Notre Dame Professor . . . Forced To Leave Project Aimed At Faithful Catholic Education

8 years ago

By JUSTIN PETRISEK

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In an unexpected turn of events, University of Notre Dame professor Fr. Bill Miscamble, CSC, has been forced to disassociate himself with a new project recommending Notre Dame professors supportive of the university’s Catholic identity and mission, an unfortunate development which reflects poorly on the university, William Dempsey, chairman of the Notre Dame alumni group Sycamore Trust, told The Cardinal Newman Society.

Earlier in November, Fr. Miscamble helped unveil NDCatholic.com, a website which gives detailed recommendations to students who are seeking an authentic Catholic education during their time at Notre Dame.

The website currently features profiles of approximately 100 faculty in the College of Arts and Letters, but as of the past week will no longer feature contributions from Fr. Miscamble, a respected and tenured professor of history at Notre Dame.

“The radical reduction in Catholic representation on the Notre Dame faculty makes this resource so important to students who want an authentic Catholic education,” Dempsey explained, noting how the circumstances reflect badly on the university.

“The university’s own requirement is a majority of committed Catholics on the faculty, and today’s faculty comes nowhere close. This is the cost of the decades-long drive of the university to match its secular ‘peers’ in the world of U.S. News & World Report rankings,” he said.

“The result is that the odds are against a student’s getting an authentic Catholic education without choosing teachers with care.”

The notion that Fr. Miscamble has been forced out of such a positive project is “most unfortunate for the university,” Dempsey said, and it gives further proof to critics who claim a Catholic institution cannot be an authentic university because its faculty does not enjoy full academic freedom.

It is still uncertain who ultimately asked Fr. Miscamble to remove himself from the project. The Newman Society reached out to the university for comment, but no response was received by time of publication.

According to initial reports, he is unable to explain why he was forced to leave a project that aims to encourage and highlight strong support for the university’s Catholic identity and mission.

“I regret that I can say only that I am required to end my involvement with the NDCatholic site and am not at liberty to say why,” Fr. Miscamble reportedly told Sycamore Trust.

However, the facts of the situation remain straightforward.

On November 9, the NDCatholic.com website was launched to aid students seeking a faithful Catholic education with the decreasing presence of faithful Catholic faculty and regular requests from students a key impetus for the project. Each NDCatholic faculty profile included the professor’s areas of research, teaching style, and a brief description of their contribution to the university and its Catholic identity.

“[M]ost importantly, Catholic teachers must constitute the majority within an institution in order for that institution to meaningfully inform all its endeavors with Catholic witness,” the website emphasized, citing Ex Corde Ecclesiae, the Church’s constitution on Catholic higher education issued by St. John Paul II in 1990.

Unfortunately, only 25 to 30 percent of the faculty fit this description, according to the Sycamore Trust’s announcement of Fr. Miscamble’s disassociation. The group plans to release detailed information on the faculty percentages in an upcoming bulletin.

Just one day after the release, Fr. Miscamble was reportedly contacted and told to disassociate himself from the website.

The Sycamore Trust soon after asked Fr. Miscamble why and expressed its concern that it would “‘reflect adversely on the university’ in the absence of a persuasive explanation,” but Fr. Miscamble was unable to explain further and simply stated that he was “required to end [his] involvement with the NDCatholic site.”

Fr. Miscamble’s welcome video, introductory comments, name, and other contributions have been removed from the website.

“I want to encourage serious Catholic students to attend Notre Dame. But they should come here with a clear-headed recognition that they must be very intentional in choosing their teachers and courses,” Fr. Miscamble told the Newman Society after the website was first launched.

“If they do so, they will find an education that allows them to face deep questions of meaning and serves to deepen and enrich their Catholic faith.”

“I realized that there were so many excellent faculty here but that students needed some guidance in finding them and selecting the right courses to take,” Fr. Miscamble said previously, noting the many students and parents who requested personal recommendations over the years.

“NDCatholic is the result of my desire to assist students.”

The initial response from students and news outlets has been immensely positive, Dempsey told the Newman Society, adding that the website crashed due to heavy traffic and demand on its first day. He also confirmed that the website will continue and plans for expansion are in the works.

Even in the midst of this unfortunate incident, there is still good news, Dempsey said.

“There are a lot of these Notre Dame students who want a Catholic education and a lot of parents to want them to have it,” he said, noting that while they may be in the minority there is still an excellent core of Catholic faculty.

Although Fr. Miscamble will be absent from the project, the resource will remain available to any and all students seeking a truly authentic Catholic education at Notre Dame.

“For our part, we deeply regret this development, which we think a disservice to students and parents and, indeed, to the university,” the Sycamore Trust stated.

“Even though Fr. Miscamble must withdraw, we will build upon what he has given us in continuing this project. All who treasure Notre Dame as a place where young men and women can be inspired through teachers steeped in the riches of the Catholic intellectual tradition are in debt to Fr. Miscamble.”