By Hilary White
ROME, May 11, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Notre Dame University, with its invitation to President Barack Obama to give the commencement address on May 17, has hurt its reputation and Catholic identity, perhaps irrevocably, a prominent US Catholic scholar and author told LifeSiteNews.com in Rome on Friday. Robert Royal, a professor of history and president of the Faith and Reason Institute in Washington, D.C., told LSN, “I don’t think this is going to end well for anyone.”
The university, that he described as having lived under a “sacred canopy” of its religious and academic identity, has made a critical error with the invitation. “I think that, in spite of the fact that the they’ll manage the public relations of this deftly, it’s going to hurt Notre Dame, and not just financially.”
“This sort of thing doesn’t do well,” he said. “It doesn’t contribute to the distinct identity that even Catholic universities now recognise they need to have.”
Royal, an author, lecturer and editor-in-chief of The Catholic Thing online magazine, was in Rome last week as one side of a debate organized by the Italian publishers of his book, The God That Did Not Fail: How Religion Built and Sustains the West. Arguing against a leading Italian secularist, Luciano Pellicani, Royal said that western history has shown that the so-called “triumph of reason” over religion has led to some of the bloodiest episodes of the last two centuries, from the Terror of the French Revolution, the Soviet Gulags, the Nazi Holocaust and, he said, “the slaughter of the innocents via abortion.”
Royal described the invitation, and Notre Dame’s persistent refusal to admit any mistake in the face of opposition from over 70 bishops, as a “watershed moment.”
“It’s a watershed for Catholicism in the US, if what is clearly the most visible Catholic university in the country can openly, openly, ignore the wishes of our bishops expressed as a body.
“As a body, the USCCB has asked Catholic universities not to honour people who represent values directly in contradiction to our own, primarily anti-life and family issues. I think this is going to speak ill of Notre Dame for a long time.”
He told LSN that since 1968, there has been a “deliberate effort” among some Catholic universities to try to recover their unique Catholic religious identity. “But you can’t recover it,” he said, “by means that are as weak as the surrounding culture. You have to have something that’s stronger than the surrounding culture.”
Royal responded to the assertion by Fr. Hugh Cleary, the head of the Holy Cross fathers, the religious order to which the Notre Dame president Fr. John Jenkins belongs, that it is unthinkable to dis-invite the president of the United States. “Of course you can disinvite the president,” he said. “It’s an extreme measure. But this [invitation] was not a tactful move.”
“It’s historic [to have the president give the commencement,] but it is also historic that the past 100 days have been the most radical anti-life presidency ever. And it’s imprudent for a place like Notre Dame to have discounted that.”
“For those of us who believe in the ‘Catholic thing’ – which is to say a communion of persons united with Christ – it sins against ‘communio’ to do this. If it’s not a sin, it’s at least an offense against communio.”
Read related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:
Exclusive Interview: Head of Holy Cross Order on Sanctions against Notre Dame Pres., “That’s Rather Extreme”
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2009/apr/09040206.html