Notre Dame Scandals under Fr. Jenkins Are Rooted in Diminished Catholic Faculty, Alumni Say
Sunday, February 22, 2015
Notre Dame alumni spoke with The Cardinal Newman Society to share their reflections on how the University has damaged its Catholic identity and how it can pave a way forward by facilitating an increase in faithful Catholic faculty.
Following the election of University of Notre Dame President Father John Jenkins, C.S.C. to his third term, Notre Dame alumni spoke with The Cardinal Newman Society to share their reflections on how the University has damaged its Catholic identity and how it can pave a way forward by facilitating an increase in faithful Catholic faculty.
In his 2005 inaugural address, Fr. Jenkins shared a hopeful vision of Notre Dame’s future—one that would combine every aspect of academic excellence with its Catholic mission. He stressed the need for “a great Catholic university for the 21st century, one of the pre-eminent research institutions in the world, a center for learning whose intellectual and religious traditions converge to make it a healing, unifying, enlightening force for a world deeply in need.”
Michael Bradley, managing editor of Ethika Politika and a Notre Dame alumnus, referenced a 2014 book by Notre Dame sociologist Christian Smith titled Building Catholic Higher Education. In the book, Smith posited that the University’s three-pronged mission—excellent undergraduate education, Catholic character, and research prominence—was “almost impossible to realize responsibly in concrete ways” due to the tensions between contemporary American academia and faithful Catholic mission, Bradley explained.
The solution Smith advised is, rather, for Notre Dame to “emphasize Catholic mission and excellent undergraduate education over research prominence when the inevitable practical tensions” arise. However, “[t]hat’s not a sacrifice that administrators are willing or able to make,” Bradley remarked.
During his inaugural address, Fr. Jenkins seemed to be in agreement with this focus on Catholic mission. “Our research must not be separate from our Catholic mission, but must draw strength from it and contribute to it,” he stated. “Every department, college, and institute must, wherever possible, find dimensions of their research agenda that reflect our Catholic character and values.”
Despite the apparent initial intention to ensure the University’s actions would be in harmony with its Catholic identity, many instances of Catholic identity abuse have occurred under the Jenkins administration.
For instance, campus performances of the scandalously lewd play The Vagina Monologues went on under the Jenkins administration and garnered sponsorship from various University departments until 2009. Fr. Jenkins remarked, in a 2008 statement about allowing the performances, that University policy permitted “reasoned consideration of issues in dialogue with faith” and this is “the action that best serves the distinctive mission of Notre Dame.” While performances were eventually discontinued at Notre Dame, Fr. Jenkins’ initial consent validated the concerns of many about mounting secularization at the University.
Bradley told the Society that many scandals at Notre Dame could be attributed to the decrease in faithful Catholic faculty. “Unfortunately, many scholars at Notre Dame remain tepid toward the school’s Catholic mission,” he explained. “The percentage of engaged tenure and tenure-track Catholic faculty continues far below 50 percent, and thus Notre Dame fails its own litmus test for Catholic character.”
William Dempsey, chairman of the alumni group Sycamore Trust, agreed that faithful faculty were crucial to Notre Dame’s Catholic identity. “The secularization of religious schools begins and ends in secularization of the faculty,” Dempsey told the Newman Society. “The lamentable episodes that have gotten publicity wouldn’t have happened had the faculty been robustly Catholic.”
Jenkins also said in his inaugural address:
Notre Dame is different. Combining religious faith and academic excellence is not widely emulated or even admired among the opinion-makers in higher education. Yet, in this age especially, we at Notre Dame must have the courage to be who we are. If we are afraid to be different from the world, how can we make a difference in the world?
Yet Bradley raised a significant concern with the University’s administration, which in recent years “has bureaucratized and grown rigidly intolerant of internal dissent or external critique,” he stated. Bradley pointed to recent lapses in Catholic identity on the administration’s part. “Notre Dame’s voluntary elevation of same-sex relationships to the status of marriage for the purpose of spousal and employee benefits is the culmination of this surrender,” he said.
Bradley also noted the controversial Campus Crossroads Project, which is continuing construction “despite being nearly unanimously unpopular on campus” and despite numerous concerns raised by faculty and alumni about the project’s financial extravagance and there direction of the campus focus away from its distinctively Catholic landmarks.
“The administration has long since ceased holding itself accountable to anything other than its own self-perception, and that’s a very dangerous situation,” he warned.
Nevertheless, hope remains for Notre Dame, Bradley maintained, particularly in the form of “several notable and highly praiseworthy hires for mission in the past ten years.”
Dempsey concurred, pointing to the “solid, if diminished, core of splendid Catholic faculty” which makes it “possible for a discriminating student to get a solid Catholic education at Notre Dame.”
“The remedy is simple and certain,” Dempsey told the Newman Society. “Restore a majority of Catholic faculty who, in the bishops’ words, ‘witness to the faith.’”