Top Catholic Analysts Weigh-in on Notre Dame's Obama Invite

"RENEWING THE AMERICAN DREAM"

Notre Shame University

Washington D.C., Mar 23, 2009 (CNA).- Under the title “A Moral Exemplar? Should the University of Notre Dame honor our most anti-life president?” National Review Online has gathered some of nation’s most prominent Catholics to weigh-in on the university’s decision to invite President Barack Obama to be the principal speaker and the recipient of an honorary doctor of law degree at its commencement on Sunday, May 17.

Kathryn Jean Lopez, Editor of National Review Online, explained to CNA that the announcement from the University of Notre Dame that it will be having Obama speak at their commencement “is an important news event.”

“It’s significant for this administration, which has put itself at odds with Catholic teachings (on embryo-destroying stem-cell research, among others) and promises more (the Freedom of Choice Act, among others). This decision by Notre Dame – along with the pro-choice Catholics Obama has surrounded himself with – provides the White House a certain amount of cover,” Lopez also told CNA.

“It is important for Catholic higher education, as the administration at ND made a choice that calls into question why they consider themselves any different than any other good school with a football team. This is an issue of political and cultural significance; NRO exists to highlight and advance and debate such things,” she added.

The NRO symposium opens with a comment from George Weigel, the biographer of Pope John Paul II and Senior Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.

“Notre Dame’s decision to make President Obama its 2009 commencement speaker is a very bad thing,” he says.