What Happened to Notre Dame?

That's the question a whole lot of people have been asking lately about the Fighting Irish football team. But this post isn't about college football (that post will come in the next day or two in preparation for that most glorious time of year, which begins this weekend).

Rather, this post is about a book authored by one of my heroes, Charles E. Rice, professor emeritus of Law at the University of Notre Dame Law School, titled What Happened to Notre Dame?

(St. Augustine's Press, 224 pages, paperbound, $15.00; ISBN-13: 978-1-58731-920-4; ISBN-10: 1-58731-920-9; publication date: September 2009).

I just received a review copy of the book in the mail today. I hope to read the book this week and post a review shortly thereafter. In the meantime, here is an excerpt from the publisher's synopsis:

... What Happened to Notre Dame? by Charles E. Rice, with a Preface by Ralph McInerny and Introduction by Alfred Freddoso – three of Notre Dame’s most distinguished scholars, who together have served the University 124 years – first recounts the details of Notre Dame’s honoring of President Obama. It then examines the succession of fall-back excuses offered by the Notre Dame President Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C., and University publicists to justify Notre Dame’s defiance of the nation’s bishops and of Catholic teaching.

But Rice is not content with mere reportage. What Happened to Notre Dame? diagnoses the problem’s roots by first providing an overview of the Land O’Lakes Declaration, its inception and its aftermath, including the ways in which its false autonomy from the Church has led to an erosion of the Catholic identity of Notre Dame and other Catholic universities.

Then, it offers a cure. Christ, who is God, is the author of the divine law and the natural law. The book presents reasons why an acknowledged interpreter of these laws is necessary, and why that interpreter has to be the Pope exercising the
Magisterium, or teaching authority of the Church. And it shows why it is so important that we have such a moral interpreter for all citizens and not just for Catholics. The alternative is what Pope Benedict XVI calls the “dictatorship of relativism,” which the book analyzes. Even for those who do not share the Catholic faith, our reason leads us to conclude that the natural law is the only moral code that makes entire sense and points to the conclusion that the Vicar of Christ is uniquely suited to give authoritative interpretation to that law.

In the final chapter Rice shows why great good can come out of Notre Dame’s blunder in rendering its highest honors to such an implacable foe. Notre Dame got itself into such a mess because it attempted to be Catholic without the Church and
ended up defying the Church and disgracing itself. But good can result from the lesson here that roll-your-own morality is no more tenable than roll-your-own Catholicism.

Rice shows why what happened to Notre Dame is symptomatic of what’s happening in other Catholic colleges, indeed in colleges with non-Catholic religious affiliations. He shows how the abandonment of principle at the college level spills over tothe general culture, with devastating effect, as religious standards get pushed out of the public square. And, finally, he shows why people who have never seen the Golden Dome, never rooted for the Fighting Irish, and never graced a Catholic Church, also have a stake in what happened to Notre Dame...

I look forward to reading and reviewing What Happened to Notre Dame?


UPDATE
I note that my old friend Advocatus Militaris has a similar post from last Friday at Fumare.