Catholics astir over Obama's speech at Notre Dame

Landing the president of the United States as commencement speaker is like grabbing the brass ring on the graduation-day carousel – usually. But for the University of Notre Dame, President Obama’s scheduled appearance Sunday as commencement speaker has touched off a gargantuan flap among Roman Catholics, not only about his policies on abortion and embryonic stem-cell research, but also about the role religion should or should not play in political life.

For a president who has taken care to embrace religious inclusivity, the vehement objections among some Catholics to his appearance at Notre Dame in South Bend, Ind., would indicate that being included may not be enough to keep certain values voters in Mr. Obama’s column.

“He claims he tries to be inclusive, but that doesn’t extend to practicing Catholics,” says Susan Fani, director of communications at The Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, calling the president “hostile to Catholic beliefs.” “Considering he has been in office for 100 days,” she adds, “we’re surprised at the pace that Catholic sensibilities have been offended repeatedly.”

A split among Catholics

The debate among Catholics over the president’s commencement role at the most high-profile Catholic university in the US has been heated, but it is, perhaps, not surprising. There is a well-documented political split between observant Catholics – those who attend services at least weekly – and Catholics who attend church less frequently, with the former tending to vote Republican and the latter up for grabs. In the last election, though, Obama won half the observant Catholics and more than two-thirds of less-observant worshippers.

“There’s been a lot of discussion in the community – apart from this flash point at Notre Dame – about how we engage people with different perspectives,” says the Rev. Donald Senior, president of Catholic Theological Union, a theology school in Chicago. “A lot of the Catholic community is conflicted” regarding Obama, says Father Senior, because his stance on issues like poverty and economic inequity parallels church teachings, while his support for abortion rights and embryonic stem-cell research does not.

He suggests that the church’s leaders today are grappling with how to present a public face of Catholicism in a way that resonates in a positive light rather than always appearing to be unyielding and “the church of no.”

“Maybe the church leadership is trying to say, how do we navigate this [era of hot-button issues]? It’s much more dicey now than it was 30, 40 years ago” when John Kennedy became the first Catholic president of the United States, he says.

Slippage among Catholic voters

There are signs that some Catholics, 54 percent of whom voted for Obama in November, are rethinking their views of the president. For instance, the share of Catholics who disapprove of the president’s performance is rising. Only 20 percent disapproved in February; lately that share has jumped to 45 percent, according to a poll released two weeks ago by the Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion & Public Life.

That means a majority of Catholics still approve of Obama’s performance, but support among observant Catholics – those who attend services at least once a week – is fading. Sixty-three percent of that subset is disapproving, compared with 43 percent of Catholics who go to church less often.

The White House, on Tuesday, acknowledged the controversy over the Notre Dame commencement speech, but sought to play down the extent of the opposition.

“It appears as if the vast majority of students and the majority of Catholics are supportive of the invitation the president accepted,” said Robert Gibbs, White House press secretary. “I think there is one group organizing a boycott, and as best I can understand it, there are 23 groups that have formed in support of the president's invitation.”

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