Stop Pornography at Notre Dame

Demanding Accountability and Moral Leadership from Notre Dame

an open letter

To Rev. Rev. Robert A. Dowd, C.S.C.
President of the University of Notre Dame

With copies to Most Rev. Kevin C. Rhoades, Bishop of Fort Wayne–South Bend; Rev. William M. Lies, C.S.C., Provincial Superior, U.S. Province of Priests and Brothers; and John B. Veihmeyer, Chair, Board of Trustees.

Subject: The University’s Refusal to Install a Pornography Filter

Dear Father Dowd,

We write as alumni, students, parents, and friends of Notre Dame to ask that you reconsider your rejection of the petition by students for the installation of a pornography filter on the University’s Wi-Fi system.

As a result of your decision, Notre Dame continues to provide unrestricted access to pornography to its students, their friends, families, guests, and all who visit campus and use the University’s network. This includes some of the most degrading content on the Internet—content the Church has repeatedly condemned as gravely sinful and a form of “digital violence.” Pope Francis called it “the language of the Devil,” and the Church urges the criminalization of its distribution.

As Sycamore Trust’s chairman, William H. Dempsey, recently wrote to you:

The pornography that the University’s Internet service supplies to students is conceived in sin, has no purpose other than stimulation of sin, and unquestionably promotes masturbation and perhaps fornication and sexual assault by Notre Dame students.”

We, too, would like to know why, in these circumstances, Notre Dame continues to provide this foul material to students and others, but in any case our plea is that, because of these circumstances, you take Notre Dame out of pornography distribution. (For a detailed description of our reasons, see the Sycamore Trust bulletin here.)

We acknowledge it would take courage to stand out from elite academe on this issue, but for that very reason the move would strengthen Notre Dame’s claim to be the nation’s leading Catholic university.

More importantly, we submit, it is simply the right thing to do.