Education: Moral Dimension

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The trouble with U.S. Catholic colleges is an "abysmal mediocrity" that has made them "almost universally destitute of intellectual leadership" in U.S. life. These words were spoken neither by Paul Blanshard nor by any other Catholic baiter—though some Catholics greeted them as if they were—but by a man who cares deeply about the fate of Catholic education: the Rev. Theodore Martin Hesburgh, C.S.C., president of the University of Notre Dame.

By no coincidence, young (43) Father Hesburgh has made old (118) Notre Dame a striking exception to his charges. In his nine years as president, football-famed Notre Dame, where Knute Rockne was once more revered than St. Thomas, has become a serious intellectual citadel. In the anguishing process, Father Hesburgh has become U.S. Catholic higher education's most public and most bluntly outspoken figure. Last week, at Notre Dame alumni meetings throughout the Midwest, he hammered away at his proposed role for all Catholic colleges: "The exalted work of mediation in our times."

To Hesburgh, mediation is nothing less than healing social schisms—between whites and Negroes, labor and management, science and humanities. Already, he has under way at Notre Dame a $2,000,000-a-year center for the necessary research. The center has launched studies on Latin America, African education and civil rights. "Here is an age crying for the light and guidance of Christian wisdom," says Hesburgh. "What must future judges think of us if we live in the most exciting age of science ever known to mankind, and philosophize mainly about Aristotle's physics?"

Bridge & Brahms. The son of a plate-glass plant manager, Hesburgh spent his undergraduate years at Notre Dame and Rome's Gregorian University, where "the classes were all in Latin, the dormitory talk in French, and the street talk in Italian." In 1945, after being ordained a priest in the Congregation of the Holy Cross, he joined Notre Dame's faculty. In seven years, he was successively head of the religion department, executive vice president of the university and, at 35, Notre Dame's 16th president.

A handsome hustler, Hesburgh likes to work until 2 in the morning with Bach or Brahms humming away on his office stereo set. He speaks six languages, has a passion for fishing and flying. He and Notre Dame's executive vice president, Father Edmund Joyce, once licked Bridge Expert Charles Goren. Nowadays his playtime is limited. He is the Vatican's permanent representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency, a member of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, and this year's president of the Association of American Colleges, where his Roman collar no longer stamps him as an outsider.