Disagree that a degree is just a piece of paper. Its the reward for students of years of hard work, and, in the case of honorary degrees, a signification of admiration and acceptance into one’s community. Maybe not the biggest thing in the world, but very meaningful to many, especially at graduation.

Sorry.

The grand movement is towards a slow disassociation from their heritage. This is of course driven by a numbers and demographic game- premise being that broader appeal somehow translates into attracting better, more diverse students.

The weakness of their approach is that folks such as myself are amazed at such counter intellectual behavior- what do they believe made those into such prestigious institutions and bastions of collegial excellence? Do colleges realize they are trading one group of students for another- making them less diverse? What distinction does that school ultimately possess amongst the other “prestigious” institutions? Or do such colleges just anticipate their “brand” and established history will cause students to toss principal and beliefs to the wind? Sure. That is perhaps a good first lesson in propaganda or liberal inculcation, but not one for independent and well reasoned thinking.

As an issue and in church teaching, abortion is very black and white. Either one supports the killing of fetuses or one does not. Mr. Obama does, and has gone to great lengths in order to establish the process globally, including previous support of what can only be termed infanticide. Abortion was one of his first priorities and missed in the 100 day accolades. In sum, this is not meeting “halfway”, it is “get on board the train is about to leave”. Sorry, I won’t be buying the ticket.

Nonetheless, this is not really the debate or discussion we should be having and once again Mr. Obama, either purposefully or misguidedly, misses the point. You don’t “meet halfway” on abortion. An abortion detractor establishes first they are against the practice, fights against proliferation, federalization and any other means of making this an acceptable practice. But that posture can not be separated from what ultimately drives that individual. It is love, compassion and understanding for our fellow man, including those who are considering or had an abortion. It is NOT a posture or policy of vehement exclusion, isolation or stigma as many abortion advocates like to characterize those against this practice. People having or believing in abortion are not the enemy or excluded from our party, in fact they are already welcomed. They are potentially the misled, uninformed, confused, conflicted or pained who need compassion and understanding. And in the end, if we agree to disagree on the issue and leave it between them and God, which is where the final resolution rests- so be it. They are still welcome in my house.

As an aside, we used to call priests who act contrary to church teaching heretics. I guess that has gone out of vogue with Catholic Church leadership.

I assume that if the election had been different and ASU had VP Palin as a speaker and gave her an honorary degree that SNL would have still been derisive of ASU for giving her one.

Hypocritical tools

– Of course, many Neuman associations probably have Fr. Jenkins types for pastors.

The left continues to beat us by redefining and twisting language to push and sell their ideas. For 8 years, you couldn’t hear GWB’s name without the word “idiot” getting snuck in there somewhere by some lefty. That became part of the general understanding of GWB.

I advocate for all of us on the right, that EVERY TIME you discuss The One, you include the word ARROGANT in there somewhere. That needs to become the major meme on Obama. We don’t have the MSM to help push this, but we do have one major advantage to pushing the Obama/arrogant theme over the Bush/idiot one: IT’S ACTUALLY TRUE!

ND’s president defended this whole commencement fiasco on the grounds of opening a dialogue with a president who holds an opposing viewpoint to Catholic teaching.

Father Jenkins, please tell me how you can have a reasoned debate with someone who isn’t honest in defining the points of disagreement from the start?

Source:
http://president.nd.edu/events-and-communications/communications/fr-jenkins-statement-on-2009-commencement-speaker

Maybe the Catholic Church is trying to appeal to “moderates”. Looks like it’s going pretty well. I am sure their pews will be overflowing since Notre Dame reached across the aisle with their bireligionship.