". . . Not as external agent, but as participant . . ."

Yesterday and today, Bishop Kevin Rhoades of the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend has been making a a sort of apostolic visit to the University of Notre Dame. He presided at a Mass of Welcome in the Basilica yesterday and greeted the faculty, staff and students of the University at a reception under the Golden Dome. This evening, he presided at the Holy Cross community's Mass in Corby Hall and joined us for dinner. I am grateful to have been able to concelebrate both liturgies.

Today's Observer does a good job of summarizing the visit, and the bishop's homily from the Mass of Welcome.

Photo Credit: The Observer

The salient point of these celebrations must certainly be what the Bishop said in his homily: “I believe, as Pope John Paul II said, that bishops should be seen not as external agents but as participants in the life of the Catholic university.”

Father John Jenkins, C.S.C. himself noted in his words of welcome, that Bishop Rhoades comes to Notre Dame not merely as our "friend" or our "guest," but as our bishop. He also noted that in the University's gift of a crozier (or pastoral staff) we can see that it is sometimes the role of the bishop to "prod" and direct.

It strikes me that both Bishop Rhoades and Father Jenkins rejected, each in their own way, the terrible inadequacies of the infamous Land O' Lakes Statement, which said:

"To perform its teaching and research functions effectively the Catholic university must have a true autonomy and academic freedom in the face of authority of whatever kind, lay or clerical, external to the academic community itself."

We must hope and pray that we are witnessing the dawning of a new day in the relationship between the University and the Church - a day that rolls back the ill effects of the Land O' Lakes Statement and asserts once and for all that "one cannot have communion with the Church unless it is with the local bishop" (as Bishop Rhoades succinctly put it in an interview with The Irish Rover).