This is the time of year where college graduations dominate the lives of many Americans. A year after these ceremonies were relegated to Zoom because of the pandemic, graduations are back this spring, with masks and social distancing in place, to again signal the sending off to undergraduates into the workplace.
For journalists, graduations have long served as easy news stories. Above all, the graduation speaker is what makes these ceremonies news. At that vast majority of rites at elite and state schools the speaker is — to one degree or another — a cultural or political liberal.
Thus, is it any surprise that the ongoing tug-of-war between the U.S. bishops and President Joe Biden has spilled over into the graduation season? Well, it has in the form of the president not addressing graduates at the University of Notre Dame this year.
This news story was broken by Catholic News Agency. Here’s how the May 11 news story opened:
In a break with recent tradition, President Joe Biden will not be delivering the commencement address at the University of Notre Dame this year – although he was invited by the university to do so.
On Tuesday, the university announced that its May 23 commencement speaker will be Jimmy Dunne, a finance executive and trustee of the university. During the last three presidential administrations, U.S. presidents or vice presidents have addressed the university's commencement in their first year in office, but that trend will not continue in 2021.
Although a university spokesman told CNA that, as a policy, “we do not discuss who may or may not have been approached to address our graduates,” sources from the White House confirmed to CNA that Biden had indeed been invited by the university but could not attend due to scheduling.
Biden, just the second Catholic president since John F. Kennedy in 1960, has not been shy about mentioning his faith in public.
While he’s attended Mass regularly on Sundays, Biden supports taxpayer-funded abortion in defiance of the U.S. bishops’ conference and, as vice president, he performed two same-sex marriage rites. The Biden administration has also started to roll back restrictions on public funding of abortion providers, has supported the expansion of LGBTQ rights and continues to wage a legal battle to keep a mandate in place for doctors to provide gender-transition surgeries.
Just on the abortion issue alone, the Biden administration said this past Monday that they are committed to defending abortion rights after the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to consider taking up Mississippi's bid to revive a state law that bans the procedure after 15 weeks of pregnancy. The 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade made abortion legal nationwide.
This is the kind of political stance — in direct opposition to the church’s teachings — that has put Biden in the middle of the ongoing doctrinal divide between traditional and progressive Catholics. Mainstream news coverage of these issues, well documented in this space since Biden was elected, has been largely favorable to Biden’s political positions. Debates about whether Biden should receive Holy Communion rages on (see recent tmatt column on this topic).
This framing of the abortion fight reached its zenith this month with the Notre Dame kerfuffle. CNA’s reporting got no pickup from journalists in the mainstream press. They seemed to have taken a “nothing to see here” attitude on this one.
Why? It’s very likely that a noted Catholic university choosing to snub the president points to the very heart of the discord between many bishops and the current occupier of the White House.
Commencement addresses get plenty of attention depending on who the speaker is and at what school. What if there is no address like in the Biden case? Given the political and theological arguments since Inauguration Day, this one is very different. Not being invited, and the circumstances surrounding Notre Dame’s decision, is very much a new story. It was so much of a story that speculation about it months ago was of interest to many, even if a final decision wasn’t?
Back in March, the National Catholic Reporter speculated on whether Biden would be invited to address Notre Dame grads. Here’s the key section from that news feature:
Six U.S. presidents have spoken at Notre Dame's commencement exercises, and a total of nine presidents have received honorary degrees. Yet the decision to invite President Barack Obama to deliver a 2009 commencement address and receive an honorary degree proved to be a flashpoint, both for campus politics and the American Catholic Church.
Now, less than three months away from the 2021 commencement, a group aimed to "protect" the university's Catholic identity has launched a "Don't Invite Biden" campaign, while others are making their case that inviting the nation's second Catholic president is essential to the university's mission, setting up another likely showdown.
For now, the university remains tight lipped.
“Notre Dame doesn't discuss prospective commencement speakers until an invitation is proffered and accepted," Paul Browne, vice president of public affairs and communications, told NCR via email.
In general, the news that Notre Dame had avoided Biden was largely ignored. News outlets local to Notre Dame, like the South Bend Tribune, managed to use Biden’s name in the headline, but not one mention in the news story, a strange feat. The newspaper even alluded to it in a tweet.
Here’s the section regarding past presidents who spoke at the school:
Notre Dame officials have declined to discuss others who may have been approached to speak at the commencement, which has a long history of presidential speakers.
Then-Vice President Mike Pence spoke at Notre Dame’s commencement in 2017 and then-President Barack Obama addressed students in 2009.
Other presidential speakers, according to the university’s archives, include George W. Bush, George H.W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter and Dwight D. Eisenhower.
“It has long been our policy that, other than the selected speaker each year, we don’t discuss who may or may not have been approached,” University spokesman Dennis Brown said in an email.
The story also made no mention of the ongoing debate among bishops regarding whether Biden, or politicians in general, should be denied Communion if they advance political positions that come into direct contrast with church teaching.
In addition to the school and the bishops, getting reaction to what students and faculty think isn’t a difficult task. Just take a walk across the campus. The Sycamore Trust, a group of Notre Dame alums who believe in “an authentic Catholic renewal on campus,” issued an open letter imploring the school not to invite Biden. They’re certainly open to voicing their opinions on the matter.
This, for example, is a piece from the letter posted to their website:
In terms of Notre Dame’s honoring Biden, matters are made still worse by Biden’s repeated profession of his Catholicism, and one who, as you have acknowledged, believes abortion to be morally wrong.
His is not the familiar “personally opposed but will not impose” dodge of too many Catholic politicians. Rather, his is an inscrutable “personally opposed but nevertheless will promote and enable” stance. It is singularly blameworthy to help people do what one knows to be wrong.
Next, as to issues of sex, gender, and marriage, Biden’s actions already taken and those promised are breathtaking in scope and will undermine the religious liberty of individuals in their private lives, employment, businesses, and social and religious activities and of religious organizations and institutions such as schools, including Notre Dame, hospitals, and adoption agencies.
Notre Dame’s decision to allow Obama to be their graduation speaker in 2009 generated plenty of controversy at the time. The South Bend Tribune, at the time, covered the opposition to Obama’s presence.
It should also be noted that Biden already spoke at Notre Dame in 2016. At that graduation, Biden and former House Speaker John Boehner shared the stage where they both spoke on the current negative state of politics.
Biden and Boehner, who is also Catholic, were each awarded the Laetare Medal, the oldest and most prestigious honor at the catholic university. This is how CNN covered the graduation on its website at the time:
Biden joked that while he didn’t like Boehner – the two were often on opposite sides over issues like Obamacare and government spending – he “loved him.”
Boehner, for his part, said it was an honor to share the stage with the vice president.
Notre Dame’s President Rev. John I. Jenkins, said the university chose to give the prestigious award to the two politicians from different sides as a comment on the current political environment “where poisonous invective and partisan gamesmanship pass for political leadership.”
“It is a good time to remind ourselves what lives dedicated to genuine public service in politics look like. We find it in the lives of Vice President Biden and Speaker Boehner,” he said in a statement.
Biden, who didn’t cite any specific politicians in his condemnation, said while politics has long been a full contact sport, “it has recently become a blood sport full of invective,” adding that he has “not seen it like this” in his career.
“We used to treat each other with respect,” Biden told the audience in South Bend, Indiana. “John (Boehner) and I aren’t old school. We’re the American school … progress only comes when you deal with your opponent with respect. Listening as well as talking.”
This is the type of news coverage we don’t often see anymore — where both sides are fairly and equally represented — between two politicians from opposing parties who actually get along. This is the journalism and politics of five years ago. It doesn’t look as if we are going back to that.
The lack of news coverage around Notre Dame’s latest decision regarding this year’s graduation speaker is also another sign that many in our journalism community aren’t interested in the religious implications and controversy that continues to swirl around Biden’s faith and politics.