Much has been made of Barack Obama being the commencement speaker at Notre Dame’s graduation over the weekend. I think it would be fair to say he took a centrist position on reducing abortions in his speech.
77 Catholic bishops spoke out against the Notre Dame’s decision and the alumni announced that over $14 million had been lost in donations (source).
I read a great post challenging Obama to stick to his word. If he says that specific things will be put in place to reduce abortions, it would be nice to see a significant decrease soon.
The most interesting piece of this story to me was a group of graduating students who boycotted their own graduation ceremony due to Obama being there. What they were really boycotting was Obama’s position and decisions on abortion.
Some quick thoughts:
- What is wrong with the students boycotting the graduation? It is their graduation, they can choose not to go. I have a feeling that those criticizing the students for not going are the same type of people who would have boycotted their graduation had Dubya been the speaker.
- Clearly the Catholic church is divided on where it should stand on the abortion issue and how it should be reaching out (or not reaching out) to Obama.
- Don’t look now but the line between Church and State is becoming quite blurred. I’m not firm in my thoughts on this, but I’d say if Bush and Obama are any indication, the blurring mostly results in a lot of unhappy people.
- I really don’t understand why Notre Dame wanted to have Obama. Sure, it gives them a load of publicity, but most of it has been negative reaction publicity. They are a Catholic university and it seems like they don’t want to embrace that.
