In the July-August 2009 issue of New Oxford Review, Michael V. McIntire, a 1957 graduate of Notre Dame and former Associate Professor of Law at Notre Dame Law School, writes:
In the early 1960s, promotion of the eugenics agenda of John D. Rockefeller III and Planned Parenthood was being frustrated by the Church's stubborn moral opposition to contraception. Rockefeller and Planned Parenthood considered public acceptance of contraception to be the key to public acceptance of eugenics by abortion, euthanasia, and genetic manipulation, and they actively sought a prominent Catholic voice to assist them in successfully opposing the strength of the Church's teaching on that issue. Notre Dame became their willing accomplice in this quest.
The university hosted three unpublicized conferences attended solely by theologians and academics who were selected because of their opposition to the Church's teaching on contraception; the first of these conferences was chaired by Notre Dame's president at the time, Fr. Theodore Hesburgh. The purpose of the conferences was to develop a "Catholic" position paper justifying the morality of contraception, which was finally promulgated in 1964 with massive publicity. The paper, popularly referred to as the "Notre Dame Statement," proclaimed that contraception was moral, that the Church's contrary teaching was unscientific and out of touch with modernity, and that those who believed it to be immoral had no right to impose this anachronistic belief on others. That proclamation was accepted and taught as authentic Catholic teaching by many Catholics, including many bishops, priests, and religious, and contributed greatly to the hostility of many to the papal encyclical Humanae Vitae, which was issued four years later. Notre Dame was rewarded for this traitorous activity against the Church with millions of dollars from the Rockefeller Foundation and other foundations whose primary mission for at least three generations has been to finance the worldwide spread of the eugenics agenda throughout the world — the agenda now called "the Culture of Death."
In 1967 Notre Dame severed all juridical relations with the Catholic Church, declaring itself to be independent from all Church authority. The infamous "Land O'Lakes Statement" became the new charter of the university, a charter that essentially replaced the faith-based principles of the Notre Dame's founder. The Land O'Lakes Statement is firmly grounded in religious relativism — the view that religious belief is not based on an absolute objective truth but on one's personal opinion, and that all such opinions are equally valid, provided they are sincerely held. Land O'Lakes proudly declared that the university would no longer promote "theological imperialism," a euphemism for the doctrine that the Catholic Church is the one true Church founded by Christ. Paradoxically, while rejecting all Church authority, that Statement arrogantly asserted that the university has the authority and the right to pass judgment on the teachings of the Church, and to decide what is and what is not proper Catholic teaching.
The Congregation of the Holy Cross meekly ratified this rebellion by transferring all interest and control of Notre Dame, which formerly belonged to the Holy Cross Province, to a board of predominately lay trustees. Since then, Notre Dame has been just another charitable educational corporation organized under the laws of Indiana and run by a board of trustees who, like their secular counterparts, are selected, not for their fidelity to the Church, but for the degree to which they can bring money, power, and prestige to the university....
[The foregoing paragraphs are excerpted from NOR Guest Column, "
Notre Dame, R.I.P." by Michael V. McIntire, and reproduced here by kind permission of
New Oxford Review, 1069 Kains Ave., Berkeley, CA 94706.]
No comments:
Post a Comment