Who Is a Real Catholic?/At Notre Dame, Obama Calls for Civil Tone in Abortion Debate/He Came, He Spoke, He Conquered

Who Is a Real Catholic?
By David Gibson
Copyright by The Washington Post
Sunday, May 17, 2009
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/15/AR2009051501390.html


All you need to know to diagnose the state of the Catholic Church in America today is that Pope Benedict XVI -- who has a knack for ticking off Muslims and Jews -- spent the past week wandering the Middle East, yet Catholics here barely noticed. They were too busy fighting over Barack Obama's appearance as commencement speaker at Notre Dame or arguing about the fate of a popular Miami priest known as "Father Oprah," who was caught on camera sharing a seaside embrace with his girlfriend.

Is this what Catholicism in America has come to? Bickering about whether Notre Dame is really Catholic, or whether a priest can make out on the beach with his gal pal? Well, yes. And that should come as no surprise.

Since the emergence of Catholicism in the 19th century as a counterweight to the United States's reigning Protestant culture, American Catholics have struggled to balance their desire to assimilate into society with the fear of losing their faith in the nation's melting pot. These new controversies show that, in the Catholic saga, assimilation is winning.

That is because American Catholics -- and there are upwards of 65 million of us -- are going their own way on many matters of faith and especially on issues ranging from priestly celibacy to political candidates, and there seems to be little the bishops can do about it. If there is a true swing vote in the U.S. electorate today, it is the Catholic bloc. This disturbs conservative members of the faith, the self-styled "orthodox" who often dismiss such fickle folks as "cafeteria Catholics." In the vacuum left by the disappearing Catholic subculture, conservatives have made politics the eighth sacrament, with one's position on abortion and gay marriage becoming the litmus test of whether one is a "good Catholic," or a Catholic at all.

This civil war, as the Catholic writer Peter Steinfels recently called it, between hard-liners and those seeking greater engagement, is one the church cannot win. A recent Pew survey showed that despite a generally greater "brand loyalty" than most faiths, Catholicism in America is bleeding out, to the point that nearly one in 10 Americans identifies as a former Catholic. For every one convert, four Catholics are leaving the church -- half of them to traditions like evangelicalism that they find more spiritually fulfilling. Without the inflow of millions of Latino immigrants in recent decades, American Catholicism would be in decline, and even still the church is shrinking in many areas.

The conflicting identities of American Catholics have deep roots. Beginning in the 1800s, American Catholics insulated themselves by building an alternate universe of schools to educate their children, hospitals to care for their sick, and cemeteries to bury their dead. They were forbidden to marry outside the fold, and stepping inside a Protestant church was considered hazardous to the soul's health. On the other hand, just as Catholics wanted to show Rome they could be every bit as Catholic as the pope, they also wanted to prove to their fellow citizens that they could be as red, white, and blue as any Connecticut Yankee. They fought in the nation's wars, labored in the country's factories, and turned out generations of college graduates who took their place among America's elite. And after the presidential candidacy of Al Smith was thwarted in 1928 thanks in part to anti-Catholic canards, the faithful helped power John F. Kennedy to the White House in 1960.

Of course, just as Catholics finally arrived, they almost immediately set to fighting among themselves with a bitterness that would make even the most fractious Baptists blush. The Second Vatican Council of the early 1960s brought contested reforms that coincided with the social upheavals of that decade, and in 1968, as women were rejoicing in the liberation of The Pill, Pope Paul VI issued his encyclical Humanae Vitae reaffirming the ban on artificial contraception. Some Catholics stormed off but others simply defected in place, feeling free to stay and disregard papal teaching. Then came Roe v. Wade, drawing Catholicism into the culture wars with a fury that seemed to peak during the 2008 election.

But it didn't end on November 4. In March, when the University of Notre Dame invited President Obama to deliver its commencement address -- as it has done for presidents going back to Eisenhower -- conservative Catholics and a growing number of bishops (about 60 at last count, though still a minority of the nearly 290 active bishops in the United States) denounced the school and its president, Holy Cross Father John Jenkins, in the harshest terms. Bishop Thomas G. Doran of Rockford, Ill., had perhaps the sharpest (and most insider) of jabs, calling Jenkins's invitation "truly obscene" and suggesting that he rename the school "Northwestern Indiana Humanist University."

As such purple rhetoric was flying about on the Notre Dame affair, American Catholics suddenly faced a more sordid one: A tabloid published shots of popular Cuban American priest Alberto Cutié -- a multimedia star among U.S. Hispanics -- in risqué poses on the beach with a woman who turns out to be his girlfriend of two years. Nothing draws media flies like a sex scandal, especially one involving a man of the cloth, but a funny thing happened on the way to Father Cutié's disgrace: He did not slink away in shame but instead proclaimed, with Luther-like dignity, that he wasn't worried what the hierarchy thought. "What worries me most is how God views me. The institution, the church, is something else."

Cutié is now reportedly considering whether to marry his girlfriend, and has said he thinks priestly celibacy should be optional. What's more, 78 percent of Miami-area Catholics said they had a favorable impression of him, and 81 percent backed his call for a married priesthood, according to a Miami Herald poll.

That willingness of American Catholics to break ranks with such long-held tenets is evident in surveys on a number of issues, including church teachings regarding celibacy and birth control. But for conservative Catholics, "opposition to abortion is the signpost at the intersection of Catholicism and American public life," as Jody Bottum, who recently succeeded the late Father Richard John Neuhaus as editor of the theocon journal First Things, wrote recently in the Weekly Standard. To Bottum, Notre Dame's president and others who could engage a pro-abortion rights politician like Obama "lack the cultural marker that would make them Catholic in the minds of other Catholics."

While those "other Catholics" are a distinct minority, they have adopted the tactics of hard-line activists. For example, when Obama visited Georgetown University last month to deliver a major economic policy speech, his set-up crew covered up a religious symbol behind the podium to make the setting conform to a non-religious standard. The move was immediately cited as proof that Obama was anti-Catholic -- the speech's references to the Sermon on the Mount notwithstanding.

These activists have also exploited -- or worked with -- bishops whose views match their own. And they can get away with it because the do-it-yourself trend in Catholicism is also infecting the hierarchy, with bishops openly contradicting each other on such fundamental issues as one's suitability to receive Communion, in terms that might have once been reserved for the church's archenemies.

And this is perhaps the greatest irony: Conservative Catholics are proving to be the greatest assimilationists, with their efforts to decertify fellow Catholics mimicking a sectarian and divisive culture that classic Catholicism has always rejected.

A recent courageous editorial in the national Jesuit weekly America (which has at times felt the wrath of Rome) cited the dangers that the Notre Dame furor has revealed: "For today's sectarians, it is not adherence to the church's doctrine on the evil of abortion that counts for orthodoxy, but adherence to a particular political program . . . They scorn Augustine's inclusive, forgiving, big-church Catholics . . . [and] threaten the unity of the Catholic Church in the United States."

This priority on unity is the principle that most American Catholics still live by, and it makes them accept Father Cutié, girlfriend and all, and welcome Obama to the iconic campus in South Bend. As the conservative Catholic legal scholar and Reagan administration lawyer Douglas Kmiec put it in Slate earlier this year, "Beyond life issues, an audaciously hope-filled Democrat like Obama is a Catholic natural."

When he speaks at Notre Dame, Barack Obama -- an African-American Protestant with a Muslim father -- may enunciate a vision that resonates more genuinely with American Catholics than the pronouncements of the church's high-decibel spokesmen. This state of affairs can emerge only in a church that is compromising its historic self-definition as the biggest of tents.

A century ago, the church was deeply divided over Pope Pius X's campaign against "Modernism," which was a catchall for anything Rome deemed suspicious. When Pius died, the conclave of 1914 elected Benedict XV, who immediately issued an encyclical calling on Catholics "to appease dissension and strife" so that "no one should consider himself entitled to affix on those who merely do not agree with his ideas the stigma of disloyalty to faith."

"There is no need of adding any qualifying terms to the profession of Catholicism," Benedict XV concluded. "It is quite enough for each one to proclaim 'Christian is my name and Catholic my surname.'"

If the Catholic Church had a bumper sticker, that could be it. And it means that the real dilemma for American Catholics today is not whether Notre Dame is Catholic, but whether we are.

david@dgibson.com

David Gibson is author of "The Coming Catholic Church: How the Faithful are Shaping a New American Catholicism" and "The Rule of Benedict: Pope Benedict XVI and His Battle with the Modern World."








At Notre Dame, Obama Calls for Civil Tone in Abortion Debate
By PETER BAKER and SUSAN SAULNY
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: May 17, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/18/us/politics/18obama.html?_r=1&th&emc=th


SOUTH BEND, Ind. — President Obama directly confronted America’s deep divide over abortion on Sunday as he appealed to partisans on each side to find ways to respect one another’s basic decency and even work together to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies.

As anti-abortion demonstrators protested outside and a few hecklers shouted inside, Mr. Obama used a commencement address at the University of Notre Dame to call for more “open hearts, open minds, fair-minded words” in a debate that has polarized the country for decades. The audience at this Roman Catholic institution cheered his message and drowned out protesters, some of whom called him a “baby killer.”

“Maybe we won’t agree on abortion,” Mr. Obama told graduating students, relatives and professors, “but we can still agree that this heart-wrenching decision for any woman is not made casually. It has both moral and spiritual dimension.

“So let us work together to reduce the number of women seeking abortions. Let’s reduce unintended pregnancies. Let’s make adoption more available. Let’s provide care and support for women who do carry their children to term.”

The encounter was a rare foray into one of the most volatile areas of public life for Mr. Obama, who supports abortion rights but has sought to avoid becoming enmeshed in the issue. As recently as last week, aides said he would mention the controversy in his speech without dwelling on it. But ultimately, he decided to devote most of his address to bridging the chasm over abortion and other moral issues.

Mr. Obama arrived here amid an emotional public argument about the duties of a Catholic university and the state of the abortion conflict. Bishops, advocates on each side and students complained that it was inappropriate to have him deliver the address and receive an honorary degree since he diverges so profoundly from the church’s teachings.

Notre Dame said it had invited Mr. Obama — the sixth president to give a commencement address here — because of his commitment to social justice and his history-making role as the first African-American president.

While several hundred people attended an anti-abortion Mass, about 100 abortion opponents demonstrated against the president’s visit at the edge of campus, shouting back and forth with a smaller number of abortion rights demonstrators. They yelled through megaphones, waved banners at motorists and distributed leaflets to pedestrians. Nearly 40 protesters were arrested trying to enter the campus, Sgt. Bill Redman of the St. Joseph County Police Department said, including Norma McCorvey, the plaintiff in Roe v. Wade, who has become a campaigner against abortion.

“How dare you honor him?” read a billboard on a road outside South Bend. A plane overhead pulled a banner with a picture of the feet of an aborted fetus.

Jon Buttaci, a graduating senior who boycotted the commencement ceremony in favor of a small vigil at the Grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes, said: “The Catholicism on this campus doesn’t match up with what the larger church is teaching. We’re standing up for prestige instead of standing up for the church.”

In his address, Mr. Obama did not engage on the merits of the debate on abortion; he instead made an appeal to each side of the issue. He said he supported a “sensible conscience clause” allowing health care providers to withhold abortion or other services that conflicted with religious beliefs. And he recalled agreeing with an anti-abortion voter who complained that his Senate campaign Web site in 2006 had demonized those who disagreed with Mr. Obama by calling them “right-wing ideologues.”

“Each side will continue to make its case to the public with passion and conviction,” he said. “But surely we can do so without reducing those with differing views to caricature.”

The modest protests here were amplified on national airwaves. “The problem here is that we’re trivializing abortion,” the Rev. Frank Pavone, national director of Priests for Life, said on “Fox News Sunday.” “But the people are speaking out. People are getting angry that 1.2 million children are being aborted every year.”

Michael Steele, chairman of the Republican National Committee and a Catholic, said Notre Dame should have allowed Mr. Obama to speak but not given him an honorary degree. “I think it’s inappropriate,” Mr. Steele said on “Meet the Press” on NBC. “And the president should speak, but the degree should not be conferred.”

The crowd inside the Joyce Center enthusiastically supported Mr. Obama, erupting into sustained cheers when he arrived. Some graduating students adorned their mortarboards with a yellow cross and baby feet, a symbol of the anti-abortion movement. But just as many had the president’s red-white-and-blue campaign logo on theirs, and the crowd sided with him against hecklers.

When a man sitting in the rafters of the stadium began shouting, the crowd drowned him out, and he was taken away by security officers. Three other men stood up one at a time within the next few minutes shouting “abortion is murder” and “stop killing our children.” The crowd responded by shouting, “Yes, we can,” Mr. Obama’s campaign slogan, and “We are N.D.,” a Notre Dame chant.

Mr. Obama added his own ad lib. “We’re not going to shy away from things that are uncomfortable sometimes,” he said as one heckler was led away.

Mr. Obama has tried to sidestep confrontation over abortion, saying at one point that he wanted “to tamp down some of the anger surrounding this issue.” He repealed President George W. Bush’s restrictions on federal money for international family planning groups and embryonic stem cell research. But while he endorsed abortion rights legislation during the campaign, he said last month that “the Freedom of Choice Act is not my highest legislative priority.”

The Notre Dame invitation and the pending retirement of Justice David H. Souter, who voted to uphold abortion rights on the Supreme Court, pushed the issue to the forefront. And a new Gallup poll suggested a shift in public opinion. Fifty-one percent called themselves “pro-life” compared with 42 percent who described themselves as “pro-choice” — the first time a majority has embraced the position since Gallup began asking the question in 1995.

As Mr. Obama departed, his motorcade passed a few dozen protesters shouting at an intersection and holding signs that showed fetuses and said things like “Notre Dame spiritually sold out.” Others approaching campus for the ceremony were likewise greeted by photographs of mangled fetuses.

Many demonstrators had no affiliation with Notre Dame. “You’re not a Christian university,” shouted Mona Wenger, 54, who said she was not Catholic. “You have invited the worst baby killer in the nation.”

Jim Leeson, 65, said he came from Garrett, Ind., to attend a Mass opposing abortion and to “prayerfully protest.”

“It’s time for this university to get back to its roots and values,” Mr. Leeson said. “I’m glad this is happening here.”

Most students stayed away from the demonstrations. Melissa Pirkey, a sociology graduate student, stood alongside the anti-abortion protesters with her own placard: “This ND student welcomes Obama.”

With mortarboard in hand, Robert Kessler, 22, a graduating senior, wandered among the protesters and shook his head. “Some of these pictures are grotesque, and I don’t want them to be part of my graduation,” Mr. Kessler said. “If these groups wanted to make a difference, they could have better used their money on homes for unwed mothers.”



He Came, He Spoke, He Conquered
THIS CATHOLIC'S VIEW
By Thomas J. Reese, S.J.
Copyright by The Washington Post
MAY 17, 2009; 5:15 PM ET
http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/georgetown/2009/05/he_came_he_spoke_he_conquered.html?hpid=talkbox1


President Obama's reception at Notre Dame showed once again that a new generation of Americans, including Catholics, is looking for a different kind of leader, not one who speaks down to his audience, demands strict loyalty and demonizes opponents, but one who addresses complexity with honesty, acknowledges disagreements and tries to bring people together for the common good.

President Obama showed himself to be respectful of Catholic views, of Catholic institutions like Notre Dame and of Catholic leaders like Notre Dame's former president, Father Ted Hesburgh, and Chicago's former archbishop, Cardinal Joseph Bernardin.
In his speech, he praised Notre Dame for being, in the words of Father Hesburgh, both a lighthouse and a crossroads. "The lighthouse that stands apart, shining with the wisdom of the Catholic tradition, while the crossroads is where 'differences of culture and religion and conviction can coexist with friendship, civility, hospitality and especially love.'"

It was clear that Obama saw Cardinal Bernardin, whom he met in Chicago, as a model of leadership:

[Cardinal Bernardin] stood as both a lighthouse and a crossroads--unafraid to speak his mind on moral issues ranging from poverty, AIDS and abortion to the death penalty and nuclear war. And yet, he was congenial and gentle in his persuasion, always trying to bring people together; always trying to find common ground. Just before he died, a reporter asked Cardinal Bernardin about this approach to his ministry. And he said, "You can't really get on with preaching the Gospel until you've touched minds and hearts."

President Obama went on to say that he learned this "tradition of cooperation and understanding...with the help of the Catholic Church" as a community organizer for a group of Catholic parishes in Chicago. He even credited his experience of working with Catholic parishes as a community organizer for making him a religious person: "It was through this service that I was brought to Christ."

President Obama did exactly what he needed to do at Notre Dame. He challenged the students to take on the problems of the day, he spoke beyond them to the wider audience of Catholic citizens and presented a demeanor that contrasted with those who tried to paint him as a demonic, anti-life fanatic. His message was the need to work together to solve the problems and challenges facing the world not by exacerbating divisions but by bringing people together.

This lesson goes beyond the abortion debate to all the domestic and international challenges that we face. As he told the graduates, "we must find a way to reconcile our ever-shrinking world with its ever-growing diversity--diversity of thought, of culture and of belief. In short, we must find a way to live together as one human family."

But he acknowledged, "even bringing together persons of good will, men and women of principle and purpose, can be difficult."

Sounding more like a preacher than a politician, he asked that we extend the "presumption of good faith" to those who disagree with us. "Because when we do that--when we open our hearts and our minds to those who may not think like we do or believe what we do--that's when we discover at least the possibility of common ground."

It is clear where he thinks this common ground can be on abortion, which he declared has "both moral and spiritual dimensions."

So let's work together to reduce the number of women seeking abortions by reducing unintended pregnancies, and making adoption more available, and providing care and support for women who do carry their child to term. Let's honor the conscience of those who disagree with abortion, and draft a sensible conscience clause, and make sure that all of our health care policies are grounded in clear ethics and sound science, as well as respect for the equality of women.
This will not satisfy those who want to outlaw abortion, but can we not all work together to reduce the number of abortions? The political reality is that abortion is not going to be made illegal anytime soon. Simply as an intermediate strategy pro-life people should join with Obama in doing everything possible to reduce the number of abortions. Not to do so is to put politics above the life of the unborn.

And abortion is only one of the many challenges that we face. Add to that finding "a path back to prosperity," deciding "how we respond to a global economy that left millions behind even before this crisis hit," saving "God's creation from a changing climate that threatens to destroy it," and seeking "peace at a time when there are those who will stop at nothing to do us harm." And more.

As the President told the graduates, "no one person, or religion, or nation can meet these challenges alone. Our very survival has never required greater cooperation and understanding among all people from all places than at this moment in history."





In Notre Dame speech, Obama skips thorny details on abortion
By Clarence Page
Copyright © 2009, Chicago Tribune
May 20, 2009
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/chi-oped0520pagemay20,0,4217525.column


As I considered the controversy surrounding President Barack Obama's commencement speech at the University of Notre Dame, I recalled a late Irish Catholic friend whose civil rights activism I admired, even if we didn't agree on everything.

One day a word in one of my columns disturbed him so much that he called me on it. I had decried the "yahoos" who wanted to ban the right of women to choose abortion. Calmly, but firmly, he let me know that he opposed abortion and he didn't think of himself as a yahoo.

I agreed that he was not, by any means. I apologized for any offense he might have taken and promised to avoid such sweeping generalities. We agreed to disagree on abortion and didn't let it get in the way of the many issues on which we agreed.

In today's media age of talk-show ideologues poking one another as "socialists," "fascists," "pinheads" or "world's worst persons," talk of civility and comity -- the ability of adversaries to work together on mutual interests -- sounds downright quaint.

Yet, that was the theme Obama appropriately promoted in his commencement speech, which had drawn controversy at the major Catholic university because of his pro-choice views on abortion.

Obama set up his theme with an episode like my own, drawn from his second book, "The Audacity of Hope." During his 2004 U.S. Senate campaign, a self-described "pro-life" Christian doctor e-mailed Obama's Web site to complain about a posted entry. The site said Obama would fight "right-wing ideologues who want to take away a woman's right to choose."

"I do not ask at this point that you oppose abortion," the doctor wrote, "only that you speak about this issue in fair-minded words."

Obama wrote back, he said, and thanked the doctor. "I didn't change my underlying position, but I did tell my staff to change the words on my Web site," he said. He also vowed to extend the same presumption of good faith to others, regardless of their agreement with him, "because ... that's when we discover at least the possibility of common ground."

The Notre Dame speech was classic Obama the pragmatist: Look past ideology, try to ignore disagreements and work together on mutual interests.

"So let us work together to reduce the number of women seeking abortions," he said, sparking rolling applause. "Let's reduce unintended pregnancies. Let's make adoption more available. Let's provide care and support for women who do carry their children to term. Let's honor the conscience of those who disagree with abortion, and draft a sensible conscience clause, and make sure that all of our health-care policies are grounded not only in sound science, but also in clear ethics, as well as respect for the equality of women."

Each of those points acknowledged the moral tragedy of abortion and was greeted with enthusiastic applause. This, too, was classic Obama. His eloquent come-together oratory enabled him to leave the university like a hero, even though he glossed over the thorny specifics that drive wedges between people of goodwill when words are hammered into law.

For example, Obama's call for a "sensible conscience clause" rankles "pro-life" and "pro-choice" advocates who have very different definitions of "sensible." A federal regulation permits doctors, pharmacists and other health-care workers to refuse to provide medical services for reasons of religion or conscience. Obama's administration has taken steps to replace provisions added under former President George W. Bush's administration, charging that the Bush rules unfairly reduce access to abortions for women in rural or underserved areas.

Also unmentioned in Obama's speech were late-term (also known as "partial-birth") abortions, parental notification of abortions for teenage girls or the proposed Freedom of Choice Act, which would codify the U.S. Supreme Court's Roe vs. Wade abortion legalization decision. That law would be "the first thing I'd do as president," he promised Planned Parenthood in 2007. But in a recent news conference he said the bill is "not my highest legislative priority."

As Obama said of the abortion issue, "at some level, the views of the two camps are irreconcilable." That's because Americans hold no values more dear than "life" and "choice." In the abortion debate, those values clash head-on.

Obama also plans to convene a series of discussions with people on both sides of the debate and draft a set of policy recommendations by late summer.

For now, by focusing on civility, the president apparently hopes to defuse the abortion powder keg long enough to address his higher priorities. The economy, national security and health care are going to be tough fights. But they're probably not as "irreconcilable" as today's culture war between "life" and "choice."

Clarence Page is on the Tribune's editorial board and blogs at chicagotribune.com/pagespage cptime@aol.com