Why reason and prayer when you can take to the air?
Bishop D’ Arcy’s request for a reserved and prayerful response to the shameful act soon taking place at the University of Notre Dame is being rejected, largely by groups led by Protestant pro-lifers.
Some Catholics are indeed joining in, but when the day ends it will be nonCatholics who were the most successful culture war profiteers by going way over the big top in South Bend.
Here is a fine example from a Protestant Evangelical group that now claims to dominate the air space over our Lady’s school:
Massive Protests Planned for This Weekend
Columbus, OH – May 14, 2009 – Today the Center for Bio Ethical Reform begins its 18th day of operations of the Obama Awareness Campaign in South Bend, IN. For almost three full weeks CBR has been making abortion real to students, faculty, and trustees. CBR’s tow banner airplane and billboard trucks have reshaped the debate over the invitation of President Obama in South Bend and a! cross America. Everywhere residents turn, abortion is now the talk of the town.
Notre Dame Commencement Protest
This weekend, CBR’s abortion planes, billboard trucks, and handheld signs will combine with the Pro-Life Action Leagueand other groups for a massive protest along Angela Boulevard and near the main gate of the University of Notre Dame.
This Protestant group (do they really have a dog in this fight?) released the following statement to counter Bishop D’Arcy’s call for reserved diplomacy.
CBR Statement
Our abortion planes are a psychological warfare tactic. The students and residents are complaining in large numbers that just hearing the plane’s engine bothers them now.
Planes fly over Notre Dame all the time and they have never before bothered students and faculty. They fear that it is not just some plane, but THE ABORTION PLANE.
Now, the sound of the engine forces them to see an aborted baby in their minds eye and it deeply stresses them. This is the first pro-life project from which they cannot totally shield themselves. It reaches them wherever they try to hide.
We may not have stopped Obama. We may not have gotten President John Jenkins fired (yet). But we have successfully connected Obama to this crime against humanity and raised awareness nationally about the abortion holocaust.
–Gregg Cunningham, Director, Center for Bio-Ethical Reform
One has to wonder if they will next seize the television stations, a surely more productive way to force a message on a captive audience.
Have the activists of the pro-life movement confused the creation of controversy with the conversion of a culture? Have the activists of the pro-life movement exchanged 15 minutes of fame for 15 years of real change?
WWJD? The movie The Gospel Blimp certainly comes to mind.
The ArchAngel Institute yet stands with Bishop John M. D’Arcy, and encourages only those protests at Notre Dame that the Bishop, as the leader of the diocese, approves.
Here is the good Bishop’s thought out statement on the sad situation at the University of Notre Dame. It is not being towed behind a Beechcraft. That just is not the Church’s way.
