Guest Post: THE UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME: THE GOOD NEWS AND THE BAD NEWS

 by James M. Thunder  

published in The Narthex, blog of New Oxford Review, in four parts Feb. 24, March 8, 11 and 13
Part 1: Notre Dame: The Good News & the Bad News | New Oxford Review

Folks, the good news out of Notre Dame is shockingly good. The bad news out of Notre Dame is shockingly bad. I’ll start with the bad.

On January 8, 2026, Notre Dame issued a press release announcing that a professor, Susan Ostermann, was being appointed, effective July 1, as director of the Liu Institute. Because of her public and persistent pro-abortion views, this appointment has been met with objections by:

• The local bishop, Bishop Kevin C. Rhoades of the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend. (Today’s Catholic (diocesan newspaper), Feb. 11, 2026.)

• Father Wilson D. Miscamble, C.S.C., retired professor of history, former chairman of Department of History and former superior of the Congregation of Holy Cross’ Moreau Seminary. (“A Crisis of Catholic Fidelity at Notre Dame,” First Things, Jan. 28, 2026.)

• Lucy Spence, editor-in-chief of Notre Dame’s The Irish Rover, appeared on EWTN.

• The 700-member Notre Dame Students for Life, including its president, Anna Kelley, who survived China’s one-child abortion policy who appeared on Arroyo’s World OverLive February 5 (see EWTN report).

• Bishop Robert Barron of Word on Fire and bishop of Winona-Rochester, Minnesota, a one-time student at Notre Dame.

• Archbishop Paul S. Coakley of Oklahoma City, President of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.

• and more.

  In response, thus far Notre Dame has doubled-down and repeated the professor’s (undisputed) academic qualifications. (Matthew McDonald, “Notre Dame Affirms Appointment of Abortion Advocate to Prominent Post,” Nat’l Cath. Register, Jan. 29, 2026.) And no announcement was made after a regular meeting of the university’s Board of Trustees February 4-5 in Naples, Florida. (Lucy Spence, “Notre Dame Maintains Support for Ostermann Appointment,” Irish Rover, Feb. 11, 2026.)

  Ostermann’s promotion was approved by Mary Gallagher, dean of Keough School of Global Affairs, who came to Notre Dame from the University of Michigan July 1, 2024, and John T. McGreevy, provost, a 1986 graduate and former dean of the College of Arts and Letters from 2008-2018. (Official university biography.) The role of Father Robert C. Dowd, C.S.C., president of the university since 2024, has not been described. He at least implicitly approved Ostermann’s promotion.

  This failure by Notre Dame has occurred at the highest levels – its Board of Trustees, its presidents, its provost -- and these failures have been replayed time and again for over 20 years. (I submit below to a candid world a chronological list of issues Notre Dame has had since 2006.)

It must never happen again. Whatever it takes, whatever money it takes, Ostermann, Gallagher and McGreevy must be dismissed to demonstrate to the entire university community and to the world that it will never happen again. We must never have shockingly bad news like this coming out of Notre Dame again.

The Ostermann appointment is not a mistake. It is not an accident. It is not a lack of vetting. No one is holding a gun to the heads of Gallagher and McGreevy. There is no benefit for doing what they did. There is no glory among the school’s peers. There is no benefactor who must be satisfied. We can assume that McGreevy cares about Notre Dame’s Catholic identity. (See his official biography. I am ignorant about Gallagher except that Fr. Dowd introduced, and Gallagher hosted and conversed with, Pete Buttigieg at a university meeting on Feb. 23. (Sam Marchand, “Notre Dame Invites Buttigieg for Fireside Chat,” Irish Rover, Feb. 28, 2026.) I think it shows that Fr. Dowd and Gallagher are not serious about ND's Catholic mission .) The sole reason for this appointment is Gallagher and McGreevey do not care about abortion and the destruction of innocent human life. Folks, it has to be that simple.

I dare the Board of Trustees, including those designated “Fellows” who are charged with promoting Notre Dame’s Catholic mission, President Father Dowd, Provost McGreevy and Dean Gallagher to come before a statue of Mary and say, “Hail Mary, full of grace. Blessed are you. Our appointment of Professor Susan Ostermann is a blessing for this university named after you.”

A Chronological List of Issues Notre Dame Has with Being Catholic Since 2006

2006
In 2006, a group of alumni and friends of the University of Notre Dame, organized the

“Sycamore Trust.” As the webpage states, “The precipitating event was [President of Notre Dame] Father Jenkins’s reversal of his tentative decision to bar the student on-campus performance of The Vagina Monologues. A March 2008 bulletin of the Trust, reported that “50 bishops had moved their conference off campus because the play might be produced.” Here is a report of the statement by the local bishop, Bishop John D’Arcy.

2009
Notre Dame announced that it would grant an honorary degree to, and hear the principal commencement address by, President Obama.

• Mary Ann Glendon, the immediate past ambassador from the United State to the Vatican declined Notre dame’s highest honor, the Laetare Medal. It was the first ever declination since its inception in the 1880s. Here is her April 27 letter published in First Things.

• Over 80 bishops made public objections, including: Bishop John M. D’Arcy (Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend, Ind.). (Today’s Catholic (diocesan paper), March 29, 2009, p. 3); Cardinal Francis George (Archbishop of Chicago and then-president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops) (stating “Notre Dame didn't understand what it means to be Catholic” and called the decision an “extreme embarrassment”); Archbishop Raymond Burke (former Archbishop of St. Louis, then-Prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura); Archbishop Alfred Hughes (New Orleans); Bishop Bernard Harrington (Winona, Minn.); Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted (Phoenix); Cardinal James Francis Stafford (Major Penitentiary of the Apostolic Penitentiary at the Vatican); Archbishop John R. Quinn (retired, San Francisco).

• There were 94 arrests (but the arrested were called “ND88”). Included among them was an elderly priest who was kneeling and reciting the rosary when arrested. Charges were not dropped for two years. (EWTN report.)

2011
Notre Dame’s board of trustees elected Roxanne Martino, benefactor of pro-abortion groups, to the board. In June, she resigned under pressure. Declared the June bulletin of the Sycamore Trust: “Ms. Martino’s declaration that she is ‘fully committed to all aspects of Catholic teaching and to the mission of Notre Dame’ without any expression of regret for her support of pro-abortion organizations surely rings false, but much more worrisome is [Chairman of the Board] Mr. Notebaert’s assertion that Ms. Martino is ‘absolutely dedicated in every way to the Catholic mission of the University.’”

2011
In mid-year, Marye Anne Fox, who had been a member of the board of trustees for eleven years resigned abruptly (and quietly). She had promoted embryonic stem cell research. (Aug. 3, 2011, bulletin of Sycamore Trust.)

2014
Fr. Jenkins rushed to provide benefits to same-sex married couples employed by the university, rejecting Bishop Rhoades request that it seek a religious exemption. (David Gibson, “Bishops Object as Catholic Universities Offer Same-Sex Benefits,” Religious News Service, Oct. 30, 2014.)

2015
Notre Dame seriously considered opening a branch in mainland Communist China. Although I initiated the Chinese language program at the University in 1971, before Nixon went to China, I objected in a published 8,500-word essay on a now-defunct website. How inappropriate, I thought, that Notre Dame should establish itself in the same country where Catholic lay, priests and bishops were being persecuted. (Imagine Notre Dame classes in a building next to a prison of the persecuted.) Not to mention other Christians and Falun Gong and Uyghurs. I concluded, “[T]he University of Notre Dame should not partner with Communist China in establishing a liberal arts college in China because Notre Dame is insufficiently Catholic in its motivation, because Notre Dame will be insufficiently Catholic in the formation of curriculum and in providing faculty, and because the Communist Chinese will not be able to tolerate a faithful Catholic presence on the mainland.”

2016
Notre Dame announced that it would bestow its highest award to then Vice President Biden (and former Speaker of the House John Boehner). Bishop Rhoades objected. (Timothy Dempsey, “Bishop Rhoades on Biden, Jenkins and Laetare,” March 14, 2016, bulletin of Sycamore Trust.)

2017

In 2014 the university provided contraceptives to students under court order. In 2017, after the new Trump administration offered religious exemptions, Fr. Jenkins decided to voluntarily continue to provide contraceptives: “After a half decade of litigation and debate, ultimately leading to a victory for Notre Dame’s cause, the university has voluntarily chosen to embrace a status quo that seems to undermine its original legal position and interpretation of Catholic doctrine.” (Emma Green, “Why Notre Dame Reversed Course on Contraception,” The Atlantic, Nov. 8, 2017.)

2018 (and continuing)
Fr. Jenkins, and now his successor, Fr. Robert Dowd, refuse to honor student petitions to filter pornography from university internet servers. (See the Dec. 2018 Sycamore Trust bulletin and Gray Nocjar, “University Denies Porn Filter, Renews Promise on Opt-in Version,” The [Notre Dame-St. Mary’s] Observer, Nov. 14, 2025.)

2021
Fr. Jenkins asked new President Biden to attend commencement and receive an honorary degree. The February 10, 2021, Sycamore Trust Bulletin listed the numerous ways that Biden was anti-life. (Feb. 10, 2021, bulletin of Sycamore Trust.) Biden declined Fr. Jenkins’ invitation.

2021
Fr. Jenkins proclaimed June to be Pride Month. The July 2021 Sycamore Trust bulletin reported the following:

Blessed Basile Moreau, who founded the Order in 1837, consecrated the priests to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. The Feast of the Sacred Heart was added to the Universal Liturgical Calendar in 1856, and the month of June became devoted to the Blessed Heart.

The Order’s consecration to the Sacred Heart was reflected in the dedication of the spiritual centers of the University to the Sacred Heart: first, the wooden “Church of the Sacred Heart,” built between 1848 and 1852, and then the current Basilica of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart, in which Mass was first celebrated in 1875.

Then there is the statue of the Blessed Heart that stands in front of the storied Main Building on the Main Quad.

In the same year, Fr. Jenkins sung the praises of Greg Bourke, ’80 M.A., author of “Gay, Catholic, and American.” (See Oct. 8, 2021, Sycamore Trust bulletin and an article in the American Spectator (Ellie Gardey Holmes, Notre Dame, ’21, “Notre Dame President Disputes Claim He Congratulated Obergefell Plaintiff on Court Win,” Oct. 8, 2021.)

2025
Fr. Dowd changed the wording of the mission statement affecting all university staff, a term that includes the several vice presidents in the administration. The original language was: Leadership in Mission: Understands, accepts and supports the Catholic mission of the university and fosters values consistent with that mission. It was changed to:

To be a force for good and help to advance Notre Dame’s mission to be the leading global Catholic research university.

For more, see the Sycamore Trust bulletins of Dec. 5 and Dec. 12.

In Part 2, I will describe the shockingly good news coming out of Notre Dame.

Part 2: Bad News Continued

In Part 1, I described the shockingly bad news coming out of Notre Dame. I promised that in Part 2 I would describe the shockingly good news coming out of Notre Dame. Instead, in this Part 2, I provide an update on the bad news described in Part 1. The good news will come in Parts 3 and 4.

Since Part 1 was posted late on the evening of Tuesday, February 24, the professor whose promotion was at issue, Susan Ostermann, decided not to “move forward,” as reported to the student newspaper by Dean Mary Gallagher, the dean who had sought to promote her. (“Breaking: Ostermann Declines Liu Institute Directorship Following Backlash Over Abortion Advocacy,” The Observer, Feb. 26, 2026, 10am.) In Ostermann’s letter to Gallagher, she criticized the university community for its objections to her persistent and public pro-abortion views:

[I]t has become clear that there is work to do at Notre Dame to build a community where a variety of voices can flourish. Both academic inquiry and the full realization of human dignity demand this of us...I look forward to collaborating with colleagues across the university to build a campus community where all can speak openly on the issues that matter to them most...

The university for its part made the following brief statement to The Observer; We respect Professor Ostermann’s decision to decline the directorship of the Liu Institute. We appreciate her deep commitment to the Institute’s mission and her desire to advance its important work. She remains a highly valued member of our faculty, and we are grateful for her continued contributions as a scholar-teacher and member of the Notre Dame community.

In his February 26th report, Jonathan Liedl of the National Catholic Register (“What Just Happened at Notre Dame? Inside the Reversal of Susan Ostermann’s Appointment”), reminded readers that Provost McGreevy is up this year for a renewal of his five-year contract. It should not be renewed.

Liedl also reported that his sources say Father Dowd had done some work behind the scenes to achieve this result, a fact implicit, Leidl says, in the wording with which he addressed a gathering of 32 bishops, which included the local Ordinary, Bishop Kevin Rhoades, on campus Feb. 23-25 for a conference co-sponsored by Notre Dame’s McGrath Institute for Church Life and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ doctrine committee.

Neither Professor Ostermann nor the two administrators who sought to promote her, Dean Gallagher and Provost McGreevy, nor the president, Father Dowd, nor the Fellows charged with promoting the school’s Catholic mission, nor the chair of the board nor the board of trustees nor any individual trustee, nor this statement by the university issued an apology, a promise to investigate what went wrong, a promise that it would never happen again, or a renewal of the commitment of the university to its Catholic mission.

Let us look at two incidents of what we might call “after-action analysis.” In the first, The Observer reported on the regularly scheduled monthly meeting held March 3 of the Faculty Senate. Amy Stark, the chair and a professor of biology, stated, “I have heard from many of you, as well as preliminary discussions within the Administrative Affairs Committee today and earlier last month, regarding concerns across the spectrum with the Ostermann appointment...I...will be reaching out directly to the provost and Fr. Dowd...about what the takeaways of the situation might be moving forward from their perspective...” (Mara Hall, “Faculty Discuss OIT Updates, Attendance policies and Ostermann at Senate Meeting,” The Observer, March 4) I suppose “concerns across the spectrum” include faculty members who approved her appointment and faculty members who rejected it.

Yes, I too, and the world await to learn what “takeaways,” what lessons, for the faculty Fr. Dowd and Provost McGreevy will tell the faculty to draw from this experience. As I stated in Part 1, over 80 bishops and Ambassador Mary Ann Glendon objected to the plan in 2009 to honor pro-abortionist President Obama. Nonetheless the president, Father Jenkins, moved forward with his plan. He said there’d be an opportunity to dialogue with the President about abortion, but no one spoke to President Obama about abortion. The only talking was by the President at commencement. The “takeaway” from this experience was that Notre Dame administrators and faculty were free with impunity to publicly support abortion--which is what Professor Ostermann did.

The second after-action analysis is provided by Thomas Mustillo, a professor of politics and global affairs, in his letter to The Observer published on March 3. His lengthy letter starts with:

As a Catholic, an alumnus [‘91] and a current member of the faculty...I believe this episode diminishes our community, including for those who hold principled views against legal access to abortion. [1] It diminishes our reputation and viability as a leading global Catholic research university; [2] it diminishes our ability to advance the Catholic intellectual traditions, including those pertaining to abortion and human dignity; and [3] it diminishes our internal discourse and cohesion...(brackets added)

He then explains his first point, namely, that this event “chills” discourse, his second point, that there was failure to “rigorously engage” the merits of Ostermann’s pro-abortion publications, and his third point: “Reasonable people can disagree about access to abortion and the qualifications for leadership. However, there is a distinction between good-faith disagreement and the deliberate weaponization of argument.” (“Ostermann’s Withdrawal Shouldn’t Have Happened,” The Observer, March 3)

Let me respond bluntly to Professor Mustillo: It was the promotion of Professor Ostermann, not the objections to it and her withdrawal, which diminished the reputation of Notre Dame as a Catholic institution. Second, no devout Catholic can “reasonably disagree about  access to abortion” and no devout Catholic, and no member of the faculty sympathetic to Notre Dame’s Catholic mission, can reasonably disagree as to whether someone who is pro-abortion has qualifications for leadership at Notre Dame. There is no need to rigorously engage the arguments of anyone in favor of abortion. There is nothing chilling about being denied promotion based on being pro-abortion.

Neither Ostermann nor Gallagher nor McGreevy nor, apparently, Fr. Dowd or the Board of Trustees understand the gravity of abortion. Devout Catholics regard abortion as abhorrent, reprehensible, abominable. We have the same reaction, as indeed these men and women I just listed would have, to the execution of a defendant known to be innocent. The ban on abortion is an ancient, two-thousand-year-old Christian teaching. It is regarded as so grave a sin that, by canon law (applicable to Catholics), the mother, as well as associated medical personnel, incur automatic excommunication. Yes, it can be forgiven. (See Servant of God Dorothy Day.) That abortion has become commonplace and frequent and legal does not negate the gravity of the sin.

How dare Professor Ostermann bite the hand that feeds her, to think that she could be publicly and persistently opposed to this ancient Catholic teaching on a matter of life and death without consequences. It is indeed a matter of life and death – both for the unborn children and, for the mother and doctors and others involved, an issue of their eternal glory or eternal punishment. In each pregnancy, a decision must be made: to let the child live or to kill him/her. Abortion is no abstraction. It is not subject to a debate in the academic Ivory Tower. It is existential. Witness the testimony cited in Part 1 of Anna Kelley, the student who serves as president of Notre Dame Right to Life and survived China’s one-child abortion policy. Witness as well my relatives who have had children out-of-wedlock or who have adopted children.

Professor Ostermann voluntarily wrote her articles which were outside her academic field. Dean Gallagher and Provost McGreevy voluntarily promoted her. No one forced them. These were, in tennis parlance, “unforced errors.” Needless. Pointless. Indeed, it is easy, easy I say, for someone sympathetic to the Catholic mission of Notre Dame, as Dean Gallagher and Provost McGreevy should be, to have rejected out of hand Professor Ostermann as a candidate for promotion, any promotion.

Does anyone doubt that if Professor Ostermann’s publications denied the Holocaust or argued that blacks were intellectually inferior she would not have been promoted? No one would claim that severe objections to her was “chilling,” a refusal to consider the merits of her arguments, a violation of her dignity, a silencing of her voice. But being pro-abortion was somehow okay. How dare Professor Ostermann, Dean Gallagher and Provost McGreevy and any other faculty member or member of the administration, fail to respect the Catholic morals held by Notre Dame’s founder, Father Sorin, the Congregation of the Holy Cross, alumni, and current students and their parents.

Let me end with a request for meditation on the words of this 1962 song Blowin’ in the Wind:

how many ears must one man have
Before he can hear [unborn children] cry?
Yes, and how many deaths will it take 'til he knows That too many [unborn children] have died?

Part 3: The Good News

In Part 1 posted on February 24, I described the shockingly bad news coming out of Notre Dame. I posted a follow-up on [date] which I dubbed Part 2 [create hyperlink]. In Part 1, I promised that I would describe the shockingly good news coming out of Notre Dame. Before I get to the shockingly good news, let me describe the simply good news for those readers not familiar with the campus or with its history (aside from football). For these readers, this news could be shockingly good.

Sometime in the 1980’s, my wife Ann and I renewed our wedding vows on our anniversary in Notre Dame’s Log Chapel, a 1906 replica of the chapel built by diocesan priest Father Stephen Badin in 1831 as a mission to the Potawatomi tribe. Father Badin is buried in this chapel. In his homily, the celebrant, Rev. André Léveillé, C.S.C., said that Notre Dame was a holy place. I had first visited the campus as a high school junior in May, 1967, graduating from Notre Dame in 1972. In nearly 20 years, and attending many Masses and Vespers, and visiting the Grotto numerous times, I had never thought of Notre Dame as a “holy place.” From then on, however, that notion sank in.

Twenty years after this anniversary Mass, Ann and I were on campus with family for a week during the summer and we decided to visit as many chapels as we could – in the mornings before family responsibilities arose. And we continued this pilgrimage the following summer. Alas, in two summer weeks we visited only about 20 chapels. What do I mean “only 20”? Well, ten years later, Lawrence S. Cunningham, newly retired professor of theology (chair, 1992-1997) (he passed on February 20, 2025) released a richly illustrated book, The Chapels of Notre Dame (2012), in which he informed his readers that Father John F. O’Hara, C.S.C., who would become Bishop, Archbishop and Cardinal O’Hara, before his departure from campus in 1939, had called Notre Dame the “City of the Blessed Sacrament.” (For example, Fr. O’Hara’s “Religious Bulletin, May 29, 1934) Only the Vatican exceeded in density the number of chapels in which the Blessed Sacrament was reserved. There are today at least 57 chapels on the 1250-acre campus. Each of the 33 residence halls has a chapel and at least 25 other buildings, like the law school, the new Raclin Art Museum, Coleman-Morse, and the Stinson-Remick Engineering Hall, have chapels. It would be ambitious to visit and pray in 57 chapels in two weeks for a couple hours each morning.

The webpage called “Faith” on the school’s website states there are over 75 priests serving on campus as hall rectors, professors, and administrators, there are 30 religious retreats offered annually through Campus Ministry, and there are over 200 Masses celebrated weekly. Mass times all over campus are provided online by Campus Ministry. A current junior writes that “Confession lines in the basilica typically extend far down the side aisles and Sunday Masses are standing room only.” (Lucy Spence, “Choose Notre Dame,” Irish Rover, Nov. 5, 2025) The Basilica of the Sacred Heart has a capacity of nearly 1,000. Also, these days there are 40 hours weekly of adoration at Colman-Morse chapel and Ms. Spence says there are hundreds of hours held elsewhere.

Notre Dame’s Grotto is a singular place of prayer. (I note that the Blessed Sacrament is not reserved there.) Books have been written about it: Dorothy V. Corson, A Cave of Candles:

The Story Behind Notre Dame's Grotto (2006); Mary Pat Dowling, Grotto Stories: From the Heart of Notre Dame (1996). Also, in 2007, the quarterly Notre Dame Magazine (word- searchable back issues online here) started a series called “Grotto Stories.”

Notre Dame’s Grotto is a one-seventh replica of Lourdes and was erected in 1896. The Rosary is prayed daily at the Grotto in the early evening. In searching the archives of The Observer back to its 1966 founding, the first reference I see to the Rosary being recited daily in the early evening is Oct. 3, 1973, p. 2. Since at least 1999, the students started a tradition of graduating seniors making a “last visit” as a group to the Grotto, held on the Thursday before commencement. (“Senior Week Schedule,” The Observer, April 14, 1999, p. 21)

Please, come with me and take a walk around campus. The campus grounds include:

• “Touchdown Jesus”: This is a nickname because Our Lord is depicted with outstretched hands and is visible from the football stadium. Formally, the mural is entitled “Word of Life.” It occupies the south side of the 13-story Hesburgh Library opened in 1964. It is 134 feet tall by 68 feet wide.

• On the west side of the library is a statue of Moses by Ivan Mestrovic.

• On the North Quad is Clarke Memorial Fountain, designed by John Burgee and Philip Johnson, honoring the approximately 500 alumni who died in World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. ROTC members stand watch every Veterans Day.

• On the west side of O'Shaughnessy Hall, a classroom building, is a full-height statue of Christ and the Samaritan Woman at Jacob’s Well by Ivan Mestrovic. (Ellie Gardey, “Ivan Mestrovic at Notre Dame,” Irish Rover, April 30, 2018) About noon on one hot summer's day, my two daughters, ages about 13 and 9, and I used the sculpture as a stage as we recited and reenacted John's Gospel. Passersby became apostles returning from town or townspeople.

• In front of the Main Building (atop of which is the Golden Dome with its statue of the Virgin Mary) is a statue of the Sacred Heart, erected in 1893 and restored in 2013.

• West of Sacred Heart Basilica, north of Colman-Morse, is a statue of the Holy Family by Ivan Mestrovic.

• Inside Sacred Heart Basilica (with its last major renovation completed in 1990), among other things is one of the few paintings depicting the death of St. Joseph, and a Pieta sculpted in the 1940’s by Ivan Mestrovic borrowed indefinitely from New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.

• A statue of Mary by Holy Cross Father Anthony J. Lauck, C.S.C., in 1954 is located at the circle at the north end of Notre Dame Avenue. In September 2025, its position was shifted amidst a new design and dedicated that month. (Jenna Liberto, “New Campus Landmark Celebrates Contributions of Notre Dame Women Students and Graduates,” NDWorks, Sept. 23, 2025)

• A statue depicting Mary’s visitation to Elizabeth, by Father Lauck was erected in 1999 near the Eck Welcome Center.

In the course of four years, students pass by each of these many times and, at least on some occasions, think about them.

On our tour, we could investigate the 25 service opportunities listed here. And we could also step into academic buildings on campus and see crucifixes. In 2019, Notre Dame started purchasing crucifixes from around the world, and also started an annual art contest for the design of crucifixes. We could also step inside the basilica and hear one of the choirs listed here. Perhaps we would hear a choir singing Notre Dame’s alma mater, “Notre Dame, Our Mother,” which you may have seen being sung at the end of a football game by the team and student body. But maybe you haven’t heard the words which bring tears to the eyes of many:

Notre Dame, our mother Tender, strong and true Proudly in the heavens Gleams thy gold and blue Glory's mantle cloaks thee Golden is thy fame

And our hearts forever Praise thee, Notre Dame And our hearts forever Love thee Notre Dame

Maybe you would concur with Father Léveillé’s assessment that Notre Dame is a holy place. I agree with junior Lucy Spence, editor of Irish Rover, that prospective students should not be put off by the bad news coming out of Notre Dame, but instead “Choose Notre Dame.”

Shockingly Good News

I have two pieces of shockingly good news for you. One was a recent outdoor Mass and the other is the long-term trend of ever greater number of students voluntarily studying theology.

Ice Chapel Mass

By late January of this year, South Bend had received over six feet of snow. Civil engineering student Martin Soros and architecture student Wesley Buonerba, on their own initiative, decided to design and build an ice sculpture on campus they called “St. Olaf ‘s Chapel.” It was tall enough and wide enough to walk through single file. You can read the report of Karla Cruise of College of Engineering News interviewing Soros on its construction. (“Engineering on Ice: Martin Soros on the Building of St. Olaf’s Chapel,” Feb. 13)

These students then sought permission to have Mass celebrated using their ice chapel as a backdrop with an ice altar and ice cross. Having received permission, they posted a sign by the chapel that Mass would be celebrated on February 2 at 10pm. There was no particular reason for Mass on that day, that time, that place, just a coming together to worship the Lord. It was a school night with papers and labs due the next day and tests as well. The temperature was in the 20’s. But the students came. During Communion, when the 1,500 consecrated Hosts had been distributed, a priest left to obtain 500 more. After these too had been distributed, there were hundreds of students who were unable to receive. Thus, well over 2,000 students of the 14,000 students (undergraduates and graduate students at Notre Dame and undergraduates at St. Mary’s College) attended the Mass. (Of course, not all 14,000 are Catholic. Among Notre Dame freshman entering in 2024 82% were Catholic. (“Notre Dame Welcomes the Class of 2028,” Undergraduate Admissions, Aug. 20, 2024) That number varies just a bit from year to year.)

The still shots and videoclips of this outdoor Mass are striking and, I submit to you that this Mass constitutes shockingly good news. (There are images in the cited piece by Karla Cruise, and in Margaret Fosmoe, “Huddled Mass,” Notre Dame Magazine, Feb. 3, 2026, and in Chloe Hanford, “Notre Dame Outdoor Ice Chapel Mass Brings Thousands Together,” The Observer, Feb. 3, 3026.)

This Mass brought to my mind two events in Church history that are now outside the historical memory of most of us. Both concern Pope St. John Paul II. The first is the dedication of a new church.

On May 15, 1977, Cardinal Karol Wojtyla, three days shy of his 57th birthday, dedicated a new church. A welcome, but fairly routine event for a Catholic cardinal or bishop. But in this instance the country was Communist Poland. The struggle to erect the church had lasted more than 20 years.

To go back: It was in 1949 when the Communist authorities started a new town on the eastern edge of Krakow. From the very beginning, there was never a plan to include a Catholic church in the town. It was, after all, to be a model Communist town. Six years later, in 1954, the super-sized Vladimir Lenin Steelworks opened. The place was called Nowa Huta (“New Steelmill”).

Five years after Nowa Huta opened for business, on Christmas Eve, 1959, Karol Wojtyla, who had been a bishop, an auxiliary bishop, of Krakow since September 1958, celebrated midnight Mass in an open, freezing field in support of the workers’ demand for a church. Wojtyla continued to celebrate Mass in the open field every year on Christmas Eve.

The church was named The Lord’s Ark. The ark referenced is that of Mary, the mother of Jesus, as protector of her people. What Cardinal Wojtyla declared on that day in 1977 of dedication to the people of Poland and to the pilgrims from 13 countries in attendance is good for all time and places:

This is not a city of people who belong to no one, of people to whom one may do whatever one wants, who may be manipulated according to the laws or rules of production and consumption. This is a city of the children of God . . . This temple was necessary so that this could be expressed, that it could be emphasized . . .Let us hope that in this our Homeland, which has a Christian and humanitarian past, these two orders – light and the Gospel, and the respect for human rights – come together more effectively in the future.

(George Weigel, Witness to Hope (2001 ed.), p. 190; Adam Bonieck, The Making of the Pope of the Millennium: Kalendarium of the Life of Karol Wojtyla, p. 754 (2000))

The second event which the Mass at St. Olaf’s Chapel brings to my mind is Pope St. John Paul II’s first visit to Poland, in June 1979, after being elected pope in October 1978. His first stop was in Warsaw. He celebrated Mass on June 2. You can see how many hundreds of thousands attended this Mass in images here, here and here. During 1979, Poland and the rest of the Universal Church were commemorating the 900th anniversary of the martyrdom of Saint Stanislaw of Szczepanow. During the Mass, the people spontaneously chanted “We want God!” (“Chcemy Boga!”).

Well over 2,000 students attended the ice chapel Mass at Notre Dame on February 2. They would resoundingly agree with the future Pope’s 1977 words “This is not a city of people who belong to no one...This is a city of the children of God...” and they would resoundingly agree with the people’s 1979 chant “We want God!”

In Part 4, I turn to the shockingly good news of the number of Notre Dame students studying theology.

Part 4: More Good News

In Part 3, I provided one piece of shockingly good news coming out of Notre Dame. The second piece of shockingly good news is the number of Notre Dame students studying theology.

When I was researching the state of the Catholic Faith at Notre Dame, I ran across the following article stating that there were about 800 students majoring or minoring in theology as of April 2025: Madeline Page, “Notre Dame Revives Theology Club,” Irish Rover, Nov. 5, 2025. My immediate reaction was that the number 800 had to be a clerical error because 800 would be almost 9% of the 9,000 undergraduates and, if one had to be a humanities student in order to major or minor in theology, it would be 40% of the 2,000 undergraduates in Notre Dame’s College of Arts and Letters. I asked myself, “How could this be? And, if it were true, wouldn’t it be shocking?”

My first inkling that the number of 800 might be correct is that I received for the first time in the spring of 2025 an email from the university listing all the students in Arts and Letters who had written a senior thesis. This document provided the name of the student, his or her majors and minors, the name of the adviser, and the title of the senior thesis. In looking it over, I thought that there seemed to be a lot of majors and minors in theology (or maybe theology students opt to write senior theses as a bigger percentage than those in other majors/minors?). I have now consulted this document. Among its 158 entries, there are 28 theses (18%) by students who majored or minored in theology.

The Numbers Are Even Better This Year

I contacted Professor Anthony Pagliarini, Associate Teaching Professor & Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Department of Theology. The 800 number for 2025 was correct. Indeed, he anticipates that there will be over 900 majors and minors in theology in the current school year. These 900 include 80 graduating seniors and 190 students in their first, second and third years majoring in theology. The majors include a regular major in theology (34 credits), a major in the joint degree of philosophy/ theology (60 credits with at least 21 in theology), and a “supplemental major” in theology (25 credits). The figure of 900 also includes over 600 students minoring in theology. The minors include a minor in theology (18 credits), a minor in liturgical music ministry (21 credits), and a minor in Catholic social teaching (15 credits). Given the growth of interdisciplinary study at Notre Dame, not all of these are students in the College of Arts and Letters. So, students of architecture, engineering, math, science, and business are among them. Let me add that there are a large number of students who, while not majoring or minoring in theology, take more courses than the required two.

While the number of students majoring in theology (across all four years) has grown in 20 years from about 200 in 2005 to 280 last year, the total number of majors and minors has exploded from 250 to 900. There can be a number of reasons for this explosion. One is the growth in the number of undergraduates, but this has been fairly modest -- from 8300 to 9000. Another can be the growth in the number of programs. (Although I could not determine when the supplemental major started, the minor in Catholic Social Thought started in 1997 and the minor in liturgical music about 2005). There’s also the change in 2014 that allowed students to begin the coursework that counts toward one’s major before junior year. And there’s the growth in interdisciplinary study. (See below regarding “CAD.”) But the real explanation for the explosion is the exceptional content of the two required courses.

The Students Are Inspired by the Two Required Courses

Only about ten students arrive at Notre Dame expecting that they will major or minor in theology. (30-Minute Interview by Professor Leonard J. DeLorenzo of Professor Pagliarini, “How Many Students Are Studying Theology?!” Church Life Today podcast, Dec. 16, 2024) How does it happen that so many students end up majoring or minoring in theology? In his interview, Professor Pagliarini answers that the professors who teach the required theology courses show them the depth and richness of the Faith and he gives a few examples.

Notre Dame requires as part of its “Core Curriculum” that every student -- humanities, science, business, engineering, architecture -- take two theology courses (3 credits each). One is called “foundational” and one is “doctrine in development and dialogue.” The latter is dubbed CAD, “Catholicism and the Disciplines,” where a course discusses the relationship between the Catholic Faith and various disciplines such as economics, biology, sociology, management. Such courses show “how a disciplinary perspective illuminates Catholicism and how a knowledge of Catholicism enriches student understanding of disciplinary subject matter.”

For each theology course in the Core Curriculum, a professor shapes his/her course to meet the description the university gives. In addition to the examples Professor Pagliarini provided in his interview, you can see an example of this in the article by Professor DeLorenzo about his course on the Catholic understanding of the development of character and his description of how his students changed during the semester: “What Happened to These Catholic College Students After They Took a Required Theology Course?” Aleteia, Jan. 2, 2019.

Only Two Courses Are Required

It may come as a surprise to you that so few theology courses are required at Notre Dame yet so many theology courses are voluntarily taken. It reminded me of the experience Father John O’Hara, C.S.C., had. He was Prefect of Religion at Notre Dame in the 1920s and had encouraged daily reception of communion which was then a newly approved practice instigated by Pius X in 1905. His Religious Bulletins catalogued statistics such as an average, in 1927-28, of 1300 of the 2500 students receiving daily Communion. These were not statistics for the sake of statistics. Rather, he sought to demonstrate that, while Notre Dame was one of the first Catholic colleges to end the requirement of attendance at daily Mass, the frequent reception of Communion resulted in increased daily Mass attendance. (Thomas T. McAvoy, C.S.C., “John F. O’Hara, C.S.C., and Notre Dame,” Records of the American Catholic Historical Society of Philadelphia, Vol. 64, No. 1 (March, 1953), pp. 13-14.)

From early on until the early 70’s, all students were required to take four theology and four philosophy courses. There was no ability to major in theology until the junior class in 1965 (Class of ’67) (Notre Dame, Summer 1965, p. 2). In the fall of 1969, the courses for both theology majors and all other students were revamped. (“Theology Reform,” The Observer Feb. 5, 1969, p. 1) In my class year, my fellow theology majors were 20 in a class of some 1500. In 2015, there was a discussion at Notre Dame of changing its requirement that all graduates (of all majors) take two courses in theology and two in philosophy to one of each. Carolyn Woo, former dean of Notre Dame’s business school and then director of Catholic Relief Services wrote a thoughtful objection to this proposal. (Carolyn Woo, “The Theology Requirement at Notre Dame: A Former Dean’s View,” America, March 9, 2015.) Fortunately, the school retained its two courses in each subject. My, my, the good that the Department’s professors have done with just two.

Taking a Second Look

If I related to you just the following story, it would be shockingly good news all by itself. A student living in the same residence hall as Rev. Kevin Grove, C.S.C., a professor of theology, asked him if he could read St. Augustine’s Confessions and discuss the book with Father. Father agreed and, as the word got out, 180 students asked to join! Father Grove arranged to get the students one academic credit and found a venue large enough to hold them all. In the following semester, the fall of 2024, there were 450! (Mary Kinney, “’Theology Helps Provide the Words’: Rev. Kevin Grove, C.S.C., Teaches Students How to Engage Meaningfully,” Latest News, College of Arts and Letters, Nov. 27, 2024.) This initiative now has the name “Take a Second Look.”

The same article by Ms. Kinney provides additional marvelous details:

Fr. Grove was inspired by Gary Anderson, the Hesburgh Professor of Catholic Thought, to take students on a journey through the Bible that makes the text fresh and new. One way he accomplishes this is by showcasing art, music, and architecture, then relating it to theology.

And to make the large class feel more personal, Fr. Grove assigns seats so students sit with others who live in their residence hall...[This] helps conversations about theology go beyond the classroom, including in weekly discussion sessions led in residence halls by students who have taken the course previously.

As a way of ensuring the discussion groups were actually happening, Fr. Grove requires them to submit a photo of their meetings. One week, inspired by Fr. Grove’s ability to relate theology to art, the women of Pasquerilla East Hall sent a photo of their group recreating Michaelangelo's Expulsion from the Garden of Eden. [And students from Dunne Hall recreated Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper. (Photo provided with the article.)]** *

When submitting their spiritual autobiography at the end of the semester, students had the option of including their mailing address, so Fr. Grove could write and send a response to their reflection. He thought only a few would take him up on the offer — but he spent most of the summer hand-writing hundreds of letters in reply.

“It was a life-changing experience, because it gave me a view into the church and young people today,” he said. “They were strikingly honest, and it’s always really edifying to me how our students are willing to think critically and beautifully about the spiritual part of their lives — and how theology can help give them the tools to do that.”

Now the Department of Theology has expanded its offerings in the current semester with a one-credit course on Graham Greene and one on C.S. Lewis. To entice the students further, the Department allows three one-credit courses to be combined into a three-credit elective to help fulfill any requirements of all students, including those majoring or minoring in theology.

Theology at Notre Dame

Last May, John C. Cavadini, Professor of Theology at Notre Dame since 1990, chair of the department 1997-2010, and director of Notre Dame’s McGrath Institute on Church Life since 2000, wrote a thoughtful piece with six rules on the question of why Notre Dame’s Department of Theology is thriving. (“Notre Dame Theology: 6 Easy Rules for Achieving a Top Ranking,” Church Life J., May 19, 2025) He bluntly writes that the first rule is “Don’t seek rankings. Don’t value rankings.” The second rule is “Seek truth, not rankings.” Here are some excerpts:

Our Department has a flourishing culture of undergraduate theology. [The students] are drawn by the encounter with mentors who show them the beauty and intellectual coherence of the faith and so also the beauty and coherence of the lives it invites us to lead...

These kinds of courses persuasively invite students to “take a second look,” as it were, at the faith of the Church, something they thought they had outgrown, left behind, or never paid much attention to in the first place. They release students from caricatured versions of the mysteries of the faith that they often unknowingly harbor, wholly unattractive banalities that they mistake, through no fault of their own, for what the Tradition actually teaches...They respond with gratitude for the gift of something they had been looking for but did not know they were looking for.

***

Courses [at other colleges] which take a pervasively deconstructive approach to the Tradition seem to tell students, there is nothing much here to take a second look at...Such courses deliver the message, intended or not, that there is no ideal, invitation, or meaning in revelation worth giving yourself to, no “pearl of great price” worth selling all that you have to buy it, or at least, worth minoring in, let alone majoring...

Conclusion

The Irish Rover reported last fall that student tour guides downplay the Catholic nature of Notre Dame. (Lucy Spence and Clare DiFranco, “Notre Dame Admissions: Covering Up Catholicism?” Nov. 5, 2025) The guides do high school students and their parents a disservice when they badly answer questions about Catholicism and theology classes. The guides should be unembarrassed about stating the truth, namely, few incoming students plan on majoring in theology, maybe few expect much from the two required theology classes, but they find these classes so substantive, so deeply enriching, that they voluntarily seek to take more such courses and that 900 are majoring or minoring in theology and many others are taking more than the required two courses.

Professor Pagliarini says no other Catholic college in the United States has as great a percentage of its students studying theology. These students resoundingly agree with the future Pope’s 1977 words “This is not a city of people who belong to no one...This is a city of the children of God...” and with the people’s 1979 chant “We want God!” Dear readers, this is shockingly good news coming out of Notre Dame. “Let us rejoice and be glad!” (Ps. 118:24)