The motto of the University of Notre Dame, translated from Latin (“Vita, Dulcedo, Spes“) means “Life, Sweetness and Hope.” This Sunday, the continued vitality of those words will be put to the test.

It would have been far more appropriate if the university had chosen a commencement speaker who supports the sanctity of human life to address its graduating class. Inviting Barack Obama is the modern day equivalent of extending an invitation to Margaret Sanger in recognition of her eugenicist policies being adopted by the National Socialist party in Germany. No amount of parsing can disguise the fact that Obama has an abysmal record on pro life issues dating back to his undistinguished tenure in the Illinois State Senate. During the 2008 campaign, Obama’s handlers tried to lie about his record, but since taking office the president’s actions have spoken volumes. Why on earth was he invited to Notre Dame? The only plausible answer is for the sake of publicity.

In recent years, it would seem that many Catholic colleges and universities abandoned their religious identity to such an extent as to become “Catholic” in name only. Apart from maintaining their not for profit, tax exempt status and displaying the Cross and religious symbols solely for fundraising purposes, many of the thoroughly secularized institutions seem to be completely divorced from their religious and cultural heritage. As the product of a parochial education, I can readily name several such institutions that no longer receive any alumni contributions from this correspondent. In Chicago, DePaul University has spent years litigating the dismissal of Thomas Klocek, an adjunct lecturer, who had the temerity to object to anti-Semitic propaganda being distributed on campus by a Palestinian student group while across town Loyola is trying to sanitize its facilities of Catholic symbols so as to create a more welcoming environment for non-Catholic students.

As to the removal of crucifixes from classrooms, an analogy is in order. Do you allow your house guests to repaint your living room, wall paper your bathroom and object to photographs that your family chose to display? Since when do courteous visitors dictate to their hosts? Some of these student activists behave like Sheridan Whiteside, “The Man Who Came to Dinner.” Sometimes, celebrating diversity and multiculturalism demands too much. Such persons should be politely and firmly shown to the nearest exit.

As other Catholic universities have retreated from their historic responsibilities along that well paved road to perdition, not to be mistaken for a potholed Chicago street, which is surfaced not with asphalt, but with good intentions, Notre Dame seemed secure unto itself. Its geographic isolation seemed to safeguard the campus from the excesses of spiritual modernity. All of that ended a few weeks ago. The new university president is not cut from the same cloth as some of his predecessors from the Congregation of the Holy Cross.

Many commentators have defended the propriety of the university inviting the president to speak to its graduating class. While I am not opposed to academic freedom,  this argument misses the point entirely. The University of Notre Dame crossed the line, not by inviting President Obama to deliver the commencement address, but by using the same occasion to award him an honorary degree. The position of Father John Jenkins, CSC, is clearly violates the express terms of a 2004 statement of the Catholic Bishops which prohibits awards and honors being conferred upon public figures who defy fundamental moral principles lest those honors be misinterpreted as support for their actions.

Obama holds the most extreme positions on abortion and stem cell research of any major American politician. Although President Clinton was reliably supportive of so called abortion rights, including a presidential veto of the partial birth abortion ban,  he expressed occasional reservations, including his belief that abortion should be “safe, legal and rare.” Obama has supported infanticide.

It seems somewhat unfathomable given the circumstances surrounding Obama’s own  parentage and birth (his own autobiography described the circumstances surrounding his parents’ marital relationship as “murky”) that Obama is such an ardent supporter of unrestricted abortion upon demand. Given the fact that his parents were a white woman in her late teens, not yet an adult by the standards of the era, and a black foreign exchange student with a personal history of alcoholism and bigamy, had abortion been legal in 1961, it seems likely that Stanley Ann Dunham would have counseled by some people to terminate her pregnancy. According to reports, the abrupt marriage of the two Russian language students who met at the University of Hawaii was opposed by both of their families. Surprisingly, however, Obama equated child bearing with a form of punishment in an unscripted moment in which he indicated that he wanted abortion available as an option for his two daughters.

What makes Obama’s strident support of abortion so appalling, even to the point where he has opposed extending medical care to a child born alive following an unsuccessful abortion procedure, is that his position seems tied to financial considerations. The abortion industry lavishes large sums of money upon its favored political candidates and support for unrestricted abortion is the sine qua non of tapping into an entire network of major Democratic campaign donors. These are not people responding to fund raising appeal letters by writing ten dollar checks. These are campaign contributors who are prepared to provide tens of thousands of dollars to left leaning candidates. Centrists and moderates need not apply.

Despite the sad news, I have not surrendered to despair. This is a teachable moment.

Around the United States, prayer meetings are being organized, buses filled with members of the Holy Name Society are preparing to make a pilgrimage to South Bend to bear witness to the central tenets of Catholic faith, graduating seniors are absenting themselves from the commencement exercises, the former US Ambassador to the Vatican, Mary Ann Glendon, has declined to attend the ceremony and accept an award on the same platform with Obama, who was one of her former students at Harvard, and many of the most important Catholic bishops from throughout the country has spoken out with one voice. Cardinal Francis George has described the honorary degree being given to Obama from Notre Dame as “an extreme embarrassment.” The controversy has caused some Catholics to re-examine their faith and to recommit themselves to their church.

It is interesting to note that a state sponsored university, Arizona State, has also invited Obama to address its graduating class, but refrained from making an honorary degree presentation on the grounds that Obama has not accomplished anything to merit such recognition yet.

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Daniel J. Kelley is a regular contributor to “The Chicago Daily Observer.” His late cousin, the Reverend William F. Kelley, S.J., was a former president of Marquette University and the recipient of a honorary doctorate of laws degree from that same university.