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Traditional Catholics (which includes all my friends) make the mistake of focusing their anger on the presidents of Catholic universities. They are prisoners in the Ivory Tower, hostages to their faculties, and, because hostages to their faculties, they are prisoners of their boards of trustees.

The product a university markets is its “prestige,” which means the prestige of its faculty, its rankings in the various polls and surveys. A president of a university cannot fundamentally alienate his faculty because if a war breaks out between president and faculty, the president loses every single time. The board can always fire the president and hire a new one. The board can’t fire the whole faculty without losing the university’s “product” and thus the university’s raison d’etre.

Presidents of universities know this. Faculties of universities know this. It’s time for constituencies of Catholic unversities to get a clue about how they operate and focus their wrath where it matters: at the board and major donors. Lobby the big-name donors—find out who they are by consulting the alumni magazine announcements of big donations.

In marketing terms, the major Catholic universities long ago shifted to marketing themselves to non-catholic and CINO constituencies. There just aren’t enough people who care about this left in the the donor and alumni constituencies of these schools to matter. The boards know this.

However, Notre Dame is a bit unique. It has always had a small minority of faculty who fought the apostasy and it has cultivated a unique dorm-piety (hence alumni-piety) over the years. So there’s a bit of a chance with Notre Dame. But shouting at the president is less effective than shouting at the board and big donors.

Many of the presidents of the big Catholic schools realize that they’ve let the secularization go too far. They would like to rein it in, just a bit, not too much, you know. It’s also a marketing thing—even the most prestigious of the Catholic schools (Boston College, Georgetown, Notre Dame), without their Catholic cachet, are second-rate as research universities, at least in the bigoted eyes of the mainstream Academy. (Notre Dame in fact ought to rank within the lower echelons of the elite bracket of research schools, but it always gets points deducted due to anti-Catholic prejudice from the Ivy Leaguers and wannabes.)

So the presidents realize that they can’t let these school become totally secularized and most of them are trying their damnedest to pull back from the brink—e.g., the crucifix gambit at Boston College—purely cosmetic but indicative of the realization that they are on the brink.

But even though Jenkins quite honestly, like a lot of other presidents of Catholic universities, would like to pull Notre Dame securely into the “Catholic orbit,” at least in marketing terms, the opportunity to have the POTUS (or at least the TOTUS) speak at commencement is just irresistable to the board and big donors: since Rockne’s time, Notre Dame has been a national icon for American Catholics and the list of previous presidents who have given commencement addresses their, growing out of Hesburgh’s cultivation of presidents for decades, has created a “tradition” along these lines. To reject Obama because of his radical embrace of the Culture of Death (when most of the country, thanks to the MSM, is still ignorant of just how radical he is on these issues), makes no PR sense.

And it’s all about PR.

But don’t shout at Jenkins. From what I know of him (and I know a good number of people who knew him long before he became the heir apparent to Malloy), I imagine he would, if he had his druthers, have kept Obama away.

But I don’t think he has much maneuvering room here. It’s the board and faculty (not to mention the students, many of whom, after the fashion in recent decades, see the whole commencement competitively with other schools: my school had a bigger celebrity for my graduation than your school had for its, so my degree is more prestigious and I’m a More Important Person than you are, added to which is the gaga hopey-changey Obama-cult among the 18-24-year-olds)who really call the shots on things of this sort.

And people ought to stop taking pot shots at Bishop D’Arcy. Over the years he’s done just about everything he can do to try to rein in Notre Dame. Yes, he could use the “nuclear option” of denying ND the name “Catholic.” But if he did, he would be turned into a Torquemada and Notre Dame would be a champion of religious freedom and liberty in the eyes of the MSM and the original issue—Obama’s vicious endorsement of Death, would be totally lost in the shuffle.

The only ones who can rein in Notre Dame are its alumni and donors. And I’m afraid there just aren’t enough of them convinced that Obama receiving an honorary degree is a bad thing to make a difference.

I hope I’m proven wrong. I pray I’m proven wrong.

I think on the whole you are probably right, although I wouldn’t underestimate the damage done by Fr. Hesburgh. He was the guy who led the Catholic colleges out of the Church at Land o’ Lakes. He was the guy who let McBrien by made head of the theology department. He was the guy who decided he wanted Notre Dame to be more like the Ivy League universities, and presided over the policy of hiring non-Catholic faculty. Now, of course, it is indeed difficult to fight the liberal faculty who are now in charge of many departments.

I taught a summer course at Notre Dame some years ago (sponsored by the Pew Foundation), and was very favorably impressed by the dorm piety you mention, and by the piety of many of the students. Also by the masses in their college chapel or church. The place is still very Catholic in spite of all those bad decisions. But I’m afraid that the current president seems to share Fr. Hesburgh’s attitudes.

I suspect that the alumni are somewhat divided. I’m sure they are proud of the new stadium and the campus and ND’s academic reputation, and perhaps bothered by the recurrent controversies and scandals such as the Vagina Monologues.