Mourn for Notre Dame

As so-called Catholic schools disappear into oblivion, scandalizing their students, those who knew them when they promoted the holy vision of their founders cannot help but mourn. Michael McIntire, a 1957 graduate of Notre Dame, is one whose family has been connected to the university since his father graduated in 1930. His article on LifeSiteNews details the disintegration of a bastion of the faith. And why? -- for money and prestige. But I'll let him tell it.

"This latest scandal cannot be seen as an isolated incident, to be lamented and then forgotten when football season starts. It is, in truth, the full flowering of the bitter fruit of the University’s rebellion against the Magisterium of the Church which first surfaced over 40 years ago.

"In the early 1960s, promotion of the eugenics agenda of John D. Rockefeller III and Planned Parenthood was being frustrated by the Church’s stubborn moral opposition to contraception. Because the Rockefeller and Planned Parenthood folks considered public acceptance of contraception to be the key to public acceptance of eugenics by abortion, euthanasia and genetic manipulation, they were actively seeking a prominent Catholic voice to assist them in successfully opposing the strength of the Church’s teaching on that issue. Notre Dame became their willing accomplice in this quest.

"Notre Dame hosted 3 unpublicized conferences, attended only by theologians and academics who were selected because of their opposition to the Church’s teaching on contraception, the first of which was chaired by Notre Dame’s president. The purpose of the conferences was to develop a “Catholic” position paper justifying the morality of contraception, which was in fact promulgated in 1964 with massive publicity. The paper, popularly referred to as the “Notre Dame Statement,” proclaimed that contraception was moral, that the Church’s contrary teaching was unscientific and out of touch with modernity, and that those who believed it to be immoral had no right to impose those anachronistic beliefs on others. That proclamation was accepted and taught as authentic Catholic teaching by many Catholics, including many bishops, priests and religious, and contributed greatly to the hostility of many to the papal encyclical, Humanae Vitae, which was issued 4 years later. Notre Dame was rewarded for this traitorous activity against the Church with millions of dollars from the Rockefeller Foundation and other foundations whose primary mission for at least three generations has been to finance the worldwide spread of the eugenics agenda throughout the world – the agenda now called “the culture of death.”

"Three years later, in 1967, the University severed all juridical relations with the Catholic Church, declaring itself to be independent from all Church authority. This was the infamous “Land O’Lakes Statement” which became the new charter of the University, a charter which replaced and essentially buried the faith-based principles of the University’s founder. The Land O’Lakes Statement is firmly grounded in religious relativism - the view that religious belief is not based on an absolute objective Truth but on one’s personal opinion, and that all such opinions are equally valid provided they are sincerely held. Land O’Lakes proudly declares that the University will no longer promote “theological imperialism,” which is a euphemism for the doctrine that the Catholic Church is the one, true church founded by Christ. Paradoxically, while rejecting all Church authority, that statement arrogantly asserts that the University has the authority and the right to pass judgment on the teachings of the Church and to decide what is, and what is not, proper Catholic teaching.

"The Congregation of the Holy Cross meekly ratified this rebellion by transferring all interest and control of the University, which formerly belonged to the Holy Cross Province, to a Board of predominately lay trustees Since then, the University has been just another charitable educational corporation organized under the laws of Indiana and run by a Board of Trustees who, like their secular counterparts, are selected, not for their fidelity to the Church, but solely for the degree to which they can bring money, power and prestige to the University. Whereas formerly the promulgation and proclamation of the Catholic faith have been the primary reason for the University’s existence, it has now become the quest for power, prestige and money, a goal with which the May, 2009 abomination is wholly consistent."

Michael McIntire has given up the fight for the heart and soul of Notre Dame. The patient is dead; the corpse is cold. The Blessed Mother atop the golden dome no longer smiles over the campus, but weeps at the feet of Her Son, betrayed once more by those who claim to follow Him.