For God, Country, and Notre Dame

After I had dinner with the "Orestes Brownson Society" at Notre Dame (see last blog below), Chris Brophy, who leads the group, gave me a pretty lengthy tour of the campus at night. What a great campus! I saw all the visitor sights, including the basilica and the "grotto", where students and others light candles and say a prayer, under a statue of Our Lady.

After touring the basilica on campus, Chris showed me a carving on the outside of a side entrance of the basilica that said, "For God, Country, and Notre Dame". That's pretty much how people feel in South Bend, Indiana. And, as I walked around this magical campus, I felt much the same way.

There truly is a sense of God on this campus, I don't care how much some of the students complain that it's too liberal or too secular. To me, Notre Dame seems to have struck a pretty good balance between the religious nature of its founding to the secular nature so prevalent throughout modern academia. I don't know what goes on inside the classrooms at ND, but just being on campus, you can certainly feel the presence of God - whether it is inside the cathedral, or out on the lawn, where a statue of Jesus looks towards the golden-domed administration building. Or, out in the grotto, where at night, the hundreds of lit candles sparkle as students pray for peace, for their relationships, for their university, or perhaps for their test scores.

Chris also showed me all the famous "Touchdown Jesus" mural that drapes the front of the library building. But, he also showed me "First Down Moses" and "Fair Catch Corby" (a priest named Father Corby, who's statue looks like he could be calling a fair catch). Ahh, yes, welcome to Notre Dame... where football and religion sometimes blend.

My second day at Notre Dame gave me a chance to see what goes on here during the day, as students bustle around to classes. The one thing I noticed most was that the campus itself just seemed very "peaceful". Granted, I was there on two spectacular looking days, where the temperature fluctated from the low 60s to the low 70s, not a cloud in the sky.

I wandered around, when I got a call from Joe Lindsley, the Editor-in-Chief of The Irish Rover, a CN-sponsored publication at ND. I was already planning on meeting him and others from his staff that night for dinner, and he called to coordinate. But, I realized he was only a few hundred feet away from me on campus, where the College Republicans were holding a "Social Security Bakesale." Classic. They were selling a few cookies each. If you were a student, the set of cookies cost you like $1.50. If you were over 65, they only cost you 30 cents. They were trying to make the point to students how our generation's paychecks are subsidizing the older generation, and that we were having to put so much money into the pot, while they collected only a fraction... thus by the time we reach social security age, their may not be much money left in the pot for us - or at least not enough benefits.

A great thing about Joe being there was that he was able to introduce me to the College Republicans at Notre Dame, yet another conservative group that ISI could be working with. These students were very motivated and they seemed to be very interested in taking advantage of the resources that I told them ISI could offer them. Later that evening, I met with the students from The Irish Rover. They were fun and very ambitious. They publish about 2 issues per month (which is impressive) and during this meeting they were going over the current issue that just came out that day - and they were doing constructive criticism of every article in that issue - from headlines to stories, etc. I was impressed to say the least.

Then, a few of the editors got into a Protestant-Catholic debate, which they say happens often on this paper. Hey, when this is the main debate you're having, you're doing pretty good in my book. I had already met Joe several times at CN and ISI functions and he's one of the best students around. In fact, this coming summer, he'll begin his year-long paid internship under Fred Barnes, an internship he earned through his hard work as an editor for a CN paper. It was also great to meet the other students with the Rover at Notre Dame. They are top-notch and Joe is leaving the paper in good hands... even if they may be Protestant hands. They're all still in God's hands.

On Friday, April 15, I jetted out of town down to Indianapolis for ISI's Annual Conference. But before I did that, I stopped off at the history department and met with the chair of the department and talked to him about the Ph.D. program they offered and potential professors in the department I might be able to work with, considering the areas of history I want to explore further. He offered some good advice and wished me luck in my ventures with ISI and my pursuit for further education... who knows, perhaps even at Notre Dame. I'll leave that up to Providence... but on this ISI trip out of South Bend, all that was on my mind was God, Country, and Notre Dame.