Introduction
In this bulletin, we discuss the commotion that arose when the University dropped from the “Values” expected of staff employees the obligation to “understand, accept and support” Notre Dame’s Catholic mission. The resulting furor caused the administration to backtrack, but not in a way that came close to restoring the deleted provision. The episode is another marker of the weakening Catholic identity of the University.
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According to The Observer, the official Notre Dame student newspaper, the first statement of “ND Values” was issued 20 years ago. It was directed at all staff employees, i.e., roughly 4,500 staff from top administrators to subordinate employees in finance, administration, communications dining services and residential life. The Values were “meant to drive staff’s mission” and are used in evaluating employee performance.
Four of the five original values were employee characteristics desirable in any organization: Accountability, Teamwork, Integrity, and Leadership in Excellence.
The fifth, however, underscored Notre Dame’s Catholic identity and assigned staff a role in its Catholic Mission:
Leadership in Mission: Understands, accepts and supports the Catholic mission of the university and fosters values consistent with that mission.
This echoed the teaching of St. Pope John Paul II in Ex Corde Ecclesiae, his encyclical on Catholic higher education:
[T]he dedication and witness of the non-academic staff are vital for the identity and life of the University,
and
[A]ll administrators, at the time of their appointment, are to be informed about the Catholic identity of the Institution and its implications, and about their responsibility to promote, or at least to respect, that identity. (Paragraphs 4 and Art IV sec. 2)
The October Surprise
In late October, the University adopted a new set of staff “Values” that revised four of the previous values (Community, Collaboration, Excellence, and Innovation) but omitted the obligation to “understand, accept and support the Catholic mission of the University.”
The University didn’t mention this provocative deletion, perhaps in the hope no one would notice. But we did. We posted our discovery on X, and the Observer broke the story as well.
A cascade of criticism followed.
Reaction
The reaction, mostly from Catholic sources, was a mixture of stupefaction, dismay, and “I told you so.” See, e.g., Catholic World Report, LifeSiteNews, Catholic Vote, Philanthropic News Digest, The Catholic Thing, Belief Net News, The Catholic Herald, Live Action News, Crisis, AOL, PJ Media, The Gateway Pundit, Campus Reform, Catholic News Agency, Daily Caller, Fox News Digital, and Inside Higher Education.
Many critics reviewed episodes that foreshadowed this development: e.g., the honoring of pro-abortion Presidents Obama and Biden; pro-abortion speakers; celebration of Pride Month “and many other pro-LGBT initiatives”; the decline in Catholic faculty; a drag show; concealment of Catholic faculty data; and furnishing students pornography through the University’s WI-FI.
The administration’s sidestep.
The administration reacted by purporting to back off. Because of “some constructive feedback,” Father Dowd said, “we have now included the language on Catholic mission as the first of our five core Values.”
But the addition is not from the Mission Statement and bears no resemblance to its rich description of Notre Dame as “a Catholic academic community of higher learning” “animated by prayer, liturgy, and service” and “committed to pursuing the religious dimensions of all human learning” in a “community graced by the Spirit of Christ.”
That’s the “Catholic mission” staff employees were formerly called upon to “understand, accept, and support.”
Now, staff are called upon instead “to advance Notre Dame’s mission to be the leading global Catholic research university.”
Here’s the entire passage:
To be a force for good and help to advance Notre Dame’s mission to be the leading global Catholic research university.
This is anchored, not in the University’s Mission Statement, but in its 2023 Strategic Framework’s 10-year plan, which led with
Notre Dame must be the leading global Catholic research university, on par with but distinct from the world’s best private universities.
The subject of the new “Value” is narrow – Notre Dame as a research university – as is the target audience –those relatively few staff associated with research.” The phrase “Catholic mission” does not appear, and “Catholic” serves simply to define the class of research universities Notre Dame aspires to lead. All staff members could, and doubtless would, support Notre Dame’s becoming the “leading global Catholic research university” whether or not they agreed with the school’s Mission Statement.
Causes and Consequences
The decision to eliminate the prior Catholic mission obligation was quite deliberate. According to Heather Christophersen, vice president for Human Resources, she and Father Dowd “talked a lot about this.” More generally, she said her team had been meeting for a year and a half with focus groups, University leaders and staff.
She said, quite implausibly, “The decision to remove the value ‘Leadership in Mission’ came in an attempt to make the Catholic mission an overarching theme, instead of a single value.” She continued, “While the new values might not say specific mission-related words, I think trying to weave them throughout was our goal.”
She left unexplained how one “weaves” the Catholic mission “throughout” without mentioning it.
Plainly, something else was in play. The forces that wanted to eliminate the robust Mission Statement call upon staff carried the day. This may very well signal that the staff is already so secularized that the University does not want to ask staff to support what they do not believe. That inference is strengthened by the administration’s saying it was restoring Catholic mission as a pre-eminent value while failing to do so.
In any case, the elimination of the explicit call upon employees to understand, accept and support the school’s Catholic mission will predictably weaken support for that mission in the community that runs the University. “Staff” means everyone except faculty, from the expansive roster of vice presidents on down. They are the people, St. John Paul II said, whose “dedication” and “witness” are “vital for the life and witness of the university.”
Oremus!
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Please consider a gift to our year-end campaign. Your support provides the resources we need to continue the fight for Notre Dame’s Catholic identity—to keep the one true light shining on the Dome.
Support SycamoreNotes
- Setting the goal in terms of “Catholic” research universities moves the goal posts within tiddlywink range. On that basis, Nore Dame is already number 4. (See World Research University Ranking.) But aspiring to be “on par” with secular leaders moves the goal posts into another county. Notre Dame is number 153 among all global universities.
- A global rating of which Notre Dame can be truly proud is the Theology Department’s first place among the world’s theology, divinity and religious studies programs – ahead of Harvard, Oxford, Cambridge and Duke.
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Oremus
O God of Truth and Love, You have called us into a loving and faithful relationship with You. Your Son identified Himself as the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and called us to follow Him wherever He goes.
In their care for and guardianship of the University and the students it serves, may the administrators of the University of Notre Dame always commit themselves to the pursuit and embrace of the Truth, which alone can set us free.
May the Holy Spirit lead them into all truth and recall them to it in times of peril. May they embrace the sorrow that comes from being different from, and rejected by, the world, so that they may rejoice always in the goodness of the Lord.
In the day of battle, may they joyfully take courage in Him who has already overcome the world.
We make our prayer through the intercession of Notre Dame, Our Mother, and 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.
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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.
At first I read, “In our latest Bulletin, we examine the commotion that followed Notre Dame’s DELUSION…”
All too typical bureaucratic CYA gobbledygook in response to a very legitimate concern and critique. Our U.S. bishops, as a collective, often respond in similar fashion. I typically glare and grind my teeth, while I imagine Our Lady weeping. I always knew Fr. Bob to have a good heart so I continue to pray for all concerned. I love Our Lady and the university, but despite two professional degrees, nine years as pastor of Sacred Heart Parish, and over twenty years living, studying and ministering at Notre Dame/South Bend, I never “drank the Blue and Gold Kool-Aid.” When they do well, I commend them. When they don’t, and they don’t repeatedly, I respond differently.
Prayers continue for all at the university in these holy seasons of Advent and Christmas.