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<P align=center>DEAD RIGHT AND DEAD WRONG:</P></B>
<P align=center>Bishop John D’Arcy and Notre Dame</P></FONT>
<P>If I were the Bishop of the Diocese within which the University of Notre Dame
lives and moves and has it being, I would have done exactly what Bishop John
D’Arcy did, the present Bishop of that Diocese, when it was announced that
President Obama is to deliver the commencement address at Notre Dame: turn-down
my annual invitation to attend the commencement. My reasons for doing so would
include two of his reasons. Quoting a 2004 statement of the U.S. bishops, Bishop
D’Arcy says, "The Catholic community and Catholic institutions should not honor
those who act in defiance of our fundamental moral principles. They should not
be given awards, honors or platforms which would suggest support for their
actions." At another point in explanation of his non-attendance he writes, "My
decision is not an attack on anyone, but is in defense of the truth about human
life."</P>
<P>What else could a Catholic bishop morally do, when an institution that is
within his Episcopal jurisdiction, calls itself Catholic and is universally
perceived as Catholic throughout the world, announces that it is going to employ
its Catholic and secular cache to honor a person who supports laws that make
abortion—as grave an evil as there is in Catholic moral theology, i.e.,
murder—legally acceptable and available? His witness to the truth of the Gospel
here is truthful, clear, needed and nonviolent. What’s the beef?</P>
<P>Are not the majority of those who are opposed to what Bishop D’Arcy has done,
exactly the same people who would have been elated and supportive of him if he
had refused his presence at past Notre Dame commencements, when Notre Dame
honored those who—beyond reasonable doubt—had engaged in the grave evil of
legalized murder outside the womb? Of course they are! Is not this whole fracas
just sour grapes because this society’s legalized murders <I>extra utero</I>
have the U.S. Catholic Bishops’ almost total public moral and political support,
while the legalized murders <I>in utero</I> get only the U.S. Catholic Bishop’s
public moral and political condemnation? Maybe that’s the beef here! The Bishop
of South Bend-Fort Wayne and the U.S. National Conference of Catholic Bishops,
as their public policy and practice, are moral rigorists regarding legalized
murder <I>in utero,</I> but moral laxists regarding legalized murder <I>extra
utero</I>. Beyond this, maybe the beef also is that this public policy and
practice of this Bishop and the U.S. Catholic Bishops as an organization,
clearly serves the interests of one political group and undermines the interests
of the other—and those whose political agenda it serves are precisely those most
responsible for <I>extra utero</I> mass murder.</P>
<P>The beef with John D’Arcy is not with him as a person—he is a most decent
human being—but with him permitting himself to become a symbol, a mouthpiece and
a puppet for the NCCB’s illogical, immoral, blatant, long-running
rigorism-laxism dance on behalf of the powerful and wealthy. Note the historical
fantasy, and the spiritual, moral, theological and factual absurdity, which
Bishop D’Arcy employs to validate his present decision and to exculpate himself
and his U.S. Episcopal colleagues, past and present, for their support of
legalized mega-murder <I>extra utero</I>: "[President Obama] has brought the
American government, <B>for the first time in history, into supporting direct
destruction of innocent human life."</P></B>
<P>Such nonsense is music to the ears of the major-domos of the U.S.
military-industrial complex, as well as, a song and dance that savage corporate
capitalists find as enticing, absorbing and personally peace-bestowing as any
song and dance Salome ever performed to please Herod. There is nothing that
power and wealth, that the military and its weapons suppliers will refuse to
give to keep this Episcopal song and dance going. All the singers and dancers
need do is ask, and they will receive! But, sing and dance the U.S. Bishops
must. And, sing and dance they must to a tune and to a cadence that brings clear
consciences and religious approval to those who on a large scale legally destroy
the innocent <I>extra utero</I>.</P>
<P>"The measure of any Catholic institution is not only what it stands for, but
also what it will not stand for." With these powerful and truthful words Bishop
D’Arcy concludes his very valid moral case against Notre Dame. But do not the
same words apply in the same way to the U.S. Catholic Episcopacy (NCCB) as a
Catholic institution? Do they not apply to Catholic institutions and their
official agents honoring those who legally kill innocent people on a large or
small scale <I>extra utero</I> and not just <I>in utero</I>?</P>
<P>That is the beef. If the Bishop and his Episcopal peers had consistently
stood-up for what Jesus taught by word and deed about violence, and what he and
they were explicitly commission by Jesus to teach as successors to the Apostles
(<I>Teach them to obey all that <B>I </B>have commanded you</I>. Mt 28:20) about
violence, and acted publicly and consistently from day-one of their episcopacies
in accordance with this stand, no one could have the slightest criticism of
Bishop D’Arcy’s course of action in response to President Obama being honored at
Notre Dame. But, this is not what Bishop D’Arcy, or the NCCB, have chosen to
stand-up for as bishops. Instead they have chosen to stand by something called
Natural Law Catholic Just Violence Theory—something that Jesus never taught and
that owes nothing to anything He ever said or did. On top of this neither he nor
his Episcopal colleagues taught this moral theory fully to those in their
spiritual care. They permitted Catholic military chaplains not to teach it at
all to Catholics in the military, and they did not apply it with logical
coherence to known facts or with consitency nor with even-handedness to all
<I>extra utero</I> homicides. </P>
<P>This is why what is happening now is happening. Bishop John D’Arcy, the NCCB
and Notre Dame have all refused to stand with Jesus and His teaching of
Nonviolent Love of friends and all enemies, <I>in utero</I> and <I>extra
utero</I>. Therefore each will "stand for" what Jesus would self-evidently never
stand for form his Apostles and disciples. Simultaneously, the Bishop, the NCCB
and Notre Dame have each played the ostrich in relation to reality and
rationality in their respective applications of this so-designated Catholic Just
War theory and Catholic Moral Theory. The present spiritually dis-graceful,
anti-witness, anti-evangelical situation amongst all of them is the direct
consequence of not following Jesus as He said to follow Him, and for standing
for any reading and application of the Gospel and/or Catholic Natural Law Just
War and Moral Theory that supports whosoever’s ox is being gored or whosoever’s
cash cow is being threatened.</P>
<P>I conclude with the following photograph of President George W. Bush years
after it was known publicly that not one of the standards of Natural Law
Catholic Just War Theory, <I>ad bellum</I> and <I>in bello</I>, had been met or
was being met and that therefore the killing of hundreds of thousands of human
beings in Iraq was objectively murder—an always intrinsically grave evil, which
in Catholic moral theology is never morally permissible under any set of
circumstances for any reason. </P>
<P align=center><IMG height=493 src="Image10.gif" width=546></P>
<P align=center>Cardinal McCarrick of DC jovially helping <BR>George Bush down
some steps.</P>
<P><FONT size=4></FONT> </P>
<P>Emmanuel Charles McCarthy</P>
<P><B>PART TWO TO FOLLOW</P></B></DIV></BODY></HTML>