Jenkins, students head to D.C. for march
Notre Dame Right to Life Club sends students to capital to support pro-life cause
Published: Friday, January 22, 2010
Updated: Wednesday, September 12, 2012 13:09
 "Photo: AP")
AP
State Rep. Bill Hinkle encourages a crowd of pro-life supporters, Jan. 19 while speaking at the steps of the Legislative Building in Washington.
Almost 400 students will participate in this year's national March for Life Friday in Washington, D.C. — doubling last year's participation.
The Notre Dame Right to Life Club sends students to the nation's capital every year to march in the annual pro-life rally, the group's co-vice president Mary Daly, a senior, said.
But this year, for the first time, University President Fr. John Jenkins will join the marchers.
Jenkins created a pro-life task force in September to "broaden and deepen the pro-life culture" at Notre Dame to help "strengthen the Notre Dame community's witness to Catholic teaching on life." One of the task force's first recommendations was to suggest the University president join Notre Dame students in Friday's March for Life.
The task force's creation was in response to the work of a group of students who condemned Jenkins' decision to invite President Barack Obama to deliver the 2009 Commencement address and award him an honorary degree.
Daly, a leader within the student group that protested Jenkins' invitation to Obama, said she is pleased with the progress of the task force so far.
"We're very glad to have Fr. Jenkins and faculty coming," she said. "This is something we've been working to get for a several years now."
Daly said Right to Life has invited Jenkins' to march with the students every year, but this is the first year he has accepted.
"It's a testament to people's recognition that this is something that is important, especially for Notre Dame to have a voice in it is key, and this year our numbers are record setting," she said.
Right to Life president John Gerardi said he believes the creation task force and Jenkins' participation in the March is a step in the right direction for the University.
"Looking at the task force as a whole, I think they've done a lot of good things and I certainly appreciate help giving for the March," Gerardi, a senior, said.
Gerardi is participating in the March for the first time, but Daly has gone each year she has been at Notre Dame.
"What is cool is when you go to the March, you get this sense that these 3,000 people think this is important just like I do," Daly said. "It's incredibly exciting to be able to go with a group of friends, but also with people from Notre Dame I don't even know. We go and sleep on a gym floor and are backpacking through the city in a way."
The students will begin the day Friday with a Mass and gathering for students, faculty and alumni before embarking on the March. Afterward, the group will meet for an "ND family dinner," Daly said.
Fort Wayne-South Bend Bishop Kevin Rhoades will celebrate a Mass Saturday morning at St. Ann's Catholic Church in Arlington, Va.
Gerardi said a big focus of the trip is uniting students, faculty and alumni.
"I think it's a really good thing that the University as a whole is attempting to give witness to the sanctity of human life," he said. "I also think it is nice to see that it's sort of the entire Notre Dame community, not just a rabble-rousing group of rambunctious 20-year-olds."
Although Daly said Jenkins' appearance makes this year's March significant for the Notre Dame community, she said Right to Life is approaching this trip in the same way they have every year.
"We would like this year to go similarly to other years. I think that's kind of normal. I don't want to hype things up because Father Jenkins is coming, and I don't think he wants that either," she said. "He wants to join us and be apart of it. That's something that has been communicated to us."
Daly said she hopes the March acts as a unifying event for the Notre Dame community.
"You feel this instant camaraderie with everyone there," she said. "It's really a cool thing."
42 comments
Dear Heavenly Father, thank you for the gift of our brother, Chuck's, honest and courageous post. You hear our brother's cry for help as he suffers from his cross of same sex attraction disorder. You know the deep pain and hurt in Chuck's heart, and you weep for and with him. Lord, please heal Chuck. Please call Chuck home to repentance and to Your loving embrace, filled with mercy and forgiveness. Please soften Chuck's heart, hardened by years of pain and bitterness. Please gently show Chuck Your Truth and Your Unconditional Love and call Chuck to a closer relationship with You. Please lovingly invite Chuck to come home to the Catholic Church. You know I, too, was away from the Church for many years, Lord. Though my sins were different from Chuck's, You know my heart, too, was once hardened by sin. And still, You called me home, home to a peace and joy I didn't know existed! Lord, please call our brother, Chuck, home, as well. Give him the courage and the strength to seek healing and recovery at www.couragerc.net. Thank you, dear Lord Jesus. In Your Holy Name, I pray. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
"Gay" pride parades are all about celebrating homosexuality. Church teaching makes clear that the homosexual orientation, and homosexual activities, are disordered and seriously sinful. That teaching is not going to change, regardless of how many states temporarily allow same-sex "marriage" (until the voters reject it, as they have consistently done in every state) or how many secular universities embrace the homosexual agenda. Notre Dame could certainly do more to support its students who are suffering from same-sex attraction, but that support should always be provided in a manner consistent with Church teaching. Telling students that a homosexual orientation is natural and normal, and that homosexual activities are simply another acceptable means of expressing one's sexuality, isn't the kind of support that the university is in a position to provide.
It's not going to happen, either on Fr. Jenkins' watch or on the watch of his successor.
So that he can begin to liberate Notre Dame from being a Magisterial protections society for dogma and so-called teaching about gay folks that is both hurtful and insulting to us and to any thinking Catholic, who has experienced the intrinsic goodness of gay and lesbian people of God. Many of us are growing weary of Catholic institutions hiding behind Church teaching, paying it lip service, as an excuse not to do the social justice thing. It's time for Notre Dame to wake up to post-modernity and behave like all its secular peer institutions -- all are way ahead of UND on the gay thing. If the most recent gay bashing cartoon doesn't cause you to re-think Notre Dame's Spirit of Inclusion," what will it take?
Too late.
You had an amazing, once-in-a-lifetime chance to stand up and be a *loud* voice for the unborn. You failed.
"5. other than; except: There's no one here besides Bill and me."
If you look further down the page, the American Heritage Dictionary says that "besides" can mean, "Except for; other than: No one besides the owner could control the dog."
I apologize for using such a confusing word.
As stated, I have been accepted to Notre Dame, and in the time that I have procrastinating my homework (due to senioitis, because I'm a senior) I have been spending much time on nd.edu trying to make a well-informed decision on the university I will attend in the fall. There is a link from the website to this one of the Observer. Finding the comment section was pretty difficult, actually. I read an article. Right underneath it, it said "Comments." I'm honored (good thing I'm not pro-choice...) you think I'm smart enough to be a professor, but I'm really not. Look at the times I have made posts. I was up pretty late last night, and I just woke up. And yes, I live in the eastern time zone. Also, if I were a professor, that would in no way substantiate anything that you have said, and I hope you realize that claiming I am one is completely the topic of ND's commencement speaker choices.
"...my entire family, besides me, is pro-choice." Actually,believe it or not, this means that I am pro-life. In fact, I went to a march about it yesterday to voice how I feel Roe vs. Wade should be overturned. I am fully aware that pro-choice means pro-abortion and how it is against the Catholic faith, but that also has nothing to do with what I have said. It seems that you are only capable of spitting out information that other people have told you, and in capable of thinking about what I have said. With your logic, if I do not agree with you, I must be pro-choice. This is not true, especially since I was not speaking about abortion. Remember that we must have faith and reason as Catholics (from Fides et Ratio by Pope John Paul II, the title translated literally means Faith and Reason) and I feel you only have faith in what you have been told, and absolutely no reason at all. I would love to disucss your opinions with you, but it seems every argument you make boils down to how Catholics can't be pro-choice, which is simply irrelevant to the discussion.
is a member of the 
