Catholic League President: "To give [Obama] an honorary degree, would be like Howard University giving David Duke a degree in racial politics" (Video)

"The proposed granting of an honorary doctorate at Notre Dame University to our president, who is so aggressively advancing an anti-life and anti-family agenda, is rightly the source of the greatest scandal,"
--Archbishop Raymond Burke, who is the prefect of the Apostolic Signatura, the Vatican's highest court.

One of the Vatican's highest ranked clerics and a frequent critic of President Obama says Notre Dame's giving the president an honorary degree and a platform to address graduates at its commencement next weekend is a "scandal."

Bill Donahue, President of The Catholic League engaged in a heated debate on the subject with Robert Boston of Americans United for Separation of Church and State with Megyn Kelly this morning.

"To give [Obama] an honorary degree, would be like Howard University giving David Duke a degree in racial politics," says Donahue.

"That's offensive," replies Boston.

"No, what's offensive is you," says Donahue.

Comments above begin at 3:00


Fox News reports:

"The path of violation of the most fundamental human rights and of the integrity of marriage and the family which our nation is traveling is not accidental," he said. "As Catholics, we cannot fail to notice with the greatest sadness the number of our fellow Catholics who cooperate fully to the advancement of a national agenda which is anti-life and anti-family."

The archbishop also slammed Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, who was confirmed by the Senate last week on a 65-31 vote. Opponents cited her ties to an late-term abortion provider, George Tillman, who is a supporter of the former Kansas governor.

"The appointment of a Catholic as secretary of health and human services who has openly and consistently cooperated with the industry of procurative abortion in our nation is necessarily the source of the deepest embarrassment to Catholics and a painful reminder of the most serious responsibility of Catholics to uphold the moral law, which is the irreplaceable foundation of just relationships among the citizens of our nation," Burke said.

He added that it "grieves me to say that the support of anti-life legislation by Catholics in public office is so common that those who are not Catholics have justifiably questioned whether the church's teachings regarding the inviolable dignity of innocent human life is firm and unchanging. It gives the impression that the church herself can change the law that God has written on every human heart since the beginning of time."