(CNSNews.com) - A top Vatican official said Friday that Notre Dame’s intention of granting an honorary doctorate to “anti-life and anti-family” President Barack Obama at its graduation ceremony this coming Sunday is “a source of the gravest scandal.”
The Archbishop Raymond L. Burke, who serves in the Vatican as the prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura, the church’s highest court, gave the keynote address at the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast in Washington.
“In a culture marked by widespread and grave confusion and error about the most fundamental teachings of the moral law, our Catholic schools and universities must be beacons of truth and right conduct,” said Burke.
“Clearly, the same is true of our Catholic charitable, missionary and healthcare institutions,” he said. “There can be no place in them for teaching or activities which offend the moral law. Dialogue and respect for differences are not promoted by the compromise and even violation of the natural moral law. The proposed granting of an honorary doctorate at Notre Dame University to our President who is aggressively advancing an anti-life and anti-family agenda is a source of the gravest scandal.”
The comment was interrupted by a 34-second standing ovation by about 1,300 people in attendance.
“Catholic institutions cannot offer any platform to, let alone honor, those who teach and act publicly against the moral law,” Burke continued. “In a culture which embraces an agenda of death, Catholics and Catholic institutions are necessarily counter-cultural. If we as individuals or our Catholic institutions are not willing to accept the burdens and the suffering necessarily involved in calling our culture to reform, then we are not worthy of the name Catholic.”
Obama is scheduled to speak Sunday at the commencement of Notre Dame, a prestigious Catholic university based in Indiana. The pending speech has stirred controversy because of Obama’s pro-abortion stance, his support of tax dollars going to embryonic stem cell research and his support for granting same-sex unions that same legal status as marriage.
The Cardinal Newman Society, a national student Catholic group, has circulated a petition that has gained almost 360,000 signatures asking Notre Dame not to have Obama speak and not to award him an honorary degree.
The university has not rescinded its invitation to Obama or its offer of an honorary doctor of laws degree. The White House, meanwhile, says that Obama looks forward to giving the speech.
More than 60 American Catholic bishops have objected to Notre Dame honoring Obama.
Some Catholic clergy in attendance at the prayer breakfast shared the bishops’ view.
The Rev. Thomas Euteneuer, president of Human Life International, is a graduate of Notre Dame.
“I’m ticked,” Euteneuer told CNSNews.com. “This is the most recent in a long line of egregious violations of the spirit and teachings of the church. They have a gay and lesbian coalition on campus that is allowed almost full expression, their openly dissenting faculty members and now Obama. It’s more than Obama though. It’s a flagrant rejection of the bishops’ authority and directives.”
The Rev. Michael Beers, Frackville, Pa., said Notre Dame “is the most clearly recognizable Catholic institution in the country. Any person who takes a strong position in favor of abortion, as President Obama does, clearly sets himself at odds with Catholic teaching, Catholic practice, in no way should be given the forum that he is being given at Notre Dame.”
The church has to retain its identity, said Rev. Stefan Starzyski of St. Mary of Sorrows in Fairfax, Va.
“Having Obama speak goes against the core of what we believe in as a church,” Starzyski told CNSNews.com. “He is probably one of he most radical pro abortion presidents we have ever had is speaking at Notre Dame. We’re acting as if abortion is not an issue. We shouldn’t be giving honors to a man whose fundamental beliefs are contrary to what we believe.”