Biden Declines Notre Dame Invite - After Catholics Object To His Presence

P. Gardner Goldsmith | May 25, 2021
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President Biden is steering clear of Notre Dame this spring.

As Michael Tennant reports for The New American, Biden opted to “turn down” the commencement speech invite from Catholic Notre Dame University as more than four-and-a-half thousand people signed a petition objecting to the pro-abortion politician’s presence on the campus.

President Joe Biden turned down the opportunity to deliver this year’s commencement address at the University of Notre Dame after a scathing petition urging the Catholic school not to honor the professing Catholic president garnered more than 4,600 signatures.

That massive response indicates just how strongly devout Catholics feel about abortion and government forcing supposedly “free” people to subsidize abortion through organizations such as Planned Parenthood.

The petition, a letter to Notre Dame president John Jenkins, begins: ‘We, the undersigned members of the Notre Dame community and others dismayed by the pro-abortion and anti-religious liberty agenda of President Joe Biden, having learned … that you are considering inviting President Biden to be Commencement speaker and, accordingly, recipient of an honorary degree, write to urge that you not do so.’

Of course, even if one were to remove the towering abortion issue and Biden’s anti-Catholic hypocrisy on it, the idea of inviting a man who has consistently broken his oath to uphold the US Constitution, who has politically courted Ukrainian neo-Nazis in the Svoboda Party (again, breaking the Constitution to do so), spouted outrageous lies, and repeatedly plagiarized the words of others might be disqualifying factors the heads of this once-august school might just want to consider.

But, regardless of the lax standards of the University heads – or, perhaps because of them -- on-the-ground Catholics are rising to assert their principles.

Notes Tennant:

In a January interview with the online Catholic newspaper Crux, Jenkins hinted that he would invite Biden to speak at commencement, citing the university’s ‘long tradition of welcoming U.S. presidents to campus.’

The petitioners pointed out that the ‘long tradition’ is ‘not … unbroken,’ noting that, as far as they knew, neither Donald Trump nor Bill Clinton was invited to speak on campus. (Trump’s vice president, Mike Pence, did give the 2017 commencement address.)

Of course, Jenkins offered the typical feel-good malarkey about “openness to those with whom one disagrees.”

Jenkins further stated, ‘We can and should welcome elected leaders to our campus … while we acknowledge where we disagree.’

While the petitioners agreed with that statement in general, they maintained that having Biden as commencement speaker would confer honor upon him, which conflicts with the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ pronouncement that ‘the Catholic community and Catholic institutions should not honor those who act in defiance of our fundamental moral principles.’

Tennant also noted the petitioners’ observation that when, in 2009, Notre Dame heads invited pro-abortion Barack Obama to the university, 83 cardinals, bishops, and archbishops criticized the school’s administrators. The petitioners correctly pointed out that Biden’s policy proposals and previous actions have shown him to be even more virulently anti-life than the anti-life Obama. 

They observed that, contra church teaching that abortion is a mortal sin, ‘Biden’s actions already taken and those promised will result in the killing of countless innocent unborn both here and abroad.’ In an appendix, they listed several of his pro-abortion policies, including his reversals on federal funding of abortion, his promise to force Catholic institutions to pay for abortifacient coverage for their employees, and his withdrawal from the Geneva Consensus Declaration, which denies the existence of rights to abortion and taxpayer funding of it.

The evidence of Biden’s incredible anti-life, anti-Catholic, anti-Constitution, anti-liberty statements, actions, and proposals is abundantly clear.

Clear to the average Catholics watching Notre Dame, but, evidently, not clear to its President or his Administration.

 

Related: Obama Admin. Buying Aborted Baby Parts From Planned Parenthood Customer

 

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