Bill McGurn: "A Notre Dame Witness for Life"

Of course, things heated up on campus in late March with the announcement of the choice of President Obama as the commencement speaker and honorary law degree recipient. In April, to contribute to the dialogue on campus about the invitation and its impact on the University, the Fund sponsored an evening lecture by Bill McGurn, Wall Street Journal columnist and former chief speechwriter to President George W. Bush, entitled “A Notre Dame Witness for Life.”

A small excerpt:
For most of her life, Notre Dame has served as a symbol of a Catholic community struggling to find acceptance in America – and yearning to make our own contributions to this great experiment in ordered liberty. We identify with those who are poor and downtrodden and on the margins of acceptance because that is where the Gospel points – and because we remember whence came our own parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents. If we are honest, however, we must admit that in many ways we – and the university that nurtured us – are now the rich and powerful and privileged ourselves. This is a form of success, and we need not be embarrassed by it. But we must be mindful of the greater responsibilities that come with this success.….

I appreciate that for some people, the idea of Notre Dame as an unequivocal witness for the unborn would be a limit on her work as a Catholic university. The truth is just the opposite. The more frank and forthright Notre Dame’s witness for life, the more she would be given the benefit of the doubt on the many judgment calls that the life of a great university entails. At this hour in our nation’s life, America thirsts for an alternative to the relativism that leaves so many of our young people feeling empty and alone. This alternative is the Catholic witness that Notre Dame was created to provide … that Notre Dame is called to provide … and that in many ways, only Notre Dame can provide.