Print This Article

The Archbishop Speaketh:
More Fightin’ Words for the Fightin’ Irish
Originally published in E-Leaven, June 8, 2009, Issue 10
by John F. Kane

It’s hard for me to believe that I’m twice within a short period (see May 7 Leaven) led to defend Notre Dame. Hard, since I am usually put off by all the puffery surrounding that place.

This time, though, my thoughts find more local provocation – from Archbishop Chaput’s May 18 DCR column condemning ND and its president for (surprise!) not bring really Catholic.

His are not only “fightin’ words,” but downright nasty. Go to www.archden.org and read the column yourself. It is, sadly, our Archbishop at his angry worst.

Notre Dame has, the Archbishop says, “no excuse...except intellectual vanity.” It “prostitutes” its Catholic identity and then defends itself with “evasive and disingenuous” explanations and by “appeals to phony dialogue that mask an abdication of our moral witness.”

It reminds him of that earlier occasion (discussed in detail in the Archbishops’ recent book) when Notre Dame hosted New York’s Governor Mario Cuomo for a (since famous and infamous) lecture about Catholics in public life. Then, too, Cuomo (and Notre Dame) produced “an illogical and intellectually shabby exercise in the manufacture of excuses” for not being really Catholic. Then as now the University effectively teaches the next generation of Catholics “all the excuses they need to baptize their personal conveniences and ignore what it really demands to be ‘Catholic’ in the public square.” (Take that all you folks who babble endlessly about conscience.)

Then, at the end, the real “bottom line”: ND is hardly alone in its “institutional confusion” and “disservice to the Church.” Thus “faithful Catholics [must] insist – by their words, actions and financial support [emphasis added]” – that institutions claiming to be Catholic be really Catholic.

How does one respond to such rhetoric? For this man there is only one way to be really Catholic – to agree with his simplistic thinking about complex issues. Everything else, especially words like “complex” and “conscience,” is (I deliberately repeat) evasive, disingenuous, intellectual vanity, phony, intellectually shabby, illogical, the manufacture of excuses, confusion, prostitution. His book is more nuanced, but here we get the raw thing.

So I will respond by simple assertion, since argument is useless – at best it’s confused and phony, at worst vanity and prostitution. I simply assert (though with plenty of good grounds) that he’s wrong. There are in fact many ways to be a good and real Catholic, in private and in the public square. And in making my assertion I remind the reader (as I argued many times during recent political campaigns) that the Archbishop is also just asserting. He is giving us his opinion; he is not exercising his teaching authority as Archbishop. Thus his opinion has to stand on its own feet – as significant or arbitrary. You decide. And remember the basic logical axiom: Quod gratis assertur, gratis negatur – what is gratuitously asserted can be as easily rejected.

One final note: To their great credit, the Colorado Bishops on June 1 released a short statement condemning the recent murder of an abortion provider and asking for prayers for the man’s family. Yet they say nothing about the images and rhetoric of much of the “pro-life” movement which clearly had inflamed the imagination and passions of the murderer. At Notre Dame, Obama and ND president Jenkins avoided inflammatory rhetoric and called for cooperation amidst real, abiding differences of belief and moral teaching. (Catholic teaching on abortion was thereby affirmed, never denied.) Clearly though, as we’ve just been told, such appeals are phony. Real Catholics will employ the kind of rhetoric and assertion used by Archbishop Chaput – fightin’ words for the fightin’ faithful. And if a few go bonkers and murderous, then tant pis. Just the price we pay for real faith. Which, I am tempted to add, sounds pretty “protestant” to me. But let me resist that temptation since I have too much respect and admiration for real Protestants.

 

Top of Page