Todd C. REAM. Hesburgh of Notre Dame. The Church’s Public Intellectual. New York: Paulist Press,2021. Pp. Xxiv + 175. $27.95 pb. ISBN 978-08091-5402-9. Reviewed by Anthony J. BLASI, 4531 Briargrove St., San Antonio, TX 78217.

Why another biography of Father Theodore Hesburgh, C.S.C.? There are already good ones as well as his autobiography. The author, an Evangelical educator and editor, explains that none of the works about the famous president of the University of Notre Dame (1952-87) dwells on the theology that inspired his multi-faceted career.

The author cites Hesburgh’s early theological book, God and the World of Man, and uses it as a key for understanding the multitudinous  addresses, public statements, and articles archived in the Hesburgh Papers at Notre Dame. Hesburgh took the priesthood of the faithful seriously, and he understood  his personal role as an ordained priest as an aspect of that broader calling. Priesthood served not only to bring the grace and inspiration of God to humanity but also to bring the conduct of human social life into the ways of God. In contemporary parlance, one would say that his view of priesthood featured an engagement in human affairs; it anticipated the teachings of the Second Vatican Council by about fifteen years.

The author points out that Father Hesburgh was called upon by U.S. Presidents, beginning with Dwight Eisenhower, to bring a religious perspective to science, civil rights, the potential benefits and dangers of atomic energy, and international development. His role as president of what was becoming the most important Catholic university in the world also led him to conceptualize the role of Catholic institutions of higher education, the place of academic freedom in them, the compatibility  of science and religion, the rights of women, and ecumenism. Because he was leading Catholics out of the defensive posture characteristic of an earlier era in which Catholics were the object of scorn and discrimination, and into a new era in which Catholics were to be citizens collaborating with other citizens, he drew the ire of Catholics who were more stationary in the ways of the early twentieth century.

This account is good, as far as it goes. However, it reads as if Father Hesburgh had developed his strongly incarnational theology based largely on his readings of Thomas Aquinas, Jacques Maritain, John HenryNewman, and Barbara Ward and proceeded to use it to guide his responses to the many requests made of him by presidents and popes. One should ask, Why did he read and dwell on these authors and not some others? Why did he read these authors selectively, allowing himself to be drawn into progressive public causes?

Ted Hesburgh was not ambitious. He had to be persuaded to undertake the ventures that he ended up leading. Those who made his acquaintance knew him as someone completely comfortable with himself and others, and who made others comfortable with him. There was nothing pretentious about him. He dined and chatted with unimportant people readily. Students dropped in to talk to him late at night at his office—no appointments needed. He was comfortably grounded in the world immediately around him and open to it.

And what was that world? Notre Dame had a tradition of being open to the sciences. Father John Zahm of Notre Dame traveled about the United States giving lectures promoting the theory of evolution in the nineteenth century. In the early twentieth century the Holy Cross priests studied at Catholic University of America, as did Hesburgh himself, and at that time Catholic University was known for its progressive social ethics. Such a scientist as Father Julius Aloysius Nieuland, C.S.C., earned his doctorate in botany and chemistry at Catholic University and had a distingusihed scientific career at Notre Dame. One would be hard put to it to credit Catholic University for such things today, but the excellence of its early history was part of the Notre Dame story in Hesburgh’s day. One priest who identified with the Zahm heritage and who earned a Ph.D. in sociology at Catholic University was Father Raymond Murray, C.S.C.; Murry wrote a dissertation on what was a novel institution at the time, the juvenile court. As a social scientist at Notre Dame, he partcipated in anthropological studies in the Arctic and wrote favorably about human evolution—in the 1940s. Murray’s sociology text condemns racial prejudice, and Murray himself did so in his classes. Murray, it turns out, was Father Hesburgh’s spiritual director. It is this kind of contextual information that can help one understand the genesis and development of Father Hesburgh’s practical theology.

While these favorable features of Father Hesburgh’s involvement in public affairs make sense given his context, there are less favorable features as well. On the Notre Dame campus is a Stonehenge-inspired monument to the war dead of World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnamese War. The largest monument on the campus, it does not simply remember the deceased but glorifies war. Hesburgh’s generation was that of World War II, and Hesburgh himself accepted militarism without any evident qualms. He also never appeared to be open-minded about sexual minorities—again, something typical of his generation.