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Catholic PRWire

FRONT ROYAL, VA (MAY 19, 2009) - “Some people say that all this stuff going on [at Notre Dame] dishonors the Office of the President of the United States,” National Director of Priest for Life Rev. Frank Pavone told 93 graduates during his homily at Christendom College's baccalaureate Mass on Friday, May 15. “I have news for them. It is the President who is dishonoring the Office of the President of the United States by taking a pro-abortion position.”

Rev. Pavone is one of the most prominent pro-life leaders in the world. Originally from New York, he was ordained in 1988 by the late Cardinal John O’Connor. He is a priest of the Amarillo Diocese and serves full-time in pro-life leadership with his bishop’s permission. He is the National Director of Priests for Life and has served as an official of the Pontifical Council for the Family at the Vatican. Norma McCorvey, the “Jane Roe” of the Supreme Court’s Roe vs. Wade abortion decision, called Pavone “the catalyst that brought me into the Catholic Church.”

“Every elected official on any level of government, who takes a position in which they fail to recognize and work for the protection of the right to life dishonors the very meaning of their office. Because you can't be a public servant, if you fail to tell the difference between serving the public and killing the public,” he said.

Rev. Pavone told graduates that they were called to be courageous in the pro-life movement by responding to Christ's challenge: greater love no one has than to lay down one's life. Being pro-life means taking risks and making personal sacrifices.Pavone sighted Prof. Mary Ann Glendon who declined Notre Dame's Laetare Medal as a great example of this.

“She was willing to lay down an honor—willing to lay down an earthly reward—for the sake of her friends, the unborn children; for the sake of her friends, the people in the Church she loves, who have been so scandalized, upset, angered, and furious at what is going on. She was not going to be used and she was not going to let earthly honors, titles, positions, privileges, or prestige turn her away from doing what is right,” he said.

Pavone alluded to his invitation to the protest at Notre Dame and his invitation to Christendom's commencement as “a study in contrasts.”

“You are committing yourself today to restore all things in Christ, because you are His friends and you know and have the power to love,” he closed. “You have the power to sacrifice whatever you may be called upon to sacrifice in order to advance justice, life, and love.”

On Saturday morning, the Class of 2009 processed to Crusader Gymnasium where the commencement exercises were held.

Salutatorian Joan Robinson of Virginia welcomed all to the ceremony and spoke of the unearthly treasures of knowledge and friendship, which Christendom gave to the students. She told her classmates that they must share these riches with a world run rampant with material and spiritual poverty. [read full text here]

“If one gives, and gives consistently, one becomes poor. We are all called to poverty. We are all called to Divine abandonment. We are all called to discard our petty trifles and, then aware of our great need for God, we welcome his Divine alms—namely, whatever vocation God sends us.”

Concluding, she told her classmates, “Now is our time to give knowledge and friendship. To go out into the desert as poor ones to the poor to be a vital part of the springtime of Christ.”

Following Robinson's address, Rev. Frank Pavone was awarded Christendom College's Pro Deo et Patria Medal for Distinguished Service to God and Country.

“I will have the profound privilege tomorrow to stand with the seniors of The University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana, who are not going to their commencement because they don't want to be part of a ceremony that obscures, rather than highlights the Church's teachings on the defense of the unborn,” Pavone said in his remarks. “Let this institution of Christendom College continue to grow into what God has called it to be: one of the greatest institutions for Catholic learning in our country.”

Dr. Jude P. Dougherty then delivered the Commencement Address and was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Humane Letters. Dougherty, the Dean Emeritus of the School of Philosophy at The Catholic University of America in Washington, DC, is the author of numerous essays, articles, and books including The Logic of Religion, Jacques Maritain: An Intellectual Profile. He is the recipient of many awards including the Knights of Columbus’ 2004 Outstanding Citizen of the Year.

"The world you are entering is not the world I entered at your age,” he began. “Yours is a far more destabilized world where few of the permanent things can be taken for granted. Confronted as you are with the intellectual and moral disarray of our ...

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