As many WND readers are aware, I was among those directly harmed by what Archbishop Burke of the Vatican called “the gravest scandal,” given to moral conscience throughout the world by those responsible for the Notre Dame University’s conferral of an honorary degree on Barack Obama, the new high priest of the global culture of death. Their action continues to resonate with evil, even as new evidence mounts of Obama’s unalterable commitment to spread and intensify the deadly perversion of moral logic involved in promoting so-called “abortion rights.”

The Obama faction proposal for inaugurating the socialist takeover of the U.S. health sector has stirred deep moral opposition. People of decent conscience are appalled by the calculus of evil involved in provisions which implement cost-cutting health-care rationing that targets the elderly and war afflicted military veterans while increasing the availability of public money for the slaughter of innocent human offspring in the womb and the laboratory. They are revolted by provisions that point toward the substitution of heartless bureaucratic dictatorship for the free and at least potentially loving decisions of human individuals about matters of life and death for their close relations.

Even once and future elements of the Obama faction’s servile claque of media idolizers have been forced to admit, with well-acted dismay, the lies Obama and his cronies are using in their campaign to quell the revulsion all this has caused. Yet as Obama takes the point to win public support for the establishment of a totalitarian health regime deeply infected by the culture of death, he enjoys a false aura of moral legitimacy. It was purposefully projected and enhanced by the words and images involved in the ceremonial moral fealty offered by Notre Dame’s president on behalf of an institution that still claims to represent an identity in faith and morals consistent with Christianity and the teachings of the Catholic Church.

This means that the Notre Dame scandal contributes to an ongoing abuse of conscience that could result in U.S. government policies that implement an even more complete and pervasive promotion of the culture of death than we have already seen in the years since the Roe v. Wade decision. Given this prospect, I was encouraged to learn that “Ft. Wayne-South Bend Bishop John D’Arcy, whose diocese includes the University of Notre Dame, has penned a column calling on the University, its president, and board members to answer for their decision to honor a pro-abortion president. …” (“Notre Dame’s Bishop D’Arcy Rebukes and Challenges Catholic University over Obama Scandal”)

The South Bend bishop pointed out the words of Pope Benedict XVI, who enjoined American Catholic educators in April to “ensure that students receive instruction in Catholic doctrine and practice.” “This requires that public witness to the way of Christ, as found in the Gospel and upheld by the Church’s magisterium, shapes all aspects of an institution’s life, both inside and outside the classroom,” said the pontiff.

D’Arcy asked: “In its decision to give its highest honor to a president who has repeatedly opposed even the smallest legal protection of the child in the womb, did Notre Dame surrender the responsibility that Pope Benedict believes Catholic universities have to give public witness to the truths revealed by God and taught by the church?”

It is heartening to see this responsible cleric challenging Notre Dame’s officials to live up to the standard of the faith they claim to represent. It is tragic, however, to reflect that these officials have gone far beyond a failure to bear witness to truth. They have consciously borne false witness, with actions that declare evil good and good evil. While clapping their hands and praising the high priest of the global culture of death, they caused the arrest and imprisonment of faithful Christians acting in accordance with the Catholic Church’s call upon the lives of all the faithful to bear “public witness to the way of Christ.” Thanks to their inversion of truth, proponents of Obama’s death culture health-care proposals enjoy perceived moral authority, conferred by a supposedly Catholic institution, as they bear false witness against people, including many faithful Catholics and pro-life Christians of all denominations, seeking to make known the true facts about the proposal’s promotion of abortion funding and an environment friendly to suicide or euthanasia for the aged and infirm.

Will anything ever be done to curtail the ongoing spiritual and moral damage being daily inflicted by this scandal? Will anything ever be done to forestall the persecution of fellow Catholics and Christians still being pursued at the behest of Notre Dame’s president and other responsible officials? I am told that, like Pontius Pilate, Notre Dame President John Jenkins professes to have washed his hands of the matter, repenting neither of the scandal nor the persecution perpetrated in an attempt to discredit and silence the voices of conscience. Such abuse of power, in contempt for the authority of God and the Church, is itself another public episode of scandal, repeated anew with every day that passes until it constitutes undeniable evidence of a contumacious will cut off from the spiritual communion that, in loving God, seeks to obey His provisions for our good.

I am encouraged by Bishop D’Arcy’s willingness to challenge Notre Dame’s officials to return to their identity as Catholics and their duty to the Holy Spirit of God, to whom Notre Dame and all the other professedly Catholic universities truly belong. But if they fail positively to respond to the challenge, who will bring resolution to the ongoing scandals for which they are responsible? How will it be done? By his forthright stance, Bishop D’Arcy makes clear where responsibility and hope for such a resolution begins. I earnestly pray that, by the love and with the guidance of Christ, he will see his way clear to its completion.

For more from Alan Keyes visit http://loyaltoliberty.com. Once a high-level Reagan-era diplomat, Alan Keyes is a long-time leader in the conservative movement, well-known as a staunch pro-life champion and an eloquent advocate of the Constitutional Republic, including respect for the moral basis of liberty and self-government. He staunchly resists the destruction of the American people’s sovereignty by fighting to secure our borders, abolish the federal income tax, end the insurrectionary practices of the federal Judiciary, and build a banking and financial system that halts elite looting of America’s wealth and income. He formally severed his Republican Party affiliation in April of 2008 and has since then worked with America’s Independent Party to build an effective vehicle for citizen-led grass-roots political action.