No President Has More Threatened The Catholic Conscience

Why are so many Catholics so offended by Notre Dame’s honoring President Obama with a doctor of laws? It is not just abortion (though that matters). It is the threat that the Obama administration poses to Catholic institutions that heal the sick and teach the young. The age old question of how far Catholics must go in opposing evil approved of by the State is present here. Barack Obama threatens the conscience of Catholics, and the mission of the Catholic Church in America, more than any President before him. He threatens by legislation and court appointments, in fact, to be an American Henry VIII, destroying Catholic institutions, as the Massachusetts Supreme Court destroyed Catholic adoption agencies in that state.

Before Obama and modern liberalism, religious institutions were allowed wide latitude to provide services in ways consistent with their moral mission. It helped that the gap between Christian morality and public morality was not as wide as it has now become. Nevertheless, all religious denominations were given leeway in providing such services. Under this regime the Roman Catholic Church, or one of its myriad Orders such as the Jesuits, founded schools, colleges, and hospitals throughout America. Catholic hospitals provide over ten percent of the health care in the country. Similarly, in hospice care, the provision of care for AIDS sufferers, crisis pregnancy centers and orphanages, the Catholic Church either led the way or took the lion’s share of responsibility in these fields.

This wide latitude in providing services in ways consistent with Roman Catholic belief allowed a public space for Catholic institutions that will end if President Obama, his likely judicial picks, and legislative allies have their way.

The Catholic Church had provided adoption services in Massachusetts formally for over 100 years and informally before that. It was presented with a harsh choice by Massachusetts courts: either agree to place children into the care of same sex couples or cease operating. Those adoption services had been in the lead in placing older and harder to place children. Homosexual rights trumped liberties formerly taken for granted in Massachusetts.

In New Mexico, where the Catholic Church first set up missions and said Mass and heard confessions before any Puritan landed at Plymouth Rock, or Cavalier saw Jamestown, Christian photographers have been fined for refusing to record a lesbian commitment ceremony. This was required by the “civil rights” laws of that state, one that Obama’s allies wish to make a federal law.

Similarly, the Obama administration has done all in its power to end the conscience clause for medical providers on abortion. President Obama has promised to sign a bill that would not only provide government money for abortions, but prohibit health care workers from refusing to participate in them. Other laws prevent the states from requiring medical schools, including Catholic ones, to provide abortion training. These too, must go.

Nor is abortion the end of the story. In states like Oregon and Washington assisted suicide is legal, and often part of the cost containment policy of the State. If hospitals can be compelled to provide abortions, why can they not be compelled to practice euthanasia?

Catholic educational institutions are also under threat. The Roman Catholic Church operates the largest non-governmental school system in the United States. Legislatively and through court action the Obama administration is extremely hostile to religious schools. That means that the poor and middle class, whom Catholic schools overwhelmingly serve, must be funded by parents with after-tax dollars. Their taxes go to send other people’s children to substandard public schools. Or course, under Obama there will be fewer after tax dollars. The Supreme Court has allowed programs that are directed at all students to aid religious schools as well. This settlement is also under assault in the Courts.

By mandating curricula at odds with Catholic teaching, filing lawsuits to prevent Catholic schools from receiving funds that non-religious private schools receive and cutting funds that allow private schools to comply with state mandates, Catholic educational institutions are undermined.

Notre Dame is ground zero in whether the Catholic colleges will remain Catholic or go the way of the mainline Protestant institutions. There is zero dispute in the Catholic community on whether pro-abortion, anti-natural marriage speakers may come to campus and present their views. The question is whether these people will be honored by the school with degrees. The answer ought to be no. The question is not debate, it is affirmation and the imprimatur of the Church. “Invincible Ignorance” does not deserve a certificate of learning from a Catholic institution.

Finally, there is the political aspect of this travesty. Those who want Roe v. Wade to endure also want to divide Catholics from their Church. Barack Hussein Obama is the premiere practitioner of this strategy in America. One fear, that certain elements of the Right, in this case the Catholic Traditionalists, will be seen as rejecting President Obama as “their President” is legitimate but not dispositive. No Catholic states that President Obama was not elected properly or is not legitimately the President. Many on the Left want to drive Catholicism from the public square and make it tantamount to a hobby practiced at home. Not coincidently they wish to squelch any practical opposition to abortion. They use every tool at their disposal to do so. President Obama has offered the power of the federal government as one such tool and that is why he should not have been honored by Notre Dame.