Dear Dionysiusdecordealcis,
"But Notre Dame could become a good Catholic college again. I'm not holding my breath, indeed, I don't hold out a lot of hope."
I'm a little more hopeful than you, maybe. I have a friend who is a philosophy professor at a Catholic school, and he seems to be in the know about what's up at Notre Dame. His view is that the less-than-orthodox are in the generation that is passing away, while the those for whom orthodoxy is the touchstone are all the younger folks. He says the same phenomenon is at work where he teaches (although he says that where he teaches, the theology department is still mostly vipers).
sitetest
I hear that at ND too -- that the old lefties are passing away, and that the students roll their eyes when they blow off. Hahaha. Encouraging words. It will not happen in an instant.
This is true some places but at others (including my own) the 1960s-1970s feminist-cum-anti-capitalist-cum Call-to-Action cadres are still controlling hiring so there is no younger generation even visible on the horizon. Those are the schools for which I hold out no hope whatsoever. Others are turning around right as we speak and still others have potential for turning around, in varying degrees. Notre Dame has potential but only potential, at this point. Ten years from now things will be clearer.