Rally Part II

The ND Response team has made available the full texts of the speeches given at Sunday's prayer rally here. Unfortunately they are in PDF form.

I have made reference to this section of Prof. Freddoso's speech numerous times already, so I will include it here:

Make no mistake. This protest has to do with President Obama’s actions and with his
intentions regarding future actions, and not merely with his beliefs.

Now, of course, the administrators of the university do not “condone or endorse his
positions”—or, presumably, his actions—“on specific issues regarding the protection of
human life.” And, to be sure, it is permissible to honor someone despite the bad
things he’s done, as long as those bad things are “not all THAT bad.” So let’s look at
a few of the actions that the administrators of the university consider to be “not all
THAT bad.”

President Obama has overturned the Mexico City Policy that had prohibited taxpayer
money from going to groups that promote or perform abortions in other nations. This
is bad, the administrators of the university admit, but it’s not all THAT bad.
President Obama has, in Michael Gerson’s words, “signaled that he will overturn [the
previous president’s] executive order protecting health workers from firing and
discrimination if they refuse to perform actions they consider morally objectionable.”

This is bad, the administrators of the university admit, but it’s not all THAT bad.
President Obama has lifted the previous president’s already weak-kneed restrictions
on the use of taxpayer money for embryo-destructive stem cell research—which
research, by the way, unlike non-destructive stem cell research, has yet to result in
curing anyone of any disease. This is bad, the administrators of the university admit,
but it’s not all THAT bad.

President Obama has nominated an enthusiastically pro-abortion Catholic to become
Secretary of Health and Human Services, the department that oversees the medical
profession along with other human services. This is bad, the administrators of the
university admit, but it’s not all THAT bad.

The issue is that objectively President Obama has acted in opposition to morality, and the Bishops have stated that those who do this should not be honored by a Catholic school. This describes the scandal of Notre Dame much better than I could.