Great letter by AH re: Notre Dame!

Dear Notre Dame and Catholic friends,

I was very saddened on Friday night to hear that my alma mater, the University of Notre Dame, plans to host Mr. Barack Obama, President of the United States, as the commencement speaker this spring. Mr. Obama's clear pro-abortion policies and positions make him unfit to have a platform at our Catholic university to promote his anti-life agenda. It should be clear to everyone that the Catholic Church teaches that abortion is wrong and always has taught that. To have a Catholic university ignore the teaching of the Catholic Church in such a blatant way is scandalous. The adminstration of Notre Dame, to put it nicely, has done a great disservice to the integrity and character of the university.

I urge everyone to consider taking the following actions as they see fit.

1. Voice your opinion on the matter to the president of the university, Fr. John Jenkins. His email address is: president@nd.edu or you can contact him on the web at: http://president.nd.edu/contact-us.

2. Pray for the University's administration. Better yet, go to the Notre Dame prayer website pray.nd.edu and specifically to http://pray.nd.edu/the-green-candle to make a prayer request at the Grotto. We need to storm Our Lady in heaven to watch over our university and intercede on the behalf of life since it's pretty obvious that things have gotten pretty bad there. The Grotto seems like a good place to start praying for these intentions since it is one of the prayer focal points on campus.

3. Sign the Cardinal Newman Society petition at http://notredamescandal.com/.

4. Learn more about the church's teachings on life if you need to: read JPII's 'The Gospel of Life' at: http://www.priestsforlife.org/magisterium/evtext.htm; learn more about the connection between birth control and abortion at: http://www.goodmorals.org/smith4.htm; learn more about healing and forgiveness after an abortion at: http://www.projectrachelnc.org/ (Note this is the North Carolina Project Rachel link but they are found in every state); learn more about how one of the many crisis pregnancy centers in our country help women with their unplanned pregnancies: http://www.birthchoicewake.org/html/birthchoice.html; learn more about how parishes can get involved: http://www.glgabrielproject.org/; Learn more about what is happening in your community to stop abortion now: www.40DaysforLife.com.

4. In my initial upset and emotional reaction, I felt like starting a 'Blue' envelope project (modelled after the famous 'red envelope project'-See http://www.redenvelopeproject.org/) where I would send an empty blue envelope to President Jenkins with the words, "The empty envelope represents the amount of money I plan to donate to the University while it continues to mock the Gospel of Life"....However, I realized that I cannot do this because I do plan to donate to the University but to a specific on-campus fund: The Notre Dame Fund to Protect Human Life. The group running this fund appears to be the only group on campus who actually promotes the culture of life. And given the administration's showing of its true anti-life colors, these people working from the inside need all the help they can get. I urge all of you who plan to donate money to Notre Dame to consider specifying it to this pro-life group on campus. See http://ethicscenter.nd.edu/NotreDameFundtoProtectHumanLife.shtml for more details.

The culture of life will triumph, we just need to do our part. God's grace works many miracles and we know He will never abandon us.
Come, Holy Spirit,
in Faith,
AH