More Than Dining Room Conversation

by Fr. Roger Landry - May 8, 2009

Four weeks ago we wrote on the symbolic messages the University of Notre Dame was giving Catholics and non-Catholics in the country by inviting President Barack Obama to give its May 17 commencement address and award him an honorary doctorate.

By choosing to ignore and violate the clear, settled and reasonable policy of the U.S. Bishops not to "honor those who act in defiance of our fundamental moral principles" — like President Obama has been doing repeatedly on the issue of the inviolable dignity of human life — by giving such figures "awards, honors or platforms which would suggest support for their actions," Notre Dame is teaching its graduates and others that it's more important to listen to what the President has to say than what the Church has to say.

It would be hard to believe that Notre Dame would ever give an honorary doctorate and a prestigious speaking platform to anyone, even a president, who supported indefensible things like slavery or anti-Semitism. By choosing, however, to honor someone who vigorously supports, both personally as well as publicly, the destruction of innocent human life, the university is teaching that it considers such destruction, in the end, a small matter that, unlike racism or something "really" evil, should not disqualify someone from public honors by Catholic institutions.

By doing something so provocative without even consulting local Bishop John D'Arcy, especially when it was easy to assume that such an action would put him in a position that he would have to absent himself from the commencement, the university was demonstrating that, given a choice between having a successor of George Washington or a successor the apostles present for graduation, they consider it more important to have the former.

For all these reasons, it's unsurprising that an unprecedented number of U.S. bishops have individually come out in public criticism of the university's decision. It's also understandable why former U.S. Ambassador to the Vatican and Harvard Law Professor Maryann Glendon, Barack Obama's former law school teacher, decided that she would have to refuse the university's prestigious Laetare Medal, lest her authentic pro-life credentials continue to be manipulated by the university to try to mollify the concerns of those outraged or scandalized by its actions.

But perhaps the most poignant description of the noxious symbolism of university's decision came from a recent Notre alumna, Lacy Dodd, in an article last week on the website of First Things magazine. Her reflections are particularly fitting as we prepare for Mother's Day on Sunday.

She wrote that during her commencement, her life was in turmoil because she was three months pregnant. "That March," she remembered, "I had gone — alone — to a local woman's clinic to take a test. The results were positive, and I was so numb I almost didn't grasp what the nurse was getting at when she assured me I had 'other options.' What did 'other options' mean? And what kind of world is it that defines compassion as telling a young woman who has just learned she is carrying life inside her that she has the option to destroy it?

"When I returned to campus, I ran to the Grotto [of our Lady]. I was confused and full of conflicting emotions. But I knew this: No amount of shame or embarrassment would ever lead me to get rid of my baby. Of all women, Our Lady could surely feel pity for an unplanned pregnancy. In my hour of need, on my knees, I asked Mary for courage and strength. And she did not disappoint.

"My boyfriend was a different story. He was also a Notre Dame senior. When I told him that he was to be a father, he tried to pressure me into having an abortion. Like so many women in similar circumstances, I found out the kind of man the father of my child was at precisely the moment I needed him most. 'All that talk about abortion is just dining-room talk,' he said. 'When it's really you in the situation, it's different. I will drive you to Chicago and pay for a good doctor.'

"I tried telling him this was not an option. He said he was pro-choice. I responded by informing him that my choice was life. And I learned, as so many pregnant women have before and since, that life is the one choice that pro-choicers won't support.

"So, without my boyfriend's support, I graduated from Notre Dame on schedule with a bachelor's degree in American Studies. I returned to my parents' home in Florida, sought and received advice and loving counsel from Kimberly Home, a pregnancy resource center in my hometown. And I prepared to give birth to the human being who has given me the greatest and most unexpected joy in my life.

"And then a miracle came: On All Saints Day 1999, I gave birth to baby Mary. Her name is no accident. This Mary was living inside me while I walked the campus of a university dedicated to a woman who is mother of us all, and it was Mary Our Mother who gave me courage when I was afraid of what would lie ahead. Mary teaches us always to be open to seeking the will of God in our lives, no matter what it is, and never to be afraid of God's will.

"Notre Dame is a special place, but it is not immune to the realities of modern life. There are students who face unplanned pregnancies, and — most tragically — women who think their only option is abortion. Statistics show that one out of every five women who have an abortion is a college student; many of these women cite the fear that they will not be able to complete their education as a primary reason. On campuses all across this country, abortion is the status quo. We need to change that with an unambiguous stand for life, and Notre Dame needs to be in the lead.

"There have been many things written about the honors to be extended to President Obama. I'd like to ask this of Fr. John Jenkins, the Notre Dame president: Who draws support from your decision to honor President Obama — the young, pregnant Notre Dame woman sitting in that graduating class who wants desperately to keep her baby, or the Notre Dame man who believes that the Catholic teaching on the intrinsic evil of abortion is just dining-room talk?"

Lacy Dodd now serves on the board of a Charlotte-based non-profit organization working to build at Belmont Abbey a maternal care facility for college students who discover they're pregnant. She has put a name and a face to why Notre Dame's decision is particularly shameful. She has identified why so many Catholics, including her fellow Notre Dame alumni, are so justly upset by it. By choosing to honor and listen to a president who thinks that the choice to kill a baby like Mary is something that the government should make possible, defend and fund, this Catholic university, rather than challenging pro-abortion assumptions some of their students and so many in our country have, is buttressing them. And rather than supporting young women like Lacy Dodd in difficult circumstances, it is isolating them further, at a place in which they should be welcomed as our Lady would and would want.

The Catholic teaching on the intrinsic evil of abortion is more than dining room talk. It's the worst systematic offense against human beings and human dignity in our time. It's about time for Notre Dame and various other Catholic educational institutions to stop giving it lip service and to take the lead in creating a culture in which every human being like Mary Dodd is valued, welcomed in life and protected in law.

Father Roger J. Landry is pastor of St. Anthony of Padua in New Bedford, MA and Executive Editor of The Anchor, the weekly newspaper of the Diocese of Fall River.