Jesuit: Notre Dame Right to Invite Obama

OK everyone, call off the dogs. We were getting ourselves all worked up about this Notre Dame/Obama scandal. But I think we should all feel a little foolish now.

It turns out that Notre Dame is perfectly right to honor Obama. Just ask Fr. Thomas Reese of The On Faith blog.

Fr. Thomas Reese offered five reasons why Notre Dame was right to invite and honor Barack Obama. Let’s go over them, shall we?

1. “In his personal life, Obama has never acted in defiance of the fundamental moral principle that abortion is wrong.”

Perfectly true. Except if you count his voting for abortion every chance he gets including voting against legislation to restrict partial birth abortions, battling Jill Stanek for the right to murder infants born alive during an abortion, funding overseas abortions, voting against prohibiting minors crossing state lines for abortion, and declaring it open season on embryos by funding embryonic stem cell research. But other than that, he’s been great.

2.”Publicly, Obama has never spoken out against the fundamental moral principle that abortion is wrong.”

Obama is the guy who said, “I don’t want them punished with a baby” or did Fr. Reese never hear that one. You see, in that statement Obama is clearly making abortion a good that stands above the inconvenience of a crisis pregnancy. In his construction, it it at least a lesser evil if not a good.

3. “He supports legal restrictions on third trimester abortions with a health-of-the-mother exemption.”

What part of the “Freedom of Choice Act” does Fr. Reese not understand?

4. “Although he does not believe that other abortions can be made illegal, he supports programs to reduce the number of abortions.”

No. He supports handing out condoms like breath mints and thinks that saying they will reduce abortions makes it an easy sell. Although nobody has ever found that more condoms leads to less abortion. Nobody.

5. “Notre Dame is not honoring Obama because of his views on abortion but because he is President of the United States, as has been made clear by the Rev. John Jenkins, Notre Dame’s president.”

Fr. Jenkin’s intentions of honoring President Obama are unclear. I don’t think many people believe he’s honoring him because of Obama’s stance on abortion. But what many Catholics are concerned with is that Fr. Jenkins is ignoring Obama’s radical history of supporting abortion.

Much like Fr. Reese.