The Sacred Heart of Jesus statue at Notre Dame’s Main Building. Father Edward Sorin called the Sacred Heart “the primary Patron of our Congregation” and urged his fellow Holy Cross priests: “More than ever, let us place our hopes and prayers and needs in the Sacred Heart.” Photo: Jack Dempsey.
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Notre Dame’s recent embrace of LGBTQ+ advocate Father James Martin prompts us to report again on the University’s celebration of June as “LGBTQ+ Pride Month” rather than the month of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. We will return to Father Martin in a future Bulletin.
Blessed Basil Moreau consecrated the priests and seminarians of the Congregation of Holy Cross to the Sacred Heart in 1841. Father Edward Sorin brought that devotion to Notre Dame, where the College Church was consecrated to the Sacred Heart in 1888 and the Sacred Heart statue was installed at the Main Building in 1893.
In 1899, Pope Leo XIII consecrated the human race to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. This year, the bishops of the United States consecrated our nation to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
For more than 150 years, June has enjoyed formal ecclesial recognition as a month especially dedicated to the Sacred Heart. Yet under Notre Dame’s last two presidents, John I. Jenkins, C.S.C., and Robert A. Dowd, C.S.C., the University has publicly promoted June as LGBTQ+ Pride Month.
Notre Dame’s welcome of students, employees and alumni who identify as LGBTQ+ accords with Church teaching on human dignity. But celebration of Pride Month—with its inescapable association with homosexual acts, same-sex marriage, and claims of gender mutability—amounts to institutional affirmation of a cultural movement at odds with Catholic anthropology and doctrine on sex, gender, marriage and family.
There is nevertheless encouraging news that there will be significant events in honor of the Sacred Heart of Jesus on campus this semester.
Pride Month at Notre Dame
LGBTQ+ influence under the Dome expanded dramatically during the Jenkins administration. Reversing decades of denials, Father Jenkins granted official status to an LGBTQ+ student group and designated it as one of 13 special-interest organizations with unique representation and funding.
Thereafter, the Law School, College of Business, and Graduate School authorized LGBTQ+ student groups; the University established an organization for LGBTQ+ employees; and the Alumni Association formed an LGBTQ+ “affinity group” for alumni called Alumni Rainbow Community (ARC ND).
Notre Dame’s celebration of LGBTQ+ Pride Month illustrates how far this movement has strayed from the Jenkins administration’s initial limitations, which required activities to remain consonant with Catholic teaching.
Here is what happened in June instead:
Office of the President
Notre Dame’s main Pride Month resource is hosted on the Office of the President webpage. There the University celebrated the advancements of Notre Dame’s “LGBTQIA+ community,” explained Pride in terms of the gay-rights movement, parades, festivals and marches, and listed an extensive internal network of resources including the Gender Relations Center, Spectrum, PrimND, Gradient ND, LGBT Law Forum, Mendoza LGBTQ and Allies Club, and ARC ND.
Additionally featured were articles evidencing Notre Dame’s LGBTQ+ support, notably:
- A Notre Dame Magazine article by an alumnus celebrating his life with his male partner, also an alumnus, and their two children—including their reception at a South Minneapolis Catholic church, where his partner is a “popular homilist” and, he writes, “we are celebrated as a family.”
- A Belonging, Engagement, and Mission profile of an “out, married, queer” Notre Dame employee that highlights support for the “trans community” and recounts his activities on behalf of Notre Dame’s “LGBTQIA+ community.”
- A Notre Dame Press advertisement for a Hammes bookstore book signing by alumnus and same-sex married Gregory Bourke recounting his success as a plaintiff in the Supreme Court lawsuit validating same-sex marriage.
- A College of Arts & Letters News profile of alumnus Patrick Burke and the You Can Play organization he co-founded, which today advocates for transgender athletes competing against athletes of the opposite sex.
As a final note, Spectrum—the LGBTQ+ employee organization listed on the President’s page—links to Planned Parenthood as a South Bend-area medical resource.
Office of Belonging, Engagement, and Mission
The Office of Belonging, Engagement, and Mission observed Pride Month with the same catalog of resources as the President’s page.
Advertising
The University continued its custom of promoting Pride across campus through digital signage with prominent placement and official branding.
Hesburgh Libraries
Hesburgh Libraries also mounted LGBTQ+ archival programming and created a Gay Games Collection. The Federation of Gay Games’ gender inclusion policy champions gender “self-identification,” permitting competitors to participate in the “gender category they feel truly reflects their identity.”
Commencement
Just before Commencement, Notre Dame held its Lavender Graduation equivalent, the 2026 LGBTQ & Allies Sending Ceremony celebrating the “LGBTQ and allied graduating community” with rainbow stoles.
NDAA and its LGBTQ+ Affiliate ARC ND
The Notre Dame Alumni Association distributed ARC ND’s Pride Month Toolkit to alumni clubs, providing sample messaging, Pride merchandise and graphics, event ideas, and instructions for establishing local ARC ND coordinators.
With the encouragement of the NDAA, Notre Dame clubs around the country sponsored Pride events, including:
- Atlanta visited the National Center for Civil and Human Rights with a happy hour.
- Boston held its seventh annual Pride Night at Fenway Park.
- Chicago had a happy hour to kick off Chicago Pride Parade Weekend.
- Denver hosted an “All Are Welcome” Pride mixer.
- Washington, D.C. invited alumni and allies to march with ARC ND in the Capital Pride Parade.
- Los Angeles hosted a Pride Mixer with Lynn Segerblom, a creator of the original rainbow flag.
- Madison held a Pride Night at a Night Mares softball game.
- New York joined LGBTQ alumni groups from Princeton, Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Stanford and others for intercollegiate Pride programming.
- San Diego paired an “All Are Welcome Mass” with participation in the Pride Parade alongside LGBTQ ministries from Catholic parishes.
- San Francisco had a night out at the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus production of “Dolly! A Pride Show.”
Notre Dame and the Sacred Heart of Jesus
While LGBTQ+ Pride continues to smother recognition of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in June, this year was not a complete shut-out, and this month is bringing a campus consecration to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
In June, the University announced that it was joining the USCCB’s consecration of the United States to the Sacred Heart, and the McGrath Institute for Church Life, Campus Ministry, and FaithND honored the Sacred Heart in various ways.
But that was all. The University didn’t join in the actual consecration, which took place in Catholic churches across the nation on June 11. Nor did it participate in the Sacred Heart Novena leading up to the consecration—or any of the other related acts of devotion recommended on the USCCB’s consecration page.
Still, while Notre Dame has been unwilling to displace Pride with the Sacred Heart of Jesus in June, it is honoring the Sacred Heart in several events later this month and next.
- September 21 (5:00 pm) Panel discussion (McKenna Hall Auditorium)
- September 25 (5:15 pm) Mass with Bishop Kevin C. Rhoades followed by a procession to the Sacred Heart of Jesus Statue & a reception in the Main Building.
- October 2 (6:30 pm) Sacré Cœur screening (DeBartolo Performing Arts Center).
Note: We have received special permission to screen Sacré Cœur online for our members. The Sacred Heart docudrama became an unexpected box-office success this year in France, with limited U.S. screenings in June. Watch for details to join our screening.
Conclusion
Notre Dame’s September consecration to the Sacred Heart is a welcome development. It is the kind of conspicuous Catholic witness we have urged the University to display by celebrating June as the month of the Sacred Heart instead of Pride.
To be sure, it would take considerable courage to retreat from the University’s now-entrenched institutional commitment to LGBTQ+ Pride. There would be a social price that an unmistakably Catholic witness increasingly demands.
But it is what a great Catholic university should do.
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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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16 Responses
“None of this anti-Catholic development could have happened at Notre Dame without the approval of the University Fellows, the governing body which has final approval at the University.”
And it certainly could not have happened without the approval of those within The Hierarchy of The Catholic Church, who, by refusing to use Christ’s Charitable Anathema existing for The Salvation of Souls, have demonstrated that they are apathetic to Christ’s New Commandment, to “Love one another as I Have Loved You”, and have, in essence, defected from His One, Holy, Catholic, And Apostolic Church, In The Unity Of The Holy Ghost, through their denial of Salvational Love, God’s Gift Of Grace And Mercy, available to all those who desire to repent and believe The Good News-
He Is Risen!
The greatest gift we have been given is Our Catholic Faith, the ability to speak The Truth about Our Only Savior, Jesus The Christ, The Word Of Perfect Divine Eternal Infinite Love Incarnate Who Has Entrusted The Deposit Of Faith, To His One, Holy, Catholic, And Apostolic Church, In The Unity Of The Holy Ghost, ForThe Salvation Of Souls.
“Homosexual persons are called to chastity. By the virtues of self-mastery that teach them inner freedom, at times by the support of disinterested friendship, by prayer and sacramental grace, they can and should gradually and resolutely approach Christian perfection” (CCC 2359).
This statement should read:
God’s Universal Call to Holiness, Is God’s Universal Call that we be chaste in our thoughts, in our words, and in our deeds, and thus be Temples Of The Holy Ghost in all our relationships and experiences.
Those persons who have developed a disordered same sex sexual inclination, like all persons who have developed a disordered inclination towards sin, are called to Chastity, regardless of our disordered inclinations.
By the virtues of self-mastery that teach us inner freedom, at times by the support of disinterested friendship, by Prayer and Sacramental Grace, we can and should gradually and resolutely approach Christian perfection.
This has always been The Teaching Of Christ regarding Salvational Love, God’s Gift Of Grace And Mercy.
Who can deny we are in the midst of The Great Apostasy where the errors of the counterfeit magisterium that is attempting to subsists within Christ’s True Magisterium , and thus, The True Church of Christ are being illuminated by The Sacred Heart Of Jesus, The Word Of Perfect Divine Eternal Infinite Love Incarnate, As Our Blessed Mother Has Lifted Her Veil?
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/-7XLl3QspwI
Pray for the affirmation of The Forever Office Of The MUNUS so that The Modernist members of the counterfeit magisterium who desire to be liberated from The Unity Of The Holy Ghost, The Spirit Of Perfect Divine Eternal Infinite Love Between The Father And His Only Begotten Son, Jesus The Christ, Who Proceeds From Both The Father And His Only Begotten Son, Jesus The Christ, will return to The Tradition Of God’s One, Holy, Catholic, And Apostolic Church.
For The Holy Spirit was not promised to the successors of Peter that by His revelation they might make known new doctrine, but that by His assistance they might inviolably keep and faithfully expound the Revelation, the Deposit of Faith, delivered through the Apostles. ”
“Notre Dame’s welcome of students, employees and alumni who identify as LGBTQ+ accords with Church teaching on human dignity.”
Please explain how reordering persons according to sexual desire/inclination/orientation which sexually objectifies the human person, In direct violation of God’s Commandment regarding lust and the sin of adultery, and denies the inherent Sanctity and Dignity of all God’s Beloved sons and daughters, could possibly accord with Christ’s teaching and thus His One, Holy, Catholic, And Apostolic Church’s teaching on the inherent Sanctity and Dignity of Human Life that God’s Universal Call to Holiness, our Call to be chaste in our thoughts, in our words, and in our deeds, as Temples of The Holy Ghost in all our relationships and experiences, requires that we reject, because we can know through both Faith and reason, we are not objects of sexual desire/inclination/orientation, we are, in essence, beloved sons and daughters of God, Made in The Image Of God, Called to live our lives in Loving relationships, in communion with The Ordered Communion Of Perfect Divine Eternal Infinite Love , The Most Holy Blessed Trinity.
For those of us no longer sleeping in Gethsemane, we can know through both Faith and reason that the reordering of persons according to sexual desire/inclination/orientation, which ipso facto sexually objectifies the human person, is, in itself, a denial of God’s Universal Call To Holiness.
“But though we, or an Angel from Heaven, preach a gospel to you besides that which we have preached to you, let him be anathema.” -https://biblehub.com/galatians/1-8.htm
“You cannot be My Disciples if you do not Abide In My Word.” – The Charitable Anathema Of Jesus The Christ
Thank you for the comment. The sentence is not intended to suggest that Catholic teaching endorses reducing a person to his or her sexual desires, inclinations, or orientation, or objectifying anyone on that basis. Quite the contrary. It distinguishes the inherent dignity of the person from questions of sexual identity and conduct. Indeed, the very next sentence distinguishes the dignity owed to every person from Notre Dame’s institutional celebration of “Pride.”
The Catechism teaches that persons who experience homosexual inclinations “must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity,” while also teaching that homosexual acts are contrary to the Church’s moral teaching and that those experiencing such inclinations are called to chastity (CCC 2357–2359). Accordingly, Notre Dame should welcome every person as a son or daughter of God without making sexual orientation the defining feature of the person or affirming beliefs or conduct contrary to Catholic teaching.
That distinction—between welcoming persons and affirming what they may believe—is precisely the point. That is why the Bulletin describes “Pride” not as a category of persons, but as a “cultural movement at odds with Catholic anthropology and doctrine on sex, gender, marriage and family.”
Thank you for your response.
I do affirm God’s Divine Will and God’s Divine Law and thus The Teaching of The Catholic Church’s Magisterium that we must respect and affirm The Sanctity and Dignity of the marital act within The Sacrament of Holy Matrimony, and thus affirm God’s Divine Will and God’s Divine Law that we respect The Sanctity and Dignity of Human Life from the moment of conception.
However, it is important to note:
https://www.google.com/search?q=which+popes+have+refered+to+persons+as+LGBTQ&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en-us&client=safari&sei=dGS0avSaDo2IwbkPzs6LuQQ&iga=1&utm_campaign=safari_share_1
How disturbing it is that millions of Americans look to Notre Dame’s practices and policies as equivalent to authentic Catholicism. Unfortunately, those millions include large numbers of young people and their parents who invest in a Notre Dame education assuming that the CSC order is a defender of the faith, not a subverter of it. The acquiescence of the Fellows in this pattern is disillusioning. Notre Dame is blessed to have the Sycamore Trust, the Rover, numerous individual CSCs and other Catholic stalwarts as reminders of the university’s promises and its mission.
Thank you, Joe. Your reference to the Fellows is especially important—as noted in comments below. When practices become embedded in University life that are in conflict with Notre Dame’s Catholic mission, the question is therefore not simply what administrators or Trustees have permitted, but what the Fellows have enabled. We report on symptoms of that secularization in virtually every Bulletin we publish.
And thank you for your kind words about Sycamore Trust and the other members of the Notre Dame community working to keep the University faithful to the Catholic identity it promises.
None of this anti-Catholic development could have happened at Notre Dame without the approval of the University Fellows, the governing body which has final approval at the University. Of the twelve members of the Fellows, six are Holy Cross priests, including the ND President and the Holy Cross Provincial. How priests (ordained to be Other Christs) could so militantly further a cause which is clearly contrary to Catholic moral and Scriptural dogma is a most disturbing indication that the CSCs are in confounding disarray about their identity and mission as “catholic” educators.
I Would like expand on this perceptive comment, Dan. Many blame the majority-lay board of trustees for the deterioration of the Catholic identity of Notre Dame in recent decades. But in fact it is the CSC Order that is primarily responsible. Father Hesbugh liked to say he turned the University over to a lay-controlled board, but in fact he did not Ultimate authority over everything resides in the 12 Fellows. The board has only such authority as is delegated to it by the Fellows, who are explicitly charged with maintaining the Catholic identity of the school. And, as you point out, half of the Fellows are CSC priests, one of whom is the President. That gives the Order effective control. And responsibility!
It goes on and on.
Where’s the End Point?
Beyond disappointed …..
Class of ’66.
It is clear that the Jenkins and Dowd administrations have succumbed to the moral relativism of the academic world in which they live, and operate. It is tragic that at a time in history where moral clarity is so greatly needed that these key leaders of the University of Notre Dame have chosen to “go along to get along.” Much is expected from those to whom much is given. Notre Dame has been given much through the years, and it makes me profoundly sad to see these Presidents and their Administrations shrinking away from the challenge of creating moral clarity rather than stepping up to it. “Choose Hard” is one of the mantras of Marcus Freeman and the football program. The Administration needs to choose to accept the difficult mantle of leadership in Catholic higher education that they are presumably uniquely qualified to take on.
Notre Dame resembles a ship without a rudder, caught in a storm. It isconflicted! The second most powerful person, Provost John McGreevy, is reported to have proposed a reduction in Theology requirements to one course and placed a pro abortion professor to head the Liu Institute who ultimately removed herself because of student and other backlash, And who can forget Mission Statement fiasco.
The Alumni Association is now used as a powerful voice for the University’s Public Relations as evidenced by your examples.
We must continue to support The Irish Rover and University clubs which support the traditions of Notre Dame.
The President’s Chief of Staff, Ann Firth, is the common denominator between Jenkins and Dowd. She controls access. And she needs to be replaced. jc
On ND’s campus sits the Basilica of the Sacred Heart. In it’s dorms are chapels where weekly masses are held. It hosts several Catholic clubs. But on its land there is also “married student housing” where a concession was made long ago for same sex married couples. And now drag shows occur in the name of academic freedom. We have to admit at his point, don’t we, that actual practicing Catholics at ND represent mere stakeholders, among many non-practicing stakeholders, whose influence is dwindling, inexorably.
The times are dark, to be sure. However, we like to remind our readers that there is still a lot going on at Notre Dame that is admirable from a Catholic sensibility — many rock-solid teachers and classes, incredibly faithful students and organizations, unparalleled opportunities to deepen one’s faith on campus, etc. But all this tends to get drowned out when people like Father James Martin come to down and we report on the deepening commitment to the LGBTQ+ agenda.
Duncan Stroik, professor at Notre Dame’s School of Architecture, has observed that church buildings teach: “They’re sermons in stone,” he says.
Notre Dame’s institutional choices preach sermons too. And, as the saying goes: Their actions speak so loud one can hardly hear what they say.
Nevertheless, we wouldn’t say “inexorably.” We prefer Father Sorin’s quote after the Great Fire: “If it were all gone, I should not give up!”
So sad to see the “leadership” at the University of Notre Dame be so disrespectful of the prior leaders who built a premiere Catholic educational institute based on the Sacred Heart of Jesus – not “Pride”!
Pride is a deadly sin. How does the “boss” in charge at ND not know this, and act accordingly?