An interview with the President of Notre Dame

An interesting piece in the weekend edition of the Wall Street Journal. You may have to hit the link a couple of times before the feature comes up.

Catholicism, Inc. Commentary: The Weekend Interview – WSJ.com

The interview starts with an oddball quote from the Rev. John Jenkins, President of the University, referring to Pope Benedict:

"He is a person who could easily hold an endowed chair at Notre Dame."

Sounds a bit arrogant to me, but perhaps taken out of context.

On the subject of arrogance, in the early nineties Brigid and I were in the television audience for a special on ABC. The then Chairman of the Nootre Dame Theology Department, Rev. Richard McBrien, was part of a panel on the show, and he exuded arrogance and pomposity.

Here’s another interesting section:

The students are probably the most religious part of Notre Dame. They live in single-sex dorms, attend mass frequently, protest abortion on campus and in Washington, etc. Despite – or perhaps because of – the fact that a greater percentage of the students have not attended Catholic school or grown up in a mostly Catholic community, Father Jenkins sees among them "a kind of yearning for tradition."

That younger Catholics tend to be among the more conservative ones is not the only demographic shift going on in the church. According to a recent Pew study, one third of native-born Americans who were raised Catholic have left the church. But the Catholic population has remained steady due largely to an influx of Hispanic immigrants. And those immigrants look to be the future of the church.

Latinos, who tend to go to more conservative churches, account for almost half of Catholics under 40. This shift, too, is evident at Notre Dame, where the Hispanic population has grown by 50% in the last 10 years. (Today almost one in 10 students is Hispanic.) Our Lady of Guadalupe observance has become one of the more popular campus celebrations.