By John Mac Ghlionn
Crisis Magazine
November 27, 2025
In 1842, when Fr. Edward Sorin stepped onto the cold Indiana prairie, he set out to build a Catholic university that would shape saints, sharpen minds, and send out citizens anchored in faith. The place was small, the winters brutal, and the resources thin. But Sorin insisted that Notre Dame would shine as a "powerful means for good," a clear expression of Catholic identity in a country that often misunderstood the Church.
For generations, that promise held. Parents sent their children there expecting more than lectures and degrees. They expected a formation, a moral compass, and an encounter with something higher than ambition.
Walk the campus today and that founding spirit feels more like a memory guarded by the Golden Dome than a mission alive in the classrooms. Notre Dame still looks Catholic. The crosses shine and the basilica stands tall. Meanwhile, " Touchdown Jesus" surveys the stadium with a look that, after recent events, seems less triumphant than quietly exasperated.
And that exasperation feels justified. The most telling sign came this autumn, slipped into an administrative update with the subtlety of a company announcing layoffs on a Friday afternoon. The university dropped "acceptance and support for the Catholic mission" from its core staff values. For two decades, that line reminded everyone why Notre Dame existed in the first place. Then it vanished. No explanation, no discussion, just gone.
In its place came four corporate-scented virtues-community, collaboration, excellence, innovation-the kind of language you expect from a tech firm trying to boost morale not a university founded under the mantle of Our Lady. If the FBI removed "uphold the law" from its mission, people would scream. A Catholic university removing its mission should spark the same reaction.
The administration insists the mission has not changed. Removing it from the list, they say, was meant to broaden the mission, not bury it. One can almost imagine Fr. Sorin hearing this explanation and instinctively reaching for holy water. A mission strengthened by being removed is the kind of logic that thrives only in conference rooms where the coffee is endless and the convictions are on life support.
It would be comical if it weren't so serious. Notre Dame eventually returned the Catholic mission to its core values, but only after enormous pressure. The reversal was forced, not heartfelt, and it doesn't diminish the severity of the original sin.
And the seriousness becomes even clearer when you look at what was happening well before the Catholic-mission debacle. In recent years, Notre Dame has swollen its diversity, equity, and inclusion machinery with the eagerness of a school chasing applause from people who want nothing to do with its faith.
In September, when the Indiana attorney general requested records on the university's DEI practices, the response wasn't transparency but silence. When scrutiny increased, the DEI center simply changed its name, swapping one label for another while keeping the same work humming beneath it. The move was less a reform than a costume change, as if repainting a sign could disguise the ideological engine running behind it.
DEI programs, by design, demand the sorting of students and staff by categories the Church has always viewed with caution: race, sex, and identity. Catholic teaching insists on the unity of the human person. DEI insists on the primacy of demographic boxes. One speaks to dignity. The other speaks to data points. Notre Dame's attempt to blend these without conflict has produced the same result seen at many once-faithful institutions: a slow substitution of Catholic truth with secular fashion, wrapped in the reassuring language of progress.
The Sycamore Trust, a group of alumni devoted to preserving the university's Catholic character, notes that the shift is already visible in hiring. The proportion of Catholic faculty members, once proudly disclosed, is now hidden with a level of discretion usually reserved for scandals. The administration talks about the importance of diversity. It talks less about the importance of Catholics teaching at a Catholic university. The school now treats the Faith as an optional flavor, a little seasoning for show rather than the substance that once shaped souls.
Notre Dame still wants the appearance of being unmistakably Catholic, but it no longer wants the demands that come with it. The statues are kept spotless. The faith beneath them is treated with a cautious arm's length, the way one handles a valuable heirloom that clashes with the new décor. The university still hosts Mass, still speaks of tradition, still sells rosaries in the bookstore. Yet in its highest decisions, the school behaves more like a religion-averse research institution that happens to own a chapel.
There is a dark humor in watching a university founded in the name of Our Lady try to reassure critics that, despite its new policies, the mission is "all-encompassing." The mission has indeed grown all-encompassing, but not in the way Fr. Sorin imagined. It now encompasses everything except the very thing that made it Catholic in the first place.
Notre Dame is not lost yet. Its students still pray. Its alumni still hope. Its chapel still fills with families who believe the university can recover its purpose. But recovery begins with radical honesty.
The founders built Notre Dame with courage and clarity. They knew what they stood for, and they said it clearly. If today's leaders wish to honor that heritage, they must reclaim the same spirit. Keep the buildings. Keep the beauty. But restore the backbone the founders assumed would never be lost. Restoring the Catholic mission on paper is not enough; the conviction has to return with it.
A university that forgets why it exists will soon forget whom it serves. And once that happens, the Golden Dome becomes just another decoration on a campus slowly forgetting the name it carries.
This article was originally published on Crisis Magazine.