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Center of the storm

This afternoon at the St. Mary's commencement ceremony (which was lovely, by the way) a huge military plane flew in low over the campus -- advance agents and materials for the president's visit tomorrow. Since getting into town yesterday, I've seen a lot of protesters on ND Avenue and Angela/Edison and heard a lot of people talking about the controversy. It looked like platforms for the NDResponse demonstration were being set up on South Quad tonight - I've read they're expecting thousands of people, which I hope is true. Hopefully this peaceful witness being shown by so many will make it harder for the media to misrepresent the objections to ND honoring Obama. (I have noticed that the South Bend tv stations have been mentioning Bishop D'Arcy and the bishops' statements more than some other outlets.)

One thing I forgot, for whatever reason, until today's commencement, was that the honorary degree recipients have glowing statements about their lives and achievements read aloud before the degrees are conferred. They don't publish the biographies in the Notre Dame commencement program like they do at some schools (like St. Mary's), so we don't know what the introductory statement on the president as he's presented for a doctor of laws, honoris causa, tomorrow will be, but we can be fairly certain it won't involve dialogue or nuance, both because of course that's not customary for these things, and because we've become pretty familiar with Fr. Jenkins's enthusiastic plaudits of the president over the past two months. So I fear we can expect a nice, unqualified hagiography, with smiles all around.

Some people don't think any of this matters. But walking around campus tonight, by the Grotto, in the Basilica, even in LaFortune, and feeling that whole special sense of place that Notre Dame always conveys, I felt again how keenly it does matter -- because Notre Dame matters to the Church in America. It's a special place, and betrayals of Catholic values like we expect to be seeing tomorrow only diminish it.

Full post as published by Irish Law on May 17, 2009 (boomark / email).