The walk across campus from Sacred Heart to the DeBartolo Performing Arts Center is not too long. On November 3rd the two buildings seemed a world away from each other and this was strangely emblematic of the growing divide at Notre Dame.

Mass was being celebrated in the Basilica by the Bishop of Fort Wayne/South Bend on the second night of the DeNicola Center for Ethics and Culture Fall Conference. This yearly conference gathers scholars, professionals, lay and clergy and students together to discuss themes essential to ethics, culture and public policy.

This year’s conference centered around the discussion of personhood and the dignity of persons.

At DeBartolo several different university departments were sponsoring a drag show. Coincidentally or not, this was held on the same weekend.

I decided to go over to witness the protest and counterprotest. The grand arched windows over DeBartolo’s entrance were brightly lit in pink and purple. Just across the street a couple of hundred people were gathered. On one side rock music blared and chants were being yelled. On the other, there was praying and singing. Both sides were respectful, despite their different approaches.

I guessed the side protesting the drag show outnumbered those in favor by about 2:1. They held signs that spoke to respecting women and remaining faithful to Catholicism. The counter-protesters held signs claiming that the protesters were somehow bigots or racists. Apparently, protesting men mocking women is now considered hateful.

After about 30 minutes the protesters embarked across campus while praying the Rosary enroute the Log Chapel for a prayer service.

The march was an odyssey into Notre Dame’s relatively recent history and its straying from its founding principles.

As I walked with them, I considered the drag show in juxtaposition to the recent celebration of 50 years of women at Notre Dame. I looked over to the right to see the Dome with Mary’s statue atop it. On the one hand we just last year recognized the tremendous contributions of the women of Notre Dame since 1972. On this night the dignity of women seemed to be cast aside as men were on stage to perform stereotypical portrayals of women. Women, we were told last year, had struggled since 1972 to gain stature at ND and had succeeded in every endeavor. Now they were being reduced to a punchline to promote “fluidity and non-traditional interpretation of gender roles” we are told.

In the same Main Building on the first floor are the Columbus Murals. In the preceding week they had been uncovered for the first time in a few years for academic classes to view. But that night they were back under wraps. These murals were painted in the late 1800’s and depict what at the time was the impression of the artist towards the trips of Columbus to the New World. But a small minority complained and were able to get the murals covered. The drag show organizers claimed their event was warranted due to “academic freedom” and were granted permission to hold it, despite its distinct opposition to Catholicism. No such permission was granted to allow the historic murals’ continuous display.

Just to the right of the Dome I saw Washington Hall. Almost 40 years ago as a sophomore I attended the infamous Mario Cuomo address at which time he twisted his logic like a pretzel to explain how he could hold his pro-life views personally while ignoring them in his role leading the State of New York. A welcoming and evidently supportive Fr. Hesburgh sat on stage with him that night.

I felt like I was sadly witnessing, through the history of these iconic buildings, the degradation that has occurred at Notre Dame over the years and was punctuated that night. Years after the Cuomo event, the two most pro-abortion presidents in history were subsequently honored by Notre Dame with an honorary degree to Barack Obama and, even more significantly, with the specifically Catholic Laetare Medal to the professedly Catholic Joe Biden while he was Vice President.

Despite all of this, a light of hope flickered inside me as we passed Sacred Heart where just an hour or so before hundreds of attendees at the Fall Conference prayed for Notre Dame and the conversion of the hearts of those who have led Her down this path.

The journey ended at the Log Chapel and my thoughts went to Fr. Sorin and his hearty band of brethren who set out so many years ago to found a great Catholic university. The struggles they faced were profound but maybe not as difficult in a different way to the ones Notre Dame faces today. They overcame their obstacles because they staunchly placed God at the center.

Fr. Sorin’s recent successors seem to have lost that focus as they repeatedly turn away from the tenets of Catholicism and bow instead to claims of “academic freedom”, “autonomy” and “inclusivity.” 

Perhaps the short-term rewards of secularism are too tempting for them to pass up. After all, membership in the Association of Academic Universities places Notre Dame up with the “elites” and the newly renewed NBC contract is quite lucrative.

That night I witnessed the fruits of what happens when an institution turns away from its founding principles in search of something else. It destroys itself from within.

But prayer is an amazing thing and was in the air.

Perhaps prayer will be the catalyst needed to heal Notre Dame and help return our beloved university to her Catholic roots.

Note: For an affecting account of the student organized protest by Merlot Fogarty, go to Notre Dame Women Students Object to Drag Show.