NOTRE DAME KEEPS OBAMA AMID 'OUTRAGE': President will remain as graduation speaker despite views considered anti-Catholic.

      *The University of Notre Dame will keep President Obama's invitation to speak at its May 17th spring commencement amid protests that his views on abortion and stem cell research run counter to Catholic teaching.       

       The Cardinal Newman Society, an advocacy group for greater orthodoxy on Catholic college and university campuses, says more than 28,000 people have signed an online petition calling the choice of Obama “an outrage and a scandal.”       

       But Notre Dame President Rev. John Jenkins says the invitation to Obama should not be taken as condoning or endorsing his positions on specific issues regarding the protection of human life.       

       Obama will receive an honorary doctor of laws degree during the ceremony. He will be the ninth president to receive an honorary degree from Notre Dame and the sixth to deliver a commencement address. The others were: Dwight Eisenhower (1960), Jimmy Carter (1977), Ronald Reagan (1981), George H.W. Bush (1992), and George W. Bush (2001).

       Obama will also deliver commencement addresses at Arizona State University on May 13 and the U.S. Naval Academy in Maryland on May 22.