It might be a small point, but Notre Dame is not a Catholic university, it is a Jesuit university that most people identify as Catholic. From my experience, if you ask a Jesuit, “Are you a Jesuit first, or a Catholic first?”, there would be a pause, regardless of what the verbal response would be.
Minor problem - Notre Dame is not Jesuit. Never has been. It's Fathers of the Holy Cross. Completely different French order.
Notre Dame is run by the Congregation of the Holy Cross, not the Jesuits.
It gets complicated.
It is not under direct Church institutional control --- that is, is incorporated separately, and it does not "belong" to a diocese nor even to the Holy Cross order, but is run by its Board of Trustees.
Nevertheless, its designation as a "Catholic" university is ultimately controlled by the Bishop of Ft. Wayne-South Bend, who has the power it rescind its right to call itself Catholic. It is still, at present, listed in the Kenedy Directory, the official directory of Catholic Institutions in the USA.
You know what...I'm sorry, but I've got to take umbrage with this as well. The Jesuits are the largest Catholic order in the world, and, yes, have some members who stray from the norm. However, they are the ones who make headlines - the vast majority of them are good, honest Catholics faithful to the Truth.
From my experience, if you ask a Jesuit, “Are you a Jesuit first, or a Catholic first?”, there would be a pause, regardless of what the verbal response would be.
Possibly because they subsist in one another. If I asked you "are you a patriot first, or an American first?" you'd probably pause as well.
Sorry, but, as the product of eight years of Jesuit education, I feel the need to defend the Society at times.
To give you some perspective as to what a Jesuit does ... one of my distant relatives was a Jesuit priest and his story is told at http://www.archive.org/stream/anamericanmissio00judguoft
From their website;
This statement speaks of the University of Notre Dame as a place of teaching and research, of scholarship and publication, of service and community. These components flow from three characteristics of Roman Catholicism that image Jesus Christ, his Gospel, and his Spirit. A sacramental vision encounters God in the whole of creation. In and through the visible world in which we live, we come to know and experience the invisible God. In mediation the Catholic vision perceives God not only present in but working through persons, events, and material things. There is an intelligibility and a coherence to all reality, discoverable through spirit, mind, and imagination. God's grace prompts human activity to assist the world in creating justice grounded in love. God's way to us comes as communion, through the communities in which men and women live. This community includes the many theological traditions, liturgies, and spiritualities that fashion the life of the Church. The emphasis on community in Catholicism explains why Notre Dame historically has fostered familial bonds in its institutional life.
A Catholic university draws its basic inspiration from Jesus Christ as the source of wisdom and from the conviction that in him all things can be brought to their completion. As a Catholic university, Notre Dame wishes to contribute to this educational mission.
Fresh off of two semesters of Church History... that is way beyond splitting hairs... The Jesuits are who? They are a religious order of the Catholic Church. There were in history, quite literally, the foot soldiers of the Pope. They were, to make a long story short, established to fight against the sweeping Protestant Reformation.
I think that you might be thinking of Georgetown University. Notre Dame is not a Jesuit institution.
Not Jesuit. It is rund by the Holy Cross order and a “lay” board of directors..