Among the many developments to which I have had to adjust as a recent alumnus is the realization that campus life has gone on without me.  All of these people and clubs and projects and ideas that I cared so deeply about and invested so much in are now passing beyond my reach.

True, there are things in which I participated that I can reasonably expect will go on long into the future.  The Knights of Columbus will continue to sell steak sandwiches prior to football games and give the proceeds to charity for as long as there are home football games, and Right to Life will continue to bring busloads upon busloads of students to the DC March for Life for as long as there is a March for Life.  I know of no one, either student or alum, who is seriously concerned about the futures of these events or, indeed, of the groups that sponsor them. Groups like the Knights or Right to Life should, barring some unforeseeable catastrophe, continue to make substantial contributions to Notre Dame’s Catholic character.

And yet there are other organizations about which both students and alumni have been rather more concerned.  PrismND, the campus LGBT student organization, has been chief among these suspect organizations since it was instituted two years ago.  These fears are not baseless: at other Catholic universities, gay-straight alliances that are similar to PrismND in many ways have rather quickly devolved into activist groups that are indistinguishable from similar groups at secular universities—that is, they demonstrate no respect for or allegiance to the Church’s teachings.

Even so, I am confident that PrismND is not only likely to avoid those pitfalls, but is capable of making a significant contribution to Notre Dame’s Catholic mission.  Moreover, even if it does not live up to its full potential in helping students understand and live out the Church’s moral teachings, it will at least resist being turned into a vehicle for anti-Catholic activism: Anyone seeking to transform it into the vehicle for their own brand of activism will have to overcome both institutional obstacles and the character of the group as it has thus far manifested itself.

PrismND’s founding documents—namely, the university pastoral plan “Beloved Friends and Allies” and the organization’s constitution—are clearly Catholic or, at the very least, are clearly structured by Catholic moral teaching.  Even the most cynical observer would admit that the leadership of PrismND has been very careful to never openly contradict Church teaching; they have always understood that PrismND’s mission—indeed, its very existence—is predicated on Notre Dame’s distinctly Catholic identity and mission.

PrismND has both implicitly and explicitly embraced Catholic reasoning and a Catholic moral framework.  It would therefore be a mistake to interpret any of PrismND’s events up to this point apart from the demonstrably Catholic foundation of the organization: even if their public programming might not put, for instance, the theme of chastity front and center, we may be assured that these principles are somewhere in the back of their minds.

Indeed, we should be surprised under any circumstances to find PrismND continually discussing the basics of Catholic sexual ethics.  The students who make up PrismND are intelligent enough to have been accepted at one of the best undergraduate institutions in the country.  We should expect them to be able to discuss and understand the established Church teachings as well as the grayer areas surrounding the pastoral application of these teachings—which are, after all, among the most controversial discussions that took place during of the Extraordinary Synod on the Family last year.  The Church is still working out exactly how it will approach these questions, and students involved in PrismND must by no means be discouraged from delving into these discussions.

However, we should not expect all of PrismND’s events to involve esoteric doctrinal discussions; these are, after all, college students, some of whom may not yet be comfortable discussing issues of personal identity even with their own families (for any who wonder why they might be so hesitant, the Internet is full of heart-wrenching accounts of young people—especially teenagers—being rejected by their friends and family on the basis of sexual identity or orientation).

We should therefore be unsurprised to learn that social events form an integral part of PrismND’s programming: It is understandable for students coming to terms with their sexuality to want to enjoy the company of others who understand what they are experiencing—to be themselves without fear of being rejected over feelings or inclinations over which they exercise no direct control.  This is a significant part of PrismND’s mission both in itself and because it is only once this basic foundation is laid—that is, when the Church’s teaching on the dignity of each person is affirmed—that it becomes possible to begin exploring the Church’s teaching in its fullness.

This, incidentally, is why events like Coming Out Day serve an important function; although Coming Out Day events in other places include an activist angle, its Notre Dame incarnation directs a much simpler message to campus: that Notre Dame is not a place where students need to fear reflexive rejection, and that affirmation of a person’s basic dignity is in no way contingent on sexual orientation or identity.

PrismND’s capacity to make such fine distinctions in their messaging was also on display during the controversy surrounding the Students for Child-Oriented Policy (SCOP) conference in the Spring of 2014.  Despite the storm of rumors surrounding SCOP’s mission and arguments that circulated in the weeks leading up to the conference, PrismND’s core leadership withheld judgment until after the event, and even then delivered not a sharp condemnation, but a constructive critique of the presentations.  PrismND did not reject out of hand (as a non-negligible proportion of the student population did) SCOP’s attempt to articulate arguments for a legal institution of marriage between one man and one woman.  Rather, they indicated ways in which SCOP might frame its own message so as to avoid potentially offensive language that could distract from the core argument.

There are several lessons to be gleaned from this episode.  First, the rumors and subsequent petition against SCOP demonstrate that activism requires no institutional vehicle; the cultural narrative that says that opposition to same-sex civil marriage is necessarily bigoted is so prevalent even among young Catholics at Notre Dame that social media alone provided a sufficient platform.  Yet the fact that PrismND did not officially join in this condemnation of SCOP undermined that condemnation: The student organization responsible for promoting an accepting environment for LGBT students did not argue that an accepting environment necessitates recognizing same-sex relationships as marriages.  Even a tacit acceptance of Catholic doctrines on PrismND’s part makes it easier for others to put forward a more robust defense of those doctrines.

That PrismND provided constructive criticism to SCOP points to a further way in which PrismND might contribute to Notre Dame’s Catholic character.  Notre Dame graduates enter a culture in which they will inevitably need to confront the full array of questions surrounding homosexuality and marriage, and PrismND has the potential to help the rest of campus learn how to address not only the philosophical concepts relevant to the highly sensitive and contentious cultural debates about sexuality, but the concrete people with whom they will be having these discussions.  Furthermore, whatever insights they may gain about the value of chastity through their discussions might be put to use in evangelizing a campus where heterosexual hook-ups are far more prevalent than homosexual ones.

There ought to be no doubt that PrismND has the potential to make as consistent and significant a contribution to Notre Dame’s Catholic character as organizations like the Knights of Columbus or Right to Life.  That having been said, I can imagine few better ways of stifling that potential than to be preoccupied with whether they are consistently promoting the Church’s teaching on marriage.  To demonstrate no interest in the content of their conversations beyond that single criterion is to send the message that, aside from that one point, their conversations—no matter how erudite or enlightening—are of no consequence and worthy of no further consideration.

We must remember that the conversations PrismND has about sexuality are not only politically or theologically significant; these discussions almost necessarily have a deeply personal dimension that makes being party to them—particularly as an outsider—a great privilege.  This is not to say that concerned alumni or students cannot ask questions—indeed, in my experience, PrismND’s leadership and the staff of the Gender Relations Center who work with them are always ready to enter into a conversation predicated on good faith—but rather, that PrismND will benefit far more from interlocutors than from inquisitors.  If we want to see PrismND realize its full potential and, more importantly, to see its members discover their vocations, we need to accord them respect and trust both individually and collectively.  In any case, they have yet to give me any reason to doubt that they deserve it.

Timothy Kirchoff graduated from the University of Notre Dame in May of 2014.  He cannot comprehend how he recently managed to visit campus without stopping at either the Basilica or the Dillon Hall chapel.  To comment on this column or to offer to make these pilgrimages in his stead, contact him at tkirchof@alumni.nd.edu.