Theodore Hesburgh presiding over the Protestant-Masonic rite falsely known as the Catholic Mass.

DON VINCENZO writes:

After a long life, the Rev. Theodore Hesburgh died on Feb. 26; he was 97. From 1952 through 1987, Fr. Hesburgh, a member of the Congregation of the Sacred Cross, served as President of Notre Dame University, whose football heroics once garnered the name “the Fighting Irish,” although the number of Hibernian Americans on the team was small and increasingly smaller with each year. After leaving as head of the university, he still exercised a great influence not only on Notre Dame, but on the path other Catholic universities and colleges would follow.  In short, although he would probably object to the title, Fr. Hesburgh became something of an icon to many in the Church. Whether or not that sobriquet is deserved I cannot say, but what can be said beyond cavil was that in seeking to change Notre Dame, he reflects the post Vatican II clerical mindset: the Church must be brought up to date; the Church and its institutions of higher learning must be modernized.

Among those “modern” changes that Fr. Hesburgh sought to bring about was giving more power to the laity at the expense of the Church’s hierarchy in running his university, and also included his dream of creating “a Catholic Princeton in northern Indiana.” In 1972, he admitted women into the university, claiming their presence, “…brought a good measure of gentility” to the university. And not to be behind the social or political curve, he eagerly accepted his position on the Civil Rights Commission as a means of carrying out the Church’s newly found requirement from Vatican II that its clerics engage in achieving “social justice.” True to form, shortly after his arrival, the Commission took up the question of the suppression of the Black vote. The good Padre was awarded not only the Presidential Medal of Freedom, but the Congressional Gold Medal as well. And yet, despite all of the listed achievements, what happened to his beloved Notre Dame University in the process?

And who could forget the university’s willingness to have “The Vagina Monologues” performed on campus? So, Fr. Hesburgh was quite prescient: he had, knowing it or not, instituted a Princeton at Notre Dame, give or take a few thousand per year in tuition.

Is it unfair to say that in the process of “modernizing” Notre Dame, Fr. Hesburgh actually aided and abetted the destruction of the school’s “Catholic” identity? Clerks of U.S. Supreme Court Justices generally can pick where they wish to teach, if teach they wish, after leaving serving in that position. It is not a well kept secret that the clerks of Justice Scalia are exempt from that selection. Why? A great many of the current Notre Dame law school faculty think Scalia’s innate Catholic conservatism is anathema, to coin a phrase. A clerk of Justice Ginsburg would have, I suspect, a greater chance of obtaining a teaching position at the “Catholic” University of Notre Dame.

And what of Fr. Hesburgh’s successor, Fr. John Jenkins? Has he continued to follow up on Fr. Heburgh’s advice and lead.

In 2009, Fr. Jenkins despite howls of protest from Catholic throughout the country, invited the most anti-Catholic and pro-abortion president in US history, Barack Hussein Obama, to give the commencement address. Fr. Jenkins invited the president back again three years later in a debate with the GOP presidential candidate. If one were to read the press release of the university in explaining the invitations, one might come to the conclusion that Fr. Hesburgh’s goal was achieved: there is a “Princeton” in northern Indiana, but there is no longer a Catholic university.

I have no doubt that the death of Fr. Hesburgh was a blow to the university’s officialdom and student body, amongst whom he maintained contact in his later years. I have no doubt that amongst the more “Progressive” members of the Church that Fr. Hesburgh’s example is one to be followed. Yet, in the process of achieving a transformation of the school that he sought, few observed that the original reason for the founding of Notre Dame du Lac – Our Lady of the Lake – had been minimalized to a point where it no longer was present. I am very fond of an Italian proverb which is, I believe, applicable here: Whoever forsakes the old way for the new, knows what he is losing but not what he will find.”

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