Annual Request 2023
2023 Annual Request & Progress Report
Dear Friends of Sycamore Trust,
If you search “Catholic Drag Show” on Google, near the top of the list of results is “Notre Dame President Defends Drag Shows” and immediately below that is “Notre Dame Prof Defends Campus Drag Show.” No matter what they say, everyone knows that a Catholic university is no place for a drag show. That’s why so many loyal sons and daughters of Notre Dame joined students in opposing the activists under the Dome who worked so hard to bring this show to campus last month.
The fact that the Jenkins administration let the show go on makes one wonder how far the school will go to welcome events that offend Catholic sensibilities and undermine Catholic teaching — especially when, right across the street, Saint Mary’s has just announced that it will accept men who apply to attend the college as women.
And especially when this gender theory has a solid foothold at Notre Dame. As we have reported, Notre Dame’s Vice President Rev. Gerry Olinger, C.S.C, urged this gender theory upon incoming freshman and Father Jenkins refused to disavow it. Bishop Kevin C. Rhoades’s strong condemnation of this theory applies to Notre Dame as well as to St. Mary’s.
Still, despite its numerous scandals, Notre Dame is matchless in Catholic higher education — both in reputation and in resources. As a result, it holds a unique place in the worlds of academia and ecclesia. If it loses its Catholic identity, Catholic perspectives will fade within academic, research, and civic circles, the Church and the Catholic community will lose a precious and irreplaceable asset, and generations will be robbed of the opportunity for a Catholic education at a university of the first rank. The stakes are too high to stand back and watch.
For nearly two decades, we have been spotlighting events like Notre Dame’s first drag show and, most fundamentally, the weakening Catholic faculty representation. Our purpose is not to disparage, but rather to call all those who love Notre Dame to her side and to join us in the fight for her most precious asset – her Catholic identity.
Meaningful opportunities to assist in this fight have increased rapidly during the last several years. But we can only do what we can afford. For example, we would like to invest a great deal more in student development and young alumni outreach to secure the next generation of leaders in our fight for Notre Dame’s Catholic identity.
While our most important request is for your prayers for Sycamore Trust and Notre Dame and those many at the University who are dedicated to its Catholic mission, we earnestly ask that you also consider including Sycamore Trust in your year-end giving to help us intensify the fight for Notre Dame’s Catholic identity in 2024.
For the Sycamore Trust officers and directors,
William H. Dempsey (’52)
Chairman
PS. For more a complete account of our origins, history, and achievements, please see our brochure below.
Progress Report
Summary | Times to come
If you have followed our bulletins, it won’t surprise you that our near-term outlook for an authentic Catholic renewal at Notre Dame continues to be bleak. What keeps us going is what got us started: an abiding love for Our Lady’s University and a vibrant Catholic presence that persists in a number of classrooms, institutes, and organizations. However, there is a long way to go if Notre Dame is to experience anything like an authentic Catholic renewal. And how much we are able to help her depends on the resources that are available to us from those who share our values and support our aims.
After 18 years of experience, we are well acquainted with the subtleties at work at under the Dome that relate to the school’s Catholic identity – the causes of the secularization that have taken root, the sources of Catholic vitality that remain, and the ways in which Sycamore Trust can work with supporters to most effectively achieve our common purpose.
You will notice from this year’s summary of activities that we have expanded our involvement with student organizations and increased our outreach activities and events that spotlight the challenges that Notre Dame faces and that create opportunities for those who value her Catholic identity to join the fight to preserve it. The fact that we have had success in these efforts is both an indication of the relevance of our mission and an crucial element in our strategy to sustain our efforts for future generations. The video of our Annual Breakfast this year (above) is an example. In addition to Father Miscamble’s tribute to Bill Dempsey, the production was unusual in the fact that, for the first time in its 15-year history, sponsors were invited to join us in promoting our mission and the event. In fact, when you click to play the video before the program you will see a short commercial from our lead sponsor, Peter Dumon (’90), who owns Waterfall Resort and Steamboat Bay Fishing Club and has continued his sponsorship by extending a discount to friends of Sycamore on reservations and returning a portion of the proceeds to our organization to support operations.
For more about what we do and why, please have a look at our new brochures by clicking on the following images. Printed versions (as many as you like) are available upon request for those who have an opportunity to distribute them.
Our principal methods for advancing our mission are publishing investigative reports about the signs and symptoms of secularization at Notre Dame, organizing collective prayer projects among our supporters, contributing to student groups that advance the school’s Catholic mission, and assisting students in selecting courses and professors who uphold the school’s Catholic mission. Through our young alumni group, we are now also able to engage directly with dedicated Catholics as they leave campus and make their way in a postmodern world.
In our frequent bulletins, online videos, social media postings, webinars, annual breakfast panels and other events, we do what no one else does: report what’s going on at Notre Dame that undermines its Catholic character. As Professor Walter Nicgorski said at a Sycamore breakfast, now everyone knows they no longer can “sweep everything under the rug.”
Sometimes, people suggest that we should tone down our rhetoric and say more positive things about what Notre Dame does that is in keeping with its Catholic identity. But the truth of the matter is that Notre Dame publicize these things already — and far more effectively than we ever could. For our part, we acknowledge and applaud the dedicated student leaders and their organizations who stand alongside us in the fight to preserve Notre Dame’s Catholic identity — as well as valuable initiatives like de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture’s Vita Institute and Fall Conference.
In the coming year, as our resources permit, we have plans to do even more in terms of promoting and supporting the efforts of our allies. Some of these efforts, which often go unnoticed by mainstream university channels, are briefly outlined below.
Investigative Reports
An especially important example of how our work makes a difference can be found in the halt in the decline of the rate of Catholics on Notre Dame’s faculty. When we came on the scene, that rate was poised to plunge below 50 percent. But shortly after we disclosed this alarming situation and began to publish the data each year, the trajectory leveled off and has even ticked up a bit. This has saved Notre Dame from continuing the slow-motion collapse of its Catholic identity that has ended so badly for most other major Catholic universities.
This year we have published 15 Bulletins on a variety of topics ranging from the students’ return to the national March for Life following Notre Dame’s lifting of COVID restrictions, the university’s breaking with its 180-year tradition of single-sex housing for undergraduates with its re-visioning of the Undergraduate Community at Fischer, the administration-approved homosexualizing of Shakespeare, Gender Studies’ six-part online series on “Reproductive Justice” featuring speakers advocating for abortion and promoting ideologies hostile to the truth of Catholicism, Keough School Professor Tamara Kay’s suit against the independent student newspaper The Irish Rover for defamation, the Department of Film, Television, and Theatre’s first ever Notre Dame drag show, and the large prayerful protest that was organized by students in opposition to it. These and our other bulletins are available in our archives.
In the next couple of weeks, we will be sharing the accounts of two of our Trustees who attended the drag show protest as well as the efforts that are underway among students, parents, and alumnae of Saint Mary’s College to organize with our help against the decision by the school’s leadership to begin accepting applications from men who apply as women in 2024.
Publishing our bulletins is resource intense. Even minor improvements like the addition of audio files for those who prefer listening to our bulletins take quite a bit of time and new technology. We would benefit a great deal by having the funds to engage additional alumni with journalistic training and experience who are able to contribute to our reporting — and even more by the ability to put a fulltime editor-in-chief on payroll. Until then, we will continue to accomplish our reporting through board members and recent graduates with Bill Dempsey continuing to serve as our unpaid editor-in-chief.
Open Letters
When we believe that collecting signatures can effectively pressure Notre Dame to act in line with its Catholic identity, we invite alumni, students, faculty, staff, family, and friends of Notre Dame to join us in signing an open letter.
This year’s open letter was to Father John I Jenkins, C.S.C., and Dean Sarah Mustillo with copies to Bishop Kevin C. Rhoades asking that Notre Dame not allow pro-abortion activists to promote their unanswered views to students and others in the university sponsored virtual series on “reproductive health” — which was nothing more than an unrebutted traducing of Church teaching on abortion. We simply asked that Gender Studies and the Reilly Center comply with the Common Proposal, the university’s own policy for insuring academic freedom while avoiding scandal and protecting Notre Dame’s reputation as an authentically Catholic institution. We did not expect that the series would be cancelled. It was not. But we do expect that there will be closer attention the Common Proposal in the future and that other programs that scandalize Notre Dame will be less likely to gain approval and sponsorship.
The staging of pro-abortion programs by two Notre Dame academic units is both damaging to the school’s reputation as a Catholic institution but especially scandalous because it is aimed at students whose moral formation has been entrusted to Notre Dame by their parents.
We have purposefully reframed from actively promoting our open letters through organizations that align with our mission but have a wider audience reach. While collaborating with another organization might indeed boost the number of signatures, it would dilute our impact by including signatories who lack a direct connection to the university.
As a result, our count may appear smaller in comparison, but it holds greater significance. Almost all of the 1,862 people who signed this year’s open letter have a genuine affiliation with Notre Dame. If you would like to increase that number, we invite you to add your name.
Student Awards
Thanks to a generous commitment from Mike (’73) and Nancy Hansen, made through the Hansen Family Foundation, we have established the Michael L. and Nancy A. Hansen Student Award in Memory of Rev. Jake Smith, C.S.C. (’53). This award, named in honor of Mike’s uncle, who played a pivotal role in his decision to attend Notre Dame, recognizes and supports students who have made exceptional contributions to the Catholic mission of the university through their leadership within various campus organizations.
Annually, a total of $25,000 in financial awards is granted to students selected for their outstanding dedication to Notre Dame’s Catholic mission. For more details about the award and to learn more about Father Smith, as well as the previous year’s recipients, please visit the Hansen Award page. We look forward to announcing this year’s deserving recipients in the upcoming Spring semester.
Additionally, we continue to make our annual Student Award for Outstanding Service to Notre Dame’s Catholic Identity that we present during our Annual Breakfast to an undergraduate who has made an outstanding contribution to strengthening Notre Dame’s Catholic identity. The award comes with a donation made in the student’s name to a campus group of his or her choice.
Last year the recipient was Joe DeReuil (’24) for his role as Editor-In-Chief of The Irish Rover, that included writing 33 articles for the paper on topics ranging from Father Olinger’s freshman gender training requirement and Professor Kay’s abortion advocacy to the limitations of academic freedom, the ongoing struggle for a pornography filter on campus. Not only was his reporting hard-hitting, but he also served in a key role to continue the Catholic Leadership Summit that we sponsor and has held leadership positions with both SCOP and Orestes Brownson/ISI. He has also published articles in the Register, First Things, and American Conservative. In the midst of all of these commitments, somehow, he has found the time to be actively involved at Widmoor where he lives. Joe sets a high bar and a good example of the sort of leadership that is needed on campus to both protect and promote Notre Dame’s Catholic identity.
Annual Breakfast
This year’s Annual Breakfast was our fifteenth speaker event during Reunion weekend at the University of Notre Dame and the first to include sponsorship opportunities.
The continuing popularity of this series, which began in 2007 with a panel discussion of the controversial campus production of the Vagina Monologues, reflects both the contemporary relevance of the topics we address as well as the eminence and excellence of the speakers addressing them.
Our 2023 program featured Law School Professor Gerard Bradley as our keynote speaker along with columnist and Sycamore Trust board member Katherine Kersten, who addressed the formidable challenges that transgenderism has raised with astonishing speed in our country, and Father Bill Miscamble, who both discussed the post-Dobbs abortion landscape at Notre Dame and provided a tribute to Sycamore Trust’s founder, Bill Dempsey (’52).
To accommodate increasingly larger audiences, in 2011 we moved the event to a large conference room at The Morris Inn and added a complimentary breakfast to the program format. We now offer a livestream of the event for those who are unable to attend in person, hold various satellite activities for friends of Sycamore such as a Rosary at the Grotto for Catholic Education and a Young Alumni Reception. Plus, each year we have hosted our Founders’ Dinner for key donors, student, faculty leaders, and others who have played significant roles in our mission for an authentic Catholic renewal at Notre Dame.
Student Groups & Organizations
While about 80% of Notre Dame students self-identity as Catholics, a large and increasing number are only loosely attached to the Church. But the truly Catholic minority is still larger, we believe, than at any other major university, and their organizations are vibrant and absolutely essential to the Catholic character of Notre Dame. Accordingly, we maintain close relations with students in organizations like The Irish Rover, Notre Dame Right to Life, Militia Immaculata, and SCOP (devoted to issues of family and chastity).
We provide much-needed financial support and help to advance their projects, connecting them with alumni and others who share their values and interests. For example, every year we promote their work during NDDay, bringing their missions to the attention of our subscribers with the invitation to contribute to their various causes.
We continue to be the exclusive sponsor of the annual Catholic Leadership Summit for students — that serves to deepen the commitment of student leaders to Notre Dame’s formative mission and to improve coordination among their respective organizations.
And we have established media and young alumni internships to assist our reporting with photographs and to increase coordination with student leaders and graduating seniors.
Students are on the front line in the fight for Notre Dame’s Catholic identity. As much as possible needs to be done to support and encourage their efforts — both to live out their faith and to speak up for the truth of Catholicism even as increasingly aggressive forces on campus press their opposition to the Church’s teaching on abortion, sex, and marriage unchecked by the administration.
We count on these talented and faithful students to advance our shared mission on campus and look to them for the future of Sycamore Trust and the continuation of our effort to restore a rich Catholic identity to this great university.
One very practical way we assist student organizations is by creating promotional videos to support their membership and fundraising goals. Click on the image above to see an example of our work which was prepared last year for NDRT and recently featured on EWTN in an interview with the organization’s president.
Young Alumni Network
For many years, we had a lingering concern that Sycamore Trust primarily resonated with older alumni. However, this concern was dispelled last summer when a Leadership Team of young alumni came together. They identified the following goals, which are not only highly valued by young alumni but also set us apart within the broader Notre Dame Alumni Association:
- Creating a platform for open discussions on the counter-cultural perspective of Catholicism in today’s climate of censorship and silencing in workplaces.
- Offering support to student activities and influencing university decisions to fortify Notre Dame’s Catholic identity.
- Introducing first-year students to campus resources that embody Notre Dame’s Catholic identity and the vibrant communities of students and faculty behind them.
- Providing opportunities for alumni spread across the globe to connect through shared devotions and engaging content crafted by fellow alumni.
We’ve held a series of meetings in Washington, DC, and South Bend with young alumni who are eager to engage with Sycamore Trust and contribute to our mission. You can expect to hear more about them as they establish their operations and help to expand our membership base.
Apostolate
With our 2017 Annual Breakfast there was a cascade of interest in establishing an apostolate within the Sycamore Trust community to encourage each other to pray collectively for the success of Notre Dame’s Catholic mission. This resulted in an extremely popular Novena for Catholic education that concluded on the first day of classes during the 2017-2018 academic year — and is repeated each year as students return to Notre Dame’s campus from summer break.
Since our first novena, we have expanded both the membership and efforts of our apostolate with thousands of people joining in projects such as our annual Twelve Days of Christmas Meditation and quarterly Ember Days — and to pray for special intentions when needed.
We are aware that we cannot achieve our goals without prayer. Therefore, we continue to create opportunities for our apostolate to seek to make God and his redeeming love present in our mission. For example, most of our bulletins now conclude with a prayer; during Reunion Weekend prior to our Annual Breakfast we host a Rosary for Notre Dame at the Grotto; expanding on our original prayer card for Catholic education, we continue to publish prayer cards on topics that are of relevance to Notre Dame’s Catholic identity; and we have made it possible for members to submit their prayer intentions online to be included in a monthly Mass offered by Father John Raphael (’89) for Sycamore Trustees and their families, the members of our apostolate, and our benefactors.
Sycamore Trust was organized with the realization that the need for alumni to defend Notre Dame’s Catholic identity is perpetual. Cultural influences will never cease circling the Dome in search of opportunities to insinuate their interests and take what is not theirs. We view it as our job to shine a light on anti-Catholic incursions and to amplify the voice of Notre Dame alumni, students, faculty, and staff who want the school to remain Catholic.
Our apostolate members make themselves available as they are able to participate in prayer projects in support of our mission for authentic Catholic renewal at Notre Dame.
If you would like to join this effort, please simply complete the form at sycamoretrust.org/pray
NDCatholic.com
Our student website, NDCatholic, is about to get a major overhaul. Organized around faculty recommendations and narrative descriptions furnished initially by Father Wilson Miscamble, C.S.C, the exceptionally gifted and courageous advocate of Catholic educational reform at Notre Dame, the site provides resources for students that contribute to a truly Catholic academic experience at Notre Dame. This includes faculty recommendations as well as information about the Catholic academic project and will be expanded soon to include links to Catholic alternatives to the self-help tools and other secular resources like the Eastern meditation apps Headspace and Calm that have been promoted by the University Counseling Center.
In addition, the new website will provide students with information about our financial resources and sponsorship opportunities. And it will debut two short courses: One by Father Miscamble on Ex corde Ecclesiae and the other by Professor Emeritus Walter Nicorski on the Catholic Character of Notre Dame.
We are eager also to retain a service commonly used by students to select their courses that would integrate NDCatholic into their registration process. This would be a truly significant step, both in terms of helping students and introducing them to our mission. However, funding for this integration has been and remains a challenge at this time.
Growth & Sustainability
Since our founding in 2006, we have funded most of our budget from a single online campaign — the one you are reading now — at year end. This has been sufficient to achieve our initial goals and has positioned our organization to be sustainable for the long-term. However, we must grow!
Both our mission and our margin are closely tied to our membership — not simply in terms of its size, but also whether those who stand with us understand the major trends of secularization and the associated risk to Notre Dame and the Church, their awareness of current episodes under the Dome that undermine the school’s Catholic identity, and whether they participate with us in opportunities to take a stand against such episodes at Our Lady’s university.
Therefore, increasing the number and involvement of those who share our values and love for Notre Dame is our first priority, especially with: (1) alumni, who pressure the University from the outside and provide the financial and volunteer resources we need to continue our work; (2) students, who advance the University’s Catholic identity and promote Catholic activities on campus — supporting our common purpose from the inside; and (3) parents, who have the University’s ear in a unique way but who have been largely marginalized because of the separation of buyer and consumer interests.
Beyond our expanding our membership, we have three additional areas of strategic interest:
Personnel
We began Sycamore Trust with a remarkably talented and dedicated volunteer team that included Bill Dempsey, who continues to devote countless hours to researching and writing our reports, and his son, Tim, who has developed and manages all of our systems, production, and programs. Fully aware that this arrangement is unsustainable for the long term, we have slowly expanded our paid personnel. This year, Tim transitioned into our first full-time employee as Executive Director. But that is not enough to sustain the organization. To ensure stability in funding, outreach, student support, and the continued production of our investigative reports, we need additional people on our team who are dedicated to increasing our membership, young alumni support, and campus reporting.
Cost: $118,000
Campus Events
Student events can help to increase the memberships of the organizations holding them and bolster their ability to engage with individuals and groups that promote ideologies that conflict with Catholicism’s core tenets. To this end we are initiating a new program aimed at enhancing the financial and technical support that we offer to student organizations that are hosting speaker events on campus. This project’s goal is to enable students who are dedicated to their faith to play a more consequential role in the ongoing struggle for the heart and soul of Notre Dame.
Cost: $52,000
Advertising
From the beginning, we have been careful to preserve our ability to be uncompromising in our criticism of Notre Dame by establishing Sycamore Trust as an independent organization.
However, that independence comes with a cost. For example, we are unable to distribute our mailings through the University’s comprehensive alumni directory. Even so, we have built a mailing list of over 19,000 alumni, family, and friends of Notre Dame. But that’s not enough! Our experience over the years suggests that there are many more people who would take a stand with us if they only knew that we existed.
Cost: $32,000
The efforts of many faithful members of the Notre Dame family, combined with the generous contributions from people like you, have enabled us to develop what is far and away the most significant organization of its kind — and for which we are truly grateful and deeply humbled.
Support Our Common Purpose
If you share our love for Notre Dame and want to see an authentic Catholic renewal under the Dome, please consider lending a hand in whatever way you are able — by giving of your time (especially in prayer), talent, or treasure. The funds we receive are used to continue our work to keep you informed of Notre Dame’s imperiled Catholic identity, organize events and activities to strengthen our collective voice, and financially support the efforts on campus by students and their organizations to stand tall for the Truth of Catholicism.
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