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Sycamore Trust

File:Sycamore Trust Logo.png
Named after	The legendary Sycamore tree standing watch over Notre Dame's Grotto
Formation	May 8, 2007 (2007-05-08)
Founder	William H, Dempsey ('52)
Type	501(c)3
Tax ID no.	11-3811842
Purpose	The organization provides a source of information, a means of communication, and a collective voice to Notre Dame alumni and others in the Notre Dame family concerned about preserving the Catholic identity of the University.
Board of directors	Officers William H. Dempsey (’52) President Joseph A. Reich, Jr. (’57) Vice President Elizabeth Kirk (’96) Secretary George L. Heidkamp (’52) Treasurer Directors David P. Bender, Jr (’78) Michael Bradley (’14) Claire M. Cousino (’12) Timothy M. Dempsey (’89) Dr. Thomas S. Hibbs (’83, ’87) Katherine Kersten (’73) Jonathan Liedl (’11) Rev. John J. Raphael, SSJ (’89) Lisa Scapellati (’81) Dr. Susan Biddle Shearer (’88)
Staff	Timothy Dempsey, Executive Director
Website	sycamoretrust.org
Formerly called	Project Sycamore

Sycamore Trust is an US-based tax-exempt organization which was established in 2007 in order to provide a source of information, a means of communication, and a collective voice to alumni, family and friends of The University of Notre Dame who are concerned about preserving the school's Catholic identity. With reportedly over 19,000 subscribers, the organization distributes investigative bulletins about a range of issues relating to Notre Dame's Catholic identity. The organization also hosts speaker events across the nation, including a highly regarded annual event during Alumni Weekend at Notre Dame, and manages a website with resources and information about the secularization of formerly religious schools in general and about Notre Dame's struggle with secularization in particular.

History

The flash point for organizers was the authorization by the university's recently installed president, Rev. John Jenkins, C.S.S., of the on‐campus student performance of The Vagina Monologues. What they found especially disappointing in Rev. Jenkins's position was that he retreated in the face of faculty opposition, initially saying that he thought this play probably should not be staged at a Catholic university. Instead, Notre Dame became the a cause célèbre among a small group of only 15 (out of some 225 Catholic colleges and universities) producing the Monologues on campus. At the same time, Rev. Jenkins approved the continuation of The Queer Film Festival, albeit under a less revealing name, providing further evidence of Notre Dame's secularization.

Secularization

As organizers soon discovered, the problem was not simply a few errant presidential decisions but a radical deterioration of the Catholic identity of the faculty since the late 1970's. What was being said at the time by a number of astute Notre Dame faculty members is confirmed by an examination of many reputable studies of the secularization of formerly religious schools -- namely, that it always results from the loss by the faculty of its anchor in the founding faith. The episodes that visibly clashed with Catholic identity during the tenures of Rev. Jenkins and his predecessor, Rev. Edward (Monk) Malloy, C.S.C. — including the 2009 honoring of President Obama, who is considered by many to be the Catholic Church‘s most formidable adversary on abortion — are symptoms of this phenomenon.

The Vagina Monologues and President Obama episodes reflect two of the school‘s most serious problems: (1) the dominance of secular forces in the faculty and (2) the dis-junction between the University and the Church. Thus, Rev. Jenkins‘s reversal respecting The Vagina Monologues resulted from a clamor by faculty in the name of academic freedom and the school‘s image in secular academe, while the honoring of President Obama in violation of an important policy of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and despite the protests of 83 Cardinals, Archbishops, and Bishops disclosed an alarming breach between University and Church.

The Faculty Issue

Catholic representation on Notre Dame's faculty has plunged so far that the school no longer meets its own test of Catholic identity. The Mission Statement declares:

The University‘s Catholic identity depends upon the continuing presence of a predominant number of Catholics.

The author, then‐President Rev. Malloy, said this “means more than a mere majority,” and Rev. John Jenkins, C.S.C., the current President, speaks of “Catholic faculty” as “those who have been spiritually formed in that tradition and who embrace it.” Provost Thomas Burish declared that the Mission Statement requires “a majority of faculty who are Catholic, who understand the nature of the religion, who can be role models.”

Notre Dame does not come close. The proportion of those who check the “Catholic“ box on a form has plummeted from 85% in the 1970‘s to 54% today. This indisputably includes a large, if indeterminate, number of merely nominal and dissenting Catholics. Plainly, there is no longer close to a majority of committed Catholics.

Dr. Walter J. Nicgorski, one of Notre Dame‘s most respected and longest serving professors, took note of this phenomenon and its consequences during a recent panel discussion. While praising Notre Dame‘s many fine attributes, he sounded this sobering alarm:

Consider this also, along with the steady and steep decline of the percentage of faculty who are Catholics to about 50 per cent, there is the widely shared recognition that a large number of those who list themselves as Catholics are not inclined to be involved in any concerns about the religious character of this university....So it is increasingly the case today that a young person going through the critical and questioning formative years of an education at Notre Dame might not encounter a practicing Catholic informed and engaged by the Catholic intellectual tradition, that curricular decisions and other decisions, including counseling decisions, will not be notably impacted by a Catholic perspective. One might say that beneath the large symbols of the University as a Catholic institution, there is reason for concern that the day‐to‐day struggles for learning and intellectual and professional development are not notably impacted by the Catholic tradition.

The attitude of the dominant forces on the faculty toward the loss of Catholic identity is displayed in a resolution of Notre Dame's Faculty Senate which was adopted on April 16th 2008 after a thorough survey of the school's faculty:

The University should not compromise its academic aspirations in its efforts to maintain its Catholic identity.

At a school in which Catholic scholars predominated, Sycamore Trust argues, this statement would, of course, be exactly reversed.

Sycamore Trust points out what researchers have discovered about the trajectory of secularization of formerly religious institutions. The transformation of the faculty and accordingly of what is taught — the heart of the university — takes hold gradually and out of sight. The outward signs of religious practice on campus remain even as the moorings in the institution's founding faith are washed away. Therefore, alumni and others who observe things from a distance believe that things are just as religious as they have always been and are surprised when they find out otherwise.

Dr. Alfred J. Freddoso, a long‐time and distinguished philosophy professor, has captured these dual characteristics in his description of Notre Dame as “something like a public school in a Catholic neighborhood.“ He continued in this illuminating and troubling passage in his introduction to Dr. Charles E. Rice’s book “What Happened to Notre Dame”:

This might sound appalling to some, but it is, I submit, what the vast majority of present‐day administrators, faculty members, students and alumni mean when they sincerely, though mistakenly, claim that Notre Dame is a Catholic university. For they assume without much thought that the Catholic character of the university is borne almost entirely by the ‘neighborhood,‘ i.e., by the university‘s sacramental life and associated activities such as retreats, bible study groups, sacramental preparation courses, etc; by various good works and service projects on and off campus; by a set of faith‐inspired rules overning campus life; … and by the sheer number of ‘outdoor‘ and ‘indoor‘ manifestations of Catholicism such as the statue of Our Lady atop the Golden Dome, Sacred Heart Basilica, the Grotto, and scores of statutes found all over the ‘neighborhood.‘ It is here that virtually all of a student‘s moral and spiritual formation, if any, will take place….The classroom or laboratory, by contrast, is a wholly different venue…. This is where ‘reason‘ resides on campus and where ‘the mind is educated‘; and it has little or nothing to do with Catholicism.

In these circumstances, while Notre Dame is probably the most Catholic of the major Catholic universities except for The Catholic University of America, and while a committed and discriminating student can still obtain a splendid Catholic education there. However, according to Sycamore Trust, the situation is not the same for the vast run of students. And absent a major reversal of the hiring pattern of the last several decades, they predict that it will only get worse.

The Administration's Response

Although Notre Dame has taken some steps to promote the hiring of Catholic faculty members, it has embraced no clear remedy to its secularization. Instead, the administration has adopted a hiring policy which, with a goal of hiring 50 percent "check the box" Catholics, will only slow the pace, Sycamore Trust argues. Because those faculty members who are presently retiring at Notre Dame are mostly Catholic, the organization claims, it is simple to see that hiring at 50 percent will neither keep things even and will certainly not reverse the downward trend.

Achievements

Still, hope remains because of an outstanding and still substantial corps of Catholic scholars, a number of supportive non‐Catholics, an 85% Catholic student body, the continuing, if diminished, presence of priests on the campus, and important features of “Catholic neighborhood“ such as those identified by Dr. Freddoso.

We believe that Sycamore Trust can play a role in the realizaion of that hope. In its short life, Sycamore can look to some positive results that can reasonably be attributed in some substantial measure to its efforts.

Here is what has happened on some of the issues upon which we have focused:

1. A board member who had been a major contributor to a pro‐abortion organization resigned.
2. Another board member who is an important promoter of embryonic stem cell research did not stand for re-election.
3. The Vagina Monologues has quietly disappeared.
4. So, too, has the Queer Film Festival.
5. Father Jenkins left his position on the board of a prominent organization, Millennium Promise, that promotes abortion and contraception. (So, too, did a major Notre Dame donor.)
6. Most importantly, the decline in Catholic faculty has been arrested for the moment. Six years ago, it seemed likely that by now Catholics would have slipped into even an arithmetical minority. Until Sycamore put the spotlight on this crucial problem, few outside the university knew anything about it and no effective action had been taken by those within the University.
7. Our investigation into the University’s asserted justification for its support of the prosecution of the pro‐life demonstrators who protested the honoring of President Obama almost certainly played a role in the University’s finally reversing its position and securing dismissal of the charges. Father Jenkins had asserted that the University must treat all trespassers the same. We discovered that it does nothing of the sort. Rather, on Father Jenkins‘s watch, the University had decided against prosecution of pro‐gay and anti‐military demonstrators who had been arrested for trespass. This embarrassingly disparate treatment was to have been an important element in the defense of these pro‐life advocates.
8. We marshaled substantial and critically needed financial support for three important student organizations: NDResponse, the federation of student organizations opposed to the honoring of President Obama; The Irish Rover, the independent voice of Catholicism on campus; and ND Identity, the organizer of the impressive annual Edith Stein Conference, the student Catholic voice on issues of gender, sexuality, and morality. We regard the support of centers of Catholicism on campus as part of our mission.
9. A contraceptive ad on The Observer Internet site was taken down immediately upon our complaint.
10. So, too, was a link to a porn site of uncertain provenance on a web site of a student organization.
11. The University eliminated its web site recommendation of an unofficial women‘s faculty organization that promotes pro‐abortion organizations.
    

To be sure, there are qualifications to some of these successes. For example, as we have said there is good reason to think that the halt in the faculty erosion may be temporary; and in any case, the stabilization is at a wholly inadequate level and the new hiring policy threatens to make the situation even worse in the long run. Again, the Monologues and the film festival might return.

Even so, there has been sufficient progress both to keep hope alive and to support our conviction that, with the help of alumni and others with a deep interest in Notre Dame and Catholic higher education, Sycamore Trust can play a significant role in the effort to restore the Catholic identity that is the defining heritage of this precious institution.