Posted on 03/08/2019 6:31:03 PM PST by marshmallow
About a year ago, I was standing in line at a tiny post office in rural America when I saw something quite extraordinary. No, not a motivated postal employee. A Theodore Hesburgh stamp.
Theodore who? Those who are not regular readers of the Catholic press may be forgiven for not recognizing Hesburgh’s name. Even NOR readers may puzzle over why Hesburgh warranted his own place in the adhesive pantheon — called to the counters, as it were, as one of the “secular saints” (to borrow Pieter Vree’s phrase from a memorable New Oxford Note) who lend the Washington Leviathan moral legitimacy while conveniently eschewing any form of religious particularity. Think Abraham Lincoln. Or Franklin D. Roosevelt. Or Steve Jobs (Vree’s subject in “Saints for a Secular Nation,” Jan.-Feb. 2012). These and many more men and women are endued with a kind of civic-religion holiness, even though hardly any of us could pinpoint their religious affiliation.
Although Theodore Hesburgh, C.S.C. (1917-2015), has faded into the mists of history, half a century ago his was a household name. Catholics will probably remember him best for “The Land O’ Lakes Statement: The Nature of the Contemporary Catholic University” (1967), a document published during the halcyon years of Fr. Hesburgh’s three-decade-plus tenure as president of the University of Notre Dame. The “Land O’ Lakes Statement” affirmed that Catholic universities should be free from religious oversight, thus effectively handing over the 800-year tradition of Catholic higher learning to the secularists who had taken over virtually every other aspect of American life. The “Land O’ Lakes Statement” was thus a kind of Summa of Catholicism in the 1960s — i.e., surrender to the world (the flesh and the Devil would come later) and capitulation to the Spirit of the Age.
To be sure, Fr. Hesburgh’s project......
(Excerpt) Read more at newoxfordreview.org ...
oops! wrong place, sorry.
Hesburgh was loved by this world (150 doctorates, on the boards of many Foundations, including the Rockefeller Foundation, friend of presidents, including Obama, etc. etc.)
But that doesn’t speak well of how he may be regarded in the kingdom that really counts...
Clare McGrath Merkle, a writer against Reiki, yoga and the new age, told me she was quoted out of context by the New Oxford Review, and they refused her request for a correction.
I was trying to figure out what Leoold and Loeb had to do with Hesburgh...
“New Oxford Review… refused her request for a correction.” I acknowledge the problem. The solution is to give NOR the benefit of doubt. Perhaps they were super busy, since the magazine is published by a few in a house in Berkeley. Perhaps correction was in the next two issues.
NOR is great and yes, a low budget operation.
The article is correct. The Notre Dame crowed was a divorce from the Magisterium in 1967 and got it. Now Catholic schools are junior research institutions with high tuition and low catechesis. Sad. One good teacher can preserve the faith of many students.
er, not much :(
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