The Continuing Shame of Notre Dame
The University of Notre Dame du Lac, (“Our Lady of the Lake”
referring to the Virgin Mary), near South Bend, Indiana, more commonly known as
Notre Dame, has long been considered the shining crown jewel of Catholic
higher education in America.
Despite a long 172 year history of producing some of the most
illustrious graduates in the nation, including former Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice and Nobel Prize winner Eric F. Wieschaus, as well as lesser
lights such as talk show hosts Regis Philbin and Phil Donahue and
sports legends like Knute Rockne, Joe Theisman, and a multitude of others, Notre
Dame is failing in its mission, failing its alumni, and failing as a Catholic
institution.
Precisely when this once-outstanding Catholic university began
devolving into a secular bastion of politically correctness is
unclear.
It may have begun when Notre Dame turned over effective control of
the school to a Board of Trustees in 1967 instead of by the continued leadership
of the Congregation of Holy Cross. It may have begun when it went
co-educational in 1972 and admitted women for the first time. It may have been
when they simply decided that it was time they join their fellow liberal
leftists by subverting principle in a misguided quest for national acceptance
and prestige.
(Not incidentally, Notre Dame trustees include Barack Obama
fundraisers, contributors to his campaign, recipients of Obama earmarks,
pro-abortionist judges, indicted frauds, embryonic stem cell researchers, and
bank recipients of government bailouts.)
Whenever the change began, when Father John I. Jenkins assumed the
Notre Dame presidency nine years ago and proclaimed his unwavering commitment
to “making the university a leader in research that recognizes ethics and
building the connection between faith and studies” and a commitment to research
leadership, many of the university’s troubles ballooned.
Father Jenkins may have achieved his goal of transforming Notre Dame
into something other than just the home of “Fighting Irish” football but
he failed miserably in achieving that ethical “connection between faith and
studies.” He evidently forgot the words of its founder, Rev. Edward
Sorin, CSC who said, “This college will be one of the most powerful means for
doing good in this country.”
Perhaps the first clear indication that the school had lost its way
and had become less interested in doing good than in doing what served Father
Jenkins’ secular purposes, that he had surrendered Notre Dame’s guiding values
and had subserviently succumbed to political correctness at the cost of Catholic
ethics came in 2009.
That year, after suing him in federal court for violating their First
Amendment rights, the university outrageously invited President Barack Hussein
Obama to be its principal Commencement speaker.
Father Jenkins gleefully escorted his guest into the Joyce Center
and introduced him as “President Barack H. Obama,” omitting the full middle name
Obama had used at his inauguration.
He lauded the president and gushed over his reciprocated, laudatory
remarks, and awarded a man who endorses partial birth abortions, legalized
infanticide, an honorary Notre Dame Doctor of Laws degree.
During the process of heaping accolades on the most pro-abortion
president in America’s history, Father Jenkins ignored the written protests of
thousands of alumni, the hundreds of protestors outside the gates, 37 of whom
were arrested when they dared to enter the campus, and the graduates who chose
principle over spectacle by gathering at the grotto in Notre Dame, the one place
on campus reserved for reflection and prayer.
