What does Notre Dame’s Catholic identity mean to me as a prospective faculty member?
All faculty, Catholic and non-Catholic alike, are full members of the Notre Dame community. Each faculty member can contribute to Notre Dame’s distinctive mission, though it is expected that they will do so in a variety of ways. Some contribute through rooting critical intellectual inquiry in a concern for meaning, character, and/or justice. Others contribute through research and teaching focused on Catholic intellectual and cultural traditions. Some ensure through their presence a diversity of perspectives and identities indispensable to allowing Notre Dame to be a locus for dialogue and debate on the issues of the day. Only through this diversity can Notre Dame serve, as the mission statement of the university says, as “a forum where through free inquiry and open discussion the various lines of Catholic thought may intersect with all the forms of knowledge found in the arts, sciences, professions, and every other area of human scholarship and creativity.” Some faculty, finally, contr
