Nearly 100 Notre Dame faculty call for bishop’s resignation from board

April 25, 2012

Less than ten days after Bishop Daniel Jenky of Peoria cited Hitler and Stalin in criticizing President Obama’s “radical, pro-abortion and extreme secularist agenda,” 95 members of the faculty of the University of Notre Dame have called upon the prelate to resign from the university’s board of fellows.

After referring to Otto von Bismarck’s Kulturkampf and the persecution of the Church in France in the early twentieth century, Bishop Jenky had said that “Hitler and Stalin, at their better moments, would just barely tolerate some churches remaining open, but would not tolerate any competition with the state in education, social services, and health care. In clear violation of our First Amendment rights, Barack Obama--with his radical, pro-abortion and extreme secularist agenda--now seems intent on following a similar path.”

“Jenky’s comments demonstrate ignorance of history, insensitivity to victims of genocide and absence of judgment,” the faculty said in a letter to the university’s president and the chairman of the university’s board of trustees.

“We accept that Jenky’s comments are protected by the First Amendment, but we find it profoundly offensive that a member of our beloved University’s highest authority, the Board of Fellows, should compare the president’s actions with those whose genocidal policies murdered tens of millions of people, including the specific targeting of Catholics, Jews and other minorities for their faith.”

“We request that you issue a statement on behalf of the University that will definitively distance Notre Dame from Jenky’s incendiary statement,” they added. “Further, we feel that it would be in the best interest of Notre Dame if Jenky resigned from the University’s Board of Fellows if he is unwilling to renounce loudly and publicly this destructive analogy.”

Bishop Jenky, a Holy Cross priest, has deep ties to the university: he is an alumnus, the former director of campus ministry, and the former religious superior of the Holy Cross Priests and Brothers at Notre Dame.

 

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Further information:

• Faculty call to distance Notre Dame from Jenky’s ‘incendiary statement’ (The Observer)
• Most Reverend Daniel R. Jenky, C.S.C., D.D. (Diocese of Peoria)
• Bishop calls for ‘heroic Catholicism,’ rips Obama’s ‘radical pro-abortion agenda’ (CWN, 4/17)