Introduction
We are pleased to present in our current Bulletin a description of the McGrath Institute for Church Life by its director Dr. John C. Cavadini.
Dr. Cavadini, one of the University’s most renowned scholars and popular teachers, has made invaluable contributions to the Church and the University through his many years of leadership as chair of the Theology Department and Director of the McGrath Institute.
Here are a couple of passages from the University’s biography of Dr. Cavadini that provide some sense of his distinction:
He has served a five-year term on the International Theological Commission (appointed by Pope Benedict XVI) and in 2018 received the Monika K. Hellwig Award from the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities for Outstanding Contributions to Catholic Intellectual Life.
As Director of the McGrath Institute for Church Life, he inaugurated the Echo program in catechetical leadership, the Notre Dame Vision program for high school students and is responsible for the continued growth and outreach of the McGrath Institute, which partners with Catholic dioceses, parishes and schools to address pastoral challenges with theological depth and rigor.
Unhappily, this will be Dr. Cavadini’s last year as director. While his retirement was expected before too long, the administration’s decision to end his tenure so soon was abrupt and has caused some concern. We will report on this development, along with the administration’s replacement of another highly successful Catholic institute director, Dr. O. Carter Snead of the de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture, in our next Bulletin.
Finally, we draw attention to the Conclusion of this Bulletin in which we respond to a couple of helpful observations by readers of our last Bulletin on the Law School. They were concerned that our praise of the Law School might be read to imply that the rest of the University was uniformly weakly Catholic at best. That was certainly not our intent, as the current Bulletin demonstrates and as we explain further at the end of this Bulletin.
McGrath Institute for Church Life
The Institute for Church Life, now known as the McGrath Institute for Church Life, was founded in 1988 by Fr. Hesburgh, and known then as the Institute for Pastoral and Social Ministry. Fr. Hesburgh’s idea was that the University, as Catholic, should be able to serve the Church from whose heart the University was born. Almost all of the programming that had been initially located under our “umbrella” had been discontinued by the year 2000, and of those remaining, the Center for Social Concerns split off in 2009, and the Center for Pastoral Liturgy became the Notre Dame Center for Liturgy, which still finds its home in McGrath. Everything else has been built up since the year 2000, when then-Provost Nathan Hatch appointed John Cavadini, at that time also Chair of the Theology Department, as Director. Cavadinistill serves in that role.
The mission we received from Fr. Hesburgh remains with us, and that is to reach out from the University to serve the Church, in particular by building up and forming leaders in the Church. We say that the MICL “forms faithful Catholic leaders.” By “leaders,” we mean the whole gamut of leaders in the Church: bishops, priests, deacons, and the manifold of lay leaders who work in diocesan, parish or school roles, namely catechists, directors of religious education or of liturgy, Catholics in the professions who want to be agents of evangelization, and, increasingly, parents, whom we often tend to forget are Catholic leaders and maybe the most important ones. We also count our own students as leaders, and the many high school students we work with either directly or indirectly. Overall we say that our goal is not only to form leaders, but to form them for effective evangelization, especially in a time when many young people are leaving the Church.
Our programs include:
Notre Dame Vision: a summer cohort experience for high hchool students, steeping them in Catholic devotion and in reflection on their lives as a calling from God. A cadre of some 60 Notre Dame undergrads serve as “Mentors in Faith,” working with the high hchool students. This program is now in its 21st year.
Echo: a graduate program training catechetical leaders. Students earn a tuition-free M.A. in Theology in summer study and serve in parish or school placements during the school year, working in parish faith formation ministries under the supervision of a mentor, or teaching high hchool theology with mentor relationships offered by the school. This program is in its 20th year.
Notre Dame Center for Liturgy: offers programming in liturgical formation for priests, religious and layfolk involved in planning, directing or celebrating Mass or other liturgies. Current programming includes a pilot program to form better preachers in the Catholic Church. This Center is actually older than the MICL itself, though it has been transformed since the early days.
STEP: offers not-for-credit courses in Theology intended for deacons and others working in Church ministry or education, as well as any interested adult Catholic. This program is in its 23rd year. A companion program, Camino, offers training for catechetical leaders in Spanish.
Notre Dame Office of Life and Human Dignity: the mission is to form Catholic leaders in a pro-life vision based on Catholic Social Teaching about human dignity and the right to life. It conducts an array of educational activities for various audiences both on campus and on-line. One recent and much acclaimed accomplishment is the 12-video series we made in partnership with the Sisters for Life, featuring their work, called Into Life. This series is user friendly for use in schools or parish discussion groups. This Center is now in its 14th year.
Science and Religion Initiative: offers programming for high school teachers so that they can more effectively integrate into their school curricula intellectual formation in the relationship between science and religion. The perception that they are incompatible is one of the known drivers of disaffiliation of young people from the Church. The programming is both on-campus and off-site, at the schools themselves. Templeton funded for the time being. This project is in its 7th year.
The Bishop John Michael D’Arcy Program in Priestly Renewal: offers a one-week continuing formation program for priests, as well as an on-line program that dioceses can use for their priests at home. A newer parallel program for continuing formation has been designed for lay pastoral workers, especially those who serve in multi-cultural churches where disaffiliation seems to be pandemic.
Fiat Program on Faith and Mental Health: Another newer program, Fiat strives to promote experiences of belonging and hope among those with mental illness and their loved ones by strengthening parish cultures of communion. It does not replace professional medical treatment, but brings the riches of the Catholic faith into dialogue with our understanding of mental illness to empower ministry leaders to accompany the growing population of people affected by this issue.
Creata: Another new initiative, led by Prof. Abigail Favale (author of recent Ignatius Press book The Genesis of Gender), is set up to create educational and formation materials for schools and parishes on the Catholic approach to gender and sexuality, including especially approaches to transgender issues as they present themselves in Catholic schools. In particular, the program emphasizes a Catholic approach to the complementarity of women and men in their identities and mutual relations.
Other programming at the Institute includes the popular lecture series, Saturdays with the Saints, now in its 13th year, biennial conferences for bishops in partnership with the USCCB Committee on Doctrine, workshops featuring the St. John’s illuminated Bible, conferences of various sizes and on various topics, for example, on Mary, on the theology of Pope Benedict XVI, on the theory and practice of Co-Responsibility, on the Eucharist and Catholic Social Teaching, on Threats to Human Dignity (a pro-life conference), on C.S. Lewis’s Narnia series, etc.
Church Related Social Research: the MICL sponsors social science research related to pastoral issues in the Church. For example, our landmark 2019 first ever study Sexual Harassment and Catholic Seminary Culture of the level of sexual harassment in seminaries and of education and reporting policies for sexual harassment within seminaries. This led to the establishment of bench marks for best practices in this area, publicly adopted by over 25 of the larger seminaries in the U.S. (most of the largest ones). Another major study was on American attitudes towards abortion, in 2020.
Academic Publication: Church Life Journal, the online weekly publication of the McGrath Institute, received 1.62 million hits in 2022 (numbers comparable to Commonweal and The Hedgehog Review) and is on target for 2 million hits for 2023. The journal was founded by Dr. Timothy O’Malley in 2012 and is now edited by Dr. Artur Rosman.
Conclusion
The McGrath Institute under Dr. Cavadini’s inspired leadership is one of the pillars of Catholicism at Notre Dame, and it is not alone. It is joined, for example, by the de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture (see our Bulletin on the Center) and the Center for Citizenship & Constitutional Government; by some elements in the academic programs, notably the robustly Catholic Theology Department; by some special initiatives such as those in the business school; and of course, by the Law School.
What sets the Law School apart from the other colleges, as we said in our last bulletin, is the high proportion of Catholics on its faculty. We do not have recent data because the administration is now suppressing them. But as of the last publicly available data by college, 81% of the law school faculty was Catholic, and no other college came close to passing the University’s own test of Catholic identity: a majority of committed Catholics on the faculty.
But we should not forget that there are many Catholic faculty throughout the University working every day to enrich the lives of students with the mind and spirit of Catholicism. Because of them, Notre Dame is still, we believe, the most Catholic of the major Catholic universities except for Catholic University of America. Given the radical secularization of Catholic higher education, that may not be saying a whole lot. But it is certainly saying something!
Support Our Common Purpose
The vibrant Catholic culture nurtured by John Cavadini at Notre Dame’s McGrath Institute for Church Life exemplifies how faith-centered leadership can sustain and strengthen the University’s Catholic identity. It stands as a testament to what can be achieved with the right people in charge and inspires hope that, in due time, an authentic Catholic renewal under the Dome is possible.
If you share our love for Notre Dame and want to see an authentic Catholic renewal under the Dome, please consider supporting our mission during this season of giving. Your generosity helps protect and sustain our work to defend Notre Dame’s Catholic identity.
Oremus
Let no one deceive himself. If any one among you thinks that he is wise in this age, let him become a fool that he may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is folly with God. (1 Cor 3:18-19)
O God our Father, Eternal Wisdom and Love, You have created us in Your own image and likeness, and called us to live in humble obedience to You and according to the order which You have established to govern the universe. You sent Your Son, Wisdom Incarnate, to save us from sin and to reconcile us to You and to one another. He established the Church to be a saving witness of Wisdom and Love, Goodness and Truth to a rebellious world. We implore You to dispel the darkness that surrounds us. May all who have rejected the truths of creation, seeking to replace Your design for the human race with one of their own, be awakened to the destructive folly which passes for wisdom in this age. Enlighten us all by the Truth which sets us free and grant that we may courageously embrace the scorn and contempt of the wise of the world so that we may joyfully share in the Wisdom of God. Through the intercession of Notre Dame, our Mother, we make our prayer in the Name of Jesus, Your Son, Who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, forever and ever. Amen.
The above prayer is by Sycamore Trustee Father John Raphael (’89). To join us in regular prayer projects such as our Novena for Catholic Education and our Meditation on the 12-Days of Christmas, please join our Apostolate.
Submit Your Mass Intention
Father John J. Raphael (’89) offers a monthly Mass for the intentions of our Sycamore Trust community. If you have an intention that you would like him to include at his next Mass, you may submit it by clicking on the following button.
3 Responses
Thank you, Professor John Cavadini, for your “Outstanding Contributions to Catholic Intellectual Life”, and your outstanding contribution to defend and affirm Catholic Tradition in service to Christ and His Church.
Since there is nothing in The Catholic Faith that precludes us from being Faithful and Good Catholics as well as Good Citizens, for The Catholic Faith can only serve to enhance The Value Of The State, I am wondering what the purpose of suppressing Data regarding the number of Catholics on the Faculty could possibly be, for we can know through both Faith and reason, There Is Only One Way, One Truth, One Life (Light) Of Perfect Life-affirming And Life-sustaining Salvational Love, and compared to The Truth Of Love, “everything else is mere straw”, which is why, I suppose, we have not been Called to debate The Truth Of Love, we are Called to proclaim Him!
“Hail The Cross, Our Only Hope! “
Thank you for this well deserved praise of john Cavadini, Ms. Suttman. He has been a personal hero from the time I met him some 18 years as I watched his career continue to unfold in such rewarding ways. Bill D
As a member of the Advisory Board of the McGrath Institute for Church Life, I can wholeheartedly attest to the superb leadership of John Cavadini and the faithful, rich programming that flows from the Institute. It is one Notre Dame’s gems. Their initiative, “Take a Second Look” has studied the phenomenon of “disaffiliation” among incoming students, which led to the re-design of some first year Theology classes with amazing success. The number of students now claiming Theology as a major or minor has skyrocketed. We should be rejoicing over this transformative approach.
John Cavadini’s inspired leadership and his deep love for the Church has, in two decades, renewed the vigor for the Catholic Intellectual Tradition and fostered faith-filled formation at the University and beyond. As a search committee is in process to find his successor, we should all be vigilant in prayer and supplication, and hope that the Institute’s great work will continue for years to come.