FATHER HESBURGH OF NOTRE DAME:
ATTEMPTING TO MAKE A GREAT CATHOLIC
UNIVERSITY
WHILE RIDING THE TIGER
by James M. Thunder*
*The author is a Washington,
D.C., attorney. He double-majored in theology and government at Notre Dame. He
has written articles online severely critical of the Catholic nature of Notre
Dame’s current president.
We shall always hope to find
them [newly-free
countries] strongly supporting their own
freedom--and to remember that, in the past, those who foolishly sought power by
riding the back of the tiger ended up inside.
President John F. Kennedy’s
Inaugural Address, 1961
Fr. Hesburgh rode
the back of the tiger. Did he end up inside? Father Wilson D. (“Bill”) Miscamble
has authored the 400-page biography, American
Priest: The Ambitious Life and Conflicted Legacy of Notre Dame’s Father Ted Fr.
Hesburgh (Image) that answers this question in the affirmative.
