With the new Ave Maria University up and running down in Florida, the inevitable comparisons to another Catholic university to the north -- specifically, the one in South Bend, Indiana -- have started to crop up. This report from South Bend fires the first shot:
Each building at the University of Notre Dame has its own chapel, each classroom its own crucifix.This could get interesting. And lively.
Its hometown of Notre Dame, just minutes from South Bend, Ind., borrows its name, and some of its religious identity, from the school.
That is where the comparisons end between the 165-year-old private Catholic college and Ave Maria University, still in its infancy.
AMU founder Tom Monaghan makes a distinction each time he speaks about the genesis of his school. Other Catholic colleges, he has said, are becoming far too liberal, and are shying away from their Catholic identity to attract more students.
Ave Maria, he has said, will not be one of those.
Monaghan speaks glowingly about Notre Dame’s academics, athletics and tradition. He stops just short of challenging their Catholic devotion.
“I try never to compare us to Notre Dame,” Monaghan said, smirking. “I try not to talk about the competition.”
But whispers about Notre Dame’s secular nature haven’t gone unnoticed.
The Rev. John Jenkins, president of Notre Dame, said the university is no less Catholic than it ever was. The intermingling of Catholics and non-Catholics on the 11,600-student campus only adds to the school’s rich, religious culture, he said.
“Faith and reason are at their best when they are in dialogue with other religious traditions,” Jenkins said. “I think the presence of non-Catholics helps us to be better Catholics, because they help us to think more deeply about our faith.”
As residents move into the town of Ave Maria east of Naples, they may find it difficult to escape the influences of the school, located in the center of town. A 100-foot-tall oratory, topped with a Celtic cross, serves as a highly visible reminder of the university’s Catholic allegiance.
Notre Dame’s Catholicism appears to have leaked into the surrounding community, too. According to 2000 U.S. census data, the number of practicing Catholics in St. Joseph County, where the school is located, outnumbers all other religions by an almost 2:1 ratio.
But for many South Bend residents, Notre Dame’s famous Golden Dome serves as more of a landmark than a religious icon. The Catholic label imposed on the surrounding community is hardly noticeable, and does little to affect town business.
“The town has a lot more Catholic churches than I’m used to,” said John Ittenbach, owner of Damon’s restaurant in South Bend. “There seem to be a lot more priests here, and I find that a lot of people have degrees in theology.”
“Notre Dame definitely has an influence on the community, no doubt about it,” agreed Roy George, manager of Eleni’s diner in South Bend. “I wouldn’t say there is too much of a religious impact, though.”
At Notre Dame, students won’t find the equivalent of AMU’s chastity club or its anti-abortion organization. They will instead notice a mingling of cultures and religions. Some from other religions participate in regular Mass at the famed Basilica of the Sacred Heart. Others do not.
“There is a sense of religion inside and outside of the classroom, but there’s always a welcoming hand,” said Notre Dame sophomore Chrisandra Downer, a 2006 graduate of Lely High School in East Naples.
“Notre Dame does have a definite conservative aim to it, but it’s not closed off to new things.”
Photo: University of Notre Dame law school tower, from school website
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3 comments:
The very idea that Notre Dame is not sufficiently Catholic is absurd beyond belief.
During my time as an administrator there, a new faculty member who'd arrived from another Catholic college told me, "This place is like a Catholic theme park!"
Not quite sure who said this, but he or she is wrong.
"At Notre Dame, students won’t find the equivalent of AMU’s chastity club or its anti-abortion organization."
See the following...
http://www.nd.edu/~prolife/
This group is VERY active, and has been for a long time.
As for clubs that promote chastity, see...
http://sao.nd.edu/studentgroups/listing/religious.shtml
Lets not forget to mention that the rules promote chastity, and violations are punished severely. (sometimes with expulsion)
Here is the text:
Because a genuine and complete expression of love through sex requires a commitment to a total living and sharing together of two persons in marriage, the University believes that sexual union should occur only in marriage. Students found in violation of this policy shall be subject to discipli-
nary suspension or permanent dismissal.
Let's at least do the comparison with correct information. :)
Ave Maria has a long way to go.
Notre Dame and schools like it are Catholic in name only. Students emerge after four years knowing nothing more about the Catholic faith or even being a better people. Indeed, graduates retain the secular/pagan ideology they entered with. Contemporary Catholic higher education does not challenge, it merely accommodates the orthodoxy of ill-informed kids in their late teens and early twenties. Of course challenging the group-think of greenhorn kids is not what Catholic colleges are worried about. Catholic higher education is uncomfortable being at variance with the left-wing junta that controls higher education in the United States and does not want to be asked to leave the party or to have its credentials questioned or revoked. Catholic higher education has for many years tried to please both God and Cesar by advocating student participation in all things non-offensive and synonymous with social responsibility such as soup kitchens and homeless shelters inter alia, but has not challenged young minds or society at large to cross the Rubicon and see the far reaching social consequences concomitant with our culture of death. “This is a hard saying” the crowd murmurs, but challenging our partial-birth-abortion culture is the one niche Catholic higher education is uniquely poised to fill during this kulturkampf in higher education and society at large, but has long forfeited in preference for accommodating the avant-garde values of secularism.
At best, "Catholic" schools like Notre Dame, imbued with a sense of equanimity, perhaps keep a lid on the radical left, which in any other venue shouts down its opposition or forbids the enunciation of any position incongruent with its left-wing dogma. But with gay and pro-abortion groups organized on Catholic campuses and advertised in Catholic school newspapers, even the prophylactic value of Catholic higher education and its ability to maintain a level playing field are debatable. Just one example of Catholic higher education’s impotence in maintaining order in the educational public square is the self-hatred at work: Catholic institutions of higher education everywhere have either removed crucifixes from common areas and classrooms or replaced traditionally designed crucifixes by the absurd abstract art versions we are all too familiar with in the post-Vatican II era. All this while secular higher education mandates sensitivity training 101 and diversity 102 for the freshman class.
The Catholic higher education establishment is in for a rude awakening in the coming decades as schools like Ave Maria approach and start to eclipse the dumbed-down mantra of "diversity" "compassion" and "ecumenism" that have become the buzzword goals of Catholic colleges ultimately co-opted from the left. Ave Maria's law school for example, had the highest bar passage rate of any law school in 2004 - 100% The home school movement and the high success rates their students enjoyed on standardized tests twenty years ago were a harbinger of what is happening now in Catholic higher education. Tom Monaghan, people like him and the Catholic schools they fund are the future. While schools like Notre Dame continue to churn out students who were never challenged to think differently, or perhaps think at all, graduates of schools like Ave Maria will stand in an erudite and stark contrast to their pseudo-Catholic college graduates. Swimming against the current of our culture and all its comfortable uncritical assumptions will build intellectual muscle. Thoreau said it best in that the unexamined life is not worth living. Schools like Ave Maria will indeed challenge their students to think and give students a life worth living and the coming decades will reveal much about the forfeiture wrought by schools like Notre Dame when they abandoned Catholicism and abdicated to the secular left the right to define a true “liberal education.”
ronthomski@yahoo.com
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