Right or Wrong?: Forty Years inside Notre Dame

In What Happened to Notre Dame? (St. Augustine’s Press, 2009), Charles E. Rice, Professor Emeritus at Notre Dame Law School, traced that university’s loss of Catholic identity to the Land O’Lakes Declaration of 1967 in which Notre Dame and other “Catholic” universities declared their independence from the Church. In fact they substituted for the positive guidance of the Magisterium a counterfeit orthodoxy of political correctness, money, and secular prestige. This book, Right or Wrong, is a compilation of columns Professor Rice wrote for the campus newspaper, The Observer, from 1970 through 2010. Those bi-weekly columns are concise, readable, and practical. They offered the students an access to the authentic teachings of the Church that they might not otherwise get in the politically correct “Catholic” university of Land O’Lakes. Those columns present those teachings, not as abstractions, but as practical guides to real-life issues. Drawing upon his wide experience in constitutional law, jurisprudence, tort, and other areas, Professor Rice tells it like it is on a wide range of issues, including abortion, euthanasia, contraception, homosexuality, pornography, clergy sex abuse, feminism, marriage, bioethics, the death penalty, just war principles, the War on Terror, “Catholic” politicians, etc., etc. He describes Land O’Lakes as a “suicide pact” that has made “Catholic” universities subservient to government, corporate donors, foundations, and the secular educational establishment. Professor Rice, however, goes beyond criticism. He offers a very practical way for Notre Dame to recover its Catholic identity. And he urges that we pray, especially through the intercession of Notre Dame, Our Lady, for her University and for our country.