Whoever knows what is right to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin. — James 4:17
As the Rover reported this issue, Gender Studies Professor Pam Butler has secretly booked rooms for Irish 4 Reproductive Health (I4RH), using a fake club name to help the group host “Catholics for Choice,” distribute condoms and “Plan B” to students, and violate university policy. But one of the most striking parts of the Rover’s reporting on the story was not the scandal itself—for examples of such, see the drag show, the hosting of an “abortion doula,” and the screening of a pornographic film—but rather the oblivious nonchalance with which the university’s communications office, led by Erin Blasko, has consistently refused to respond to requests for comment.
In the Rover’s investigation into Pam Butler’s deception and various other campus issues, interviewees have frequently and increasingly refused to respond to requests for comment, directing Rover journalists to Blasko instead. The problem is not entirely confined to the Rover. A former editor for the Observer, speaking under the condition of anonymity, told the Rover, “I remember during editorial meetings and department meetings we would have to discuss how to deal with how to get around university statements. It’s just difficult to get them to say anything substantive.”
But Blasko in particular routinely ignores Rover requests for comment, communicating a marked lack of accountability that Rover journalists and editors have noted specifically targets reporting which highlight Notre Dame’s Catholic identity. “Free inquiry and open discussion,” it seems, are never at home when conservative Catholic student journalists knock on the door.
Blasko, listed as the primary communications contact for Student Affairs, Public Affairs, the Graduate School, and the Alumni Association, failed to communicate, well, anything. On behalf of the university, Blasko has declined to comment on Butler, I4RH, and SAO guidelines, and even declined to list Catholic resources available to pregnant students on campus.
This consistent obfuscation from Blasko and Notre Dame’s communications office is only a symptom of a larger institutional disease. At worst, the misdirection of Blasko and the communications department represent an anti-Catholic sentiment alive and well in the upper echelons of Our Lady’s university. But even interpreted in a more charitable light, Notre Dame’s silence on questions of its Catholic mission is a kind of educational agnosticism that leaves students “free” to keep all options open. Notre Dame students and faculty can opt in to orthodoxy if they’d like, but that’s a choice. Catholicism is a choice. Choose it, and don’t complain if others don’t!
This approach is fundamentally anti-Catholic. Take the example in the Confessions of St. Augustine’s friend Alypius, who is dragged into a gladiatorial show by his friends, all the while insisting that he will remain unaffected by its bloody violence. Alypius assumes that he is strong enough to withstand a corrupting environment, keeping his eyes closed with the confidence that he can withstand temptation. But then Alypius hears the roar of the crowd at the death of a gladiator. Unable to overcome himself, he opens his eyes and gorges himself on the violent spectacle.
If Notre Dame remains agnostic on issues of faith and morals, she becomes the gladiatorial games, putting the souls of her student “Alypii” at stake. Notre Dame’s indecision is a decision: against students and the Faith.
The university is responsible for condoning occasions of sin and opponents of the Faith: “It would be better for him if a millstone were hung round his neck and he were cast into the sea, than that he should cause one of these little ones to sin.” The co-habitation of hundreds of Masses and hours-long confession lines alongside professor-facilitated condom distribution and abortion access is neither coherent nor sustainable. Every other American university has recognized this, for better or worse. Every other university is markedly Catholic, or not so. Here, Notre Dame’s contingent Catholic future hangs in the balance.
How might Notre Dame educate students toward a clearer view of right and wrong? In other words, what do Notre Dame students encounter without opting in?
In academics, students are required to take the revised Moreau First-Year Seminar, one laudable example of an institutional decision. All Notre Dame freshmen are to read the Mission Statement and excerpts of the Constitutions of the Congregation of Holy Cross. Students are also required to take two theology courses during their time at Notre Dame. In residential life, students are required to live in single-sex dorms with parietal rules, and Notre Dame’s housing regulations require that students live on-campus for three years, an excellent way of ensuring a strong community.
As we stated in our last edition of the Rover, we will still tell you: Choose Notre Dame. But the vivid sacramental life we mentioned is the necessary pre-condition for attaining the fullness of Notre Dame’s Catholic identity, not sufficient in itself. The university must embrace its responsibility as educators to vulnerable “little ones.” How is it to do so?
To begin, the justification of myriad and gross anti-Catholic activity under the veneer of “academic freedom” must end. Such defenses are disingenuous—very justifiably, no Notre Dame administrator would balk at forbidding those on the far right to enjoy campus privileges. In practice, the university has exercised this power even for more “moderate” conservative figures, such as when it withdrew support in 2022 from a pro-life event hosting Ben Shapiro on the same night that it hosted a sex worker and abortion advocate.
Why does Notre Dame hide behind so-called “academic freedom,” yet slant itself towards progressive events and refuse to communicate with Rover journalists? Is there a simpler explanation for the university’s actions than anti-Catholicism? The deceit behind “academic freedom” has been proven to be just that by other Catholic universities like CUA, which fired a professor for hosting a self-described “abortion-doula” on campus just last year.
Or take the example of the push for an on-campus pornography filter, which, despite garnering 2,400 total signatures in 2019 and over 650 student signatures in an April iteration of the petition, failed to pass in the 2023 student senate or get approval from then-President Fr. John Jenkins, C.S.C. Fr. Jenkins suggested at the time that he would approve an “opt-in” filter (even though no such filter currently exists), but Students for Child Oriented Policy rightly responded that it is inappropriate for the university to suggest that students can “opt-in” to respecting women. Once again, “student choice” is really the university’s choice: against women, against the Church’s teaching on chastity, and in favor of the most destructive and abusive industries in the modern West.
As Pope Benedict XVI said in his 2010 Address to Teachers and Religious, “A good school provides a rounded education for the whole person. And a good Catholic school, over and above this, should help all its students to become saints.” This is the spirit of Notre Dame’s Mission Statement, when properly adhered to: “A Catholic university draws its basic inspiration from Jesus Christ as the source of wisdom and from the conviction that in him all things can be brought to their completion.”
By refusing to denounce a professor breaking the rules to help Irish 4 Reproductive Health, the university—in the person of Erin Blasko—is complicit in evil. The truth does not hide.
Michael Canady is a senior from Falls Church, Virginia, majoring in classics with a minor in constitutional studies. He can be reached at mcanady2@nd.edu.
Photo Credit: Irish Rover
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