Word: dame
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Tuesday when it was announced that television personality Matt Lauer would be this year’s Class Day speaker, other colleges have seen far more spirited reactions to their graduation orators. Barack Obama will deliver the commencement address at the University of Notre Dame this May. Far from being overjoyed at the news, many Catholics are fuming at the choice. Since the decision was announced, groups and individuals inside and outside of the Notre Dame community have made their opposition clear: Because of Obama’s status as a pro-choice politician, these “defenders...
...That news became old news faster than the average Boston College freshman gets drunk on his first St. Patrick’s Day sans parents. The defenses given for the choice were equally predictable: It was not intended to reflect the majority opinion held by members of the Notre Dame community on the issue of abortion, but rather to honor a president committed to principles of social justice that Catholics also espouse. The media flurry that chased the protests illuminated the arguments of supporters and opponents of Obama but has missed the larger question here: Why are people so surprised...
...from a secular perspective, as well, Notre Dame has failed ignominiously. The proper role of the university, in transmitting and elaborating on the collected wisdom of the ages, is to pursue and safeguard truth. Secular universities, enraptured by modish postmodernism and value-free social science, understandably have abandoned that creed. But for an institution sustained by the Catholic faith, which still, however unfashionably, purports to serve and honor the truth, such a mission ought not be discarded thoughtlessly...
...Catholic Church teaches that abortion and stem-cell research is wrong and forbids its faithful from supporting such practices, whether directly in person or indirectly through the ballot box. In inviting a president whose recent agenda prominently has contradicted those tenets, Notre Dame intimates that the Catholic truth it purportedly upholds is malleable and appropriately sacrificed for the fleeting prestige that a presidential commencement address would confer...
...Notre Dame provided the site several years ago for New York Governor Mario Cuomo to offer his infamous rationalization that, as a Catholic, he was personally opposed to abortion, but, as a public figure, he should not necessarily refuse to support it. Such a defense, mounted by every progressive Catholic politician since, clearly indicates that “truth” imposes no obligation if public opinion and the machinations of well-funded lobbyists are not fortuitously aligned. That shameful episode, a source of scandal to faithful Catholics even today, threatens to repeat itself...