University of Notre Dame Press
Notre Dame, Indiana 46556
All Rights Reserved
www.undpress.nd.edu
Copyright 1999 by University of Notre Dame
Published in the United States of America
Reprinted in 2000, 2001, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2012, 2014, 2016
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hesburgh, Theodore Martin, 1917
God, country, Notre Dame / Theodore M. Hesburgh with Jerry Reedy.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN: 978-0-268-01038-6 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN: 978-0-268-08803-3 (paperback)
1. Hesburgh, Theodore Martin, 1917 . 2. University of Notre DamePresidentsBiography. 3. College presidentsIndianaBiography. 4. Catholic churchUnited StatesClergyBiography. 5. Social reformersUnited StatesBiography. I. Reedy, Jerry. II. Title.
ld4112.7.h47h47 1999
378.111dc21
[b]
99-38524
This book was printed on acid-free paper.
ISBN 9780268088040
This e-Book was converted from the original source file by a third-party vendor. Readers who notice any formatting, textual, or readability issues are encouraged to contact the publisher at .
To my mother and father for the early years, and to my colleague and friend Father Ned Joyce and my secretary, Helen Hosinski, for all the years since.
Ten years ago, when Dick Conklin, Jerry Reed and I, with the help of Alvin Moscow and Bill Barry of Doubleday, launched this book, I hoped [it] would have a good life, which means it will enter into others lives. Now ten years later, largely due to the love and friendship of over one hundred thousand Notre Dame men and women and friends, more than three hundred thousand copies have been sold around the world, leaving interesting tracings, which I found even spread into China.
The book spent eleven weeks on the New York Times best-seller list. It appeared also in paperback. Doubleday decided against another hardcover printing, but I still kept getting numerous inquiries for copies. Many copies crossed my desk for inscription that had been scrounged from secondhand bookstores. Again, thanks to Dick Conklin, now our associate vice president for university relations, the book is being republished by the University of Notre Dame Press. I will be eighty-two years old when the new edition appears, and my hope is that this edition will enter a few more lives, as it had during the past decade. Among the many letters I have received from readers, the ones that touched me the most are those from young men who say that after reading the book they are now considering studying and preparing for the priestood. This reaction is the greatest reward of all. The profits from the book have gone into an endowment for our Notre Dame Law Schools Institute for International Civil and Human Rights. Graduates who received a masters degree in law through that Institute are already hard at work in most of the troubled spots around the world, including Bosnia, South Africa, and Rwanda.
I should perhaps give a brief account of myself in this past decade. Following retirement in June 1987, Father Ned Joyce and traveled just about everywhere in the world (including Antarctica) to get away from the work we had been doing together for thirty-five years. All of our travels appear in a book, Travels with Ted and Ned, now out-of-print. I should add that we left the campus for over a year in order to give our successors, Father Ed (Monk) Malloy and Father Bill Beauchamp, an open field for their new endeavors. They have done very well and are both still on the job after more than twelve years. The University has grown and prospered under their direction and continues to move forward as a great Catholic university in our timesperhaps the greatest, if I might brag a bit on their behalf.
When we returned to the University in January 1989, Father Ned and I occupied adjoining offices on the thirteenth floor of the library, one of my favorite buildings on campus after the Basilica of the Sacred Heart and the refurbished Main Building with its Golden Dome. We still collaborate on many projects and have not yet had our first fight, despite the fact that he is quite conservative and I am quite liberal. He is a Southerner and I, a Yankee.
I had worried somewhat that retirement would mean sitting quietly in a corner, albeit a high corner on the thirteenth floor of a library now carrying my name, but the very opposite has happened. We have managed to keep very busy here and abroad. The mail continues to come in bushel-basket quantities.
I serve on several humanitarian foundations and carry forward other outside assignments, including a second term as a presidential appointee on the board of the U.S. Institute of Peace. There are many other assignments around the world that keep me busy, one of the most recent of which is a tripartite committee to keep peace in the Holy Land.
Every day that I am on campus, the office is filled with a long line of students, faculty members and alumni, mainly seeking advice on personal matters. This is core priestly work which I enjoy greatly. Every Sunday night during the school year, I offer Mass in the chapel of one of our student residence halls. It is a great consolation to see the jam-packed chapels, the enthusiastic fervor of the students, and the deep sense of Christian service which enriches the lives of so many. About eighty percent of our students are involved in service projects of every imaginable kind, bringing inspiration and hope, especially to the poor and dispirited. I must admit that I growl every time I hear people say that the younger generation lacks spirituality or inspiration. They are the best, far better than I was at their age.
My final words to my successor when I left was to tell him, Be Malloy and forget Hesburgh. During the past decade, I have worked out my own definition of retirement: Do as much as you can, as well as you can, as long as you can, and dont complain about the things you can no longer do. Thanks for the Good Lord and good health so far, I enjoy the role of being everybodys grandfather, especially while living in the midst of such a wonderful group of young men and women students and the dedicated faculty members who teach them.
On the health side, I am down to one eye because of macula degenerans, an affliction of my age group. However, I continue to remember the words of Frey de Carvajal, the chaplain of a group of Spanish explorers on the Amazon, when he wrote after losing an eye to an Indian arrow, I pray to God that I may serve Him better with one eye now than I have done heretofore with two.
May I close with a final thought. The Holy Spirit is the light and strength of my life, for which I am eternally grateful. My best daily prayer apart from the Mass and breviary continues to be simply, Come, Holy Spirit. No better prayer, no better results: much light and great strength.
Theodore M. Hesburgh, C.S.C.
President Emeritus
University of Notre Dame
