Fr. John Jenkins inaugurated

Fr. John Jenkins was inaugurated today as the 17th (I think) President of the University of Notre Dame.  God bless him.  Here is a link to his address, which should be required reading for all those interested in questions relating to the nature, role, and mission of Catholic universities.  He said:

Notre Dame is a distinctively Catholic university that strives to be among the pre-eminent universities in the world.

What is the role of a Catholic university?   Pope John Paul II wrote that our proper activity is (and I quote):  “Learning to think rigorously, so as to act rightly and to serve humanity better.”

The duty is timeless, yet its challenge is new in each age, and particularly pressing in this age.  The struggle to be a great Catholic university in a world that has become both increasingly secular and more radically religious has placed Notre Dame in a unique position at the heart of the most complex issues facing our society. We have not just an opportunity, but a duty to think and speak and act in ways that will guide, inspire, and heal – not just for followers of the Catholic faith, but for all our neighbors in the nation and the world. 

The world needs a great university that can address issues of faith with reverence and respect while still subjecting religion to intellectually rigorous, critical discussion.   

The world needs a university that not only contributes to scientific breakthroughs, but can address the ethical implications of scientific advances by drawing on an ancient moral and spiritual tradition.

The world needs a university – grounded in a commitment to love one’s neighbor – to debate how we in prosperous societies will respond to the grinding and dehumanizing poverty in which so much of the world lives. 

The world needs a university that graduates men and women who are not only capable and knowledgeable, but who accept their responsibility to serve others – especially those in greatest need. 

The Catholic Church needs a university whose scholars can help pass on its intellectual tradition, even as they address the challenges and the opportunities the Church faces in this century. 

There are certainly many other truly great universities in this country.  Many of them began as religious, faith-inspired institutions, but nearly all have left that founding character behind. One finds among them a disconnect between the academic enterprise and an over-arching religious and moral framework that orients academic activity and defines a good human life.             

My presidency will be driven by a whole-hearted commitment to uniting and integrating these two indispensable and wholly compatible strands of higher learning: academic excellence and religious faith.    

Building on our tradition as a Catholic university, and determined to be counted among the preeminent universities in this country, Notre Dame will provide an alternative for the 21st century – a place of higher learning that plays host to world-changing teaching and research, but where technical knowledge does not outrun moral wisdom, where the goal of education is to help students live a good human life, where our restless quest to understand the world not only lives in harmony with faith but is strengthened by it.   

We seek worldly knowledge, confident that the world exhibits coherence that reflects a Creator.  We will train the intellects of our students, cultivate their faith and instill the virtues necessary for living a good life. We will strive to build a community generous to those in need and responsive to the demands of justice – strengthened by grace and guided by the command to love God and neighbor.

This is no easy mission. But its difficulty is not our concern; we did not create the mission, and we cannot change it. The word “mission” derives from the Latin root missus – which means “sent.” We have been sent – to seek God, study the world, and serve humanity. 

If we are clear in our purpose, we will excel in our ideals.   

This will be my priority and my passion as President of Notre Dame. . . .

A Catholic university has a distinctive identity today.   But in the beginning, all universities were Catholic universities. The first university was founded in

Bologna, Italy, in 1088, as a place for Church officials to study canon law. After that came the University of Paris, developed out of the school at the Cathedral of Notre Dame. Next was Oxford, which grew up out of the remains of an Augustinian monastery.   

These universities were, as Pope John Paul II later described them:  “ex corde ecclesiae” – “from the heart of the church.” Their emergence was stimulated by deep principles in the Catholic tradition.  These Catholic principles that inspired the founding of universities still define Notre Dame’s character and describe her mission today. One could name many, but I will highlight just three.

[The three principles are "knowledge is good in itself and should be pursued for its own sake"; "there is a deep harmony between faith and reason"; and "the role of community and the call to service are central to the Christian life"]. . . .

There's more . . . check it out.

Rick