Replies

Nonsense. Miscamble's positions are well known. He has tenure. He is respected. He's not going to be fired. He has been a voice for restoration and renewal at Notre Dame for 15 years or more.

And he is not alone at Notre Dame. He has allies and they are well known there. I get tired of uninformed traditional Catholics making blanket statements about Notre Dame based on the Dick McBrien they see on TV. Notre Dame never went the route of Boston College, Georgetown, DePaul or Loyola Chicago or Loyola LA etc. where there simply has not been a real alternate voice, no real discussion of what it means to be a Catholic university because the very scant numbers of traditional faculty have been totally silenced.

Notre Dame always had enough dissenters (McInerny, Jenkins himself, Cavadini, Charles Rice and Gerard Bradley in the law school and a number of others) against the false Catholicism to keep the issues alive. Notre Dame had an alternative conservative Catholic newspaper that raised these issues. That's why Jenkins could initially raise hopes so high.

You have totally misread the Miscamble letter. He addresses Jenkins as a friend and co-combatant in the battle to restore Notre Dame to real Catholicism. He faults Jenkins for wimping out. He does not anathematize Jenkins. He was disappointed but he believes Jenkins could still be won for a course reversal.

When you snottily and breezily affirm that Miscamble will soon be exiled and Jenkins is another wolf in sheep's clothing you can have no basis in knowledge about the school to go on.

Miscamble may be disappointed yet again and Notre Dame may never really return to authentic Catholic university life. But the battle over that is not yet over there, whereas it is over, essentially, at BC and Loyola Chicago and elsewhere.

You would further your cause and the cause of the recovery of authentic Catholicism in Catholic universities greatly if you actually informed yourself and made distinctions between the truly lost Catholic schools, the startups that are faithful, and the small ones in the middle who are either already well on their way to recovery (Benedictine in Kansas) or have announced an intent to recover (St. Franics in Fort Wayne, St. Joseph's in Maine) or the large ones in the middle who are at least recoverable, though at very great effort and with no guarantee of success--which is where Notre Dame belongs.

Pray for the schools like Notre Dame whose cause is not yet lost rather than anathematize them. Anathematze the ones that deserve it--BC, Georgetown etc.

My goodness! Calm down, already! Look, there is such a thing as tongue-in-cheek hyperbole. I believe I understand the concept of tenure. But it *is* possible that, friendly appeal or no, Fr. Jenkins can most assuredly make Fr. Miscamble's life sufficiently miserable as to force him to "decide" to leave. It's been done before.

As for tendencies toward "misreading" texts, you do a good job of that with mine. Certainly, you project *far* more into my comments than I myself intended to convey, and extrapolate from my remarks all sorts of things about my frame of mind than you could possibly know from the content. I take an obviously hyperbolic (bishops aren't generally nominated in the fashion I "proposed") stance siding with Fr. Miscamble against an institution that has a long way to go in its fidelity to Catholic teaching, and the next thing I know, you decide that this is some sort of prima facie evidence that confirms the (universally known?) impression you have that it typifies "uninformed traditional Catholics making uninformed blanket statements about Notre Dame." I'll thank you, sir, to keep such "blanket statements" about the motives of *this* "traditionalist" to yourself, instead of condemning yourself with the same "charge" that you so "snottily and breezily" lob against me. You don't *know* me well enough to hurl such accusations in public, sir! You "misread" *me*!

Notre Dame may not be Georgetown, but it certainly isn't Thomas Aquinas College, either. It has a deserved reputation for sliding-scale orthodoxy, and it will be years before the school fully restores religious and moral fidelity to the Catholic Faith. To say otherwise fully insults the intelligence of any knowledgeable Catholic. One does not need to be a mere "uninformed traditionalist" to understand ND's current situation in this regard. Ralph McInerny himself felt sufficiently alarmed by Notre Dame's lack of fidelity that he commented on it more than once in his own Crisis Magazine, and full-length exposes concerning the issue have appeared since he left the helm, but maintained a toe-hold with the magazine. Notre Dame is *not* the "Catholic" institution it gives itself out to be. That's common knowledge, and *no* relative comparison was intended by myself with any other college, nominally Catholic or otherwise.

It's too bad when people similarly minded about so many things have to blow up at each other in a public forum like this one. I've admired your scholarship many times; you display amazing knowledge of so many facets of the Faith and history. But this doesn't qualify you to read hearts and minds as you did here, particularly when you thereby engage in the same things ("blanket statements," "snottiness," "breeziness," "misreading" written words, presumption of motives, presumption of ignorance without warrant from the text, and defamation) that you decry.

Some of our FRiends among the "separated brethren" here eat this stuff up. That's too bad. "With friends like you..." Creating that type of potential "scandal" is not my doing here. Perhaps you just need to lighten up a bit, and see an attempt at humorous wishful thinking for what it is, even if you *don't* think it's very funny - that's *certainly* your preogative! :-O

I'm afraid that, while I also have long admired your contributions to this forum, I must heartily disagree with your presumption that unless one has some deep knowledge of the inner workings of campus politics at ND, one can't really know the true state of that institution.

You write,

"When you snottily and breezily affirm that Miscamble will soon be exiled and Jenkins is another wolf in sheep's clothing you can have no basis in knowledge about the school to go on."

Um, excuse me, but we do. While I wouldn't make the first charge regarding Miscamble, we have ample evidence Jenkins is, in fact, a wolf in sheeps clothing. Sorry, DI, but this is a no-brainer. If the guy can't stand up and say, "Uh, we're a Catholic institution so we won't be promoting the V Monologues and we're not going to be promoting homosexuality either," well, then, if he's not a wolf he's at least a coward acting no different than a wolf.

In fact, one of the more disheartening things to me is that I think you're right. I think Miscamble IS writing just as a disappointed friend, indicating that while he may wish the outcome were different, its really not that big of a deal. He'd just like his friend to reconsider.

Meanwhile, thousands of parents will ship their kids off to ND this year mistakenly believing their kids will get a Catholic education.

Frankly, Georgetown, BC, Loyola, etc., don't bother me as much as Notre Dame. Most everyone knows they're not Catholic anymore. But things like this letter are just enough to keep some people believing that ND still is. Hence, it is ND, not these other institutions, which perpetrate the biggest fraud. You yourself indicate ND has a ways to go before it can truly be considered "Catholic," again. But what percentage of this year's incoming freshman families do you think realize this?

Let's look at this Cavadini you mention as being one of those who is fighting the good fight, one of the 'allies' of those who wish to restore ND to catholicity. Is this the same Cavadini who called the Cardinal Newman Society, "a militant right-wing Catholic interest group lobbying for the most stringent standards of orthodoxy to be used in courses and curricula at Catholic colleges and universities,” when defending McBrien against charges of plageurism?

Don't get me wrong, I thought Cavadini was correct in his decision at the time. And I thought he made good points in defense of McBrien. McBrien's an outright heretic, not a plageursit. But the gratutous swipe at the Cardinal Newman Society? Granted, the CNS IS militant, and it is right-wing, (thank goodness) but you and I both know he used those terms to smear the people making the allegation and curry favor with the liberal press. Again, his concern was far more for protecting the image of ND than it was for advancing any restoration of catholicity. So while I might not have 'inside information' on the politics at ND. It seems fairly clear even a country bumpkin like me can conclude that even some of the so-called 'orhtodox' at ND aren't really all that concerned with orthodoxy if orthodoxy bumps up against popularity.