Unmasked

The Land O’ Lakes Conference took place in July 1967 in Wisconsin led by Father Hesburgh of Notre Dame. The intent of this conference was to define the relationship between the modern American university and the Church, and between the Catholic university and American intellectual life.  In today’s Catholic university system of the 200 Catholic institutions supported by the Catholic Church, only about 20 are truly Catholic in doctrine. 

Much of the dispute about the Land O’ Lakes Conference has come to light again because the crowning glory of the Catholic university system, Notre Dame, invited the most Anti-Life, Pro-Abortion, liberal President in American history to give the commencement address at Notre Dame in May, where he will receive an honorary doctorate.  President Obama has made no secret of the fact that he is anti-Catholic with his Mexico City Retreat, his passage of the Conscience Clause which forces Catholic hospitals and Catholic personnel to participate in abortion, the slaughter of embryonic stem cells and his support of a political party which leads to the abortion of 3,500 babies each day including 1,400 Black babies, his Black constituents, his chief supporters.

Susan B. Anthony who died in 1906 and who made 75 to 100 speeches each year as head of the Women’s Suffrage Movement said, “abortion is the murder of children.”  It cannot get any plainer than that to Mr. Obama or anyone else including the Democrat Party.  Every Democrat, who voted for this President and who supported the Democrat Platform will answer to God for the murder of children. 

Like the Land O‘ Lakes meeting of agnostic, liberal educators such as Father Hesburgh and UNC's Bill Friday, academic freedom and the isolation of colleges and universities from historic church support in the name of freedom of inquiry has led to the morass at Notre Dame where 250,000 Catholics have already protested in writing, the Obama appearance.  Catholic bishops from Rome and across the United States know full well that the bells and smells of the Catholic liturgy will never erase the hypocrisy of such a person speaking at a commencement, President or not. As Reverend Wright, nationalistic, semi-religious Obama, Chicago pastor has said, “The chickens have come home to roost.”

The liberalism of church supported education institutions as well as the Marxism of state supported education institutions has lowered education to the gutter with the acceptance of  immorality and the John Dewey mantra “The end justifies the means.” The intelligentsia of our nation truly believes they know better than the rest of us about life and the way we should live our life. The DNA molecule in each human cell can produce enough information about the parents of a child, born or aborted, to fill thousands of pages.  The intelligentsia, so concerned with turtles, whales, certain species of animals that contribute very little to anyone at any time should be concerned about the child who might grow up to be a pope or a president, a pianist or a physician.

One early church in England was built without interior lighting. The pastor said, “Each family will be given a lantern.  Each family will bring its own lantern to church and we will have sufficient light.”  One Black pastor said to me recently, “Most Black people attend church ‘Just in case there’s something to it.’  They really have no belief and absolutely no faith.” Mother Theresa made the statement long ago, “We are not here to win but to show our faith.” When will the church, the college, the social and political groups learn that making numbers count is more important than counting numbers?

When I was a young boy, my Father was putting a new roof on a barn.  Thank God, he wanted me to be a man and as I heard so many men say when they walked by his casket, “He was a man‘s man.”  I still remember how scared I was on that barn, but I would never let him know my fright because he expected me to do a job and help him.  Some years ago I was speaking at a large meeting on the coast near Manteo, NC.  When leaving a restaurant, on the way to the meeting where I was to speak,  we passed a home which was on fire.  Of course, then as now, I was blind but at that time had a small shadow in one eye. 

On the coast, a house burns quickly because of the wind and the flame.  I remember the fire department had already given up on the house which had been engulfed and they were spending their time trying to protect nearby houses, but the lady whose house had burned was still standing close by with her water hose still spraying water on her burned-up house.  She was crying and spraying, she would not give up.  We may do some weeping as we see our education institutions descend into the mire of immorality, indifference and unimportance brought on by Marxist sophisticates, politically correct intelligentsia who feel that academic freedom is more important than academic achievement but we will still be holding the hose trying to salvage anything left.

Near the small school which I attended for 12 years and from which I graduated a class of 13 was the one room school attended by both my Grandfathers.  Schoolmates, reared in the same community, of Governor Charles Brantley Aycock who was Governor of North Carolina 1901-1905.  Aycock, the youngest of 10 children whose father died when he was 15 years old determined to get a good education when he saw his uneducated Mother make her “mark” on a deed.  As governor, Aycock became known as the "Education Governor" for his support of the public school system. It was said that one school was constructed in the state for every day he was in office. He felt that no lasting social reform could be accomplished without education.  In the book “Charles B. Aycock:  Education Governor” he is reported to have said,  “Education is the only God-given gift that can bring a young mind into the sphere of incomparable accomplishment.”