To the editor:
On May 17 of this year, President Barack Obama gave the commencement address and received an honorary law degree from the University of Notre Dame. Fr. John Jenkins, president of Notre Dame, also gave President Obama a framed picture of the late Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. marching with the former long-time president of Notre Dame, Fr. Theodore Hesburgh.
During his address, President Obama, a huge supporter of abortion rights, asked, “How does each of us remain firm in our principles, and fight for what we consider right, without demonizing those with just as strongly held convictions on the other side?”
He hoped that we could find “common ground” when talking about abortion and that we could “work together to reduce the number of women seeking abortions by reducing unintended pregnancies, and making adoption more available, and providing care and support for women who do carry their child to term.”
Leaving aside for the moment whether it was appropriate for Notre Dame to invite a president whose position on abortion rights violate Church and natural law, the ultimate question is not “what we consider right,” but what is the “truth” when it comes to abortion? Is abortion the taking of an innocent human life? Yes. Is an unborn child made and created in the image of God? Yes. Do we as a nation have an obligation and duty to protect and defend innocent human life from death? Yes.
Should I as a practicing Catholic and American citizen compromise with our culture on protecting all life from conception until natural death? No. I will not compromise with the “grave moral evil” of abortion.
I wonder if President Obama would have asked Dr. King that he needed to find “common ground” with those who supported “Jim Crow laws” that denied him civil rights? Would he have asked Frederick Douglass, the great abolitionist from the 19th century, that he needed to find “common ground” with those who supported slavery?
Would he have asked Dietrich Bonhoeffer, German Lutheran pastor, to find “common ground” with those in the Nazi party who supported the Holocaust?
Yes, “we can work together to reduce the number of women seeking abortions,” but the first thing we must do is to enact laws that will protect all life from conception until natural death. How can we continually ask God to bless this country when we have a law that allows the killing of over 50 million unborn children since 1973?
Shame on Notre Dame for awarding an honorary law degree on someone who is in direct opposition to such a critical teaching of our Church and in defiance of God’s commandment of “Thou Shall Not Kill.”
Patrick Hardyman, Blanchardville