Obama, faith, and Notre Dame

In the same vein as my earlier post on the fortuitous timing of the Defense Budget news, news about the Bush intelligence report covers forcefully underscore President Obama’s message at Notre Dame’s commencement.
(For those who haven’t seen them yet, GQ (interestingly enough) has the covers of the Department of Defense’s intelligence reports, which landed on Bush’s desk. Rumsfeld formatted the covers with military pictures and scripture verses — pretty amazing, and frightening, stuff.)
In the address at Notre Dame, Obama called for civility, dialog, and finding common ground. He does not say the debate about abortion is illegitimate or wrong but rather that it distracts us from making constructive improvements in reducing the instances of unwanted pregnancies, for example.

Obama does not defend one side of the abortion argument or another. Instead, he sidesteps the whole ideological debate by redefining the role of faith. He does not call for people to change their faith or the principles by which they lead their daily lives but rather redefines the role of faith in common decision-making. Faith does not convince the actor of certainty and moral righteousness, but rather humbles him/her and opens him to civil engagement with other points of view. Great quote from the speech:

“Hold firm to your faith and allow it to guide you on your journey. Stand as a lighthouse. But remember too that the ultimate irony of faith is that it necessarily admits doubt. It is the belief in things not seen. It is beyond our capacity as human beings to know with certainty what God has planned for us or what He asks of us, and those of us who believe must trust that His wisdom is greater than our own.”
(full text of the speech here)

How can we ask the Islamic world to renounce the fundamentalists who kill for religious reasons if our intelligence briefing covers make the Iraq war sound like a crusade? Our moral authority to do that has been pushed off its wobbly stilts. Obama is assuring the world that his administration does not ascribe to blind faith but rather dialogue and common ground.

While there have been various motives and meanings attached to the speech by different critics (One of the more amusing ones: Peter Roff claims that the speech was a gross violation of the separation of church and state, as Obama was using it to assert his voice into the intra-Catholic “culture war” and tell “those in attendance to reorient their faith in ways that … compel them to address global problems … as [Obama} and his political cohorts see them to be”), I believe the address reflects two things. First (and this is clearly true of his ASU speech, too) Obama is serious about taking an active part in supporting both education and the youth, and secondly, Obama is serious about trying to open constructive dialogue by rationally and pleasantly speaking directly to Catholics at a high profile Catholic event.