Catholic Fire

Less than a month before Notre Dame's Commencement, the former Vatican ambassador Mary Ann Glendon has written President Jenkins to refuse the university's Laetare Medal, rebuffing his claim that her acceptance speech would somehow "balance" the event. Mary Ann Glendon, a pro-life feminist and Harvard professor, today released an open letter to Notre Dame President John I. Jenkins, in which she told Jenkins that she could not speak alongside President Obama at the May 17th Commencement exercises. In her letter, Glendon related that she was initially "profoundly moved" at the news that she would receive Notre Dame's coveted Laetare Medal. After hearing the news, she said she quickly began crafting an acceptance speech that she "hoped would be worthy of the occasion." In March, Glendon said that she received a phone call from Fr. Jenkins informing her that she would not be giving the commencement speech, but that instead President Obama would fi...

Amid controversy over its chosen commencement speaker, it's now emerged that President Obama will share the Notre Dame stage with the "first lady" of American Catholicism. At this hour, as the bells of the Basilica of the Sacred Heart toll in Laetare Sunday, the university has announced Mary Ann Glendon -- the Harvard Law star, pro-life force, Vatican A-lister and, until January, former President Bush's ambassador to the Holy See -- as its 2009 recipient of the Stateside church's oldest and most prestigious honor, the Laetare Medal. (See the complete post at Whispers in the Loggia .)