Imagine if the U.S. government used for immigration policy Notre Dame’s reasons for not inviting President Trump:
The decision by the University of Notre Dame to invite Vice President Mike Pence to be this year’s graduation speaker and recipient of an honorary degree was surely not made lightly. The last six presidents have all been invited to the school’s commencement exercises, so the decision to invite someone other than President Donald Trump represents a change from the norm. And that is precisely why it was the correct decision.
The first thing to remember about the decision is that it affects not only the Indiana university’s standing, but the actual students whose families and friends will be gathering that day. There were some protests eight years ago, when newly inaugurated President Barack Obama attended the commencement exercises, but those protests were mostly on the internet and at the margins. The day itself was not ruined for the graduates.
Can anyone really think that Trump’s presence would not elicit a different kind of protest? Is it not likely that the protests would be so vociferous and widespread that the day would be marred for the students who should be the focus of the day?
I am sure that consideration weighed heavily on the decision-making process, which is not to say Notre Dame is likely to award a heckler’s veto to anyone. It is a mere acknowledgement that a man for whom a central campaign theme was the demonization of other people elicits a kind of visceral response, not because some people are too politically correct or thin-skinned, but because that visceral response is what Trump was after. He stoked the flames and cannot now wonder that people recoiled from the prospect of being burned.
Lots can go wrong if you invite POTUS. Nothing can go wrong with open borders?
But don’t forget welcoming the stranger.
Welcome the stranger.
Trump is strange.
Welcome Trump.
Old Life 
I am still not sure if the Roman Catholic church is in the first or the second kingdom, but isn’t it time that we realized that WE are ALL “in” counterculturally, and therefore on the same side?
Carl Truman—“If Rome crumbles, we will all suffer the political consequences.”
https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2017/03/a-book-for-me-and-all-protestants-to-read
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You spoke of violating conscience. If the church may intervene when state policies cause the church to violate her conscience, then hello the church defending the rights of its members not to sell flowers for gay weddings, or pick your issue.
Robert, the church, not her members. Her members selling cakes and flowers in their private lives is completely different from the church’s officers publically preaching the gospel and administering the sacraments.
Maybe it’s just the case that the state killing innocent people is so obviously wrong by good and necessary consequence and by OT precedent that the NT doesn’t have say specifically that Caesar sinned when he had Paul executed. Why is this so difficult?
Maybe because saying Caesar sinned is different from getting in his face about it. The NT teaching to submit to persecution seems pretty clear, doesn’t it? Nobody is saying it’s easy, but where o where in the NT is there ANY precedent or teaching for pushing back against persecution? And if there is no warrant for the church resisting persecution from the state, how can there be for the lesser instances of the church pointing out the state’s foibles in carrying out its duties?
I would be curious, however, as to why 2Kers are going to assume continuity with respect to something like the baptism of infants even though there is no crystal clear example of it in the NT but all of sudden going to assume the church no longer has a responsibility to preach to the nations and to state governments under the NT when it certainly did under the OT.
Well, nobody is saying the church no longer has a responsibility to preach to the nations. Just as in baptism where the discontinuity is in how the sacrament is expanded from male only to both male and female children, the preaching to the nations is expanded to every tribe and tongue. IOW, it’s a call to all persons. 2k is actually about wanting to make sure the gospel is unfettered and not obscured by the mere trifling social and political interests of men. When the church is compromised and distracted to take magistrates to task for their policies and cultures for their trends, not only is that a law-based track instead of gospel, it’s that much more energy that is kept from calling PERSONS to reconciliation. Why would anyone want to dilute that great singular commission with civil rights and abortion and on and on and on?
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