NOTRE DAME'S CATHOLIC CHARACTER:A STATEMENT:
NOTRE DAME'S CATHOLIC CHARACTER In September of 1972 Father Theodore M. Hesburgh, C.S.C., President of the University of Notre Dame, appointed a Committee on University Priorities to look at where...
...To study the Catholic tradition is to study an institution constantly at odds with its own ideals...
...There are so many necessary features to excellent scholarship, and we cannot choose to excel in some and not in others...
...Even if all other Christian universities were to forfeit their re P ligious character (as many formerly Christian universities have done), we affirm that Notre Dame must continue to be a Catholic university...
...To survive without its unique place in the minds of believers, and without its Catholic witness in the larger pluralistic society, would be not to survive as Notre Dame...
...Yet their very existence shows how unsatisfying-apart 19 April 1974: 156...
...Responses to the Statement ROBERT GORHAM DAVIS Robert Gorham Davis is a member of the Dept...
...Because a university is a place of study and scholarship, our Catholic commitment is primarily intellectual...
...At every stage it presents a history wherein inadequate outcomes suggest more challenging beliefs...
...That the University have a faculty and a student affairs staff among whom committed Catholics predominate...
...If the University is to have a Catholic character, it is obvious that all who play a role in recruitment should exercise care to attract and appoint from among the most competent teachers, scholars and scientists available those who are articulate believers: brilliant scholar-teachers who respect Christ in man and who are committed as He was to service and sacrifice...
...Officially most of them feel compelled to declare their teaching "value-free" or "valueneutral" at a time when values are precisely what everyone is-or should be-worried about...
...The life in our residence halls, and the interchanges between faculty, students, administrators and alumni must not give the lie to the faith which is false if not verified by love...
...A large proportion of the population experiments desperately with body language, sex techniques, orthodox and heretical psychoanalysis, en counter sessions, communal living, consciousness raising, transcendental meditation, occultism, magic, shamanism and a blending of acid rock with Eastern mysticism...
...In the light of faith the truth is best seen as a moral need, and its study as a moral duty...
...Scholars here-as individuals and as a community with a common cause-must teach what they know to be true and proclaim to an often uncaring world what they know to be good...
...An environment of faith at a university should draw forth that wonderment of the mind, past the barriers of narrow vision or slothful study, so that the arduous work of higher learning is accomplished with enthusiasm...
...Also, they should be aware of the numerous scholars who, while not sharing either the Catholic tradition or the Christian faith, abide here because they lead lives of inquiry which include a sensitivity to and respect for the commitment to investigate the moral realm...
...Belief -should widen our purview rather than restrict it, and we should cherish the humane achievement of justice, not only among our own, but also in a world too prone to forget the source and basis for justice...
...We recommend: That the University continue its traditional commitment to freedom of inquiry and thought...
...The University's highest and also its most distinctive priority is to understand and to adhere to its evolving Catholic character...
...The Catholic university should be especially open to all truth and to every human insight, more even, than other universities...
...In an era of intellectual nonchalance there should be voices here-chorused when possible-that challenge as prophets do, and even sting...
...Our Catholic character should, as we say, have its first impress upon our intellectual work...
...In return, we hope that those who guide the studies of young members of the Congregation will give emphasis to the educational and pastoral needs of the University...
...Pilgrims, being human, have their different and distinctive paths to follow, though bound for a common shrine...
...We believe care should be taken to assure that whatever in Christianity is worthy of study Commonweal: 155 may be studied at Notre Dame, especially what is best and most intellectually challenging in a robust Catholic tradition...
...Yet we willingly stand also in a religious tradition, and if this commitment is not steadfastly fulfilled, nothing else we do will be at its best...
...And this concern for the values of man before God occurs in every learning opportunity afforded by Notre Dame: in residence hall life as in the classroom or library...
...But it should also permeate-in a way we could hardly describe as secondary-the community of learners...
...Values which emerge from the life and lessons of Jesus Christ should have room here to intensify the value of literature, of the arts, of the professional traditions studied by Notre Dame students...
...Included in the output of the Committee was a statement on the Catholic character of the University, a statement which was subsequently transmitted to the trustees with the rest of the Committee's analysis and which was published in Notre Dame Magazine for December 1973...
...The honesty and scientific rigor that study requires are virtues as much in a church as in an academy...
...That appointment to the faculty and staff continue to be offered by preference to competent members of the Congregation of Holy Cross, whose contribution to the University is a special guarantee of its Catholic character...
...Preservation...
...It needs that untrammeled curiosity of the mind that can take advantage of this freedom...
...To understand how wide and deep are the issues of the spirit is one of the proclaimed fruits of our religion...
...Because of the importance of the topic, that statement is reproduced below in its entirety, followed by comments from a variety of men and women in the academic world...
...NOTRE DAME'S CATHOLIC CHARACTER In September of 1972 Father Theodore M. Hesburgh, C.S.C., President of the University of Notre Dame, appointed a Committee on University Priorities to look at where Notre Dame is, where it wants to go, and how it might get to that point...
...All three facets are brightened by the light of those who meet here to learn about man, his world, and his endeavors in an environment of faith...
...At Notre Dame we make our way through the land of Christian belief...
...That the University continue to sustain an increasingly competent Department of Theology...
...Of such intellectual comrades who live in and by the spirit of Notre Dame and respect her heritage and tradition, we have much need...
...Meanwhile, partly as a consequence of this neutrality, strange things are happening outside the universities or in their interstices...
...They add essential meaning to our striving to be Catholic...
...Learning defies departmental borders, and every department impinges upon the inquiries of others...
...But our tradition makes the excellence of this one department singularly imperative...
...Exploration...
...Chairman of the Committee was Father James T. Burtchaell, C.S.C., Provost of the University...
...The central questions in many disciplines, as they pertain to human action, are made whole by their consideration in the light of theological values...
...Theology should permeate much of what is studied here...
...The sustaining of scholarly inquiry requires more than intellectual freedom...
...These are the paradoxes that make the faith in Christ such a haunting intellectual stimulant, and they should always be part of the mind's occupation at Notre Dame...
...This purposeful preservation of the Catholic interests of the University will need the continued guidance and support of the Congregation of Holy Cross...
...Communication...
...Distinctive of the scholarly quest of this community of Catholics would be: an exploration of the consequences of faith in Jesus Christ, a high value placed upon the age-long tradition of Catholic learning and the open teaching and moral witness of the Christian heritage...
...of English and Comparative Literature, Columbia University...
...In its present appalling spiritual and cultural condition, the United States gets precious little help from its universities...
...THE EDITORS Every university is on pilgrimage, in search of wisdom through learning and study...
...Though preferable to the brutality and tasteless materialism of much of the culture, these movements are ephemeral, mindless, rootless and totally uncoordinated with formal education...
Vol. 100 • April 1974 • No. 7
