Rethinking Catholic Attitudes Toward Israel

From Crown Heights to Zion Canyon, the United States is dotted with places reclaimed as holy ground. On the surprisingly crowded map of sacralized America, the Notre Dame campus is distinctive for its decidedly nontranscendent surroundings: America's leading Catholic educational institution breaks the monotony of the Indiana flatlands, two hours from the nearest big city and over an hour inland from Lake Michigan. The Congregation of Holy Cross, which founded the university in 1842, must have realized how much was left to the imagination. A major campus landmark is a partial reconstruction of the Grotto of Lourdes, sitting beneath the apse of the school's towering neo-gothic basilica. Venerable as the Grotto is—construction began in 1869 under William Corby, who preached to Union troops at the Battle of Gettysburg—a visitor could remain oblivious to its power if they didn't stop to read a plaque reproducing the final letter that Tom Dooley, a 34-year-old Notre Dame alumnus and medical doctor dying of cancer in Hong Kong, sent to Notre Dame president Theodore Hesburgh in 1961. “What is unutterable, I can utter because I can pray. I can communicate. How do people endure anything on earth if they cannot have God?,” he wrote. “How I long for the Grotto… If I could go to the Grotto now, I think I could sing inside… the Grotto is the rock to which my life is anchored.” Correct me if I'm wrong, but no one talks about College Walk or even Michigan Stadium that way.