Obama invite not the first time a presidential speech at Notre Dame has drawn protesters

George Bush also was a target, back in 2001

The president is coming to Notre Dame, and the protesters are outraged.

2009? Yes. And 1992. And 2001. And 1981. And 1988.

What is perhaps so surprising about the uproar over President Obama's speech at Sunday's commencement at America's best-known Catholic University is how precedented it is.

Notre Dame has seen it all before. Student demonstrations, protests by alumni and outside groups -- even the bishop threatening to boycott.

For close to a century at least, Notre Dame has been inviting leading American politicians, Catholic and non-Catholics, to speak. U.S. Rep. John F. Kennedy spoke at the 1950 commencement, and his grandfather Boston Mayor John F. "Honey Fitz" Fitzgerald spoke at the 1915 commencement.

Anti-abortion activist Joe Schiedler graduated from Notre Dame in 1950, the year Kennedy spoke and he was teaching in th late ‘50s and early ‘60s when President Eisenhower spoke. He doesn’t remember protests there at either one. He expects the number of protests this weekend to top anything Notre Dame has seen before.

Obama may be the only president who went to work for a Catholic Church-sponsored agency after college and he agrees with the church on war and peace issues, but Obama's stance supporting abortion rights trumps all that, Scheidler said.

"I see this as an opportunity to cement the abortion issue to him," Scheidler said.

Daniel Moriarty and his wife run a mission in Bolivia. At his 2001 graduation from Notre Dame, Moriarty, clad in his gown, turned his back to President Bush and said the rosary kneeling in the aisle as a silent protest.

"Bush was far more threatening to Catholic values in terms of his policies than Obama," Moriarty said.“I think Obama actually, in his policies, may be doing more than any ‘pro-life’ president has done to reduce abortion.”

Statistics show abortion rates actually went up under the presidencies of Ronald Reagan and the first President Bush until 1990, then continued declined through the terms of President Clinton -- who did not speak at Notre Dame -- and President George W. Bush.

"I don't think they should invite presidents -- they should look beyond the state for commencement speakers," Moriarty said, suggesting people doing "The Lord's work.".

1950: JFK -- the only Catholic president -- gave the commencement speech at the winter commencement while he was a congressman. His father, Ambassador Joseph Kennedy, gave the commencement speech in 1941. His grandfather, Boston Mayor John "Honey Fitz" Fitzgerald spoke in 1915

1977: President Jimmy Carter, who disagreed with the church on abortion, but agreed with it on many worldwide humanitarian issues, said of university President Fr. Theodore Hesburgh, "Hesburgh has spoken more consistently and more effectively in the support of the rights of human beings than any other person I know."

1981: President Ronald Reagan, who agreed with the church and the pope on abortion and standing up to communism but disagreed with the church on U.S. intervention in Central America and on capital punishment, attracted a crowd of 400 protesters who opposed his policies and 400 counter-protesters who held up signs such as "Don't give the Gipp no lip."

1984: New York Gov. Mario Cuomo chose Notre Dame to articulate the doctrine of Catholic elected officials who "personally oppose" abortion but support keeping it legal because "Catholics, the statistics show, support the right to abortion in equal proportion to the rest of the population. Are we asking government to make criminal what we believe to be sinful because we ourselves can't stop committing the sin? Abortion will always be a central concern of Catholics. But so will nuclear weapons. And hunger and homelessness and joblessness. Approval or rejection of legal restrictions on abortion should not be the exclusive litmus test of Catholic loyalty.”

(Cuomo was pinch-hitting for Democratic Vice-Presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro, who had been warned by her bishop, Cardinal John O'Connor, to change her position on abortion.)

1988: Reagan, at the end of his presidency, and who would later acknowledge he was suffering early-onset Alzheimer's, tried to reprise his role as George "The Gipper" Gipp in the classic Knute Rockne All-American. He tossed a football toward Heisman Trophy winner Tim Brown and said, "Win just one for the Gippet."

1992: President George H.W. Bush was to give the commencement speech, and Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.) was to receive the university's Laetare Medal. President Bush had come to agree with the church on abortion. But Moynihan's support for legal abortion was enough to convince Bishop John D'Arcy to boycott the event, as he is this year because of Obama's abortion stand. University President Edward “Monk” Malloy called Moynihan “sensitive to the cry of the poor.”

2001: Protests greeted newly-elected President George W. Bush. Valedictorian Carolyn Weir posed the question to the audience, and, indirectly to Bush: "Why do you play God, by executing the guilty?" During the roar of applause that followed, Bush leaned over and made a comment to Malloy.

For more information on past Notre Dame protests, see http://www.ndsmcobserver.com/