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Re: Re: Re: V-Monologues Despoil Easter Week
by Bill Dempsey
I'm afraid you have me above my grade level on these questions, Nancy -- except for Father Jenkins's needing our help and prayers, with which I quite agree -- but they do point to a fundamental fact: The future of Notre Dame as a robustly Catholic university depends on those in governance. It depends on the Administration -- in your words, those "who should lead this beloved University into the fugure" -- and on the Board and Fellows, those who are responsible for defining the "role of a Catholic University." As a practical matter, my guess is that those in governance are not about to consider a chance in the Mission Statement, and frankly I think that is probably a good thing. The Mission Statement is fundamentally sound, it seems to me, though no doubt it could be made more specific, as you suggest; and the risk of a change is that it would be weakened rather than strengthened. That's been the historic trend in Catholic higher education when fundamental policies are changed. At Georgetown, for example, when for the first time a layman was installed as president. The challenge, as I see it, is to conform the practice to the Mission Statement, and first of all to the central requirement that there be a solid majority of Catholics on the faculty. If committed Catholics, trained in the Catholic intellectual tradition, were in fact to "predominate," as the Mission Statement requires, I'm confident we would see the end of such morally and intellectually bankrupt events as The Vagina Monologues. It is in aid of that goal, that is, encouraging and supporting the radical change in hiring policy that is essential, that I think all of us have a role to play.
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