By Kathleen Gilbert
SOUTH BEND, Indiana, February 23, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Notre Dame University has established a new pro-life fund to in an effort to bolster the Catholic school’s pro-life identity and activity.
The Notre Dame Fund to Protect Human Life will be conducted under the auspices of the University’s Center for Ethics and Culture.
Despite the broad title, the school says the fund is intended to protect vulnerable human life in its earliest stages. “While the sanctity of human life ought to be protected in all stages, these beginning stages are particularly vulnerable ones in our contemporary culture and represent points at which human dignity and human life are subject to the most egregious attacks,” states a University press release announcing the establishment of the fund.
The University said the main purpose of the fund is “to educate Notre Dame students in the rich intellectual tradition supporting the dignity of human life, specifically in its beginning stages, and to prepare those students – through personal witness, public service and prayer – to transform the culture into one in which every human life is respected.”
The fund is also intended “to encourage relevant understanding, support and involvement among the administration and faculty; and to promote activities and projects that will enhance the university’s institutional involvement and reputation as a leader in issues pertaining to the dignity and worth of human life in its beginning stages.”
The fund is an expendable fund, which means that money within the fund can be spent immediately as needed for purposes deemed worthwhile and within the scope of the fund’s premise. Allocations from the new fund will be determined by a committee of five pro-life scholars, including the chair, David Solomon, who is director of the Center for Ethics and Culture.
Funds will go to such causes as transportation to the March for Life, supporting student pro-life clubs, pro-life speakers, seminars, research, and curriculum development, among other possibilities.
The University explained that the fund would narrow itself to advocating respect for life in its earliest stages because, while the school already addresses human-rights issues such as endemic poverty and genocide, right-to-life issues “have generally received short shrift at Notre Dame.” The student right-to-life club, it noted, currently receives little financial support or encouragement from the administration, and the pro-life identity enjoys very little recognition in such areas as the school’s website and in its freshman orientation program.
“The Notre Dame Fund to Protect Human Life is therefore specifically designed to fill this void at Notre Dame and to fund activities that will complete the Circle of Sanctity of Life commitment so central to an institution claiming Catholic character,” stated the release.
Members of the Center for Ethics and Culture were unavailable for comment.