May 21, 2009
Fr Weslin/Fr Jenkins/Notre Dame posts
I can’t get past this.
Fr Weslin Arrest #1: Four minutes of pain and humiliation while he sings
And is has nothing to do with my personal views on abortion or stem cell research or Notre Dame or Catholicism or Father Weslin’s foundation or even barry. I’m not debating the issue of abortion – the morality or ethics – or my personal thoughts. I am looking at it from the Catholic viewpoint.
I can’t get past the vision of a 78 y/o Catholic priest–who was doing what the Lord asked of him and what he vowed to the Lord he would do–getting manhandled, disrespected and humiliated in front of the world on the grounds of Catholic University because the president of the alleged Catholic University, an alleged Catholic priest, chose to award a man who thinks it’s okay not only to kill fetuses, but to withhold from them medical care should they survive the attempt on their life.
Father Weslin, hands bound behind his back, propped up by policeman asks:
We’re Catholic priests. Why are you arresting a Catholic priest for trying to stop the killing of a baby? Use your mind. What are you doing that for? Why are you arresting a priest for trying to stop the killing of a baby? You’ve got it all backwards.
In what world, let alone Catholic institution, is this even remotely okay?
And how is it a Catholic University when it allows a devout Man of God to be manhandled, bound and humiliated for the sake of a man who disregards the most sacred tenet of the Church? A man who believes killing a fetus is not murder.
As of Friday, Notre Dame ceased being a Catholic University. By censoring a priest, who was defending the Church, they unequivocally sanctioned abortion. They put honoring a man how has vowed never to allow abortion to become illegal before God, before a Man of God and before the sanctity of human life.
Over what?
An ego-feeding honorary degree that means absolutely nothing because man receiving it has done absolutely nothing other than talk and read a teleprompter.
“These honorary degrees are apparently pretty hard to come by“
(JEFF HAYNES/Getty)
This smiling man, who made Father’s arrest necessary, could have gotten his fix of adoration, given his teleprompter reading and been feted like a king even without accepting the honorary degree. But his sense of entitlement prevented Professor Mary Ann Glendon, a Harvard Law Professor and former Ambassador to the Holy See, a woman truly deserving of the the honor that was to be bestowed upon her — the highest honor awarded an American Catholic to have to decline. A 120 year tradition broken for a man who is not even Catholic and who disregards the most sacred teaching of the Church.
But his ego wouldn’t budge — his needs more important than the Catholic electorate and ND graduates opposed to his presence – graduates who would have to miss their own graduation through no fault of their own. ASU wouldn’t give him anything but naming rights to an already established scholarship. He was not about to go 2-0. He even admitted so in his Commencement Address. So he chose to accept an honorary degree that was based on nothing and had no inherent meaning other than a token given out to dignitaries during commencements.
But that meaningless token now has meaning. It will forever be linked to the image of Father Weslin, helpless on the ground, alone, hands bound behind his back and his torso held in place, not by human hands, but by a booted leg and anonymous material. Instead of some trivial degree given away to a man who speaks but does not act – it will represent the actions of a man who stood behind his words, willing to suffer the consequences.
The hood of honor vs the humiliation of handcuffs
Arrest #2
Side by side video of barry’s and Weslin’s respective welcomings
