“It is finished.” (John 19:30). The abominable actions by Fr. John Jenkins, president of Notre Dame University, who invited President Obama to give the commencement address and receive an honorary Doctor of Laws degree, came to fruition on May 17, 2009 at that formerly Catholic university. This was a travesty and a slap across the face of every faithful Catholic and indeed, every faithful Christian. It was an example of a rogue priest ignoring the directives of his superiors and a testament to the evil that occurs when “Thy Will Be Done” is construed as “my will be done”. Fr. Jenkins defended his invitation as one that would open a dialogue regarding the issue of abortion. Upon what does he hope to base that dialogue?
President Obama supports partial birth abortion and has been a steadfast supporter of Planned Parenthood and abortion on demand. He has vowed to continue to support this position and has appointed vehemently pro-abortion cabinet members, such as Secretary of State Clinton. Yes, Fr. Jenkins, let us dialogue.
Secretary Clinton spoke recently at the Planned Parenthood awards gala in Houston, where she received that organization’s highest honor, The Margaret Sanger Award. Clinton said of Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood: “I admire Margaret Sanger enormously, her courage, her tenacity, her vision’, and “I am in awe of her.” Further she said: “It’s the lesson that women’s empowerment is always, always about more than bettering the lives of individual women. It is part of a movement. It’s about economic and political progress for all women and girls”.
The supposedly pro-woman, pro-abortion mentality that Obama and Clinton support has resulted in some 50 million babies’ lives being purposely extinguished. This has resulted in 25 million women denied the right to life, the right to grow and mature, denied the right to vote and to add their voices to those of all women. How can anything be more anti-woman than to deny female babies the right to live? How can anyone be pro-woman when they support the violent termination of the lives of future women for the sake of their own convenience and comfort?
Margaret Sanger, the woman Clinton so admires, was a self professed Nazi sympathizer. She said this when referring to prevention of the birth of Blacks and Jews: "Birth control must lead ultimately to a cleaner race." And, referring to blacks, she said: "Eugenic sterilization is an urgent need ... We must prevent multiplication of this bad stock." Perhaps there is room for dialogue here, Fr. Jenkins.
I do not know whether Fr. Jenkins has reviewed abortion statistics, but they are staggering. We rightly mourn all of our brave soldiers who have died in war and we honor them for their willing and selfless sacrifice. The sum total of all US service related deaths in all wars from the Revolutionary War until today is about 1.2 million. This is about the same number of people as the 1.2 million babies killed each and every year in this country due to abortion. Perhaps Fr. Jenkins could start his dialogue here.
Our country would have had to fight WWII for some 400 years for as many Americans to die as have been killed by abortion. There are as many Americans aborted in one day as have been killed in Iraq in six years. To kill as many Americans as are killed by abortion in just one year the war in Iraq would have to continue for some 1,800 years! Most amazingly, for the same number of US citizens to die in Iraq as have been extinguished by abortion since the Roe vs Wade decision, the war would have to be fought for some 75,000 years! Yes, Fr. Jenkins, let us dialogue with the president.
President Obama continues to promote an ongoing holocaust in affirming the absolute right of a woman or an underage girl to choose. Arguments such as “It’s only a fetus. I don’t have time for a baby. It will be inconvenient. It is not really human”, have been heard in the past. “They are only Jews. They are only Poles or Gypsies. We’re better off without them and they’re less than human”. When we depersonalize the victims and rationalize the action any evil can be made palatable to a supposedly civilized society and the most reprehensible aspects of history are repeated. This holocaust could only continue with the attitudes of people like Fr. Jenkins who wish to dialogue with the perpetrators instead of rebuking them.
Planned Parenthood performs over 200,000 abortions, receives more than $300 million dollars each year from our taxes toward a total budget of nearly $1 billion and a profit of nearly $250 million. To that end, it covers up the physical and sexual abuse of underage females, increased breast cancer rates in post abortive women and severe emotional trauma resulting in significantly increased suicide rates among women who have had abortions. The Royal College in the United Kingdom has warned that women who have had abortions are at increased risk of mental health breakdowns. Far from promoting the cause of women’s health, Planned Parenthood sacrifices women and babies on the altar of its own ideology and for its own profit. How can we dialogue with a president who, by supporting Planned Parenthood, supports the perpetrators of sexual abuse of young girls and is unconcerned that post abortive women commit suicide at more than twice the rate of their peers? How would Fr. Jenkins propose a dialogue with a supporter of these atrocities?
Planned Parenthood operates 80 percent of its clinics in minority neighborhoods. Almost as many African American babies are aborted as are born. A black baby is three times more likely to be killed in the womb as a white baby. Twice as many African Americans have died from abortion as have died from violent crimes, heart disease, accidents and AIDS combined. Every three days more African Americans are killed by abortion than have been killed by the Ku Klux Klan in all its history. Since Roe vs Wade, abortion has reduced the African American population by 25 percent of what it would otherwise have been. Is there any other organization in America that could have so strong a following, receive so much money in tax dollars, be so proudly promoted in our schools and on our streets, yet be as openly and vehemently racist as Planned Parenthood or its supporters? How would Fr. Jenkins propose to dialogue with a president who supports the genocide of his own race?
What are the legacies of Roe v Wade, Margaret Sanger, Planned Parenthood and the culture of death supported by President Obama? Are we better off ? Are families stronger? Are children emotionally healthier and happier? Has social and economic progress resulted from essentially devouring our own young? The answer is a resounding no! We need social workers, psychiatrists and metal detectors in our schools. In the misguided pursuit of the false god of absolute personal freedom the proponents of the culture of death have insisted in teaching impulse gratification in our schools rather than impulse control and respect for the lives of others. We teach our children that it’s acceptable to deny the right to life of a baby and then wonder how it is possible for a tragedy such as Columbine to occur. If we taught our children that every human life is sacred the killers at Columbine may not have felt it was their right to choose. It is the pinnacle of ignorance for us to expect children to understand that killing a classmate they don’t like is wrong, but killing a baby who may be inconvenient is progressive. This moral sewage is the fertilizer in which Columbine and other incidents like it grew, and continue to grow. It is this morally necrotic ideal that President Obama supports and to which the University of Notre Dame gave a platform.
There is ample evidence that instead of the empowerment of women and promoting equality socially and financially, abortion increases the “feminization of poverty”. The mindset that children are expendable resulted in a significant change of attitude among men. If a woman did bring a child to term, that was her “choice”. Children are the cement that binds families together and in fact are the reason for the existence of families. Once they could be discarded like the weekly trash there was no reason for men to remain associated with women in family units. Between 1969 and 1978 the number of poor households headed by women doubled. Divorce rates have increased markedly over the past 30 years. Poverty rates among women and female children have increased, not decreased, especially for African Americans. There are a greater percentage of women in poverty now, precisely because of the attitudes that promote abortion, than there were before Roe v. Wade. The culture of death proponents simply do not understand that children are the cement of families and families are the necessary foundation of societies. Remove enough of the cement and families, then entire societies, will crumble. Shall we dialogue on this?
I, too, am in awe of Margaret Sanger, but in an entirely different way! Some may not have noticed the real implications of the words Clinton used when she said: “women’s empowerment is always, always about more than bettering the lives of individual women. It is part of a movement.” This is a very revealing and chilling statement and shows the underlying motivation of the culture of death. These words are reminiscent of those used by Lenin, Stalin, Mao and Hitler in promoting the “cause” over the bodies of expendable individuals. Yes, in Clinton’s own words, the culture of death is not really about helping individual women. It is about promoting a social and political agenda that subjugates the individual to the will of those in political power and makes individuals dependent upon those in power. President Obama and Secretary Clinton must be reminded that truth is the greatest enemy of those who promote the culture of death and truth is the greatest ally of those who hold all innocent human life to be sacred. President Obama should have been rebuked by Fr. Jenkins, not invited for a dialogue.
Our new president is the voice of the culture of death. He and Prime Minister Pelosi are in the process of repealing conscience protection for doctors and other health care personnel. The "Freedom of Choice Act" will give a legislative seal to the atrocity that was the Roe vs Wade decision. There will be freedom of choice, but only for those who agree with the culture of death.
Perhaps Fr. Jenkins has forgotten Luke 9:55. “But He turned and rebuked them, and said, "You do not know what kind of spirit you are of.” There would have been no shame had Fr. Jenkins admitted a mistake and corrected it. There would have been no loss of honor in standing firmly as a supporter of human life. There was great shame and dishonor in continuing along a course of prideful disobedience and allying himself and the University of Our Lady with the supporters of the culture of death. By using the excuse of starting a dialogue Fr. Jenkins dishonored the priesthood, his university and the Catholic Bishops. In his act of disobedience, Fr. Jenkins has taught Catholic students to have a selfish disregard for the teaching and authority of the Catholic Church and a lack of regard for the teaching of Christianity.
We who are pro-life have a responsibility to promote the respect of all persons as equal members of society. We embrace people of all races, religions, ages and infirmities. We must promote individual human rights for all. The first among these rights must be the right to life, for without this right, the other rights dependent upon it are meaningless. We must continue to stand for the right of every pre-born person to experience the blessings and joys, as well as the tribulations and difficulties of life. For all of these experiences encompass the nature of life. We must continue to stand firmly against the prevailing culture of convenience and death and condemn it for being anti-woman, anti-family and racist. There is no excuse for weakness or equivocation in this responsibility and there is no excuse for the actions of Fr. Jenkins and the University of Notre Dame. I hope that, for Fr. Jenkins, as far as his tenure at ND, it is finished.
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