The brouhaha over President Barack Obama's appearance at the University of
Notre Dame culminated Sunday with apparent defeat for pro-life Catholics. The
university's hotly contested plan to bestow an honorary degree on Obama, a
staunch supporter of legalized abortion and embryonic stem cell research, went
off without a hitch.

The president entered the university's Joyce Center arena to robust applause
and enjoyed several standing ovations in the course of the commencement
ceremony. Reporters contrasted Obama's well-received plea for transcending
differences on abortion and embryonic research with the demonstrations of a few
anti-Obama hecklers in the arena and several hundred vocal protesters on the
edge of campus. Scant press was given to the much larger, more decorous
gathering of Notre Dame students and faculty and other Catholics who filled the
campus' main quad that day for an open-air pro-life Mass and peaceful protest
rally, or to the coalition of pro-life students who gathered the evening before
for an all-night campus prayer vigil.

The dominant story line that emerged from South Bend on Sunday was that of a
short-lived struggle that came to a swift, tidy resolution. A moderate
president and enlightened university administrators took on a small band of
anti-abortion extremists. And the forces of progress prevailed.

Comforting as that story line may be to Notre Dame administrators and the
Catholics who supported their decision to honor Obama, it ignores the true
novelty of this controversy, which has been in national headlines for months.

That novelty has nothing to do with Notre Dame's willingness to fete a
politician who publicly opposes fundamental moral teachings of the Catholic
Church. That's par for the course at a university that long ago opted to put
secular prestige before fidelity to Catholic doctrine, and for the many other
Catholic universities that have followed suit.

Nor was there anything original about Obama's answer to America's abortion
debate — let's agree to disagree — and the fact that it was applauded by a
crowd of Catholics more wedded to the post-modern doctrine of moral relativism
than to Catholic teaching about the sanctity of unborn human life. Cafeteria
Catholicism is old news in America. So is the idea that endless dialogue
constitutes a morally sufficient response to the systematic denial of basic
human rights to an entire class of human beings. Slaveholders and segregation
supporters spent centuries making the same claim.

What was unusual about the Notre Dame controversy was that it sparked such a
substantial backlash from rank-and-file Catholics and their bishops. In the
past two months, some 367,000 Catholics signed a petition against Notre Dame's
decision to honor Obama, nearly 80 bishops publicly denounced that decision and
an estimated $8.2 million in alumni donations were withheld in protest.
Catholics lit up the blogosphere, op-ed pages and YouTube with critiques of
Notre Dame officials. Some registered their disapproval by donating to Notre
Dame's campus pro-life groups. Others traveled hundreds of miles to personally
participate in pro-life rallies at Notre Dame.

Although many Catholics backed the university's decision to honor Obama or
ignored it altogether, the scores who objected took Notre Dame administrators
by surprise. After decades of flouting Catholic teaching with impunity,
Catholic university officials now have been put on notice that many of the
faithful are fed up with their now-you-see-it, now-you-don't approach to
Catholic identity and values.

Just as one speech cannot erase Obama's longstanding record of combating even
the most negligible protections for unborn human life, so one commencement
ceremony cannot resolve the long-brewing struggle for the soul of Catholic
higher education. For many pro-life Catholics, Sunday did not mark the end of
that struggle or the defeat of their cause. It served as a summons to greater
vigilance and activism that they will not soon forget.

Colleen Carroll Campbell is an author, television and radio host and St.
Louis-based fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. Her website is
www.colleen-campbell.com.