Notre Dame's Obama Invite Riles Catholic Bishops

President Barack Obama makes a surprise appearance at the daily briefing in the Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House in Washington, Friday, May 1, 2009. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

(AP)

This coming week, Bishop Thomas Wenski of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orlando, Fla., will take the unusual step of celebrating a Mass of Reparation, to make amends for sins against God. The motivation: to provide an outlet for Catholics upset with what Wenski calls the University of Notre Dame's "clueless" decision to invite President Barack Obama to speak at its commencement and receive an honorary doctorate May 17.

The nation's flagship Catholic university's honoring of a politician whose abortion rights record clashes with a fundamental church teaching has triggered a reaction among the nation's Catholic bishops that is remarkable in scope and tone, church observers say.

At least 55 bishops have publicly denounced or questioned Notre Dame in recent weeks, employing an arsenal of terms ranging from "travesty" and "debacle" to "extreme embarrassment."

The bishops' response is part of a decades-long march to make abortion the paramount issue for their activism, a marker of the kind of bishops Rome has sent to the U.S. and the latest front in a struggle over Catholic identity that has exposed rifts between hierarchy and flock.

Bishops who have spoken out so far account for 20 percent of the roughly 265 active U.S. bishops — a minority, but more than double the number who suggested five years ago that then-Democratic presidential hopeful and Catholic John Kerry should either be refused Communion or refrain from it because of his abortion stance.

"I think they do believe the chips are down," said James Hitchock, a history professor at St. Louis University. "The election has changed the whole landscape. Now we have a strongly pro-abortion administration in power, and he's in a position to achieve what we've been trying to stave off now for years."

As for Wenski, he issued a statement and then came up with the Mass idea after angry Notre Dame graduates from central Florida asked for guidance about how to respond, he said in an interview.

"I figured, 'I'm a bishop — I'm not going to tell them to attack Notre Dame with a pitchfork,'" said Wenski, who is not among the nation's more confrontational bishops. "I'm going to tell them to go pray."