Notre Dame

Can 'orthodox' colleges and universities survive clashes with the Sexual Revolution?

Can 'orthodox' colleges and universities survive clashes with the Sexual Revolution?

As America's second-oldest Lutheran college, Roanoke College in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley proclaims that it is "never sectarian" in outlook, while maintaining that "critical thinking and spiritual growth" are essential.

The online spiritual-life page also offers this advice: "We encourage you to follow your own personal spiritual path while here at Roanoke." The collage "honors its Christian heritage" and its affiliation with the progressive Evangelical Lutheran Church in America by stressing "dialogue between faith and reason," according to its "Mission & Vision" statement. "Diversity, inclusion and belonging" are strategic goals.

These commitments are "so informal that it's hard to call them doctrinal commitments at all," said Robert Benne, a retired Roanoke College professor who founded its Benne Center for Church and Society. "This is what you see in many Christian colleges. … These vague commitments go along with efforts to embrace whatever is happening in modern culture."

This isn't unusual, he stressed, after studying trends in Christian higher education for decades. In the post-pandemic marketplace, an increasing number of small private schools -- religious and secular -- face economic and enrollment challenges that threaten their futures.

Leaders of many Christian colleges and universities face a painful question as they try to stay alive: When seeking students and donors, should administrators strengthen ties to denominations or movements that built their schools or weaken the ties that bind in order to reach outsiders and even secular students?

If the goal is to remain committed to traditional Christianity doctrines -- in classrooms and campus life -- academic leaders need to take specific steps to build academic communities that can survive and thrive, said Benne, in a new essay for the interfaith journal First Things.

Any "serious Christian school" has to "have an explicit, orthodox Christian mission and it has to hire administrators, faculty, and staff for that mission," he wrote. "It has to have a fully informed and committed board that insists on those things happening. Without that there will be a slow accommodation to secular, elite culture. Indeed, if a college or university has swallowed that ideology whole, orthodox Christianity will move out as it moves in."


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Thinking just a little bit about Jimmy Buffett, the laid back Catholic troubadour?

Thinking just a little bit about Jimmy Buffett, the laid back Catholic troubadour?

I wrote this short “think piece” just before heading out the door on a trip to our old stomping grounds in South Florida.

The timing is a coincidence, with zero connections to some follow-up reflections on my recent post — “New York Times offers flashback to sacraments offered by the priest of the Parrotheads” — about some religion “ghosts” linked to coverage of the late singer-songwriter Jimmy Buffett.

I had no idea that there would be some Catholic-press coverage pointing to some faith-centered threads in his music. Hold that thought. Here is a small chunk of my GetReligion post noting the Big Idea in the Times story:

The basic idea is that the singer-songwriter was a kind of guru-priest who was looking at the humdrum lives being lived by millions of Americans. He saw this and, looking out from the center microphone on stage during his never-ending tours, he had compassion on them.

After all, he had seen this relationship before. When fans sang along in the crowd, it created, as noted in the Times feature, a “unified hum, reminding Mr. Buffett of the recitation of prayers in church during his altar boy days.”

Was there more to the theological content of Buffett’s lyrics than that? The Catholic News Agency offered a feature with the headline, “Jimmy Buffett: more Catholic than you think?”

While admitting that there was little overt Catholic content in the singer’s public life and remarks, this new piece dug back to earlier interpretive work by Stephen M. Metzger, writing for the Church Life Journal at Notre Dame University.

“[I]t is clear that Catholicism left an indelible mark on his imagination,” wrote Stephen M. Metzger, a scriptor (cataloguer of Latin manuscripts) and graduate of the University of Notre Dames Medieval Institute. … Buffett attended St. Ignatius Catholic School and went on to graduate from McGill-Toolen Catholic High School, which remains the most prominent Catholic high school in Mobile, Alabama. 

Metzger said evidence of Buffett’s Catholic upbringing shone through in his work, even if his songs weren’t explicitly Catholic.


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Sports, passion, faith: The ties that bind are always there, even if journalists miss them

Sports, passion, faith: The ties that bind are always there, even if journalists miss them

Sports, in so many ways, are almost like a religion for many people. Like religion, sports can convey important lessons about culture and values. From the times of the Ancient Greeks, athletes were sometimes accorded the status of gods.

Not much has changed since ancient times. Modern society has given god-like status to many athletes. Lebron James, Tiger Woods and Lionel Messi are just three athletes who garner such adulation on a global scale.

The question here at GetReligion is how this relationship shows up in news stories about sports, especially stories in which religious faith is — according to the athletes themselves — a key element in their lives and their success.

A new book by Randall Balmer, a historian who holds the John Phillips Chair in Religion at Dartmouth University, called “Passion Plays: How Religion Shaped Sports in North America” (University of North Carolina Press) explores the relationship between sports and religion. It will be available starting Sept. 20. For journalists and news readers, this book can be a door into some important topics in the news.

Balmer is an academic, not a journalist. Yet, he is on to something here -- something most sports writers miss altogether when they cover games or write player features. This is a book about subjects that religion-beat pros need to consider, since so few sports pros appear willing to do so.

GetReligion hasn't shied away from sports in the past and how it often intersects with faith and religion, as seen in this Google search for “GetReligion,” “sports” and “ghosts.”

For years, GetReligion has noted God-sized gaps in sports stories. We refer to these holes as "holy ghosts." Consider the titles of these posts: “Tragic death of NBA coach's wife Ingrid Williams and a missing element in the news,” “God credited with shrinking figure skater's brain tumor, but otherwise terrific story haunted by ghost” and “Haunted house Olympics: How many of the faith-driven stories did you see in Rio coverage?

Balmer writes in the introduction that the book “examines how the history of religion across North America connects in fascinating ways to the emergence of modern team sports.” He also argues, very persuasively, that modern sports have “evolved into a phenomenon that generates at least as much passion as traditional religion.”

I can relate to Balmer’s general argument.


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Five big Catholic news angles that journalists will need to cover during 2022

Five big Catholic news angles that journalists will need to cover during 2022

As 2021 comes to a close, everyone is looking towards 2022. The news cycle over the last two years has been dominated by COVID-19 and that doesn’t seem to be subsiding — given the rash of infections the past few weeks as a result of the Omicron variant.

The Catholic world, meanwhile, had in 2021 one of its busiest years. The election of Joe Biden as president — this January will officially mark his first year in office — also dominated news coverage. That Biden was also a Catholic (only second after John F. Kennedy in 1960) thrust Catholicism into the political news coverage. Politics plus religion equals news. It’s a familiar formula.

Biden, a practicing Catholic who attends Mass on Sundays, was at odds this year with many U.S. bishops — setting up a year-long debate over whether he (and other pro-abortion politicians) should receive Holy Communion. In the end, the bishops offered more clarification in the importance of the Eucharist without singling out Biden. Truth is, no one knows if the bishops actually considered mentioning Biden or other pro-abortion-rights Catholics.

Issues around politics and religion will likely dominate once again in 2022. The abortion issue and a pending Supreme Court decision regarding access to it will be a big story in the coming year. The Catholic church, a major part of the abortion debate in this country for decades, will play a major role in news stories that will be written over the coming months.

At the same time, Pope Francis, who recently turned 85, will again be surrounded by rumors that he will either resign or die. Whether this pope — the most polarizing in centuries — can chip away at his agenda to change the church in the 21st century will continue to pit traditionalists versus progressives.

Here are the five big news trends and stories journalists need to keep an eye on in the new year:

(5) Pope Francis and his focus on a progressive agenda

This coming year could be the one where the battle between this pontiff and doctrinal traditionalists intensifies even further. A Dec. 17 Associated Press story set the stage for such a confrontation in what will be Francis’ ninth year as head of the Catholic church.


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Notre Dame's 'woke' rebuild plan: Why the glaring lack of mainstream news coverage?

Notre Dame's 'woke' rebuild plan: Why the glaring lack of mainstream news coverage?

Before the pandemic dominated the news cycle starting in 2020 (and continues to do so), the fire that ravaged Notre Dame in Paris in 2019 was among that year’s biggest stories.

Over the Thanksgiving weekend, the famed cathedral was once again catapulted into the news cycle — despite it being a busy few days thanks largely to the Omicron coronavirus variant — after The Telegraph, based in London, reported a scoop under the headline “Notre Dame interior faces ‘woke’ Disney revamp.”

What followed was an amazing lack of mainstream news coverage.

Here’s how the Telegraph story (behind a paywall) opened. The following is a meaty excerpt since so many of you do not have a subscription to the British newspaper:

Paris’ fire-ravaged Notre-Dame cathedral risks resembling a “politically correct Disneyland” under controversial plans for its renovation seen by the Daily Telegraph.

Critics have warned that the world-famous cathedral will be turned into an “experimental showroom” under plans to dramatically change the inside of the medieval building.

Under the proposed changes, confessional boxes, altars and classical sculptures will be replaced with modern art murals, and new sound and light effects to create “emotional spaces”.

There will be themed chapels on a “discovery trail”, with an emphasis on Africa and Asia, while quotes from the Bible will be projected onto chapel walls in various languages, including Mandarin.

The final chapel on the trail will have a strong environmental emphasis.

“It’s as if Disney were entering Notre-Dame,” said Maurice Culot, a prize-winning Paris-based architect, urbanist, theorist and critic who has seen the plans.

“What they are proposing to do to Notre-Dame would never be done to Westminster Abbey or Saint Peter’s in Rome. It’s a kind of theme park and very childish and trivial given the grandeur of the place,” he told The Telegraph.


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Mainstream press shrugs at Biden's Notre Dame snub for upcoming graduation rite

Mainstream press shrugs at Biden's Notre Dame snub for upcoming graduation rite

This is the time of year where college graduations dominate the lives of many Americans. A year after these ceremonies were relegated to Zoom because of the pandemic, graduations are back this spring, with masks and social distancing in place, to again signal the sending off to undergraduates into the workplace.

For journalists, graduations have long served as an easy news stories. Above all, the graduation speaker is what makes these ceremonies news. At that vast majority of rites at elite and state schools the speaker is — to one degree or another — a cultural or political liberal.

Thus, is it any surprise that the ongoing tug-of-war between the U.S. bishops and President Joe Biden has spilled over into the graduation season? Well, it has in the form of the president not addressing graduates at the University of Notre Dame this year.

This news story was broken by Catholic News Agency. Here’s how the May 11 news story opened:

In a break with recent tradition, President Joe Biden will not be delivering the commencement address at the University of Notre Dame this year – although he was invited by the university to do so.

On Tuesday, the university announced that its May 23 commencement speaker will be Jimmy Dunne, a finance executive and trustee of the university. During the last three presidential administrations, U.S. presidents or vice presidents have addressed the university's commencement in their first year in office, but that trend will not continue in 2021.

Although a university spokesman told CNA that, as a policy, “we do not discuss who may or may not have been approached to address our graduates,” sources from the White House confirmed to CNA that Biden had indeed been invited by the university but could not attend due to scheduling.

Biden, just the second Catholic president since John F. Kennedy in 1960, has not been shy about mentioning his faith in public.

While he’s attended Mass regularly on Sundays, Biden supports taxpayer-funded abortion in defiance of the U.S. bishops’ conference and, as vice president, he performed two same-sex marriage rites. The Biden administration has also started to roll back restrictions on public funding of abortion providers, has supported the expansion of LGBTQ rights and continues to wage a legal battle to keep a mandate in place for doctors to provide gender-transition surgeries.


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Brace for SCOTUS wars: Three big questions people keep asking about Amy Coney Barrett's faith

It’s been two weeks since President Donald Trump officially nominated Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court. Right on cue, Barrett’s Catholic faith and religious life became the focal point of news coverage, particularly by the secular press.

What has ensued is an exercise among journalists — particularly in elite newsrooms — to question Barrett’s fitness for the lifetime position, particularly because of her religious beliefs.

For many people in elite zip codes, this is life-and-death territory, since Barrett would give the Supreme Court a solid 6-3 conservative majority on some issues.

The nomination — taking place just weeks before the Nov. 3 presidential election — has already triggered a nasty tug-of-war between Republicans and Democrats. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has pledged to hold a vote, leaving Democrats with very few options to halt it. In retaliation, Democrats have threatened to pack the Supreme Court with as many as 15 members (from the current nine) should Joe Biden win the race and his party gain a Senate majority in 2021.

Barrett, 48, currently serves on the Seventh Circuit in Chicago, a position she attained after being nominated to the bench by Trump. Barrett, who also teaches at Notre Dame Law School, was one of Trump’s finalists for the Supreme Court two years ago, but he instead went with Brett Kavanaugh.

As Election Day draws near in an atmosphere of near chaos, both the Trump and Biden campaigns have made appeals to communities of faith — particularly Catholic voters in the Rust Belt states of Ohio and Pennsylvania — by highlighting issues they believe resonate with them. In Pennsylvania, Biden has seen his lead widen in recent weeks. It remains a key battleground state with a very large Catholic voting bloc that Trump needs to win.

Overall, Catholics, according to recent polling, favor Biden — but traditional Catholics do plan to join evangelicals and vote for the president. Trump’s pick will certainly serve as an overture to faith voters like evangelicals and a segment of white Catholics who tend to be politically conservative.

With religion so crucial to this campaign season, here are three things you need to know about Barrett’s faith:


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Speaking of people being praised: New York Times offered solid, old-school story about Barrett

Guess what? Judge Amy Coney Barrett is being considered, once again, for an open chair at the Supreme Court, the only branch of the United States government that seems to matter in this tense and divided land.

The odds are good that you have read about this development in the national press or even in the few remaining pages of your local newspaper.

We all know what this means, in terms of press coverage. Many of the same reporters who are perfectly comfortable calling Joe Biden a “devout” Catholic — while his actions clash with church doctrines on marriage and sex — are going to spill oceans of digital ink warning readers about the dangerous dogmas that dwell loudly in the heart and mind of Barrett. I am following all of that in social media and elsewhere.

However, let me start these discussions with a post that might surprise many readers. I would like to praise the recent New York Times story that ran with this headline: “To Conservatives, Barrett Has ‘Perfect Combination’ of Attributes for Supreme Court.” Also, I think it was wise to have a religion-beat professional take part in reporting and writing this story.

I am sure that combatants on both sides of this debate will find some sections in this story rather troubling. But here is the key point I want to make: Unlike many Times stories in recent years, almost all of this material comes from qualified sources (left and right) whose names are attached to their opinions and the information they provided. There are attribution clauses all over the place, just like in Times of old.

Near the top there is this short summary:

“She is the perfect combination of brilliant jurist and a woman who brings the argument to the court that is potentially the contrary to the views of the sitting women justices,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, the president of the Susan B. Anthony List, an anti-abortion political group, who has praised Mr. Trump’s entire shortlist.

The nomination of a judge whom Mr. Trump was quoted last year as “saving” to be Justice Ginsburg’s replacement would almost surely plunge the nation into a bitter and divisive debate over the future of abortion rights, made even more pointed because Judge Barrett would replace a justice who was an unequivocal supporter of those rights. That is a debate Mr. Trump has not shied away from as president, as his judicial appointments and efforts to court conservatives have repeatedly shown.

As you would expect, Barrett’s critics are given plenty of space to respond — which is totally appropriate. It is also good that these voices are clearly identified, along with information about their organizations.

In other words, the story contains evidence of debate on a serious topic in the news.


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