Rogue Intelligentsia
The Curia on the St. Joe
Above: Basilica of the Sacred Heart and the “Gold Dome,” Notre Dame University, South Bend, Indiana. Photo courtesy of Facebook
The St. Joseph River flows through the states of Indiana and Michigan. It is the only river east of the Mississippi that flows both north-south and east-west. It’s tributaries drain into the Mississippi Basin and the Great Lakes. It’s banks metaphorically bind the Midwest to the Delta. Nestled in the St. Joseph River valley is South Bend, Indiana, home to America’s intellectual “Curia.”
The Basilica of the Sacred Heart at Notre Dame looks as if it were dropped out of St. Peter’s Square, gold flake trim and all (1). There is no school of Continuing Education at Notre Dame. The renamed “Center for Continuing Education” is a conference center convenient to South Bend International Airport and nearby golf courses. The football team does not participate in a NCAA league. Unlike its sports competitors, Notre Dame was not founded as a land grant college. Notre Dame was founded by a religious community, the Congregation of Holy Cross, with land contributed and funded by a host of devout Roman Catholic families.
One can recall Notre Dame is where President Biden was snubbed for his refusal to abet anti-abortion causes — a first for a Catholic President; and from whose bosom ascended a young forty-something lawyer to an ill-gained seat on the US Supreme Court, sixty days before the same President, who blessed her ascendancy, fomented a violent assault on the nation’s Capitol.
The newly ensconced Justice, a devout Roman Catholic, who stayed on at her law school alma mater to teach and join a member-vowing Catholic circle of fundamentalists (2), had once clerked for another Roman Catholic, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. Not lost on Senate Republicans who endorsed her candidacy was this passing of the Judeo-Christian judicial ‘torch’ from one conservative Roman Catholic to another. The current Supreme Court is represented by 6 who claim Roman Catholicism as their religious affiliation (3), outweighing their percentage of American voters by almost 3 to 1. (4)
The story of Justice Amy Coney-Barrett’s ascendancy is told in a recent well-documented piece in the New Yorker (5). Consider by her ascendancy the influence of the group from whence Barrett came — ”People of Praise” and the socio-political culture of the Notre Dame ‘intelligentsia,’ — and with her religio-conservative trajectory the influence on future jurisprudence and America’s moral and political direction.
This is a story of an intellectual tradition within Catholicism ‘bending right,’ a story of an institution retreating from Catholic progressive liberalism to a reductionist ‘coming to terms’ with balancing religious doctrine and inclusion: the church of Catholic progressive activist Dorothy Day and the same Church of the purist-reactionary chosen of Opus Dei.
One can look at Barrett’s extended community of souls, “People of Praise,” as a religious neo-conservative movement challenging the liberal ‘relativism’ of reformist Catholicism and offering little alternative, certainly none that squares with inclusive discipleship. Think more Margaret Atwood (6. “The Handmaid’s Tale”) than Day’s Settlement House Movement. Justice Barrett’s ascendancy marries a quasi religious fundamentalism to the revisionist Scalia-endorsed “originalist” interpretation of the Constitution. (7). As if such a leaning will dominate future court deliberations — witness the recent shameless retreat from Roe vs. Wade — were not bad enough, the ‘future’ is lengthened by Barrett and company’s youth: at least 5 of the 6 Roman Catholics have twenty to thirty odd years ahead of them on the bench.
Most progressive social movements are reactions, not reactionary. (8) Most social movement is a ‘reaction to,’ hence reformist by nature. Think Lutheranism as a reaction to Catholicism. Recall the intellectual underpinnings of America’s eclectic ‘socio-theology:’ a combination of Catholic Suffrage, Protestant Reformation, Calvinism, Pragmatism, Rationalism and Human Exploitation. Think reaction to an orthodoxy and to a hierarchical world view embedded in dynastic and authoritarian rule.
In 1927 Notre Dame students fought the Indiana-harbored, anti-Catholic KKK (9). Ninety years later in 2017 Notre Dame prides itself in welcoming and protecting the “free speech” of white supremacist apologist Charles Murray (“The Bell Curve”).
And in 2017 the same proud Notre Dame intelligentsia applauds the delusions on the matter of freedom proffered by Indiana favorite son, former Vice President Mike Pence.
It is ‘progressive thinking’ in today’s Notre Dame intellectual community to tolerate but not take up the cause of inclusion, of diversity… for its latest alumna practitioner to publicly espouse adoption at the expense of physical and mental health (10)… for its devout to nibble at the edges of orthodoxy while allowing history shredding.
And for its providing campus visitors a platform for the rehearsed promotion of ‘free speech.’ (11)
February 16–18
Footnotes
1-Stained glass windows of the Basilica of the Sacred Heart were done by “the Vatican stain glass artist.” Cf. Wikipedia.
2-https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2020/10/16/catholics-amy-coney-barrett-people-of-praise-anti-catholic/
3-Justices Alito, Thomas, Roberts, Barrett, Sotomayor and Kavanaugh claim Roman Catholicism as their faith; Breyer and Kagan are Jews; Gorsuch, Protestant.
4–25 — 27% of American voters claim Roman Catholicism as their religious affiliation.)
5-”Amy Coney Barrett’s Long Game,” Margaret Talbot, The New Yorker, February 14
6-https://www.vox.com/culture/21453103/amy-coney-barrett-handmaids-tale-supreme-court
7-(Talbot) “In any case, since originalists maintain that a right to abortion can’t be inferred from the Constitution, the goals of an originalist and an opponent of legal abortion often dovetail conveniently. But, so far, Roe has survived the originalist era.”
This may soon change. (Italics mine)
“In a recent manifesto, the legal commentators Hadley Arles, Garrett Snedeker, and Matthew Peterson, along with the opinion editor of Newsweek, Josh Hammet, argued for “a more robust jurisprudence rooted in the principles and practices of American constitutionalism before the last century of liberalism began its attempt to remake America.”
8-Richard Hofstader, Age of Reform
9-Notre Dame Vs. The Klan: How the Fighting Irish Defied the KKK https://g.co/kgs/yYxsi1
10-”Option-Speak,” December 4, 2021, Medium
11-https://www.thefire.org/the-state-of-free-speech-on-campus-university-of-notre-dame/
