Faculty
The Catholic identity of the University depends upon a predominant number of Catholic intellectuals.
The Faculty Issue
It's what goes on in the classroom that matters most
The nature of a university depends ultimately upon what goes on in the classroom – who’s teaching and what they teach. Notre Dame has recognized this with respect to Catholic identity by declaring in its Mission Statement:
However, this view is not shared by the Faculty Senate which, in a relentless drive for recognition by secular academe and ranking organizations, has made its own countervailing declaration:
Catholic Hiring
Notre Dame’s hiring of Catholic faculty has fallen off so badly that the number has plummeted far below that prescribed by the University as a test of its Catholic identity. This has both deprived many students of the Catholic education to which they and their parents were entitled and also produced the seedbed for the jarring actions that we highlight in our bulletins and elsewhere on this site. More, the Jenkins administration set a hiring policy designed merely to maintain the status quo. If those now in governance do not revise this policy or otherwise substantially increase the hiring of committed Catholic faculty, the point of no return will be reached and Notre Dame as an authentically Catholic university will be lost to history.
Mission Statement Test
The central document is the university’s Mission Statement test of Catholic identity: a “preponderant number” of “Catholic intellectuals” on the faculty. That criterion is rooted in a similar standard in Pope John Paul II’s Ex Corde Ecclesiae and the United States bishops’ Application of Ex Corde.
The Standard
All agree that “preponderant number” means a majority, and since the “Catholic intellectuals” are those who contribute to the Catholic identity of the school, they cannot be merely nominal Catholics. They must be “dedicated, committed Catholics,” in the words of former Provost Timothy O’Meara.
- The Mission Statement: “The Catholic identity of the University depends upon, and is nurtured by, the continuing presence of a predominant number of Catholic intellectuals” on the faculty. (Notre Dame Mission Statement,1993.)
- Ex Corde Ecclesiae: “In order not to endanger the Catholic identity of the University or Institute of Higher Studies, the number of non-Catholic teachers should not be allowed to constitute a majority within the Institution, which is and must remain Catholic.” (Ex Corde Ecclesiae, 1990.)
- The bishops’ Application of Ex Corde Ecclesiae to the United States: “[T]he university should strive to recruit and appoint Catholics as professors so that, to the extent possible, those committed to the witness of the faith will constitute a majority of the faculty.” (United States bishops Application of Ex Corde, 1999.)
The Meaning of “Preponderant Number” and “Catholic Intellectuals”
- Father Malloy: “A predominant number refers to both more than 50 percent and not simply being satisfied with 50 percent. It’s an effort, without specifying a specific number, to take seriously that numbers and percentages make a difference.” (Observer, October 11, 2006)
- Father Malloy: “It remains our goal that dedicated and committed Catholics predominate in number among the faculty.” (Notre Dame 2010: Fulfilling the Promise)
- Father Jenkins: “[W]e must have a preponderance of Catholic faculty and scholars, those who have been spiritually formed in that tradition and who embrace it.” (2005 address to the faculty)
- Provost Burish: “It’s to have a majority of faculty who are Catholic, who understand the nature of the religion, who can be living role models, who can talk with students about issues outside the classroom and can infuse values into what they do.” (Notre Dame Magazine, Summer 2007)
- Provost Timothy O’Meara: “If Notre Dame is to remain a Catholic university, dedicated and committed Catholics must clearly predominate on the faculty.” (Priorities and Commitments for Excellence (PACE), 1982.)
The Shrinking Catholic Faculty
The percentage of self-declared Catholics “plummeted from 88.6% in 1952 when Father Ted Hesburgh became president to 65.2% midway through his long tenure, where it leveled off until his retirement in1987. The proportion of Catholic faculty took a further dive to 52.9% under President Rev. Edward A. Malloy, C.S.C., who retired in 2005.
Under his successor, Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C., the number ticked up a couple of points but then fell to 54% in 2019. Thereafter, despite repeated requests, the Jenkins administration refused each year to disclose the current data.
The administration offered no explanation for this reversal of the University’s long-standing policy of open disclosure. The most obvious inference is that there has been a further decline the administration does not wish to reveal.
In any case, whatever the current figure, the important consideration is that it represents merely “check-the-box” Catholics, faculty who check the “Catholic” box on a personnel form when they are hired. And no one would claim that the “committed, dedicated” Catholics among them constitute close to a majority.
Consider, for example, what Professor Emeritus Walter Nicgorski declared at a 2009 Sycamore Trust breakfast gathering:
Along with the steep decline of the percentage of faculty who are Catholics to about 50 per cent, there is the widely shared recognition that a large number of those who list themselves as Catholics are not inclined to be involved in any concerns about the religious character of this university. As a result, a young person going through Notre Dame might not encounter a practicing Catholic informed and engaged by the Catholic intellectual tradition.
Similarly, in an illuminating essay on Notre Dame’s loss of Catholic identity, Professor Emeritus Alfred Freddoso wrote of a Notre Dame faculty “more and more dominated by people ignorant of the intellectual ramifications of the Catholic faith” and the “concomitant marginalization” of dedicated Catholic scholars.
The short of it is that, as Professor Freddoso wrote, while Notre Dame is still “in some obvious sense Catholic . . . it is not a Catholic university.” It is rather, in his memorable phrase, “something like a public school in a Catholic neighborhood
That is a hard fact. No one likes to hear it. But it is what the university itself tells us through its carefully considered Mission Statement standard even as it now looks the other way.
Sources: From Transparency to Concealment
For the percentage of Catholic faculty from 1953 to 1985, we found university-wide figures in the university archives. In 1985, the university began publishing annually the “Fact Book,” a comprehensive compilation of information about the university that included the number of Catholic faculty and the total faculty in each of the schools, i.e., law, science, engineering, architecture, and business.
We published these detailed data each year beginning in 2006, shortly after Sycamore Trust was established, until 2007, when the university discontinued the Fact Book.
From then until 2019, the university refused to provide data broken down by school – the College of Science figure had been especially low – but did furnish annually a university-wide figure for Catholic faculty.
Then in 2020 and thereafter the university simply ceased to respond to our repeated requests for faculty composition data.
Consider the moral implications of this behavior: Notre Dame holds itself out to students, parents, and financial supporters, past, present, and future, as a Catholic university; it tells them that, in order to be Catholic, it must have a majority of committed Catholics on the faculty; but it refuses to tell them whether it does.
On what principle of moral behavior can that be justified?
Faculty
bulletins
GO, IRISH Rover!
On Monday, the Notre Dame student publication The Irish Rover was vindicated and Notre Dame professor Tamara Kay was routed when Indiana Supreme Court Senior Judge Steven H. David categorically rejected each and every allegation by Kay of defamation by the Rover in its reports on Kay’s pervasive pro-abortion actions.
Taking a stand for Catholic values at Notre Dame
Merlot Fogarty discusses her experience as a pro-life advocate on campus and explains why she felt compelled to challenge the university’s academic freedom policy by organizing the recent protest against the school’s first drag show.
Rainbow is Thy Fame
A sobering reflection on Father Jenkins’s nearly two decades as Notre Dame’s President by Sycamore Trustee and Irish Rover Editor-in-Chief Emerita Mary Frances Myler (ND ’22).
