SHE'S ONCE, TWICE, THREE TIMES A LADY

PROF. MARY ANN GLENDON DECLINES MEDAL
AND PARTICIPATION IN NOTRE DAME GRADUATION


Harvard Law School professor, former U.S. Ambassador to the Vatican, former Vatican delegate to world conferences on women, and avid pro-life advocate Mary Ann Glendon has stood athwart history shouting "Stop!"

Well, not shouting so much as just saying "No." I've been waiting for this. She did it without grandstanding. It looks like she contemplated it as possibly an opportunity to be a countervailing voice. But in the end she decided that graduations are not debates, nor are they proving grounds for campaigns of self-justification on the part of wobbly university presidents.

Glendon did not immediately turn down the invitation to receive Notre Dame's Laetare Medal for Catholic witness when she learned that she would be sharing the stage with avidly, RABIDLY pro-abortion-rights President Barack Obama. But two things altered her appraisal of the situation: that the President would be getting an honorary degree, and that Glendon herself had been turned into a couple of the exculpatory "talking points" being madly circulated by ND President Fr. John Jenkins after his invitation to the Infanticide President caused international uproar. Being so nakedly used as a human shield by Fr. Jenkins without so much as a by-y'r-leave obviously helped Glendon wrestle her misgivings to the floor, and she very politely declined to be involved in this distasteful exercise, planned and carried out in flagrant disregard for directives issued by the American Bishops about precisely this type of vehicle for scandal: the provision of a platform and accompanying honors for politicians whose policy positions are in clear opposition to the Church's teachings on the sanctity of life and fundamental justice.

[More on the Laetare Medal here -- as you can see, Notre Dame is a bit promiscuous with its awards. It would have added no great lustre to Mary Ann's trophy case.]

Glendon has written to Fr. Jenkins saying thanks, but no thanks. She has released her letter to the press to make her reasons crystal clear. And she has declined to say another word.

Some women expend their energies in hot pursuit of faux ordinations -- others just LEAD.

Kudos, Professor Glendon, on doin' the right thing.