It was not particularly surprising that Notre Dame invited Pres. Barack Obama to give the commencement address and receive an honorary degree. What was surprising was the firestorm of outrage his decision provoked.
The reaction has included not only websites dedicated to the controversy — NotreDameScandal.com and NDResponse.com — but also one specifically aimed at recruiting donors to withhold money from Notre Dame — www.replacejenkins.com. Even more important, at least 68 American bishops — including luminaries such as Francis Cardinal George of Chicago and Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York — have publicly taken Notre Dame to task for honoring the most dogmatically pro-abortion-rights president in U.S. history. Some have asserted that Notre Dame’s action directly contravenes the U.S. Bishops’ 2004 statement asking all Catholic institutions to avoid giving platforms or awards to politicians or public figures who deny the basic human rights of children in the womb.
Notre Dame’s ambivalence about its Catholic identity has been noted frequently, but never by this many people, and never by so many leading members of the Catholic hierarchy. And those who follow these issues know that Notre Dame is in no way unusual in this regard — it is representative of most mainstream American Catholic universities.
But will the outcry simply die down, leaving the status quo in place? Will this occasion stimulate any serious thinking about the direction of Catholic higher education? This should be a matter of interest to non-Catholics as well as Catholics, because Catholic universities educate three-quarters of a million students annually, and because concern about the secular liberalism dominant in academia today cuts across denominational lines.
If serious Catholics and their sympathizers want to consider new strategies for reinvigorating Catholic higher education, they might consider the following four options.
1)
Support current American Catholic universities only by carefully targeting programs and individuals within them. Some mainstream Catholic universities have programs that are well-known for their commitment to classical understandings of Catholic education, in which principles of faith are brought to bear throughout academic and student life. These are similar to programs at secular universities that resist the dogmas of contemporary secular liberalism and make serious offerings available to students (the best known of which is the James Madison Program at Princeton University). At Notre Dame itself, for example, the Center for Ethics and Culture (under the directorship of a non-Catholic) has championed John Paul II’s vision.
As knowledgeable philanthropists increasingly understand, donations need to come with clear and enforceable strings attached. University administrators and development officers work for large gifts that can be used at the unfettered discretion of the school and its faculty. How many donations have been given by alumni and other donors with the intention of supporting authentic Catholic education, and have then been applied to programs and scholars that simply follow the lead of elite secular institutions? (One thinks of the Stillman Chair at Harvard Divinity School, donated by the great Catholic benefactor Chauncey Stillman, first held by Christopher Dawson but subsequently filled with a string of disaffected Catholics.)
2)
Abandon today’s mainstream Catholic universities, and focus on providing Catholic education at prestigious secular schools. What is the largest Catholic college in the state of Illinois? Well,
practically speaking, you could say that it’s the University of Illinois, which has more Catholic undergraduates than any of the formally Catholic universities in the state. Why not establish a first-class Catholic formation program — or, in the case of Illinois, support an already existing one? The Newman Center in Champaign (unlike many other university Newman Centers) has for years provided an excellent broad-based program of Catholic piety and teaching. Likewise, the Lumen Christi Institute offers superb intellectual opportunities for students at the University of Chicago, bringing in outstanding national and international speakers.
Another variation of this strategy — suggested to me by a thoughtful Catholic businessman — would be to build Catholic student residences at major universities. To build a great Catholic university, he argued, would take one of two things: a billion dollars, or at least 40 years. Why not (now) go to the best universities in the nation and establish Catholic residences there — conceding the weekly 15 or 18 hours of class time to the university, but then providing a strong program of Catholic intellectual resources and spiritual formation during the many other hours of the week?
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