Column Living the faith at Notre Dame
By TARA DIX
On the path to the Grotto of Our
Lady of Lourdes on the Notre Dame campus, theres a statue of Thomas
Dooley, a Notre Dame graduate and a famous physician active in the care of
refugees in Vietnam in the 1950s. Hes portrayed holding two small
children by the hand. Beneath the statue is a bronzed copy of a December 1960
letter he wrote from Hong Kong where he lay dying of cancer, which claimed his
life the following month, the day after his 34th birthday. The letter
reads:
How I long for the grotto now. ... And I wonder, do the
students ever truly appreciate what they have while they are there?
Certainly many do not. They may never truly realize the gifts that
surround them at a place like Notre Dame, may never linger in the autumn
afternoon on the quad, thinking that there are many who would surely like to be
in their shoes.
Still, I believe the majority do stop, perhaps every other day, to
give thanks. They take a walk along the lakes or light a candle at the grotto
before a test, a decision, or even a date. They stand among their friends at a
Mass in the dorm on a Sunday night or in the Basilica of the Sacred Heart and
say together, Thanks be to God. Or maybe it is the moment they take
to sit by the statue of the woman at the well and remember that we are all much
like her.
At Notre Dame, we are surrounded by the Holy Spirit. She is
everywhere you look -- crucifixes in every classroom, a chapel in every dorm,
religious statues and artwork everywhere, and Our Lady atop the Dome, visible
from all corners of the campus. The Catholic character of Notre Dame is,
visually speaking, inescapable -- a constant reminder to put things in
perspective, remember whats important and give our daily labors to the
glory of the Lord.
Notre Dame has created an environment where some would say there
is peer pressure to attend Mass, take part in retreats and become
active in community service. In 1998, 10 percent of graduating seniors entered
into volunteer work, a tangible indication that the message is getting
through.
With all the benefits of this strongly spiritual environment,
however, come restrictions and quasi-oppressive policies deemed necessary by
administrative standards to maintain the Catholic character of the
university.
For instance, Notre Dame remains one of the only schools in the
nation not to have coed dorms. At midnight on weekdays and 2 a.m. weekends, all
members of the opposite sex must evacuate the premises or limit their visit to
the designated 24-hour space. In this 24-hour space, certain rules
must be adhered to, as I quickly found out my freshman year when my male
companion and I were thrown out of my dorms 24-hour lounge because he did
not have both feet on the floor. They were up on the table in front of him and
(gasp!) my head was leaning on his shoulder as we watched a movie.
In every way possible, were always dealing with that oddly
Catholic ambiguity about sexuality. A case in point was the banning of rock
star Billy Joel because he sang Only the Good Die Young in direct
violation of the administrations orders during a campus concert
(Come out, Virginia, dont you wait/You Catholic girls start much
too late).
On a more serious level, the rights of gay and lesbian students
are constantly in question. In my four years at Notre Dame, the issue remained
in the headlines every season of every year. A group called Gays and Lesbians
of Notre Dame and Saint Marys was denied official university club status
in 1995, making national news. Most recently, an openly homosexual Holy Cross
priest resigned his faculty position in protest of the universitys
policies and alleged discrimination. In addition, in the spring of 1997, the
university refused to revise its nondiscrimination policy to include gays and
lesbians.
In the past year, students have also had to suffer through the
weekly bombardment of offensive advertisements for a continuing lecture series
promoting conversion therapy, the very suggestion of which was enough to make
most students and faculty sigh in disbelief and disappointment.
Many a time, there was a sadness in my heart over the things I
witnessed, the apparent lack of compassion in these types of policies, and I
and others did our best to change minds.
Still, the bottom line is that it is a unique and blessed
experience for a college student to be surrounded by spirituality on a daily
basis. Fortunately, the education provided by the university, rich in
philosophy, theology and the liberal arts, reminds us always to maintain our
own individual thought. We were taught well enough that we need not accept
everything we hear, to critically analyze and examine the world around us,
including its policies and procedures.
In fact, I believe the most important thing I learned at Notre
Dame is to embody my religion in everything I do, to live as best I can in the
example of Christ, although that will many times run counter to the the status
quo. Thus, as students and graduates, we can still appreciate the Catholicity,
the family of love and the incredible atmosphere of Notre Dame, while choosing
to express Christs love according to the estimations we were taught so
well to develop on our own.
Tara Dix can be reached at taradix@juno.com
National Catholic Reporter, October 30,
1998
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