Joanne Pierce, professor of religious studies at College of the Holy Cross and a University of Notre Dame alumna, reflects on the legacy of Rev. Theodore Hesburgh, president emeritus of Notre Dame, in a piece for The Conversation.
She writes, “Hesburgh’s keen awareness of others marked his pastoral and professional life, and that awareness served as one element of his vision of what Catholic higher education could and should be. As a priest and an academic leader, he knew that the role of the American Catholic university had to face the future fully engaged with the strengths and weaknesses, the gifts and the needs, of the human society that surrounded it.”
She believes his death should not be viewed as a door closing on a “room” that will never be revisited. “The successive generations of those shaped by Catholic higher education carry his vision forward,” she writes. “With the passing of Father Hesburgh, one stage of public American Catholicism does recede into the past, but, led by scholars and alumni inspired by his ideals and example, other stages have already begun.”
David O’Brien, professor emeritus of history at Holy Cross and a Notre Dame alumnus told the Wall Street journal: "Fr. Hesburgh was a man of our generation. The previous generation might have inspired people to be priests and nuns and missionaries. He inspired laypeople to achieve great things.”
This "Holy Cross in the News" item by Cristal Steuer.
