Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Correspondence: A Letter to Notre Dame

In response to a fundraising letter I received from the University of Notre Dame this week, I sent back the following letter:

August, 11, 2009

To: The University of Notre Dame Development Office

I will not be giving any donations to the Annual Fund in light of the University's decision to honor President Obama at Commencement.

This honor was awarded in direct defiance of the 2004 guidance given by the US bishops. Mr. Obama is arguably the most prominent and powerful abortion advocate in the world. For a Catholic university to honor him as such was disgraceful.

I will reconsider my decision to withhold donations to the Annual Fund when the following developments have occurred:

  1. Fr. Jenkins has publicly apologized, resigned, or been replaced as University president, AND
  2. The University has undertaken a clear change in direction by fully embracing its Catholic identity in all its endeavors.

In the meantime, I will redirect my donations to other worthy causes.

Respectfully,

(Mr. H)

Class of 1991


If you would like to help in the fight to restore the Catholic identity of the University of Notre Dame, you can:

1. Check out and support the Sycamore Trust. Click here for their website.

2. Check out and support the wonderful on-campus initiative, the Notre Dame Fund to Protect Human Life. The website is here.

3. Join the Facebook Group Pro-Life Alumni and Friends of Notre Dame which can be found here.

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Addendum: I have posted the letter of another ND alumnus here.

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6 comments:

  1. I wonder how many people did the same thing. Hopefully there were enough letters like yours to make them take notice. Well done!

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  2. James,

    Thanks for your blog and for posting your correspondence. As a Notre Dame alumnus, it's easy to go back to fretting about the fall football season and forget about the Obama fiasco. I will try to put forth the effort that you're suggesting here in response to the University's fundraising efforts. I know it would be more effective if I were a regular donor (I'm not) but thoughtful letters do have an impact, I can say as a development consultant.

    Regards,

    Bill Murray '89

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  3. Thank you for featuring the Sycamore Trust, http://sycamoretrust.org. We established the organization in response to Father Jenkins's authorization of The Vagina Monologues and the Queer Film Festival. It soon became obvious to us, from what Catholic faculty said and wrote and from the library of studies of secularization, that the root problem is the radical decline in Catholic faculty, from 85% in the 1970's to 53% today, with many of those dissenting or merely nominal. The Obama fiasco would not have happened were the culture of the university formed by a vibrantly Catholic faculty rather than one that has roundly applauded Fr. Jenkins's action. I urge all who want to join the struggle to stop Notre Dame from being another Georgetown to examine our web site and then if satisfied -- as I'm confident you will be -- to join us. Bill Dempsey, President, Sycamore Trust, whdempseyW@earthlink.net

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  4. Thank you Mr. H. I am not an Alumi, but a Catholic. I like to think a good one. I am glad to see the Alumi cut off ND financially if thats what it takes for them to continue to teach our children what we started.Thou shall not kill. I have just sent another child to college and pray that she will get threw her four years and come out the same Young Christian I worked so hard to form.

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  5. the fighting irish have run from the fight surrendering to the obamas and their pagan society.

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  6. All of the Catholic colleges not on the Newman list have been taken over by government affiliates and are no longer run by the church, but instead, the state. Condemning Catholicism is actually mandatory for many reasons, only one of which is to program future nurses for euthanasia (all while Obama swears there is no such thing in this new Health Bill). Unfortunately, without being aware of this, many of us Catholics would really be in a state of shock to find Catholicism being constantly condemned in a Catholic college... which means, as students we found ourselves literally suffering religious abuse in one of our own religious institutions (yes, in the year 2010, long after religious abuse was supposed to be a thing of the past).

    After telling the first professor off and dropping her class, still learning about this set-up (of government programming) the hard way, I was then actually set-up by the next professor, the nun who's head of the religious department. But God really doesn't care about B.A.’s, M.A.'s and PhD's or so-called nuns. When he wants to turn one’s 'private' stupidity into their 'public' stupidity he picks where and when and all those degrees go right out the window (while this nun’s vows of obedience had left long before I’d come along). However, since no one can do anything for us students, I guess this will be my one and only semester at what is still referred to as a Catholic college. It’s one thing to deal with evil, another thing altogether to pay $1600 a class (some of which are useless), while the rest of the world has no clue what’s going on. The college administration here will be tickled pink that I’m leaving, as my name had instantly turned to “Mudd”, with sweat actually running down this nun’s brow, thinking I was a Theology major, and worrying about which professor would be dealing with me next.

    Unfortunately, for the senior citizens of today who are so worried now about their demise with Obama’s new health care bill, they will NEVER connect the fact that the circumstances they are dealing with has anything to do with the fact that 30 years earlier many of them had voted for the demise of the unborn.

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