The Cardinal Newman Society (CNS), a national organization to renew and strengthen Catholic identity at U.S. Catholic colleges and universities, announced today that it will protest commencement honors at several Catholic colleges and universities, including the University of Notre Dame.
 
For several years CNS has protested Catholic institutions' selection of commencement speakers and honorees whose public opposition to the Catholic Church or its teachings are a scandal to students and the public.
 
The University of Notre Dame has invited Ireland's President Mary McAleese to receive an honorary degree and deliver this spring’s commencement address on May 21.  At first glance, McAleese might seem a good choice for a Catholic university's graduation ceremony: she is a practicing Catholic who has opposed abortion, in vitro fertilization, divorce and contraception.  Notre Dame President Rev. John Jenkins, C.S.C., has declared McAleese "an inspiring model for women" and "a passionate voice within the Catholic Church."
 
But McAleese has not always been a faithful voice.  "Prior to her election as Ireland's president in 1997," explains CNS President Patrick J. Reilly, "McAleese was a vocal dissident from the Church's infallible teaching on the male priesthood, and her statements about Vatican leaders have been strident and offensive.  Unless McAleese publicly recants her position, Notre Dame's choice to honor her is a scandal."
 
Writing for The Tablet in March 1997, two years after Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) formally instructed Catholics to end public debate over the infallible teaching that only men can be priests, McAleese refused to "humbly submit to an edict which purports to bind in perpetuity".  She compared "defenders of the Vatican line" to "Communist Party apparatchiks hawking redundant clichés."
 
Speaking at a 1995 conference of women's ordination activists in Dublin, McAleese thumbed her nose at Ratzinger: "They say the debate is closed.  I think they had better turn up their hearing aids."  In a stunning act of dissent, McAleese announced, "If I truly believed that Christ was the authority for the proposition that women are to be excluded from priesthood by virtue simply of their gender, I would have to say emphatically that this is a Christ in whose divinity I do not and will not and cannot believe."
 
McAleese was also the founding legal advisor to the Campaign for Homosexual Law Reform.  The Irish group's lawsuit to overturn anti-sodomy laws was rejected by the Irish Supreme Court, but it motivated the Irish parliament in 1993 to pass a law legalizing same-sex activity.
 
Last year CNS protested commencement honors for McAleese at Villanova University in Pennsylvania.  The protest drew scorn and anger from several Irish-American publications and the news media in Ireland, and this year's protest is likely to provoke a similar reaction.
 
"We are not eager to protest an honor for the leader of Ireland," Reilly said. "The country and its President deserve respect, and we admire President McAleese's positions on abortion and other issues.  But our concern is whether a Catholic university is scandalizing students and others by honoring a harsh and vocal critic of the Church who has publicly opposed infallible teaching.  This is clearly inappropriate."
 
Catholic colleges and universities are just beginning to announce their commencement plans.  Other announced speakers and honorees to be protested by CNS include:
 
Gen. Colin Powell, former U.S. Secretary of State, will receive an honorary degree and deliver the commencement address at Marymount University on May 14.  Powell has publicly and repeatedly declared his support for "a woman's right to choose" abortion, even disagreeing with President George W. Bush's res