Editor’s Note: A longtime journalist, Margo Howard went into the family business (her mother was the fabled Ann Landers) in the 1990s as Dear Prudence. Her broad experience and understanding of human nature provide answers for the troubled — and entertainment for everyone else. Margo’s advice column, Dear Margo, appears twice a week — on Thursdays and Fridays — on wowOwow.com.

I suspect by now everyone knows there’s a big whoop about Notre Dame having invited President Obama to be their commencement speaker. The anti-abortion people feel that because Obama is pro-choice, he should not be honored by a Catholic University. I must say that when this mess got started I wanted to holler, "But he’s the president!  What kind of crazy litmus tests do you people want to saddle yourselves with? Must every speaker share all your religious views?" And when I thought that Notre Dame’s eye could get no blacker, I read in The New York Times that a Bishop Robert W. Finn, bishop of the Kansas City-St. Joseph Diocese in Missouri, told an anti-abortion convention, “We are at war! We are engaged in a constant warfare with Satan.”

I mean no disrespect to those who take the Bible literally, but Satan?

By now – the 21st century – Satan, to me, is like a character in a play or a puppet show; a metaphor for bad and evil things. It is hard to imagine a senior prelate of a major religion actually saying with a straight face that “we are engaged in a constant warfare with Satan,” as though he were a person running an organization, if you will, that stands for everything the Catholics don’t.

I think many people know by now that I identify as Jewish, though my actual beliefs fall somewhere between humanism, agnosticism and atheism. I accept as true that there is evil in life, but it is hard for me to believe that educated people see him dressed in a red suit and toting a pitchfork. I am pretty sure I will make zero friends with this little essay, but that will be nothing new for me. I remember when I wrote for slate.com as “Dear Prudence” that I had a letter asking me a religious question. When I answered that more wars were fought and lives lost over the question of who had the better imaginary friend, the server crashed.

In any case, I think what troubles me most is that I have very fond feelings for Notre Dame – or had – because the Notre Dame I knew was headed by Father Theodore Hesburgh, one of the great men of all time.

I can’t prove it, but I doubt that he ever invoked Satan to show his displeasure about a commencement speaker. “Our Lady,” indeed, needs to show a little more grace and tolerance.