Columns

Angela Bermudez discusses a panel to inform pregnant women, fathers-to-be and student parents on campus of the many resources available to them at Notre Dame. The university offers an abundance of resources for those facing an unexpected pregnancy.

Editor’s note: This article is part of a series of interviews with men and women in the Notre Dame community who have responded to God’s call to holiness in different ways. Here, campus minister Brett Perkins speaks on vocation and tells the story of what brought him to the faith, as well as to Notre Dame.

Rover: How would you describe vocation in a general sense?

Look at today’s newspapers and you will see that Americans are poised to fundamentally reform two huge sectors of our lives. The headlines on page one will tell you about the healthcare sector. Our government is even “closed” due to the fight over implementing “Obamacare.” That’s one. Look at one of the inside pages and you will likely read about the other wholesale reform, the one of K-12 education. This reform is more important than the healthcare changeover, even though it is less prominently reported.

On September 16, 2013, our nation watched in horror as news of yet another mass shooting unfolded.

This time it occurred in a secure military facility in Washington, DC, at the Navy Yard. Now living in the DC area, I was glued to the radio for the minute-by-minute updates provided by local and national news. As the news came in I was seeing images of parts of Southeast DC, where I spend time on the weekends watching the Washington Nationals baseball team, whose stadium is mere walking distance from the Navy Yard. The nation’s collective mind, heart and prayers were with those in the throes of grief that morning.

In GK Chesterton’s allegorical novel The Ball and the Cross, MacIan confronts the socialist journalist Turnbull over a blasphemous statement regarding the Virgin Mary that Turnbull has published in his newspaper, The Atheist.

Professors Amy and Leon Kass, introducing their book of readings on courtship and marriage, Wing to Wing, Oar to Oar, complain of the lack of “a cultural script whose denouement is marriage.”

This dearth gives another dimension to the failure pointed out by Madeline Gillen in the March 21, 2013 issue of the Irish Rover, when she says: “Noticeably lacking in a Notre Dame undergraduate education—the education of the mind and the heart—is any introduction or exposure to the beauty of the Church’s teachings on sexuality…,” and by Michael Bradley in the August 29, 2012 issue, when he complains of Notre Dame administrators failing to bear witness that “The Church wants every man and woman to experience the joys of living a chaste integrated love.” It is certainly true that the Church’s teachings on sexuality should be more effectively presented here, but effective, even insistent, presentation of the teachings will not be enough. Without the cultural script—without an understanding of chaste courtship as a foundation for Christian marriage—the teachings will be floating in a vacuum.

Think of Notre Dame: What comes to mind? Football. The Dome. Catholics. Beyond these, though, the word connected most distinctly to our university is a simple one: home. You do not need to investigate very deeply to discover this. Look at the jubilant reunions of students coming back to campus after summer, or ask any alumna if she wishes she could be here again. Yes, the most important aspect of Notre Dame is that we are ND—we are a family.

Through my work with Notre Dame Right to Life and in my home community, I have come to understand that the term “pro-life” is more than just an adjective; it is a way of life. In descriptive terms, we believe that all life, from the newly conceived child in the womb to the elderly grandparent in the wing of the hospital, should be protected and cherished. This belief constitutes the entirety of the pro-life movement. We are called to more than mere belief, however; we are called to action.

This article is the first in a series of interviews with men and women in the Notre Dame community who have responded to God’s call to holiness in different ways. Here, newly ordained deacon and rector of Keough Hall, Patrick Reidy, CSC, speaks on discernment and shares his own vocational journey.

You know many, many people. You greet them as you cross the quad, stay up late chatting and are in constant communication through Snapchat, Facebook and Twitter. You keep up with your high school friends back home, and here at Notre Dame you make sure to spend enough time with teammates, roommates and classmates.