Even the Pope has noticed

Knute Rockne (1888 AD - 1931 AD)

105-12-5 as Notre Dame Football Head Coach
Winner of 3 National Football Championships

More importantly, converted to Catholicism due to the good example of ND football players

That Notre Dame is defaulting on its Catholic obligations.  And he's not talking about the 26 years since their last football title.

Of course, this has been going on since 1967, but kudos to Pope Francis for calling Notre Dame out.
 

"Rudy" it ain't

 Must have been a slow week for sports news.

Notre Dame sued to prevent the release of the movie shown above, alleging that the university's name and trademarks were used without consent, and that it defamed Fr. Theodore Hesburgh.  Notre Dame lost the suit, and the movie was released in March, 1965.  Even though the movie was featured on an SI cover, boasted a screenplay by William Peter Blatty, (who would achieve fame and fortune for writing "The Exorcist,") and included major stars like Shirley MacLaine and Peter Ustinov, it promptly disappeared, leaving scarcely a trace.   Any guesses as to the movie's name?




"John Goldfarb, Please Come Home!"  Bosley Crowther of the NYT said the movie
"demeans the prestige of movie humor and, indeed, of the human race."  (h/t Notre Dame Archive News and Notes). 

Here's a prescription for humanizing the global economy

                                                           They would do better to return to these every day

Alas, it's more of an earnest wish than a prescription.   It's embodied in a high-flown statement recently signed by a long list of US women's religious congregations.   I came across the document  while I was doing research into one of the signatory congregations, the Sisters of the Holy Cross.  The congregation was founded in France after the Revolution, and the Sisters first arrived in the US in 1843.  The Sisters served bravely as nurses in the Civil War, and today run many schools, including St. Mary's College, the famous sister college to the University of Notre Dame. 

I was interested in the Sisters of the Holy Cross because, like the Servites (see previous posts here and here) the Sisters have a particular devotion to Our Lady of Sorrows.   One of the ways the Sisters of the Holy Cross used to express their devotion to Our Lady of Sorrows was by praying the chaplet of the Seven Dolors/Sorrows of Mary in community every day.   The chaplet is prayed upon prayer beads like a rosary, except the beads are organized into seven sets of seven, one for each of the seven sorrows.  An example of such a chaplet is shown above.  According to the Sisters' website, this practice is now a "frequent" rather than a daily one.

Like many other religious congregations, the Sisters of the Holy Cross now view the pursuit of Social Justice as a critical part of their mission.  In connection with this pursuit, the Sisters, along with many other congregations of Sisters, in 2009 signed on to a document called  "A call to integrate FAITH ECOLOGY AND THE GLOBAL ECONOMY."  The signatories note their desire for lots of good things, such as "secure, meaningful, and ecologically responsible livelihoods," but also note the existence of lots of regrettable things, such as "over-consumption."  As to how to achieve the goal of bringing about more of the things they like, while reducing the number of things they don't like, the signatories can do little more than speak wistfully of  "[p]aradigm shift" and "[p]ublic policies for an economy of right relationship."

I suppose if it were easy to build heaven on earth, we'd have done it already.

Our Lady of Sorrows, pray for us