The Premise

On Sunday, May 17^th, 2009, I attended the rally sponsored by ND Response on the south quad of Notre Dame’s campus, in front of the Rockne Memorial.

I, like many alumni, was unspeakably disappointed in the decision of the University to invite President Obama to be the commencement speaker on this day and, to an even greater degree, in the University’s decision to bestow upon him an honorary law degree.  In fact, I have even gone so far as to request that the Alumni Association have my name removed from any and all contact lists, especially those associated with requests for donations to the University.

My reasons for disagreeing with the University have been clearly expressed by others in many other locations, and I do not wish to dwell on them here.  Suffice it to say that they have not disappeared just because the event is over.

I found the rally moving.  It was peaceful, genuine, and honest, while at the same time being steadfast and unyielding.  I have expressed privately to some of my alumni friends that I do not love Notre Dame anymore, but in truth I found in listening to the speakers that this is not the case.  My love for Our Lady, if anything, has deepened through the angst that this situation has caused me.

The question that remains open is how my relationship with Her university will evolve.  Is it possible it could progress into something that I never conceived that it could be?  Or will it instead require pruning, a vine of my life that has ceased to bear fruit.

As I have pondered the situation at large, the issue of life, and the rally over the past several days, I have been inspired.

The University has expressed in its response to the outcry over the invitation the hope that this will be a sort of beginning, the start of a dialogue that might lead to substantial progress on the issue of abortion in this country.  Her leaders have indicated that their invitation does not indicate agreement in any substantial fashion with the policies of this President.  They have professed that they remain in step with the teaching of the Church.

The rally, as one of many points of emphasis, indicated a hope that those present would make an attempt to the hold the University accountable to these pronouncements.  More than one speaker expressed not only the hope, but the very real need, for Notre Dame to follow through on these statements if her family is to be healed from the rift that has occurred.  If the disputes that have taken place over the last few weeks are to have any real merit and impact, then the University’s implied promise to be a leader in the arena of dialogue must be concrete, and not just words lost in the gentle spring breezes of a beautiful Indiana commencement day.

The rally also spoke of many other things.

One major point of emphasis was the discipline of history.  Father Miscamble spoke of the history of the University, of its founding by Father Sorin, and of its persistence in the face of catastrophic fires and financial distress.  Father Raphael spoke of the history of the civil rights movement with a dynamism that echoed that movement in ways that current political discourse could never hope to match.  Professor Solomon spoke of the history of the culture of death, in particular about an article that appeared in a Princeton Journal of Bio-Ethics in 1973 that not only argued that a fetus did not have moral standing in our society, but that even an infant that was actually birthed into this world did not merit such standing because of its dependency and vulnerability.

The rally also spoke of ongoing efforts to combat the culture of death.  We heard about the yeoman efforts of the Women’s Care Center, founded by a Notre Dame professor, and the fantastic work it does to give resources to women who wish to choose life for their unborn babies.  And we also heard the story of a young Notre Dame graduate, and her efforts to establish a place called Room at the Inn that will allow college aged women confronted with an unexpected pregnancy to bring their babies to term in a caring atmosphere that does not require them to give up their studies and dreams of a meaningful education that will allow them to support these babies once the bring them into the world.

As I ponder these things, there is an unavoidable realization that the task before those who believe in life is monumental.  How are we, in the face of the betrayal we feel at the hands of Notre Dame, to maintain our hope?

I can’t, and won’t, let go of my faith.  No one, no matter the odds, will convince me that the side of life will not win.  It is now clear to me that this struggle, when finally resolved, will be looked back upon by future historians as epic, as one of those things that truly defined our society.

The inspiration that I am left with is that this struggle for life will become for our nation the 4^th great campaign in its history that will be centered on, and ultimately decided by, our unconditional support of an innate need to advance life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

The first campaign was the War for Independence, and everything that surrounded it.  It ended in the establishment of the first nation in history that was truly dedicated to preserving those ideals for all its citizens.

But it was imperfect, and the embodiment of that imperfection was the institution of slavery.  If the experiment was to thrive, prosper, and endure, it ultimately had to come to grips with an institution that was, at its core, antagonistic to the ideals that the nation was founded upon. The second great campaign was, therefore, the abolitionist movement, which found its resolution in the outcome of the Civil War.  The nation was tested to its limit, but it found a way to survive.

But still, it was imperfect.  The blot of slavery was technically exercised from the Constitution, but the racist attitudes that enabled it were far from removed from the hearts of the people.  Freedom was given in name to people of color, but the equality spoken of in the Declaration of Independence was far from present in the day to day life of the country.  The third great campaign, then, is the struggle for Civil Rights, begun on behalf of people of color, but in the end also encompassing women and issues of gender equality.  We had advanced culturally to the point where war was no longer the answer, although violence was not completely absent.  But that violence was now largely committed only on one side of the argument, and in the end it actually contributed to that side losing the struggle.

Because war was not used to resolve the campaign, the end point is not as clear.  The Civil Rights legislation that was passed in the 1960s was the great victory, but change brought about peacefully does not produce results as quickly as the sword, and we are really only now seeing the final culmination of that campaign.  Negatives linger, but, ironically enough, despite the work that still needs to be done, it is the election of Barack Obama that signals the end time of this third campaign.

And yet our society remains imperfect.  In the wake of the great expansion of Civil Rights that resulted from the turmoil of the sixties, a grave new injustice found its way to open acceptance within the law of the land.  A new class of powerless found themselves forgotten and marginalized by those who adopted a version of liberty more extreme than what our founders intended, a definition where the power of liberty once again did not free people from the impositions of their fellows, but instead legislated one person’s liberty at the expense of another’s life.

So long as we remain imperfect, we will always be in the midst a great campaign that seeks to extend a truer understanding of the words life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness to the people of this country.  As Americans, we can’t help it.  It’s in our cultural DNA.  And thus, just as the election of President Obama marks the end of the third great campaign, it must inevitably also mark the beginning of the fourth.

Who is it that is trodden upon by the powerful through the use of laws that by natural right ought to be protecting them?

First, it was the commoners, those taxed without representation, who were underestimated by the powerful.  Then it was those who were held in bondage to those in power to such an extent that they only counted as three fifths of a person.  And then third it was those who, because of a different color of skin, or because of their gender, were discriminated against despite the gifts so clearly given to them by their Creator.

Fourth and now it is the vulnerable unborn, represented first and foremost by more than fifty million dead since the passage of those Civil Rights laws that have made the election of President Obama possible.

The debate over abortion seems, at this exact moment in time, to be frozen.  President Obama, in his commencement address, spoke in platitudes about his hope that common ground can be found.  But the cold hard truth is that no common ground exists.  There was no common ground in 1776, when an oppressed people rose up to throw off their oppressors.   There was no common ground in 1861, when Civil War was the only answer to the problem of slavery.  And there was no common ground in the 1960s, when the evils of racism and gender discrimination reached a point that a good hearted people could simply no longer tolerate them in their society.

The question is not if, but when, will the evil of abortion be eradicated in this country.  If it is not, we can no longer be America.  If we will not stand as a people who see as their first duty the protection of the innocent, if we are not a people who choose always to serve others at the expense of our own individuality on the things that really matter, if we are not a people who believe that “we are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” then we are lost.  We cease to be what we were meant to be by those who founded this great nation.

For me, despite the betrayal I felt, hope dawned in front of the Rockne Memorial.  Bits and pieces of it were scattered throughout the speeches made this day.   Bits and pieces of it that coalesce into the idea that the issue of abortion can and should be recast as the 4^th great campaign in favor of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in this great American experiment.

A couple days ago, I registered the domain name www.the4thcampaign.com.

I believe a movement can be started that will be addressed not at Democrats or Republicans, but at the great silent majority of Americans that sits in the middle of the political spectrum, disgusted by both sides of the issue of abortion, and also disgusted by the way that both major political parties in this country are currently comporting themselves.

It is a movement that, like the rally this weekend, will be kind and peaceful in its rhetoric.  It will refuse to be drawn into the current combat on the issue.  It will speak the truth on the issue from a scientific, a philosophic, a theological, and a patriotic viewpoint.  It will be, in the words of Professor Solomon, counter-cultural, and as such it will refuse to even recognize the status quo.  It will use cutting edge technologies to bypass all the major information outlets of the day in order to speak directly to people in their homes and in their hearts.

In short, it will be American, and it will be Christian, and it therefore will be successful because it has history and truth on its side.