The College Fix

Kathryn Jean Lopez reports for NRO on a recent visit to Rome by a delegation of leaders from the University of Notre Dame. The Pope challenged leaders of the university to remain faithful to church teaching.

Critics say Notre Dame, which is a Roman-Catholic institution, has drifted away from church teaching in order to embrace a more secular and liberal ideology.

Student Michael Bradley wrote for The College Fix last year:

“Over my past three years here, I’ve observed that beneath the Catholic trappings of campus, disconcerting trends indicate a deeply flawed aspiration: the desire to be the best of two worlds, secular and Catholic…

The tension… was on full display in fall of 2009, when the university chose to honor President Obama with an honorary degree against the explicit instruction of the local bishop (and more than 80 other American bishops as well)…”

Notre Dame also launched a “gay-friendly campus” initiative last year, causing increasing concern among faithful Catholic, who fear that Notre Dame is following in the path of some other prominent Catholic schools, such as Georgetown, which has largely jettisoned its mission to remain faithful to Catholic teaching in favor of a more liberal secularist agenda.

Lopez asked several members of the Notre Dame faculty to comment on the Pope’s recent remarks to Notre Dame leaders. Among them, was Patrick Deneen, a political science professor who left Georgetown in order to teach at Notre Dame, largely because he hoped Notre Dame would remain truer to church teaching. Deneen has this to say:

I think all of us at Notre Dame are deeply grateful and gratified for the encouraging and hopeful words of Pope Francis in his praise of the contributions of Our Lady’s University to the Church in America and the critical role it has to play in the new evangelization. But we should also recognize the challenge he lays down to us, in what he recognizes to be “the changed circumstances of the twenty-first century.” There are at least two main challenges that we keenly experience on this campus and as a Church as a whole. First, there has been the discernible change of an increasingly secular governing elite that has become emboldened in a frontal challenge against the Church’s witness and teachings. On the same day that Pope Francis’s statement was publicized, members of the university community were given notice that we would be receiving new health ID cards for “women’s preventive services.” While Notre Dame has admirably fought the HHS Mandate in the courts — and was handed down a highly dubious refusal for a stay by Judge Philip Simon of the Seventh Circuit — the university also decided to comply with the Mandate and even officially adopted the deceptive language of “women’s preventive services” in their official missive, contrary to the statements of the Bishops who have decried this misleading euphemism. Pope Francis quite clearly recognizes this profound challenge to Catholic institutions such as Notre Dame, and calls upon us to “continue to offer unambiguous testimony…, especially in the face of efforts, from whatever quarter, to dilute that indispensable witness.”

Read more of Lopez’s coverage of the Pope’s remarks to Notre Dame leaders here, and read more faculty reactions here.

By the way, did you know that Pope Francis is on the cover of this month’s Rolling Stone?

I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or not. But it is remarkable-that’s certain.

While many secular liberals have praised Francis’s language of love and compassion–and rightfully so. My own guess is that many of them interpret his words as a hint that the Catholic church is softening its attitude toward sin.

I’m observing all of this as a protestant Christian myself–admittedly outside the immediate circle of debate. But from what I’ve read of the Pope’s remarks, including his contorversial comments on abortion and homosexuality last summer, I don’t think changing the definition of sin is Francis’s agenda at all. Rather, it seems he wants to strike a more loving and engaging tone, inviting sinners into the church, without actually altering the church’s teaching on these issues.

In that sense, I don’t think Rolling Stone, or liberal academic leaders are likely to get the so-called “modernization” they want from Francis.

Time will tell.

(Image: CasaRosada.WMC)

Nathan Harden is editor of The College Fix and author of the book SEX & GOD AT YALE: Porn, Political Correctness, and a Good Education Gone Bad.

Follow Nathan on Twitter @NathanHarden

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