Catholic teaching has nothing to fear from engaging the wider culture, but we all have something to fear if the wider culture never engages Catholic teaching. That is why the Catholic tradition must not only inspire our worship and our service on campus; it should help shape the intellectual life of the university. Our goal is not to limit discussion or inquiry, but to enrich it; it is not to insulate that faith tradition from criticism, but to foster constructive engagement with critics.Through the various bits and pieces of rhetoric and such in his response, my first impression was that the president knew exactly what decision he wanted to make (keep whatever secular media and non-Catholic viewpoints in the campus setting, but get just as loud and broad with a counter presentation that shows the Catholic doctrine) and took this opportunity to galvanize the campus into such an action on their own without a top-down "you will do this or else" approach. Maybe that's giving him too much credit or making him sound Machiavellian, I don't know.
It's just good to be proud of my alma mater and be reassured that it is a place where I would be happy to send Drew to not only get an excellent education but also to learn more about his faith. Not to assume he'll either want to go to Notre Dame or that he'll necessarily care a snit about Catholicism at that or any point in his life. I'm not ever going to be one of those "Momma was a Domer, and so you will be" alums, and I hope he actively questions his faith before he gets to college age. And this all assumes that Notre Dame would even want the son of a lowly genre writer whose novels contain, to use a Simpsons euphemism, "adult situations."
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