SOUTH BEND, Indiana, September 7, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) – Ruth Bader Ginsburg, one of the U.S. Supreme Court’s most pro-abortion and gay “marriage” justices, is scheduled for two appearances next week at the University of Notre Dame.
Advocates of Catholic identity at Notre Dame and other Catholic colleges expressed concern and criticism over the university hosting Ginsburg.
William Dempsey, president of the Board of Directors of the Sycamore Trust, a group of Notre Dame alumni, isn’t as troubled over her scheduled “conversation with law students,” calling it “unexceptionable.”
“That will be Notre Dame functioning as a university,” Dempsey said.
Ginsburg’s general appearance at the university, however, is another matter, where Dempsey expects her to be publicly lauded despite her support for abortion and homosexual “marriage,” both of which violate Catholic Church teaching, and despite the justice’s opposition to religious liberty, such as in the Hobby Lobby case.
“The Justice’s appearance thereafter in the Purcell Pavilion before what will be a very large audience — ticket distribution has been suspended — will plainly be something quite different,” Dempsey told LifeSiteNews. “It will be a celebratory appearance in which the Justice will be fulsomely praised and warmly applauded.”
“That will be Notre Dame functioning as an admirer of one of the country’s most influential supporters of abortion and same-sex marriage and influential opponents of religious liberty,” he continued. “That is to say, as with Notre Dame’s recent award of the Laetare Medal to Vice President Joe Biden, it will be Notre Dame proclaiming once again that neither secular academe nor anyone else opposing the Church on these vital issues ought to hold Notre Dame’s professed Catholicism against it.”
Ginsburg’s “conversation” with Notre Dame law students will be Tuesday, September 13, according to the university’s website. The event is scheduled for an hour in the middle of the school day at an on-campus courtroom. Ginsburg is slated to “talk with students about a variety of issues” at the event moderated by a Notre Dame associate law professor who also directs its Center for Civil and Human Rights.
Ginsburg will also “share a conversation with the university community” the night before, “engag(ing) in a dialogue on a wide range of issues” with Notre Dame alum and Trustee and U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Ann Claire Williams. As of August 31, ticket reservations for the two-hour September 12 event sponsored by the Office of the University President, Notre Dame Law School and Notre Dame Student Government group were suspended because of high demand.
Appointed in 1993 by Bill Clinton, Ginsberg has a history of open and ardent support for abortion and homosexual “marriage.”
The justice presided over a homosexual “marriage” for two men last year, at least her fourth such ceremony, and one that took place between the time Ginsburg and her colleagues on the Supreme Court heard arguments and rendered a decision in the June 2015 Obergefell case redefining marriage.
In a 2009 New York Times interview on abortions and government-funded healthcare, Ginsburg said Medicaid should cover abortions, and that she had originally thought Roe v. Wade would enable such coverage so as to control the population of groups “that we don't want to have too many of.” Three years later, she later backpedaled on the statement.
Last year, she referred to pro-life laws regulating the abortion industry as a “crying shame” for purportedly making abortion inaccessible to poor women.
Cardinal Newman Society Editor Adam Cassandra sees issues with both campus appearances, telling LifeSiteNews, “Obviously, there are Catholic identity concerns in that Justice Ginsburg has been very outspoken, especially recently, in her public advocacy for abortion and same-sex ‘marriage’ in opposition to Church teaching — which isn’t mentioned in Notre Dame’s news release about these ‘conversations.’”
“It’s unclear if any representative of Notre Dame will be willing and able to adequately challenge her on such topics should they come up,” Cassandra stated. “Simply leaving it to one or two students to explain why Justice Ginsburg is wrong on these important moral issues would be abdication of the Notre Dame’s responsibilities as a Catholic university.”
“But this is the same university that just awarded Vice President Joe Biden its highest honor for an American Catholic despite decades of public opposition to Church teaching,” he continued, “so it’s not likely the incidence of scandal is something the current Notre Dame administration would care about now.”
“Still,” he concluded, “Notre Dame continues to be a Catholic university, and we should expect that every official action of the university is in accord with its Catholic identity, per Ex corde Ecclesiae.”
Issues with Notre Dame’s Catholic identity have abounded for decades, but more recently with criticism earlier this year of Notre Dame’s choice to honor pro-abortion and homosexual “marriage” Vice President Joe Biden with its annual award of the Laetare Medal to an American Catholic in recognition of outstanding service to the Church and society. University president Holy Cross Father John Jenkins accused critics of acrimony and intransigence.
The Notre Dame president saw fit at the time to renew his continual defense of Notre Dame’s 2009 honoring of pro-abortion Barack Obama with an honorary degree and featuring him as a keynote speaker, the controversy occurring in spite of objection from 83 cardinals, bishops, and archbishops, among them Notre Dame’s local ordinary, and a 367,000-signature petition.
Last year, a prominent priest-professor was compelled to back out of a project providing Notre Dame students information to help ensure they get an authentic Catholic education at the university
Notre Dame denied official recognition in 2014 for a student group dedicated to promoting traditional marriage at the same time it had officially sanctioned a student group for homosexuals.
And while other Catholic entities have fought the federal government in court to preserve their Catholic principles, the university announced in 2014 it would willingly comply with the immoral HHS contraception mandate, saying as well that year it would offer employee benefits to “same-sex spouses.”
Back in 2006, the University hosted the vulgar “Vagina Monologues” on campus.