University of Notre Dame - Dome Yearbook (Notre Dame, IN)

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Notre Dame has undergone greater physical, academic, disciplinary, and ' spiritual ' change than during any other jour year span in the University ' s history. Four years ago . . .

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A Stephen Badin, the first priest ordained in the United States, bought land and gave it to a bishop for a school, Father Edward Sorin, C.S.C. was sent from France to build on it. With seven religious helpers, an oxcart, and little more than five hundred dollars, Sorin travelled to the North- ern Indiana plot of land, finding a snow-covered wilderness. (Legend has it that the snow-white surroundings inspired Sorin to reflect on the puri- ty of the virgin land, calling it Notre Dame.) Within a few years, the work, sweat and tears of these pioneers had produced something concrete. Father Sorin ' s achievement was in creating in effect, out of nothing a tightly disciplined col- lege, modeled after French boarding schools. When Father Sorin died, his work and his school continued to exist. It remained the typical Catholic institution he had made it for over half a century: self -centered, unrecognized, ignorant of the world. Notre Dame, was more convent than college. Seventy-five years after Sorin had mastered the wilderness, another pioneer transformed the school into a football power. Notre Dame became famous with a stunning upset of high-powered Army in 1913. Star left end Knute Rockne be- came Notre Dame ' s most stirring coach and made Notre Dame football into a national institution with the best teams in the nation from 1918 to 1931. The orator and living symbol of Catholic vi- rility and Notre Dame greatness, Rockne brought the school into the big time and into the big money. Football became enhanced with the rich- ness of a cult. Catholic Notre Dame had entered into the stream of American higher learning with the least scholarly discipline of the nation ' s uni- versities. The result was what has been called, an exciting but non-intellectual blend of Thomism and the split-T. As football became prosperous, it became an im- portant element in the Notre Dame tradition ; nev- ertheless, the university continued to mirror the academic poverty of Catholic higher learning. The educational architects of Catholic America were gradually provoked at the abysmal mediocrity of the Catholic contribution to the nation ' s literary, political, and social leadership, but became artic- ulate only after the changeover toward aca- demic excellence had actually begun. Criticism of Catholic higher education blos- somed in the middle forties and reached full bloom in Msgr. John Tracy Ellis ' article in Thought in 1955. (Cont. next page) INTRODUCTION THE SNOW-COVERED WILDERNESS

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Previously, at Notre Dame, Father John Cavan- augh had laid the groundwork for expansion ; his acknowledgement of the noticeable lack of Catho- lic intellects and desire for improvement pointed toward the future. Father Cavanaugh was con- vinced that the Catholic University must aim for the intellectual heights while retaining much of what was good of traditional Notre Dame atti- tudes. As early as 1950, Father Cavanaugh, who wanted to retain the integrity of the miracle of Notre Dame, realized that the best football would be played by the professionals. He convinced a conservative clergy and football alumni that Notre Dame must be academically proficient. But the face and future of the University really changed under Father Theodore M. Hesburgh. What Hes- burgh inherited was a university ready for take- off, Time noted in 1961. Alongside a dramatic decline in football vic- tories, Notre Dame has undergone greater physi- cal, academic, disciplinar y, and spiritual change than during any other four year span in the University ' s history. More than previous classes, this Senior Class has been acutely aware of the tortuous evolution that Notre Dame is under- going Seniors have felt the strain of values past and present, the struggle between a Catholicism of yesterday and a University of today.