McGurn at Notre Dame

My old friend Frank Beckwith has just called my attention to this announcement at his Return to Rome website.

The Notre Dame Center for Ethics & Culture is sponsoring a lecture tonight by the Wall Street Journal ’s Bill  McGurn. McGurn is a Notre Dame alumnus (1980) and a former chief speech writer for George W. Bush (2005-2009).

Mr. McGurn offered the following comments on what he plans to talk about:

President Obama’s invitation to speak at Notre Dame comes at a moment when the nation’s most prominent Catholics—our Vice President, our Speaker of the House, the nominee for Secretary of Health and Human Services—are all strong and unequivocal advocates for enshrining abortion into the law as a constitutional right. For the prolife community, the issue is not so much opposition to a commencement speaker as what we long to see at Our Lady’s university: affirmation for the premier civil rights cause of our day. In a nation wounded by Roe , in a culture that sets mothers against their own children, we know this: Our church, our culture, and our country are poorer without the life witness of Notre Dame.

Thanks Frank, wish I could be there. But, excuse me for asking: don’t you think a few days advance notice would have been nice! Maybe you Rome guys could do with a little Genevan efficiency and timeliness.

But we’ll save those theological conversations for another day.