As if anyone could forget – President Obama’s commencement address at Notre Dame will take place this upcoming weekend.
What he will say, how students will react and how the university administration will continue to defend its decision to honor the pro-abortion rights president have of course been fodder to the firestorm of debate – both within and outside the Church – over the past couple months.
Most recently, Notre Dame president Fr. John Jenkins issued a letter to graduating seniors, asserting the university’s commitment to the sanctity of life and the fact that conferring an honorary degree “has never been a political statement or an endorsement of policy.”
That’s unlikely to convince one group of seniors to attend their own commencement ceremony – they’ll skip it in protest and convene in a prayer vigil, instead.
Earlier this week, the White House gave its most lengthy to-date reaction to the debate, with press secretary Robert Gibbs arguing that “there’s one group organizing a boycott” versus 23 student groups that support the honoring and invitation. (ABC, however, points out a couple errors from Gibbs, including the fact that that “one group” is actually a coalition of 11 organizations).
As for what the president will actually say this Sunday, and whether he’ll touch the controversy at all, his commencement address at Arizona State University last night could perhaps provide a clue.
ASU drew its share of media attention earlier this spring when a spokesperson said President Obama would not receive an honorary degree from the school, due to his lack of a “body of work” that would normally precede such a distinction.
Not only did the president address that head on, but he wove it into his advice for the graduates – “No matter how much you’ve done, how successful you’ve been, there’s always more to learn, always more to achieve,” he said. “You too cannot rest on your laurels … your own body of work is also yet to come.”
Will Obama do similarly at Notre Dame? With major newspapers now joining the bandwagon and printing stories on the Notre Dame-abortion-Catholic Church drama, the lack of even an allusion to the debate would be just as obvious as an actual statement during his address on his support for abortion.
So with Obama’s ASU approach as a model, as well as his careful handling of abortion on other occasions, here’s a prediction: he will likely make a general allusion to issues upon which people of good will and moral character disagree, and if he mentions abortion outright, he will classify it (as he always does) as “a serious, moral and ethical issue” on which he respects the views of his opponents. But then he will likely urge the graduates to apply their education toward dialogue, building bridges and finding common ground on America’s divisive issues. It will be followed a call to help move the nation forward and making their alma mater proud, a relatively generic graduation speech.
As Mr. Obama heads back to the White House, a central question will remain: how Notre Dame will live out its Catholic identity in the future, and how its newest graduating class will do likewise. As the President told the ASU graduates, there is still a body of work to be formed.
Wow! What insights! How very original!
Posted by: Preston | May 14, 2009 at 03:51 PM