{"id":355,"date":"2009-03-20T16:49:42","date_gmt":"2009-03-20T16:49:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/pontifications\/2009\/03\/obama-to-give-commencement-add.html"},"modified":"2009-03-20T16:49:42","modified_gmt":"2009-03-20T16:49:42","slug":"obama-to-give-commencement-add","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2009\/03\/obama-to-give-commencement-add.html","title":{"rendered":"Obama to give commencement address at Notre Dame"},"content":{"rendered":"

This should get the Irish fighting, along with lots of other Catholics. Or am I wrong? Via The South Bend Tribune<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

Obama will be the principal speaker and the recipient of an honorary doctor of laws degree at the university’s 164th commencement ceremony [on May 17], which will be in the Joyce Center, Notre Dame officials announced Friday.<\/p>\n

Obama will be the ninth U.S. president to be awarded a Notre Dame honorary degree and the sixth to be the commencement speaker.<\/p>\n

President George W. Bush spoke about faith-based and community initiatives when he was the commencement speaker in 2001. His father, President George H.W. Bush, gave the commencement address in 1992.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Hat tip to Amy Welborn<\/a> (check out her Via Media blog at Beliefnet) who in her post opines thusly: <\/p>\n

\n

“I think it would be easier on everyone, frankly, if Catholic universities cut the cord with politicians completely. I don’t care how prestigious you aim to be, how much you want your graduates to contribute to the fabric of American civic life, even a sitting president cannot help but associate you with a political ideology.<\/p>\n

I’m not arguing for the ghetto, at all, but we’re not talking noble statesmen here. We’re talking politicians who are divisive figures and who,  Obama’s case, are pursuing policies that directly threaten Catholic institutions. <\/p>\n

(Bush is a worthy object of criticism, too, IMHO, but remember his speech was 2001 – before the Iraq war was pursued. And I don’t necessarily want to get mired in that <\/i>conversation, but we might as well bring it up at the beginning.)”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Notre Dame certainly seems to be leading with its (her?) chin, but I think it’s a fine choice for many reasons: One, they invited Bush after he was elected, so the invite is justified if not imperative. And two, it offers Obama a Catholic setting to talk some about issues of central importance to Catholic, which have not received the hearing (so far) that he promised. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This should get the Irish fighting, along with lots of other Catholics. Or am I wrong? Via The South Bend Tribune: Obama will be the principal speaker and the recipient of an honorary doctor of laws degree at the university’s 164th commencement ceremony [on May 17], which will be in the Joyce Center, Notre Dame…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":128,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,6,3,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-355","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-catholic","category-church","category-politics","category-pop-culture"],"yoast_head":"\nObama to give commencement address at Notre Dame - Pontifications<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2009\/03\/obama-to-give-commencement-add.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Obama to give commencement address at Notre Dame - Pontifications\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"This should get the Irish fighting, along with lots of other Catholics. 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He came by all those vocations by accident, or Providence, during a longer-than-expected sojourn in Rome in the 1980s. Gibson began his journalistic career as a walk-on sports editor and columnist at The International Courier, a small daily in Rome serving Italy's English-language community. He then found a job as a newscaster and writer across the Tiber at the English Programme at Vatican Radio, an entity he describes as a cross between NPR and Armed Forces Radio for the pope. The Jesuits who ran the radio were charitable enough to hire Gibson even though he had no radio background, could not pronounce the name \"Karol Wojtyla,\" and wasn't Catholic. Time and experience overcame all those challenges, and Gibson went on to cover dozens of John Paul II's overseas trips, including papal visits to Africa, Europe, Latin America and the United States. When Gibson returned to the United States in 1990 he returned to print journalism to cover the religion beat in his native New Jersey for two dailies. He worked first for The Record of Hackensack, and then for The Star-Ledger of New Jersey, winning the nation's top awards in religion writing at both places. In 1999 he won the Supple Religion Writer of the Year contest, and in 2000 he was chosen as the Templeton Religion Reporter of the Year. Gibson is a longtime board member of the Religion Newswriters Association and he is a contributor to ReligionLink, a service of the Religion Newswriters Foundation. Since 2003, David Gibson has been an independent writer specializing in Catholicism, religion in contemporary America, and early Christian history. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Boston Magazine, Commonweal, America, The New York Observer, Beliefnet and Religion News Service. He has produced documentaries on early Christianity for CNN and other networks and has traveled on assignment to dozens of countries, with an emphasis on reporting from Europe and the Middle East. He is a frequent television commentator and has appeared on the major cable and broadcast networks. He is also a regular speaker at conferences and seminars on Catholicism, religion in America, and journalism. Gibson's first book, The Coming Catholic Church: How the Faithful are Shaping a New American Catholicism (HarperSanFrancisco), was published in 2003 and deals with the church-wide crisis revealed by the clergy sexual abuse crisis. The book was widely hailed as a \"powerful\" and \"first-rate\" treatment of the crisis from \"an academically informed journalist of the highest caliber.\" His second book, The Rule of Benedict: Pope Benedict XVI and His Battle with the Modern World (HarperSanFrancisco), came out in 2006 and is the first full-scale treatment of the Ratzinger papacy--how it happened, who he is, and what it means for the Catholic Church. The Rule of Benedict has been praised as \"an exceptionally interesting and illuminating book\" from \"a master storyeller.\" Born and raised in New Jersey, David Gibson studied European history at Furman University in South Carolina and spent a year working on Capitol Hill before moving to Italy. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and daughter and is working on a book about conversion, and on several film and television projects.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/author\/dgibson"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/128"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=355"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}