Weigel: A Golden Dome Opportunity Missed

George Weigel on Notre Dame's - or, rather, Father John Jenkins' - missed opportunity with respect to "academic freedom" and the Catholic university:

A pall will hang over commencement at the University of Notre Dame this year -- the pall of a great opportunity missed. Temporarily, one must hope.

Notre Dame's new president, Holy Cross Father John Jenkins, got off to a brilliant start this past fall, with an inaugural address that located Notre Dame solidly within the ancient tradition of Catholic higher learning. Father Jenkins then led a pilgrimage to Rome, an act that embodied a key plank in the reformist platform announced in his inaugural address: to "think with the Church" means both to think and to think "with the Church."

Then, in April, things changed, dramatically and for the worse. After a campus-wide debate, Father Jenkins announced that "the creative contextualization of a play like 'The Vagina Monologues' can bring certain perspectives on important issues into a constructive and fruitful dialogue with the Catholic tradition." Therefore, Father Jenkins decreed, the V-Monologues could continue to be produced on campus.

It was difficult, bordering on impossible, not to read Father Jenkins' decision as a surrender to the most corrosive forces eating away at the vitals of Catholic higher education.

That view is shared by numerous Notre Dame faculty, among whom Holy Cross Father Wilson Miscamble stands tall, literally, intellectually and spiritually. In a public letter to his brother Holy Cross priest, Father Miscamble told Father Jenkins that "your decision is being portrayed as involving your 'backing down,'" in part because of an untoward deference to "the convictions of certain senior Arts and Letters faculty that any restriction on this play would damage our academic 'reputation' --- and especially among those 'preferred peer schools' whose regard we crave."

"Indeed," Father Miscamble continued, "it is hard to understand [your decision] in any other terms."

[More]

My Comments:
Sorpresa, sorpresa! Una oportunidad perdida para la Universidad de Nuestra Senora.


Previous Pro Ecclesia posts on this subject:
An Open Letter to the Notre Dame Community Regarding Catholic Identity [UPDATED AGAIN]

Bishop D'Arcy Issues "Pastoral Response" to Father Jenkins' "Closing Statement"

Rape Survivor (ND Graduate) "Shocked" and "Depressed" by Father Jenkins' "Closing Statement"

Bishop D'Arcy Denounces Notre Dame Policy

Some GOOD Things Happening at Notre Dame, Too

The "Scooby Doo" Ending to the Academic Freedom Debate at Notre Dame

An Open Letter to the Notre Dame Community Regarding Catholic Identity [UPDATED]

Father John Jenkins, Moral Coward

More of the Same at Our Lady's University?

Fr. Richard McBrien, MSM, Cleared of Plagiarism