the Energy Frontier Research Center is between 2 and 5 million per year for five years. There are sixteen schools that received such grants from the U.S. Department of Energy through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

Could it be that simple?

It may be that all of this scandal was simply about following the money and obeying those who control the purse strings. Ten to twenty-five million dollars might have influenced the decision to hold fast on granting the current leader of the free world an honorary degree.

In Robert Bolt’s “A Man for All Seasons,” there is a moment, when Richard Rich reveals to Sir Thomas More that he has been given the position of Attorney General of Wales as a reward for his perjured testimony that helped convict More. The saint responds, "Richard, it profits a man nothing to trade his soul for the whole world; but for Wales?"

Whatever the reason, it remains a very expensive degree to grant for all concerned. Whatever the profit for the University of Notre Dame by the grant of this award, the cost was too high.

Why the Notre Dame/Obama Scandal Matters

My husband and I met at Notre Dame on the third day after we arrived on our respective campuses. After four years of dating while at Notre Dame and Saint Mary’s, and two years of engagement wherein I received a Master’s of Education at Boston College, and my then fiancée attended NYU law school, we were married by the Bishop of Beaumont, Texas, Bishop Bernard Ganter in 1990. Nine children and no small number of Notre Dame T-shirts and sojourns out for games or to visit friends later, we find ourselves looking at a school we no longer recognize as the place that helped preserve our pure spirits, that helped keep youthful desires in check with such quaint restrictions as visiting hours.

Where we once argued against Mario Cuomo and were not scoffed at, now we see a school that seems both hard headed and in part, hard hearted. We do not understand this beautiful place that no longer recognizes the source of its fundamental beauty. When people of good character and deep faith ask how this school (which they know we love), can authentically represent Catholicism, (indeed, Mary in all her glory), if we cannot recognize life at its beginning as being sacred to those who do not believe it, I have no answer.

We will be praying the rosary. We are praying the rosary. We pray for the President to have the scales fall from his eyes and for this most anti-life of all presidents in the history of our country to become like Saint Paul. We pray for Fr. Jenkins and those who stand fast with him on this point. We pray for their hearts to be softened by the weeping and anguish of the faithful who see this as a far more egregious assault on Catholic sensibilities than the erotic pseudo intellectual musings of an artistically contrived lesbian play. The later is self absorbed mental porn packaged as art, the former is a rejection of everything our Lady stands for and everything her life means, for the sake of a photo-op and the bragging rights amongst Universities for hosting the current President of the United States.

The rejection of the timeless for the transitory, of the prayerful for the powerful injures more than just those graduates and families and alumni who may not be entirely thrilled with President Jenkin’s choice. Those who never loved Notre Dame but love the policies of the current President of the United States, seem to find almost perverse glee that the faithful, (who cannot be anything but pro-life), agonize over this once crown jewel of Catholicism falling so far from her truly once upon a time deserving heights. Being the body of Christ, all of the Church, all of us that make up the countless unknown laity that line up for the Eucharist on a weekly basis or more, we suffer each time a Catholic in a position of leadership denies Mary, denies Christ, or denies the authentic reality of each person, by their policies and actions and words.

The University of Notre Dame should mean something. It should embody the beauty of Mary, the humility of Mary, the obedience of Mary, the purity of Mary, the whole dedication to Christ of Mary. It should be a place that creates people of steel and fire, people who know how precious life is, and how important it is to be obedient to God in all things. The University should radiate the essence of Mary in all its policies and in all of its classes, and in every bit of ground.

No one who contemplates this Queen of heaven with a sincere heart, cannot be softened by her witness, by her love, by her life and her instruction. “Do whatever He tells you to do.” This should be the great lesson that all students come to master as a result of their experience at this campus, whether in physics or art or sociology or economics.

The purpose of a Catholic University is not to win accolades or host world leaders or build the largest endowment in the history of man or have the greatest number of federal dollars in grants for its research purposes. The purpose of a Catholic University is to via the craft and art of instruction, through the sense of place and the beauty of minds and persons represented in the faculty and staff, to turn souls towards God while putting before the students, the richest banquet possible of all the best thoughts, practices and experiences available. The purpose of a Catholic University is to pursue the Truth in all things. Modern sensibilities would parse Truth and reduce it to being merely a religious tenet, and that only scholarly truth should be so ruthlessly sought in the academic world.

But Christ tells us clearly, “I am the way and the Truth and the Life.” If we would be Catholic, if Notre Dame would be Catholic, it must know Truth, it must love Truth, and it must pursue Truth over politics, over power, over prestige. And the Truth in this circumstance is humble and small and achingly real in the person of Mary.

Notre Dame Our Mother, Pray for us. And Our Hearts forever, Love Thee Notre Dame.