The Observer

Issue date: 10/11/06 Section: News

Editor's Note: This is the second story in a three-part series examining the role of Catholic faculty at Notre Dame.



While University President Father John Jenkins announced two weeks ago the creation of a new office to recruit Catholic faculty members, that drive is nothing new to a school so deeply rooted in its religious identity.

After all, when Father Edward Sorin founded Notre Dame more than 150 years ago, he dreamed it would become a great American Catholic university.

So this year's more aggressive approach to bumping up the continually slipping percentage of faculty members who are Catholic - now just under 54 percent - is not a redefinition, but a "re-articulation" of the goals of the University, said Vice President and Associate Provost Jean Ann Linney.

"Across the University there is attention now - but it's not that it wasn't there in the past - but more heightened [attention] perhaps, as to who we're hiring and whether they are Catholic or not," Linney said.

That attention was certainly present during the tenure of University President Emeritus Father Edward Malloy, who was involved in crafting a part of Notre Dame's mission statement directly tied to faculty recruitment: "The Catholic identity of the University depends upon, and is nurtured by, the continuing presence of a predominant number of Catholic intellectuals."

"[A predominant number] refers to both more than 50 percent and not simply being satisfied with 50 percent," Malloy said. "It's an effort, without specifying a specific number, to take seriously that numbers and percentages make a difference."

Malloy said he and University President Emeritus Father Theodore Hesburgh believed, as Jenkins does now, that the presence of Catholic faculty makes an important contribution to the University.

Internal, external aspirations

In 2003, Malloy and other leaders of the University drafted a strategic plan called "Notre Dame 2010: Fulfilling the Promise," which described Notre Dame's commitment to become a premier university while simultaneously maintaining its Catholic identity.

The agenda - which was approved by the Board of Trustees in 2004 - outlined ways for Notre Dame to remain "the premier center of Catholic intellectual life" and promoted the recruitment of both Catholic intellectuals and non-Catholics who can contribute to broad conversation. The University must "recruit aggressively" to bring Catholic scholars to Notre Dame, the document said.

Continued...

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