The Continuing Shame of Notre Dame

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.

Another clear indicator of the abandonment of Catholic values at Notre Dame . . . (Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=36971.)