The University of Notre Dame, perhaps the best-known of American Catholic universities, often serves as a mirror of the travails and triumphs of Catholics in mid-twentieth-century America. Its story is as spirited and compelling as the traditions for which Notre Dame is famous.
Being Catholic, Being American, Volume 2: The Notre Dame Story, 1934–1952, continues the work of Burns’ first volume. By 1934, Notre Dame was widely perceived as a university where young men with Irish, German, Italian, and Polish surnames who excelled in sports were educated for success in middle-class America. It was a place where religion was taken seriously and patriotism was highly valued. In the years before, during, and immediately after World War II, this perception was seriously challenged.
After a successful period of academic expansion and improvement under Father John O’Hara (1934–1940), his successor, Father J. Hugh O’Donnell (1940–1946), was drawn into the bitter conflict between isolationists and interventionists then raging in the country. In numerous, widely reported off-campus speeches, Father John A. O’Brien, a well-known, colorful diocesan priest and professor in the religion department, took up the isolationist cause. The more liberal Professor Francis E. McMahon of the philosophy department was an equally outspoken interventionist. The two generated storms of negative publicity. When McMahon’s stance triggered pressure on O’Donnell from the apostolic delegate, the professor’s dismissal was seen as a shameless assault on academic freedom. The incident, occurring as it did in the midst of a terrible war against authoritarian fascist regimes, created the greatest public relations disaster in the history of the university.
Burns describes how the presence of the military and, after the war, the influx of veterans transformed the campus. O’Donnell’s successor, Father John J. Cavanaugh (1946–1952), succeeded in restoring the university’s reputation following the McMahon crisis, aided by the spectacular performance of Frank Leahy’s championship football teams. Cavanaugh believed that a new style of leadership sensitive to public relations and committed to permanent fund raising was required if Notre Dame was to grow and prosper as an authentic modern research-based American Catholic university.
This second volume is invaluable for historians, teachers, students, alumni, sports enthusiasts, and everyone else touched by the story of the University of Notre Dame.
