Obama Champions Relativism

Michael Sean Winters writing about President Obama's Notre Dame speech in the journal America:
The speech handed the President’s opponents plenty of ammunition and showed the extent to which the Obama White House is tone deaf to Catholics and our concerns.
During the campaign, when asked about when human life begins, candidate Obama said the question was "above my pay grade." But, he had no difficulty doing a theological riff on Sunday afternoon as he spoke at some length about the relationship between faith and doubt. "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," the President intoned. "This doubt should not push us away from our faith. But it should humble us. It should temper our passions, and cause us to be wary of self-righteousness."
If that was the President’s best impersonation of Augustine, he gets an F. For starters, there is nothing ironic about faith. Secondly, a Catholic university is an odd place to give an essentially Protestant interpretation of what can, and cannot, be "known" by faith. Finally, it is not doubt that invites humility. It is faith itself - faith in a God who has not finished with His creation, faith in a God who counseled us to humility in His scriptures and who gave an example of humility if His own life when He walked the earth - that leads us to humility. And, I would have thought even a rudimentary knowledge of human psychology would suggest that self-righteousness is a temptation as well known to the doubters as to those possessed of true faith.
One wonders why the president’s speechwriters could not find a quote from the Pope appropriate to the occasion. Needless to say, the way to the heart and mind of Pope Benedict is not with a paean to relativism. Yet, the President did precisely that. "The soldier and the lawyer may both love this country with equal passion, and yet reach very different conclusions on the specific steps needed to protect us from harm. The gay activist and the evangelical pastor may both deplore the ravages of HIV/AIDS, but find themselves unable to bridge the cultural divide that might unite their efforts. Those who speak out against stem cell research may be rooted in admirable conviction about the sacredness of life, but so are the parents of a child with juvenile diabetes who are convinced that their son's or daughter's hardships can be relieved." Alas, I am counting the minutes until some smart operative for the GOP makes sure a copy of this passage finds its way to the Vatican.
What disappoints here is that the President was at a university, a place dedicated to the search for truth. He could have moved beyond the debate about "values" that has afflicted our contemporary discourse about the intersection of religion and politics and echoed Pope Benedict’s insistence that faith and reason together seek the truth, a truth that is worthy of the human person.
The speech was typical Obama: It sounded good on the surface. But on closer inspection it proves to be fuzzy and evasive; hopelessly imprecise and artificial.