Ralph McInerny - RIP

Ralph McInerny, Professor of Philosophy, Director of the Jacques Maritain Center, & Michael P. Grace Professor of Medieval Studies at the University of Notre Dame until his retirement in June, 2009 passed away Friday morning. Back in the early 90s I had the pleasure of hearing him speak. I was impressed with his knowledge as well as his orthodoxy. A rarity for someone who then taught at Notre Dame. He started there in 1955 when the place was still Catholic so he actually harkens back to a better time. ND may have drifted, he didn't.

He was a solid & faithful Catholic who was very upset with the direction his beloved Notre Dame took in recent years. He publicly criticized ND President Jenkins for inviting Obama to speak at the 2009 commencement. In an article for The Catholic Thing (Is Obama Worth a Mass?) written in March 2009 he had this to say about the invite: "Not to put too fine a point on it, this is a deliberate thumbing of the collective nose at the Roman Catholic Church to which Notre Dame purports to be faithful. Faithful? Tell it to Julian the Apostate." & that was just the start. Later he comments: "the invitation to Barack Obama is far from being the usual effort of the university to get into warm contact with the power figures of the day. It is an unequivocal abandonment of any pretense at being a Catholic university."

He laid the roots of this right where it belonged, the "infamous 1967 Land O’Lakes statement in which the assembled presidents of Catholic institutions declared their freedom from the supposedly baleful influence of Catholic orthodoxy."

As I said he deeply loved Notre Dame & was hurt to see the direction it had taken. (Something I can very easily identify with in relation to my alma mater.) He was clearly hurt to see his career there have to end this way. "For one whose fifty-four year career as a member of the Notre Dame faculty is coming to an end this June, it is a bitter thing to reflect on the 2009 commencement speaker."

He concluded the article by saying: "By inviting Barack Obama to be the 2009 commencement speaker, Notre Dame has forfeited its right to call itself a Catholic university. It invites an official rebuke. May it come."

1st Things has a biographical tribute to him (Ralph McInerny (1929-2010) ) as well as another tribute here that links to some of the things he wrote for the magazine.

Several years ago he did a series on EWTN entitled What Went Wrong With Vatican II based on a book he wrote by the same name.

Finally, here is a part of a series he did on Thomas Aquinas. McInerny was 1 of our era's greatest Thomistic scholars. He will be sorely missed.