Time for the unpopular -- and, for a change, a little joy

The Sept. 10 issue of America magazine includes a courageous cover story by Wilson Miscamble, CSC, titled "The Faculty 'Problem': How Can Catholic Identity Be Preserved?"  Miscamble is professor of history at Notre Dame, and what he has published in "The National Catholic Weekly" is a lawyer's brief arguing that Notre Dame has lost -- or is about to lose -- its claim to be a meaningfully "Catholic" university and calling for the action that is necessary to stop what is in fact not an inevitable loss of identity.  Miscamble also draws the lessons for places that haven't been as blessed with fidelity as Notre Dame has been:  Notre Dame, and other historically Catholic universities, can choose to remain, or to become again, Catholic, but it's a choice, a choice that would involve a lot of hard and frequently unpopular work.  When a member of the sponsoring religious order publicly questions whether Notre Dame, of all places, is going to end up Catholic and does so, as Miscamble has, in measured but strong terms, it's at last time to pay attention.  As one friend put it to me:  "Miscamble shows exactly how the store gets sold."

Miscamble makes the case that the right faculty hiring is absolutely essential to creating and maintaing a school's Catholic identity.  He also argues that, in the present circumstances of departments and units that are indifferent or even hostile to mission, presidents and provosts and boards of trustees must sit up straight, put down their coffee cups, slide the honorific paper weights to one side of the well-varnished desk, and do something, even something unpopular:  "It must be understood . . . that this is not a matter that can be massaged by minor measures.  The temptation for administrators is to hope that a little adjustment here and a bit of tinkering there might improve the situation without stirring faculty opposition.  Settling for minor measures in the present circumstances, however, indicates a complicity in the secularization process.  A major change in the hiring process is required, and the need for it must be approved at the level of the board of trustees and implemented with courageous leadership, whatever faculty resistance it generates." 

The opposition to Catholic universities' actually being (or becoming again) Catholic comes in many forms and from many quarters -- and, to be sure, there's no Platonic form of the Catholic university.  Many of us in "Catholic" law schools are familiar with the internal opposition that is pure, old-fashioned anti-Catholic bigotry, the more subtle but monstrously crude opposition that supposes that Catholics can't be smart (and that people who haven't gone to the short list of schools, which of course includes no Catholic places, aren't good enough), and the contented, supine opposition that says "I go to Mass on Sundays, say the creed, support my parish, and the rest, but my faith -- and yours -- has nothing to do with providing professional education."  Some of us are also blessed to be familiar with deans and colleagues (not all of them Catholics!) who take the work of building inclusive Catholic places of higher education to heart.  But, if Miscamble is right, those of us in the classrooms and in the departments need help from above.

The observation that what presidents, provosts, and boards must do will be unpleasant because unpopular should not be allowed to obscure the end goal, and one dimension of it in particular.  Catholic Christians living or working together in inclusive communities can be expected to be people of joy, the joy that attends believing in and sharing the Good News.  Mary Ann Glendon exemplifies this when, in answer to the question "Why are you still a Catholic?", she replied (in print): "I love being Catholic!"  The work of building Catholic universities depends for its success on people who, loving their faith and Church and their God, can show by their joy and generosity that the work is attractive, even compelling.  Catholic institutions don't get built without self-sacrifice on the part of the builders.