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Being Catholic, Being American, Volume 1

The Notre Dame Story, 1842-1934

Being Catholic, Being American, Volume 1

The Notre Dame Story, 1842-1934

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Hardback

£29.99

Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press
ISBN: 9780268021566
Number of Pages: 595
Published: 01/06/1999
Width: 15.2 cm
Height: 22.9 cm

The University of Notre Dame, as the pre-eminent American Catholic University, often serves as a mirror of the travails and triumphs of the American Catholic community. Being Catholic, Being American: The Notre Dame Story, 1842-1934 by Robert E. Burns is an archive-based account of the developmental years of the University of Notre Dame. During these years, university leaders strove to find the additional resources needed to transform their successful Catholic boarding school, then attended primarily by the sons of middle-class Irish- and German-Americans, into an ethnically diverse modern American Catholic university with traditions of both academic excellence and intercollegiate football greatness.

Being Catholic in America during these years was not for the faint of heart. Anti-Catholicism, driven by a revived nationally organized Ku Klux Klan, intensified throughout the country, especially in Indiana. Burns recounts the encounter between Klansmen and Notre Dame students in 1924 known as the "Battle of South Bend." He examines the impact that clash had upon the performance of Knute Rockne's legendary football team, led by the Four Horsemen of Notre Dame. He penetrates the mythology surrounding Rockne's football enterprise and describes the impact the glorious 1924 season had on American Catholic self-esteem at a time when Klan-inspired anti-Catholic bigotry was common.

Though corruption and scandal destroyed Klan political power in Indiana, anti-Catholicism remained strong. Dismayed by the anti-Catholic character of the presidential election of 1928, overwhelmed by the onset of the Great Depression in 1929, and shocked by the death of Rockne in 1931, Notre Dame was well aware that an important era of expansion and glory had ended. The leaders of the university firmly believed, however, that Notre Dame was a special place, and with God's help and continuing support from loyal and generous alumni, the university's future would be brighter and grander than its past.

Being Catholic, Being American is for historians, teachers, students, alumni, sports enthusiasts, and all those touched by the story of the University of Notre Dame.

Robert E. Burns

Robert E. Burns came to the University of Notre Dame in 1957 without previous exposure to Catholic education or commitment to it. He remained at the University for 39 years, serving as a teacher, working historian, and administrator of the College of Arts and Letters.

Burns, a teacher and administrator at Notre Dame for four decades, has written an entertaining, useful history of the university from its founding in 1842 through 1934. The first section concentrates on the institution's growing pains, including the debate over hiring lay faculty and the beginnings of the phenomenally successful football program under Knute Rockne. The second section treats the virulent anti-Catholic sentiment of the Ku Klux Klan in Indiana and its influence on the university and its football team, whose national championships gave American Catholics something to be proud of as they moved toward assimilation into the mainstream culture. The third section examines the impact of the Great Depression on the university's finances and enrollment and the effect of Rockne's untimely death in a plane crash in 1931. This book is an important contribution to the history of one of America's most important Catholic universities, a story that often mirrors the history of American Catholics in the 19th and 20th centuries. Highly recommended. -- Pius Murray, Pope John XXIII National Seminary, Weston, MA

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