The University of Notre Dame has removed its long-standing expectation that staff should “understand, accept and support” its Catholic mission.
In a press release, the University of Notre of Dame explained that it was removing its Catholic mission statement for staff. It will be replaced with a streamlined set of secular values that no longer makes explicit reference to the religious character of the institution.
The change was unveiled during staff town-hall-type meetings held on 29 and 30 October, where new organisational principles were presented as part of a wider refresh of internal culture at one of America’s most prominent Catholic universities.
The announcement noted that the updated values – Community, Collaboration, Excellence and Innovation – were intended to express how staff “seek to advance Notre Dame’s mission as a global, Catholic research university”.
They replace a list introduced some two decades ago, which included “Leadership in Mission”, the only value to speak directly of the institution’s Catholic identity. The previous values, created under former president Fr John Jenkins, also included Accountability, Teamwork, Integrity and Leadership in Excellence.
In an email to staff announcing the new values, Heather Christophersen, the university’s vice-president for human resources, told employees that the older framework “had only one value that pointed into mission” and that the attempt now was to make the Catholic mission “an overarching theme” rather than a single, accessible category.
She continued by explaining that the former wording “often caused confusion of what that really means", adding that the university does not monitor the religious affiliation of its approximately 4,500 staff in the way it does for faculty and students.
She further states, “At Notre Dame, our values are more than words – they are the foundation of our community and the guiding principles that shape how we work, interact, and contribute to a purpose greater than ourselves.”
During the staff sessions at the end of October, university president Fr Robert Dowd thanked staff for their work and praised their contribution to the “hope” theme guiding the institution’s current forum.
“Hope is not a passive virtue,” he said. “Cultivating hope requires that we take the challenges of our world seriously.”
Senior leaders also spoke of financial pressures affecting the institution, including an increased endowment tax and reductions in federal research funding, and confirmed that a 2.5 per cent budget reduction and limits on staff hiring had been introduced.
This is not the first time that the university has been seen to have diluted the Catholic character of the institution. Last year, the announcement of the new “Jenkins Centre for Virtue Ethics” raised concerns that it was “supplanting” the older de Nicola Centre, signalling a re-framing of ethics and mission under a broader, less explicitly Catholic rubric.
Furthermore, the Sycamore Trust in 2023 criticised Notre Dame for allowing academic programmes offering “pro-abortion” imagery and permitting drag queen events under its auspices, calling this deeply “scandalous … because it is aimed at students whose moral formation has been entrusted to Notre Dame”.
The University of Notre Dame was founded in 1842 by Edward F. Sorin of the Congregation of Holy Cross. It has long promoted itself as “a Catholic academic community of higher learning” rooted in a tradition of Catholic intellectual life and service.
Photo: A view of the The Word of Life Mural on the University of Notre Dame campus as fans arrive prior to the game between the Notre Dame Fighting Irish and the Stanford Cardinal at Notre Dame Stadium, South Bend, Indiana, USA, 12 October 2024 (Photo by Michael Reaves/Getty Images)
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