Berkley Center

In this discussion, Fr. Wilson Miscamble, C.S.C. and Chester Gillis offered their thoughts on the question: to be Catholic, does a university need a faculty composed predominantly of Catholics, or can a majority non-Catholic faculty pursue higher education within a Catholic tradition? Holy Cross priest and Notre Dame history professor Wilson Miscamble, who authored the article "The Faculty 'Problem': How Can Catholic Identity be Preserved?" (America, September 2007), argued that the Catholic university "has increasingly lost its distinctive content and [has] come to resemble what occurs in secular institutions of higher learning." In order to preserve its Catholic identity, a university like Notre Dame must rely upon a predominant number of Catholic intellectuals on its faculty. He called for two-thirds of all faculty appointments to be committed Catholic scholars. Chester Gillis, on the other hand, argued that hiring for mission or Catholic identity is much more complex than Miscamble indicated. Naturally, Catholic universities have an interest in preserving their religious identity and should work towards this goal so that they do not become institutions with solely historic ties to their Catholic founders. Achieving this, however, is more complex than merely having a certain number of Catholics among their ranks.