No, I think I get it. What you still don't seem to get is that I was responding to your post primarily as one might intend to respond to an unwarranted personal attack. Everyone knows that there are gradations of deviancy from orthodoxy in Catholic colleges. Are you now implying that I lead so sheltered a life as to not know this? I don't have time to humor you on fine distinctions in issues that don't pertain to my original post, yet you insist on bringing up. Accordingly, the either/or type of contrast with TAC should have sufficed to show that ND isn't near the top of the heap, and that was sufficient for me in response to your charge that I am a mere "uninformed traditionalist."
But I'm not keenly absorbed with making such fine distinctions. Notre Dame has made its way in the world letting-on that it is a fine "Catholic" institution. This is false advertizing. The Catholic applicants and their parents have every right to suppose that it *is* entirely orthodox when shelling-out their hard earned $100,000+ for the tuition bill over the four years they'll attend there. That ND may not be as bad as some other Catholic colleges is besides the point. From the standpoint of parents getting what they think they're paying for, students learning the Faith more fully as a bulwark for the likelihood of their salvation, and society as it profits from Catholic morality and philosophy making its way into the world from Catholic schools, nuancing levels of infidelity makes little sense. Either a college purporting to be Catholic is, in fact, Catholic, or it isn't. If it isn't, decades after the wheels started coming off the rails, then who is ultimately at fault but the school itself.
Fr. Jenkins *might* mean well overall. But his actions here are limp-wristed in the extreme. If he feels compelled to mollify the student body and faculty with the cave-in he made to the VM, it bellows the supposition that the entire campus is so "un-Catholic" that it is beyond hope. Were it otherwise, he could have stood his ground with relative impunity. The students and faculty not only would have supported such a decision, they probably wouldn't have put him in this position to begin with, as they would see that the VM has no business being shown on a Catholic campus. What is being taught (or, perhaps that should be *not* taught) at Notre Dame that such a palpably hedonistic worldview needs to be appeased by Fr. Jenkins? His appeal to the concept that the show can at least teach the young women to respect their bodies is most touching, and most instructive for us out here. Yes, even for us uninformed traditionalists!
Fr. Jenkins may not discipline Fr. Miscamble or make his life difficult. Or maybe he will. I don't know and neither do you. I'm sure Fr. Miscamble is angling for a change of mind and nothing more. But, if no change is forthcoming, do you suppose that Fr. Miscamble may soldier-on in his crusade for integrity? Given his sincerity of tone and earnestness of purpose, it's a fair assumption he will. At what point does Fr. Jenkins do "something" to put a stop to it? Tenure means nothing. A persons life can be made miserable enough that he will eventually leave any tenured position just to have some peace. From the position of someone like a Fr. Jenkins in such a scenario, that's just as good as a firing.
The long-suffering Catholics of America have coddled these types long enough. The spiritual, societal and financial (for the parents paying tuition bills) stakes are too high to fool around any longer. If Notre Dame cannot or will not get back on the rails quasi-immediately, it has no reason to exist as a Catholic institution. Have *all* of the professors in the relevant departments taken the oath of fidelity yet? I dare say not. Then Catholics need to call ND to task for this publicly. They have no excuses, they're years behind schedule. And we're tired of footing the bill for promises not kept and services not delivered. Fr. Jenkins needs to understand that, for he has more to fear from disaffected alumni and parents of potential students than he ever will from the likes of a few dozen harpies from the women's studies department, their hangers-on, and their facilitators.
If your goal is to "call Notre Dame to task," which is an admirable goal, you would do well not to employ the broadside "Miscamble will be eliminated" sort of denunciation. If you wish to call Notre Dame to task you ought to take the time to find out just who the faithful teachers are there and find out how you can help them. Lobbing bombshells at the whole school neither fazes the heretics nor strengthens the faithful teachers there. And there are dozens of the latter struggling mightily for renewal.