Why Notre Dame?

The DB had a funny joke about Trump sending the 82nd Airborne to secure Notre Dame -- the joke being that he sent them to the university, not the French cathedral. Not everyone who is out of place at Notre Dame is part of a satire, however. Consider the new director of gender relations for the student government.
[A fellow student] expressed concerns that [the director]’s condemnation of Catholic sexual ethics would affect her policies as director of Gender Relations at Notre Dame, where at least 80 percent of the students are Catholic.

[She] had said in a now deleted tweet: “I see the [Catholic] faith as inherently against female empowerment and sexual freedom.”

She also tweeted, “Catholic marriage isn’t about love, it was conceived to make licit the illicit act of sex for the purpose of procreation (evangelization).”
I'm leaving out the names of the students because, though not minors, they are still young and figuring things out. The ideas are worth criticizing, but I don't want to engage in any sort of personal attacks on someone so young.

That said, if that's how you feel about things, Notre Dame might not be the right place for you. I know: she chose the place just because she wants to take a hammer to the Catholic faith. That's also why she seeks a position in student government, which ordinary students completely ignore because it has very little real effect on anything. It's merely a platform for activism, and some people were raised to believe -- or came to believe -- that activism is good in itself.

Minding one's own business is another good, in part because it allows people who disagree to get along. When 80% of people in your community agree, they represent the norm in your community, and as a dissenter you should consider trying to get along with them -- or else finding a new community that better fits your view of what is right. It's a big country, and there are lots of communities that do, pretty much no matter what you believe.

3 comments:

E Hines said...

When 80% of people in your community agree, they represent the norm in your community, and as a dissenter you should consider trying to get along with them -- or else finding a new community that better fits your view....

That's not the only answer. There's nothing wrong with the minority trying to change the ways of the majority in any community. What's necessary--and it's a skill that's increasingly absent, perhaps for a new 1,000 year Dark Age--is an ability to engage in reasoned discourse (and the majority must have this skill, also), rather than the two sides speaking with wide open mouths and closed ears and minds.

Eric Hines

douglas said...

She's a symptom, not the disease, so far as so-called 'Catholic' universities go.

ymarsakar said...

The Student Council in the US are often just money redistribution centers.

They may mean well, but... corruption or lack of wisdom is perpetual.

Student Councils in Japan look more like some kind of corporation... or organized religion. They are sort of like what the pioneers would have seen as junior adults. The kids aren't the kids. They are the juniors or apprentices.