Is Notre Dame cool?

ddjones007
Tue, 06 Feb 2007 18:57:48 +0000

I don’t mind the rant, nameless, it keeps my mind ticking. You are a young whippersnapper of a Domer who can survive the weather (we just experienced it this past weekend). I’m a middle-aged Domer who needs to keep my brain active with something other than Sudokos. Actually, this is the kind of debate that fascinated me at ND; the kind, in fact, that still does. Difference is that now I realize just how important the issues are that I used to believe were merely hypothetical.

Obviously, different religions have been persecuted over the years in many ways. My personal belief is that I am a Catholic because I was culturally raised to be one. I don’t believe that those who don’t share my faith are destined to hell, or that those who do will be automatically spared from it, or even, in fact, that hell exists. I do believe that there is a common moral underpinning to virtually every organized religion, a set of universal values that guides it. The older I get, the more I see in life, the more I realize that those universal values are far more crucial to the long-term existence of a society than I ever understood when I was your age.

In fact, when I was your age, I was an agnostic in Domerland; a born and bred Catholic with 12 years of Catholic education prior to going to Notre Dame. I’d had enough; enough of rules that didn’t make sense to me, enough of the hypocrisy of those whose patent judgmentalism seemed to defy everything for which Jesus himself appeared to have stood, enough of this lottery of which God is THE God that provides the ticket to heaven.

It wasn’t until the birth of my oldest, now a sophomore at ND, that I was convinced there was a God. Hard to explain until you’ve been there, witnessing new life in your arms, knowing that its existence is explained by something that transcends what mankind and its technology could ever hope to create. In time, I came to realize that hypocrisy and arbitrary rules and the rest of it are all part of the human condition, present in any group whether religious or secular. It was a long process, but I came to understand why Catholicism mattered to me. Rather than sit in the pews and marvel at the audacity of some people who would dare to take communion and act superior when so many of their actions seemed to bely their faith, I realized that the true miracle of the Eucharist was that all of us–myself included–had the faith and hope to be there anyway, making the effort to transcend our human condition.

A few years back, when I was disgusted with the Catholic heirarchy that had so botched the molestation scandals, awash in their own arrogance, I took some very long walks around those same Notre Dame lakes, as I decided whether to remain a Catholic or not. In the end, I was inspired to stay. The Church needs outspoken activists within its ranks, not among the ranks of its former membership. And so I have.

There is not enough space in a message reply, nor time that I would have to write, to explain how I have arrived where I am. Suffice it so say, however, that I have come to believe that spirituality, espoused through many religions, is that guiding hand which leads society to fulfillment. My beef with secularism is it discards the universal moral code common to nearly all religions, replacing it with a relativism that is a prescription not only for chaos, but for the ultimate decay and demise of society. In the end, God makes more sense than any other explanation. Again, this isn’t something I picked up in a weekend seminar or retreat, but rather the products of decades of living. It is said that religion is for those who fear hell, sprituality is for those who have been there. It is through the latter that I came to appreciate and accept the former.

So, yes, when I hear people deriding the genuine practice and adherence to religion as somehow being less “cool” than a secular viewpoint, I am bound to speak out.

For those reading in on this, it is these kind of debates, as stated, that made my experience at Notre Dame most valuable. (It was the Faust era, so it certainly wasn’t the football!)

Suffice it to say, I see Notre Dame as a beacon of courage, retaining its core values and beliefs, embracing its religious identity, at a time when the academic community is prone to frown on religion as the domain of the intellectually inferior. It is in the fine tradition of great Catholic thinkers and philosophers, such as Thomas Aquinas, that ND gives a home to those who believe that intellectualism, enlightenment, and religious faith need not be mutually exclusive.

That’s why I’m thrilled my son is there today, and my daughter will be there next year. The Notre Dame experience is one of those that lasts a lifetime, revealing itself with the stages of life. I can think of no better way to prepare them to be leaders of the next generation.