Notre Dame scandal: Obama not role model for Catholics

Emailed April 6 to Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C., president at University of Notre Dame. (Confirmation reply received April 16.) To date, 24 bishops have voiced opposition.

"Rather than honor this president and condone his life-denigrating
policies, we Catholics should stand firmly in opposition and call him to task on his ethical transgressions."

Dear Father Jenkins,

Please rescind the invitation that has been accepted by President Obama to speak at commencement on May 17, and reverse the university's intent to confer on him the honorary doctor of laws degree.

Called the "abortion president" by pro-life activists, Mr. Obama’s appearance at the university would contradict the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ policy against honoring pro-abortion politicians. In 2004, the USCCB approved a policy statement regarding "Catholics in Political Life," which states, with reference to pro-abortion politicians, "They should not be given awards, honors or platforms which would suggest support for their actions."

It is an insult to all Catholics; and it would be a lasting disgrace for Notre Dame, as one of our country's leading Catholic universities, and an unwanted complicity for Catholics of conscience everywhere, to have a legacy of hosting and commiserating with this president, who in the first months of his term has done unprecedented moral damage to implicate all taxpayers in funding abortions at home and abroad.

Additionally, this president has supported abortionists’ leaving viable babies – survivors of botched abortion procedures -- to die, thereby compromising the life-protecting and preserving oaths of health care workers in our nation’s hospitals.

Now the Obama administration intends to rescind health service regulations that would result in health care workers being forced to provide such services as abortions in violation of their beliefs and consciences. USCCB President Cardinal Francis George states: "No government should come between an individual person and God—that’s what America is supposed to be about.” Indeed, Mr. Obama’s proposed rescission of these protective regulations amounts to government oppression and threatens the inalienable rights to freedom of religion and conscience and speech that are protected under the First Amendment.

Furthermore, Mr. Obama has promised to sign into law the Freedom of Choice Act, which further would violate and suppress constitutional rights to exercise freedoms of religion, conscience, and speech, and would enforce the taxpayer-funded genocide of unborn infants in America. As a result, Catholic practitioners of conscience could lose their livelihoods, and Catholic health facilities would close. The light of our society’s strongest bastion of reason – the Catholic Church -- would be extinguished, and its voice would be strangulated, in a legalized culture of death in America.

Mr. Obama’s embryonic stem cell research policies, as well -- unnecessary in the light of advances made in adult stem cell research -- are contrary to a respect for the dignity of created life, and they fly in the face of every conscionable Catholic.

Catholic teachings state that “the measure of every institution is whether it threatens or enhances the life and dignity of the human person” (USCCB “Themes of Catholic Social Teaching,” 2005). Mr. Obama’s policies regarding abortion, conscientious objection, and stem cell research threaten the life and dignity of the human person. Rather than honor this president and condone his life-denigrating policies, we Catholics should stand firmly in opposition and call him to task on his ethical transgressions.

Please don't support or honor this president and his problematic policies. He is not a model to raise up before your students, or before Catholics anywhere, to admire or to emulate. Only further harm to our nation’s damaged moral fabric, and to our historic Catholic values, ideals, and identity would come of it.

Please rescind the invitation. Please reverse the decision.

Many prayers for you, your students, and for our country,

Nancy E. Thoerig and Mary W. Thoerig
Mount Savage, MD 21545

cc: Patrick McCartan (fellow and board chairman emeritas), Cardinal Francis George (USCCB president), Archbishop Edwin F. O'Brien (Baltimore)
mailed copies to: Bishop John M. D'Arcy (Fort Wayne-South Bend), Richard C. Notebaert (board chairman)

Constitution a product of Christian influence

Written by Glenn C. Riffey, Cumbelrand, Maryland, and published in Cumberland Times-News Letters April 14, 2009.

To the Editor:

In his letter of “Why shouldn’t we honor the Constitution?” (April 8 Times-News) Mr. Jeffrey Davis makes the comment that the Constitution is truly a secular document.

If he means that it was written without any Christian influence, I totally disagree. Here is why.

During the Constitutional Convention, when things were becoming quite tense, Benjamin Franklin not only called for prayer but stated that “he could hardly conceive a transaction of such momentous importance — referring to the Constitution — to pass without being in some degree influenced, guided and governed by that omnipotent, omnipresent and beneficent Ruler, in whom all inferior spirits live and move and have their being.”

Now, Dr. Franklin was no Christian but he was highly influenced by the British evangelist, George Whitefield, and was a close friend of his.

In addition, convention President George Washington stated, “This event is in the hands of God.” He went on to say, “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.”

James Madison, the chief architect of the Constitution and fourth president of the United States stated in the Federalist Papers no. 43 that the authority for ratification of the Constitution by nine states under Article VII of the document was the same “laws of Nature and Nature’s God” to which Thomas Jefferson, our third president, had appealed for our right to exist as a nation in the Declaration of Independence.

In the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson wrote that liberty was a gift of God and an “unalienable right” to be secured by government. In the Constitution the preamble states that one of the purposes of the government is to “secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Prosperity [sic]" (should be "posterity").

According to Washington, one of those liberties was the right to worship God.

Last, but not least, John Adams, our second president succeeding Washington said this, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” In other words, Adams knew that unless we kept moral and religious principles that the Constitution would not work.

During these times Christianity was a daily living way of life, and even non-Christians were greatly influenced by Christian principles. Without the guidance of God and Christian influence in the midst of this convention the Constitution would not be the document that it is.

he Constitution of the United States may not be a Christian church document, but it was by Christian reason and influence that gave way for the liberties that it gives, even to the point of one wanting to deny any Christian influence upon the document at all.

This same Christian influence is what gives Mr. Davis the right to say that it is only a secular document and for that he should give thanks to God for the ability to do so.

Glenn C. Riffey
Cumberland

President intends to remove 'conscientious objection' clause

Submitted to Cumbelrand Times-News Monday, April 6, 2009.

"Everyone who believes in conscientious objection should write
to the Department of Health and Human Services and to President Obama to let them know your objections...."

To the Editor:

The Obama administration intends to rescind health service regulations that would result in health care workers being forced to provide such services as abortions in violation of their beliefs and consciences.

Everyone who believes in conscientious objection should write to the Department of Health and Human Services and to President Obama to let them know your objections to this proposed rescission of regulations that currently protect that right.

The deadline to log comments is April 9.

DHHS can be emailed through the Maryland Catholic Conference web site at mdcathcon.org. Click on “Protect Medical Conscience Rights.” The President can be emailed at whitehouse.gov. At the far right bottom of the home page, click “Contact.”

United States Conference of Catholic Bishops President Cardinal Francis George states: "No government should come between an individual person and God—that’s what America is supposed to be about.” Indeed, Mr. Obama’s proposed rescission of these protective regulations amounts to government oppression and threatens the inalienable rights to freedom of religion, conscience and speech that are protected under the First Amendment.

Nancy E. Thoerig
Mount Savage

View Cardinal George's message: