Building Catholic Higher Education: Unofficial Reflections from the University of Notre Dame. This item is unavailable.Building Catholic Higher Education: Unofficial Reflections from the University of Notre Dame

American Catholic universities and colleges are wrestling today with how to develop in ways that faithfully serve their mission in Catholic higher education without either secularizing or becoming sectarian. Major challenges are faced when trying to simultaneously build and sustain excellence in undergraduate teaching, strengthen faculty research and publishing, and deepen the authentically Catholic character of education. This book uses the particular case of the University of Notre Dame to raise larger issues, to make substantive proposals, and thus to contribute to a national conversation affecting all Catholic universities and colleges in the United States (and perhaps beyond) today. Its arguments focus particularly on challenging questions around the recruitment, hiring, and formation of faculty in Catholic universities and colleges.

Christian Smith is the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Sociology and Director of the Center for the Study of Religion and Society at the University of Notre Dame.


John C. Cavadini is the McGrath-Cavadini Director of the Institute for Church Life and Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame. He is the author and editor of several books, including Gift to the Church and World (Pickwick, 2021), Visioning Augustine (Wiley-Blackwell, 2019), Pope Francis and the Event of Encounter (Pickwick, 2018), Mary on the Eve of the Second Vatican Council (Notre Dame, 2017), and Explorations in the Theology of Benedict XVI (Notre Dame, 2012).