From the Sycamore Trust, “an alarming recent study”:

[M]any students become pro-choice at Notre Dame. By the time they graduate, there are as many pro-choice students (42%) as in the general population. Among the reasons may be mixed signals from the faculty.

Though the University declared itself pro-life in the wake of the Obama episode, there is reason to think that a large proportion of the faculty is pro-choice, and prominent members of the Theology faculty have been outspoken in their dissent from Church teaching on abortion.

Indeed, the nation’s leading “Catholic” pro-choice advocate has welcomed the recent public dissent from Church teaching by one of Notre Dame’s most widely known ethicists.

Give Notre Dame a pro-lifer, get back a pro-choicer. Read about it here.

Very hot news in Catholic circles: the Society of St. Pius X, broken away from the Vatican since the 2^nd  Vatican Council, is “on the verge” of reconciliation with the church.

It’s remotely comparable to the resolution and dissolution of The Great Schism of the 14^th  century, the three-pope period when disarray was the order of the day. 

Benedict XVI is making it happen.  Standing objections by the SPX people to Vatican 2’s “rupture” or disruptive aspects will remain. 

Trust me, folks, it’s like The Episcopal Church U.S.A. making room for Evangelical Christians.  Somewhat like?  Am working on that.

In Oak Park it means that the Pius X Latin mass church at Ridgeland and Washington, kitty-corner from Julian Middle School, is no longer out of bounds for venturesome Catholics. 

More to come.  more more more

Assorted Jesuits, Jesuit university teachers, and other liberal Catholics DO NOT LIKE Rep. Paul Ryan’s citing Catholic teaching in support of his budget.

Among his sins surely would be his embracing the long-ignored principle of subsidiarity, which says big organizations or governmental entities should butt out of matters better handled by smaller ones. 

In accordance with the principle of subsidiarity, neither the state nor any larger society should substitute itself for the initiative and responsibility of individuals and intermediary bodies.

No surprise here: A Jesuit history prof at a large Jesuit university told me 20 years ago that the principle no longer had currency.  If it did, one might add, big government would not be considered the cure-all it is treated as today.

It was Dorothy Day, I believe, who referred ironically to “holy mother the state.”  It’s a good phrase for today’s feckless reverence for big…