You make the same mistake a lot of people are making. This is not about Jenkins. It is about the entire university and the university’s constituency.
How many times do I have to repeat on these threads. University presidents serve at the pleasure of the boards of trustees. If they do not have the backing of their boards and their faculty, they can do nothing. If they lose the confidence of their boards and faculty and big-time donors, they get canned and replaced.
To target Jenkins in his functions as a priest in order to get at the board of trustees and the big-time donors is STOOOOOPPPPIIIDD. It would turn him into a victim and obscure the real issue: American Catholic culture, esp. at the affluent levels, has become pro-abort and pro-contraception.
Notre Dame and the other big Catholic schools long ago figured out that not enough Catholics with enough money give a damn about unborn babies and about contraception to affect things. Those who do care long since shifted to supporting the start-up Catholic schools.
Look, these universities are run as businesses. They do their market research. They know what “sells” to potential students and to big-time donors. And a “moderate” pro-abort, pro-contraception, pro-Democrat line sells.
If conservative Catholics want to turn this around, they need to get smart and learn about how universities are run, what motivates boards of trustees, faculty, administrators, where the real money is found and how these businesses market and sell their “product” (which product consists of the academic expertise of their faculty, including the amount of research money the prestige of their faculty pulls in).
I am sick and tired of people yelling at D’Arcy and calling for an interdict on the campus or Notre Dame or for throwing the CSCs out of the diocese. That would accomplish ZERO, indeed, would set your cause back big-time.
Fight smart. Be wise as serpents and gentle as doves.
It is too late now for D’Arcy to do anything. Yes, I know that Jenkins is only a front man and now undoubtedly feels affirmed in his position, and as we saw at the commencement, downright smug. Any donations lost by the boycott will be made up by cronies of board members. What I mean when I say that D’Arcy is soft, I mean simply that like most bishops he as got ahead by being nice. And he wants to be popular. Sometimes we need a good old fashioned counter-reformation type who is hated by the clergy. Do remember how the reformer nuns hated John Paul II? One can be gentle, kind and good-hearted and be hated, because one takes unpopular actions. Words ARE cheap. The Gospel is about action.