SOUTH BEND, Ind. — The University of Notre Dame is allegedly paying students to spend their summers advocating for homosexual and abortion rights.
The news, reported by the Cardinal Newman Society, suggests the university administration’s efforts to improve the school’s Catholicity are being undermined by particular departments.
“Catholic universities have a sacred obligation to students and families, but also to the Church to be faithful to its teachings,” said Patrick Reilly, president of the Cardinal Newman Society.
Students in Notre Dame’s gender studies department not only served as summer interns at organizations such as the Minnesota Women’s Consortium (whose members include Planned Parenthood and assisted-suicide advocate Compassion & Choices) and the National Organization for Women in recent years — the department actually paid the students up to $2,500 to do so.
University spokesman Dennis Brown told the Register, “Generally, we don’t even comment on the Cardinal Newman Society and their reports, but I’ll make an exception and tell you we will be reviewing all internships as part of a comprehensive review.”
The department’s internship program draws money from the Boehnen Fund for Excellence in Gender Studies.
Department head Pamela Wojcik said, “Gender studies does not view any of its activities as counter to the mission.”
The department’s website announces: “To affirm the human dignity of all, the members of this program support and actively work to ensure the inclusion of our faculty, staff and students regardless of gender, race, religion or sexual orientation.”
The American Life League contends that Notre Dame relinquished its Catholic identity years ago. It provides a timeline chronicling what it sees as the school’s decline into error, starting with the award of its Laetare Medal in 1961 to President John F. Kennedy, who, the league states, “famously declared his Catholic beliefs would not affect his political decisions.”
The pro-life organization’s timeline also notes the university’s honoring of many pro-abortion or anti-Church politicians, such as former Vice President Walter Mondale, former New York State Gov. Mario Cuomo and former President of Ireland Mary McAleese.
But the most controversial of these honorees was President Barack Obama, who gave the 2009 commencement address despite condemnation of the university’s decision on the part of many bishops, alumni and Catholic laity.
Strikingly, Notre Dame hosted the 1967 Land O’ Lakes Conference, described by the American Life League as “a landmark conference rejecting Catholic authority in favor of academic autonomy.”
According to Charles Rice, emeritus professor of law at Notre Dame and author of What Happened to Notre Dame?, the school erred in its decision to host and endorse the groundbreaking initiative by Catholic university academics and administrators. The Catholic educators sought to “be accepted by the secular academic establishment by releasing themselves from any deference to the magisterium.”
As such, dissent became widespread in Catholic schools worldwide. Pope John Paul II wrote Ex Corde Ecclesiae in 1990 to clarify the role of Catholic universities. Said Rice, “John Paul said there has to be truth in labeling. If a school says it is Catholic, it is obliged to conform to the definition of a Catholic university by the only body with authority to make such a definition”: the Holy See. A Catholic university, said Rice, is obliged to teach the truth in conformity with the magisterium of the Catholic Church.
Wanted: Catholic Faculty
A decade after Ex Corde Ecclesiae, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops published norms for Catholic universities in the United States, such as requirements for at least 50% of the faculty to be Catholic and all faculty committed to promotion of Catholic ideals. Last year, the USCCB launched a study to check compliance.
Meanwhile, a 2011 doctoral dissertation by James Caridi, vice president of Ohio Dominican University, based on a survey of more than 100 Catholic university presidents, suggests their schools were more faithful to Land O’Lakes than Ex Corde Ecclesiae. Ninety-three percent, for example, thought their instructors had full intellectual freedom, while only 59% thought they “adequately incorporated the message of the Gospel” in their teaching.
Only half of the presidents said they were trying to fill at least half the teaching positions with Catholics, and about the same number didn’t even know what proportion actually was Catholic.
That said, Notre Dame’s mission statement affirms the goal that a “predominant number” of faculty be practicing Catholics. Six years ago, when Holy Cross Father John Jenkins, the university’s president, admitted the Catholic proportion had fallen to 53%, he announced the creation of two chairs to attract world-class scholars committed to preserving the school’s Catholic identity and an office to identify prospective Catholic faculty.
On the university website, its “Report on the Catholic Mission” notes institutional expressions of Catholic social teaching, including the Center for Social Concern and its annual Edith Stein Conference.
Pro-Life Notre Dame
After the Obama controversy, Father Jenkins created a task force on life issues, and then backed its recommendation that the university fund a full-time pro-life post. Further, he led a contingent of staff and students on the 2010 March for Life in Washington, and he issued a formal pro-life statement that “the University of Notre Dame recognizes and upholds the sanctity of human life from conception to natural death.”
The same statement went on to promise something those reviewing the gender studies’ internship grants might find instructive: that the university will seek to “direct its contributions to both persons and organizations so that they are not used to support research or activities that conflict with Catholic teachings.”
Register correspondent Steve Weatherbe writes from Victoria, British Columbia.
Edward Pentin: Pope Francis, the Mafia, and Pro-Abortion Politicians
Jimmy Akin: Pope Francis and lying to save life
Comments
Post a Comment
“Gender studies does not view any of its activities as counter to the mission.” Really? Look at their gender studies resource page and the YouTube video shows open defiance to ND for not having a gay-straight alliance - of course, there is a priest in the video as well.
The bishops’ requirement to have 50% Catholics? What’s wrong with 100%, minus a few priests and PhD’s who think they know better? What, there are no Catholics who know how to teach the Faith?
The footdragging on this issue has been going on for far too long and the bishops are part of the problem with pseudo-Catholic schools who claim to be Catholic. Rescind their use of the honor of being called Catholic and move on!
It is time for regime change.
Notre Dame must be stripped of the name “Catholic.” End of story. If a person or community does not accept all of the doctrine and dogma of the Holy Spirit inspired Church founded by Jesus Christ himself, in person, then that person or community is NOT Catholic! Notre Dame is NOT Catholic.
What did University spokesman Dennis Brown mean by his statement? “Generally, we don’t even comment on the Cardinal Newman Society and their reports, but I’ll make an exception and tell you we will be reviewing all internships as part of a comprehensive review.”
Wow Bob, and Ed, a little on the harsh side. I wonder if you know what it’s like to be a student there. Talk to actual professors, students and graduates, not pundits and talking heads.
Keep in mind also that not all students at ND are Catholic. We do not live in a Catholic world, and I do not think it is realistic to expect that everyone else subscribes to our beliefs. Does that mean we recoil from our beliefs? No, but you must think beyond your little world and understand the complexities of what it means to be Catholic AND higher-level learning.
Notre Dame and Father Jenkins? Catholic? Well, maybe according to the late and not great ‘pope’ Ted Kennedy and his apostles: Kerry, Biden, Pelosi and some bishops and priests of the American ‘catholic church’, this might be so, but, not in line with the teachings of God’s Holy Church, the Roman Catholic Church. Get rid of Fr. Jenkins, Pamela Wojcik and her department of ‘gender studies’ and the rest of those frauds that are receiving a salary far too large for them, that are not in the Grace of God because of their faulty and dangerous ideas. +JMJ+
Agnes, thanks for your comment. You ask if I “know what it’s like to be a student there.” I spent seven years at Notre Dame and have two degrees. My father is an alumnus, as are six of my siblings. And, for what it is worth, my daughter also graduated from Notre Dame. I suspect I have spoken with thousands of professors, students and graduates. Do you think this gives me standing to offer and simple assessment, or even to hold an opinion in “your little world”?
By the way, one of the things I learned at Notre Dame is that Christopher Michael is absolutely correct. In “Satis Cognitum”, Pope Leo XIII wrote:
“16. In what has been said we have faithfully described the exemplar and form of the Church as divinely constituted. We have treated at length of its unity: we have explained sufficiently its nature, and pointed out the way in which the Divine Founder of the Church willed that it should be preserved. There is no reason to doubt that all those, who by Divine Grace and mercy have had the happiness to have been born, as it were, in the bosom of the Catholic Church, and to have lived in it, will listen to Our Apostolic Voice: “My sheep hear my voice” (John x., 27), and that they will derive from Our words fuller instruction and a more perfect disposition to keep united with their respective pastors, and through them with the Supreme Pastor, so that they may remain more securely within the one fold, and may derive therefrom a greater abundance of salutary fruit. But We, who, notwithstanding our unfitness for this great dignity and office, govern by virtue of the authority conferred on us by Jesus Christ, as we “look on Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith” (Heb. xii., 2) feel Our heart fired by His charity. What Christ has said of Himself We may truly repeat of Ourselves: “Other sheep I have that are not of this fold: them also I must bring and they shall hear my voice” (John x., 16). Let all those, therefore, who detest the wide-spread irreligion of our times, and acknowledge and confess Jesus Christ to be the Son of God and the Saviour of the human race, but who have wandered away from the Spouse, listen to Our voice. Let them not refuse to obey Our paternal charity. Those who acknowledge Christ must acknowledge Him wholly and entirely. “The Head and the body are Christ wholly and entirely. The Head is the only-begotten son of God, the body is His Church; the bridegroom and the bride, two in one flesh. All who dissent from the Scriptures concerning Christ, although they may be found in all places in which the Church is found, are not in the Church; and again all those who agree with the Scriptures concerning the Head, and do not communicate in the unity of the Church, are not in the Church” (S. Augustinus, Contra Donatistas Epistola, sive De Unit. Eccl., cap. iv., n. 7).”
Agnes is correct that we do not live only in a Catholic world, and non-Catholics certainly attend Notre Dame. But, Notre Dame is a private institution and, therefore, may demand compliance with its rules and standards, e.g., no co-ed dorms. If non-Catholics don’t like it, they do not have to attend. So too with heretics and apostates, who no longer are Catholic.
It sure would solve things if all persons going to a Catholic school (of all types) were Catholic. What, there aren’t enough Catholic students who want to attend these schools but the available spaces are given to someone else? This sure would help reestablish “Catholic Identity!”
These so-called “liberal-Catholics” should just declare themselves separated from real Catholicism and start a different Christian sect. We don’t need them.
Sadly, another zeitgeist generation blinded by vain glory and worldly affection presumes to know more than our Lord and His Magisterium…
To paraphrase Kempis, a little formal education instilled in a weak soul sometimes leads to self delusion and vanity… and ND appears to be stacked with deluded creatures fondly worshiping at the altar of self.
Rodan, those who reject Church teaching have separated themselves from the Catholic Church. In particular, they are excommunicated latae sententiae. For example, Nancy Pelosi, Joe Biden, John Kerry, Gray Davis, the Kennedy family, and Anthony Kennedy for that matter, all have been excommunicated because their beliefs and actions regarding abortion are contrary to Church doctrine. Similarly, those who, like Chavez, embrace the heresy of liberation theology are excommunicated latae sententiae.
@Carmen Gassert - What he means when he says ““Generally, we don’t even comment on the Cardinal Newman Society and their reports,,....” Is that CNS is a muckraking rag of a blog that has no interest in the truth and no ecclesial authority. If Reilly couldn’t take situations and twist them into something they aren’t, then he would have no lever to suck donations out of Catholic-hating gossip lovers.
Have you ever noticed that his “reporting” only quotes himself?? It’s as meaningless as it is hilarious.
@Ed—- Liberation Theology has never been declared heresy by any official authority. Unless you yourself have been granted such authority. Oh…wait a minute…those who presume they can speak for the Church on matters of doctrine of faith are actually guilty of heresy. That’s rather humorous.
Post a Comment
By submitting this form, you give The National Catholic Register permission to publish this comment. Comments will be published at our discretion, and may be edited for clarity and length. For best formatting, please limit your response to one paragraph and don't hit "enter" to force line breaks.