The Trouble With the Congregation of the Holy Cross

IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT RESPECTING NDCATHOLIC.COM

NOTRE DAME, IN — We are obliged to inform our subscribers that Rev. Wilson D. Miscamble, C.S.C., is no longer associated with the website NDCatholic.com, which we established to house Father's recommendations of Notre Dame faculty whom students could count on for an authentic Catholic education.  The radical reduction of Catholic presence on the Notre Dame faculty makes such information essential. Nevertheless, two days after the inauguration of the website Father sent us this message: "I regret that I can say only that I am required to end my involvement with the NDCatholic site and am not at liberty to say why." 

 In more detail, the facts are these:

On November 9, 2015, we unveiled the NDCatholic.com website, which is designed to assist students seeking a Catholic education at Notre Dame.  They need this sort of help because of the alarming reduction over recent decades in Catholic representation on the faculty.  The faculty no longer comes close to meeting the University's own Mission Statement test of Catholic identity: a majority of committed Catholics on the faculty.  Perhaps 25% to 30% of the faculty fit this description, as we will show again in a coming bulletin using the most recent data available.

The consequences of this steep decline in Catholic faculty have been described in concrete terms by Professor Emeritus Walter Nicgorski, who retired recently after more than forty years as one of Notre Dame's most highly regarded teachers and scholars:

It is increasingly the case today that a young person going through the critical and formative years of a Catholic education at Notre Dame might not encounter a practicing Catholic informed and engaged by the Catholic intellectual tradition.

Father Wilson D. Miscamble, C.S.C., prepared the instructive recommendations of faculty and courses that appear on this website to assist students in making the choices necessary to insure that they receive an authentic Catholic education.  As a long time Notre Dame professor and  a nationally recognized historian who has served as chairman of the History Department and rector of Moreau Seminary, Father Miscamble was admirably suited to this task.  

Father Miscamble

So why did Father Miscamble give for his disassociation? 

Father responded: "Dear Bill, I regret that I can say only that I am required to end my involvement with the NDCatholic site and am not at liberty to say why. 

 In summary:

UND administrators and CSC superiors determined that Fr. Miscamble was engendering dissension within the UND and CSC communities by agitating for a more demonstrably Catholic UND.