Spent a few days visiting my brother, Tom, an English literature professor at Notre Dame in Indiana. The university claims to fame: its football, its high academic standards, its Catholicism, its endowments.
So students walk across the well tended grounds, sit in the fine library with its touchdown Jesus, upside down in the reflecting pool, probably visit the grotto for a prayer before exams, go to classes. Tho' sitting in my brother's class, one of the students (joint accounting and English major) sid he would not be in class on Friday "because he was going to China for a week" for some form of international business school competition. Didn't happen when I was in college.
I wandered through the basilica...gothic revival recently restored...noting the stained glass saints with their halos and the popes with their crowns...gives one the sense of France rather than the American Midwest...
In the ornate administration building, an historic note on Catholicism. Murals painted in the 19th century on the life of Columbus. Columbus? Well, at the time the university was founded...1880s...the country, and particularly rural areas, experienced a wave of anti-Catholicism. The pope as the anti-Christ. So Catholics tried to create a symbol to stand for the Catholic contributions to America. They pushed for making Columbus a saint but that was a stretch even for the 19th century. But they did get a federal and bank holiday...in addition to the murals.
Given the current attitudes toward Islam, it is useful to remember that some of us have been there before.
