How to Avoid Another Blowup at Notre Dame

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.