Blog

Biden’s Hit Man, an Unexpected Laetare Awardee, & Zahm House Blues

Will @NotreDame ever end its silence on inviting @JoeBiden to speak at Commencement? Will honoring a little-known gospel singing financier end #Laetare blowback? Will canceling Zahm House end campus #Zahmantics? #GoCatholicND Click To Tweet

The University has announced an unforeseeable selection for the Laetare Medal, thrown up its hands in its efforts to bring law and order to Zahm House, and remained silent as to the 2021 Commencement speaker as evidence of President Biden’s unsuitability continues to mount. Here are the details:

Biden and Same Sex Marriage (Cont.)

A new and widely publicized statement by the Vatican about same-sex unions underscores one of the many reasons Notre Dame should not invite President Biden to be a Commencement speaker and recipient of an honorary degree. 

On March 15, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, in a statement approved by Pope Francis, declared that Catholic clergy may not bless same sex unions since, “even [if] stable,” they are “illicit” because the homosexual sex they involve is “illicit.”

On this radioactive same-sex marriage issue, as we have noted, Biden is a leading opponent of the Church. In 2012 he abandoned his support of the Church’s teaching and led the Obama administration in support of same-sex marriage, and in 2016 he actually presided over such a marriage in the Vice President’s residence. 

Biden, the Equality Act and the Hyde Amendment Redux

We have discussed in prior bulletins Biden’s newly minted support for public funding of abortion and his resolve to override religious liberty claims in order to promote abortion, contraception, and the demands of homosexuals and transsexuals against religious institutions, organizations, and individuals. 

As we have reported, his abortion funding policy has been put into effect so far by the omission of the Hyde Amendment barring use of federal funds for abortion in the COVID-19 relief legislation, and his anti-religious liberty policy is embodied in the Equality Act that has been passed by the House of Representatives. 

We are pleased to bring you brief presentations on these subjects by Sycamore Vice President Charles A. “Chuck” Donovan (ND ’74) and Sycamore Board member Mary Rice Hasson (ND ’82). 

In their “day jobs,” Chuck is President of the Charlotte Lozier Institute, the research arm of the Susan B. Anthony List, one of the nation’s premier pro-life organizations dedicated to advancing pro-life legislation and electing pro-life leaders with an emphasis on women, and Mary is the Kate O’Beirne Fellow in Catholic Studies at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C. and director of the Catholic Women’s Forum, “a network of professional women and scholars seeking to amplify the voice of Catholic women in support of human dignity, authentic freedom, and Catholic social teaching.”

In his Star Parker interview, Chuck discussed the increasing radicalization of the pro-choice movement as it morphs into the pro-abortion movement, the importance of the Hyde Amendment now targeted by Biden and the Democrats that has saved an estimated 800,000 lives, the unparalleled pro-life policies of the Trump administration, and reason for hope in the states. 

CURE America with Star Parker | CASP 37 (lwcdn.com)

In her testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Mary Hasson described how, “When gender identity is privileged over biological sex, females lose,” and how the Equality Act, in its “hostility to religious believers and religious organizations, seek[s] to coerce people of faith to exit the public square unless they trade their religious beliefs for the reigning ideology of today.”

https://vimeo.com/533329566
Senate Judiciary Committee Holds Hearing on LGBTQ Rights Legislation | C-SPAN.org (c-span.org)

“Xavier Becerra: Catholic Hitman”

With Xavier Becerra’s confirmed as HHS Secretary (50-49), the most pro-abortion anti-religious president in history is sided by the most pro-abortion anti-religious liberty HHS Secretary in history. As a Catholic News Agency analysis summarizes the situation: 

Becerra’s record in California shows that he, perhaps more than any other state attorney general, has been willing to wield the power of the state to enforce pro-abortion policies against religious and pro-life groups. And if appointed as Health Secretary, he would have authority to craft far-reaching policy across a number of controversial “culture war” issues.

And see Robert Royal’s withering “Catholic Hitman” article in The Catholic Thing looking backward at Becerra’s record to foretell the rocky road ahead, with Becerra giving regulatory form to Biden’s most alarming notions — for example,

Let’s be clear: Transgender equality is the civil rights issue of our time. There is no room for compromise.

Biden Administration – Elevation of Abortion and Same-Sex Marriage as Universal Human Rights

Secretary of State Antony Blinken has just announced the “decisive” repudiation of the report of the Trump administration’s Commission on Inalienable Rights, which had been assailed from the left for assigning foundational importance to religious liberty and considering the “divisive” nature of issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage pertinent to whether they should be recognized as universal human rights. 

In disowning the Commission’s “unbalanced” views, Blinken declared the administration’s commitment to the advancement of abortion and gay marriage as universal human rights. 

This hit close to home for Notre Dame. Paulo Carroza, Director of Notre Dame’s Kellogg School for International Studies and a member of the Law School faculty, was a member of the Commission, and it was chaired by Harvard law school professor and former ambassador to the Vatican Mary Ann Glendon, whose refusal to accept the Laetare Medal in 2009 put an exclamation point to the criticism by 83 Cardinals, Archbishops and Bishops of Notre Dame’s honoring of pro-abortion President Obama.

We commend to those interested the report itself, which was praised by the former editor-in-chief of America Magazine as “a consensus document, centrist in a sophisticated way seldom found in public documents.”

The Laetare Medal 2021

Notre Dame’s Laetare Medal, the University states, is awarded annually to a Catholic “whose genius has ennobled the arts and sciences, illustrated the ideals of the church and enriched the heritage of humanity.”

This year, bypassing notable Catholics in the arts and sciences and in social and public service, the University has named as recipient a highly successful black businesswoman from the financial world, Carla Harris, who said she was “very, very surprised.”

 A Harvard graduate, Harris has risen through the ranks at Morgan Stanley to the position of vice chairman of wealth management and senior client adviser. A motivational speaker and author (“Expect to Win,” “Strategize to Win”), Harris attributes her success “first of all” to her faith.

While she told a Forbes interviewer her race “absolutely [did] not” hinder her advancement, she found the challenges greater as a woman, and the University praises her work in promoting multiculturism and the advancement of women in business enterprises. 

Harris attended Catholic primary and secondary schools, is active in her parish, and as an avocation is an accomplished gospel singer. For more information, see Harris’s website CarlasPearls.com.

“Gangs of Zahm House”(Administration) or “Notre Dame by Choice, Zahm by the Grace of God” (Zahm House Motto)

Giving up after “several years of unsuccessful intervention to alter a troubling culture,” the administration is exiling Zahm residents to other halls (a limit of three to each) or off campus and converting the Hall into a “swing residence” for students displaced by renovations and the like. 

The administration cited vandalism, “disrespect for University officials,” “disregard of COVID-19 protocols,” and “concern about Zahm’s culture … expressed by new students and parents.” 

Zahm residents and alumni have struck back, citing reforms (e.g., the discontinuance of “the naked ‘Bun Run’ through campus”), asserting that, while “parties and drinking are common,” they are “no more so than in other dorms,” claiming unfairness bred of unwarranted hostility by the administration, and, in a “Save Zahm” petition, staking a claim to be “a community that left its members stronger in body and spirit than when they arrived” (Open letter from present and past Zahm student government.)

See the Irish Rover account here.

(Note: Zahm Hall alumnus Bill Dempsey is bemused. Under his rector, Rev. Charles “Black Mac” Charles McCarragher, “intervention” would have been by way of capital punishment.)

Conclusion

Requiescat in pace for Zahm House. On Biden as Commencement Speaker, Oremus!

President Biden has been called “our first anti-Catholic ‘Catholic’ president” because his aggressively pro-abortion and anti-religious liberty agenda — which threatens not only the Church but Notre Dame, Catholics, other persons of faith, and countless unborn. Nevertheless, Father John Jenkins is considering honoring him as Notre Dame’s Commencement speaker. Please add your name to our Open Letter to Father Jenkins asking that he not do so.

Leave a Reply

 Let us know what you think about the issues we’ve raised in this bulletin in the comments below. And help to spread the word by sharing this bulletin with others who care about Notre Dame’s Catholic identity. 

Every Penny Helps!

If you are like us and want to see an authentic Catholic renewal at Notre Dame, please consider lending a hand by making a donation to Sycamore Trust.

DONATE ONLINE
print
No comments yet.

Comments & Questions