Why Can’t Notre Dame Avoid Scandal?

Another blowup. The recent eruption at Notre Dame over the appointment of an abortion rights advocate to the directorship of the Liu Institute is the latest in a succession of public controversies that span my twenty-five years on the faculty. They arrive as often as the fall football season. The Dome puts forth a policy, bestows an honor or makes an appointment, or a professor pursues a panel, performance or some other activity, almost always dealing with sex, gender, marriage or life, that detonates outrage. Professors, staff, students, alumni, the President, the Provost, the Bishop, priests, prelates, pundits, journalists, and the university’s official spokesman variously tweet, post, text, march, pray, pen letters to the editor, place articles on the internet, organize petitions, appear on television, send hundreds of emails to the Dome and issue mollifying bureaucratic statements, all to denounce or defend the policy or the panel or to decry the suppression of academic freedom. 

Each blowup leaves wounds—people angry, friendships frayed, colleagues factionalized, alumni disillusioned, the university disunited and the Dome’s moral authority compromised. Can the blowups be avoided?

Yes, they can, through clarity about the principles that govern the university, resolve to abide by these principles on the part of university leaders, and acceptance of these principles by everyone. These principles emanate from Notre Dame’s unambiguous profession to be a Catholic university. Entailed in ‘Catholic’ is truth, a word that will seem anodyne to some and imposing to others but that it is inseparable from the meaning of Catholic. Truth is what Catholics assert when they recite the Nicene Creed and from which flow the Church’s moral teachings. Truth is the telos of the university as health is the telos of Memorial Hospital and winning football that of the Pittsburgh Steelers. Everyone in the organization is asked to respect it and some will promote it avidly. Truth is what may guide Notre Dame through its disagreements and help to diffuse its blowups.

Two principles are paramount. The first is simply that all aspects of life at the university ought to be governed consistently with Catholic teachings: residential life, the bestowal of honors, the appointment of leaders, the work of campus ministry, health and benefits policies, student organizations, codes of conduct and also, crucially, the shaping of teaching, learning, and research. The second is that the freedom of inquiry ought to be protected in teaching and scholarship, including conferences, invited speakers, and public engagement—what may be called in the sphere of inquiry. The second principle, like the first principle, is grounded in the Catholic mission and its attendant truth.

Each principle poses demands on parties to our blowups. Administrators have a duty to maintain them. All have a duty to respect them. No-one has grounds for demanding that the Dome abandon Catholic policies, and all have a right and even a duty to protest loudly when it does. Likewise, all have a duty to respect the expression of inquiry even when it contradicts Catholic principles. When it does, adherents to these principles ought to speak up, argue, and engage, but not cancel, fire, or sanction. Respect for both of these principles, each grounded in truth, would do much to avoid the blowups and their wounds.

The first principle follows simply and readily from Notre Dame’s profession to be a Catholic university. To be Catholic is to hold that God has established a moral order consisting of immutable principles. This is the natural law, whose meaning and obligatoriness reason can grasp. The magisterium of the Church confirms the truth of these principles through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. The principles, though, are not true because the Church teaches them but rather the Church teaches them because they are true. 

Notre Dame commits the university to the truth of these principles at the outset of its mission statement, where it says that all of its activities image Jesus Christ, his Gospel and his Spirit. To live in friendship and grow in union with Jesus Christ is to abide by his commandments; the Gospel entails moral teachings; and the Spirit guides and empowers our fidelity to them. If a university holds these principles and their sources to be true, then it ought to govern and conduct all of its activities accordingly. 

The principles that usually feature in the blowups are firm, clear, and constant, without a shadow of turning, in the teaching of the Church. The prohibition of abortion is a straightforward application of the Fifth Commandment, thou shall not kill, to human beings living in the mother’s womb. Correlative to the Sixth Commandment, all sexual acts are to be ordered to the begetting of human life and to the union of a man and woman in marriage. Complementing these principles is compassion, mercy, and friendship for everyone who encounters hardship in them. The entirety of moral principles—taught by Jesus, found in the Bible, confirmed by the Church, known by reason—guide a Catholic university in all of its activities. 

These principles include every principle of justice. “God’s grace prompts human activity to assist the world in creating justice grounded in love,” the mission statement avers. Axial to justice is the dignity— or infinite value, or preciousness—of the human person, created in the image of God. Notre Dame promotes this dignity in advocating for migrants, the poor, peace, human rights, racial justice, the security of countries, the integrity of the natural environment and many other causes, through its many programs and organizations, and its faculty, staff, and students.

Appointments of leaders of centers and institutes readily fall under these principles, this truth. The Dome stated this clearly amidst the recent blowup: “Those who serve in leadership positions at Notre Dame do so with the clear understanding that their decision-making as leaders must be guided by and consistent with the University’s Catholic mission. Notre Dame’s commitment to upholding the inherent dignity of the human person and the sanctity of life at every stage is unwavering.” The principles most obviously pertain to organizations overtly dedicated to justice—the Kellogg, Kroc, and Klau Institutes; the Institute for Social Concerns; the university’s initiatives on democracy, ethics and poverty; as well as the Liu Institute, whose website declares its justice commitment. All organizations in the university, though, whether they pursue high-energy physics, the visual arts, or social science data collection, fall under its principles. Heads of these units speak and act for the university and pursue ends on which the university bestows its moral authority in establishing and endowing the units – some of them at tens of millions of dollars. A public advocate for the contrariety of the university’s principles, then, is unsuited for a directorship, and appointment of such a person begets a blowup.

The same goes for hiring faculty. If the purpose of teaching and scholarship is the pursuit of truth—here again, Notre Dame’s mission statement concurs—then a candidate who publicly opposes the principles (and stands by his position at the point of hiring) ought not to be hired. That scholar is destined to shape the minds and souls of students, society’s stock of knowledge, and the university’s public witness while here at Notre Dame. Probably few candidates who come to Notre Dame stand publicly at odds with its principles. Most pursue the truth about God’s universe through the standards of the natural sciences, social sciences, the humanities, and the arts. The idea is simply that a scholar’s opposition to the university’s mission is relevant to hiring that scholar to the university.

The same goes, too, for bestowing honorary degrees, appointing people to advisory and leadership councils, and everything else a university does. Critics may cry censorship and if they have a headache might invoke ghouls of the Catholic past—the Index, the Inquisition. But is conducting the life of a university according to moral principles any different from what Jewish, Mormon, Muslim, and for that matter, secular universities do? Secular universities indeed have been the most morally fervent in recent years in their speech codes and their cancellation of speakers (see here and here), yet even apart from their excesses apply criteria of justice in hiring and promoting faculty, appointing leaders and sundry other matters. Any crier of censorship, and everyone at any university, ought to ask: Can I imagine a moral view X such that were a person to espouse X, he or she ought not to be a director, dean, recipient of honors or hiree? The only university where this question is answered ‘No’ is one that proclaims no moral purpose. I know of none. 

Alas, Notre Dame’s principles have been violated more than a few times in the past several years, sparking more than a few blowups. A good indicator is the public statements of the Bishop of Fort Wayne-South Bend. He is not a busybody and does not want to run Notre Dame, but rather is the shepherd of souls in the diocese and issues a statement only when a public contravention of the moral law takes place. Bishops have spoken against: the performance of the Vagina Monologues (2006-2008); the bestowal of an honorary degree on President Barack Obama (2009); Notre Dame’s extension of marriage benefits to same-sex partners (2014); awarding the Laetare Medal to President Joe Biden (2016); coverage of contraception (2018); a “reproductive justice” lecture series (2023); and the recent Liu Institute directorship appointment. Like misdeeds are the Dome’s communication of many messages implying endorsement of same-sex partnerships; an unauthorized group distributing contraceptives on campus; a professor’s support for this activity; and others. 

Wounds result. In Catholic teaching, moral principles not only define wrongs but also are contours of happiness and portals to friendship with God. “If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love,” Jesus teaches (John 10:15). Wrongs wound most the souls of their doers. Educators compound the wound by teaching wrongs as right, not least to the body of students. “Whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do so will be called least in the kingdom of heaven,” Jesus also teaches (Matt 5:19). Finally, these wrongs compromise the credibility of the Catholic mission. To flout a firm moral teaching is to disclaim its Source. Once that is done, what is the point of the mission? If the principles are not true, does not the mission become arbitrary and exclusive? And if the university will abide only by norms of morality and justice that conform to dominant secular mores, why would anyone take seriously its profession to be Catholic? Its insistence on hiring for mission? Its single-sex dorms? And all else.

What, then, of the second principle, academic freedom? Does a thorough pursuit of truth in the academy leave room for it? In fact, academic freedom is a precious principle that is to be preserved – and is itself grounded in truth. Again, Notre Dame’s mission statement: “The University insists upon academic freedom that makes open discussion and inquiry possible.” 

At Notre Dame, as at most universities, every professor and student is granted freedom in the sphere of inquiry—teaching, scholarship, public advocacy. Academic freedom means that a student or professor may express a view without suffering a material penalty: a lower grade, censorship, a loss of job or position, the denial of tenure or advancement to an academic rank, or any other sort of sanction. The purpose of this freedom is to protect the sphere of inquiry and its defining activity – the pursuit of truth. As I wrote earlier in the Irish Rover, “[w]e grasp truth—about biology, theology, politics, literature—through acts of the intellect that entail judgments, ones that we arrive at through investigating, arguing, considering, listening, persuading, challenging interrogating, experimenting with hypotheses, assessing evidence and thinking matters through, alone and together with others. This work of reasoning, leading to acts of the will through which we give our assent to what we judge to be true, is, by its nature, only genuine when it is performed freely.” This inquiry, activating the person’s capacity for and interest in truth, is characteristically human and manifests human dignity. It merits protection just as the Church taught that inquiry into religious truth manifests dignity and merits protection in its landmark declaration of the Second Vatican Council, Dignitatis Humanae. 

Academic freedom does not aim to establish a neutral sphere of knowledge, a zone sequestered from the Catholic mission, or a pact of reciprocity by which opponents agree to tolerate one another’s offenses. True, an implication of academic freedom is that it protects speech—writings, lectures, dramatic productions, and other activities belonging to the sphere of inquiry—that contests Catholic truth. This use of freedom does not call for indifference on the part of adherents to the Catholic mission. No, they ought to exercise their own freedom by engaging such speech through dialogue in faithfulness to the pursuit of truth. 

What does engagement look like?  

In recent years, a colleague and I developed a course, Why the Church?, that examines the case for the Catholic Church with respect to the reasons why young people have departed from it in recent years. The course was based on the method of disputatio, where students were assigned readings on both sides of several issues—science, sexuality and marriage, history, the veracity of the Resurrection—and encouraged to argue for or against the teaching of the Church. I and my co-teacher also made clear that our purpose was apologetics, a defense of the teaching. I recall a day that I taught a discussion section of the course and argued about marriage and sexuality for 50 minutes with the students, some three quarters of whom questioned the Church’s teachings. I did not downgrade them; they did not seek for me to be fired; and the Church’s teachings were taught.

Another example. In 2022, the Center for Citizenship and Constitutional Government sponsored a public debate on abortion between Notre Dame alumna Alexandra De Sanctis and journalist Jill Filipovic. The two disagreed ardently and shared dinner together. It was a rare example of this issue being discussed publicly and civilly at Notre Dame. 

One more. In 2006, when Fr. John Jenkins memorably decided to allow the performance of the Vagina Monologues at Notre Dame, he required that contra-Catholic views be accompanied by a presentation of the Church’s teaching. Although his policy has been honored in the breach, it reflects an approach to engagement that might work if tried.

Engagement becomes more Catholic still when it is conducted with collegiality, respect, love, friendship and forgiveness. Let us go to dinner afterwards. Soundly pursued, academic inquiry at Notre Dame might be a model for other universities in its openness, its diversity of views, and its manner of engagement. 

Gray areas, fuzzy lines, and hard cases attend academic freedom, as they do any principle. Like free speech and freedom of religion in a democracy, academic freedom is bounded by what is defamatory, violent, obscene, illegal, and threatening. Pornography, for instance, is not usually viewed with a purpose of inquiry and so is in principle restricted (with exceptions for genuine research). Artistic portrayals of immorality make hard cases. Usually they advance a point of view, sometimes within a curricular setting, and so bid for the sphere of inquiry, yet may also contain what is illegal or obscene. The Vagina Monologues celebrated a sexual relationship between an adult and a minor and was plausibly pornographic, thus meriting restriction. Debatable is a drag show staged at Notre Dame in 2023 in a Film, Television, and Theater (FTT) course. I would protest and criticize this show as well as departments’ decisions to co-sponsor it but not call for its prohibition. It is worth repeating that protecting the sphere of inquiry in no way contradicts the duty of university leaders to shape the sphere of inquiry according to Catholic truth—creating (and dismantling) departments, prescribing the curriculum, hiring professors, and the like. It is entirely fitting to ask how FTT came to be a department that stages drag shows rather than, say, Karol Wojtyla’s The Jeweler’s Shop.

The two principles, then, are that the Catholic mission governs all aspects of life at the university and that academic freedom be respected. They are consistent and each grounded in Catholic truth. Protection of inquiry does not negate the duty to hire, appoint, and govern according to the mission, and vice versa. Were the members of the university to respect and abide by these principles, each restraining their temptation to subvert them, another blowup can be avoided.