Angelus News | October 25, 2019 | Vol. 4 No. 36

Who was
Father Ted?
Two new biographies take
on the different sides of the
longtime Notre Dame president’s
complicated legacy
BY EVAN HOLGUIN / ANGELUS
“I So begins a scratchy recording at the start of
think one should remember that this is something
coming from memory.”
“Hesburgh,” the documentary film that takes its name from
Father Theodore M. Hesburgh, CSC.
The 2019 film chronicles the life of the 35-year president
CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE
of the University of Notre Dame, in South Bend, Indiana,
using mostly excerpts from his own autobiographical writings
as the basis for the narrative.
Its portrayal of Hesburgh as heroic and stately is based
on the memories of its subject and those who knew him:
friends, family, confreres, and allies. It is spectacular, beautiful,
and compelling, yet, importantly, one should remember
that it is coming from memory.
“I can recall my father always telling my mother that she
‘piled it,’ tended to exaggerate things,” the recording continues.
“And I may have inherited some of that Irish trait.”
If the quasi-autobiographical “Hesburgh” can be accused of
piling it, then its confrere, “American Priest: The Ambitious
Life and Conflicted Legacy of Notre Dame’s Father Ted
Hesburgh,” by Father Wilson D. Miscamble, CSC, aims for
a more balanced take.
Miscamble portrays Hesburgh as a man in conflict with
himself, totally dedicated to his priesthood but trying to
balance his Catholic faith with the desire to be a protagonist
in the civil rights movement while elevating the school’s
academic prestige.
Through interviews, books, historical records, and some of
his own memories of his coreligionist, Miscamble drafts an
honest and nuanced narrative that at times conflicts with the
narrative in “Hesburgh.”
According to Miscamble, Hesburgh’s public version of
his relationships with St. Pope Paul VI, Presidents John F.
Kennedy and Richard Nixon, and even successor Father
Edward “Monk” Malloy, CSC, were rose-colored compared
to reality.
There was hurt and loss between the broken relationship
of Hesburgh and the pope, anger at Kennedy for distancing
himself from his Catholic roots, and distaste when Nixon
championed Hesburgh’s “15-minute policy” to fight campus
protests, and, most importantly for the priest who dedicated
his life to Notre Dame, hurt at being left out of decisions
made after his 35-year presidency had ended.
For all its historical nuance, Miscamble’s work is clearly the
superior of the two, filled with more accurate scholarship
than the largely autobiographical film, and thus recording
more honest nuance. And yet, Miscamble’s work still suffers
from a slight bias and cynicism of which he warns the reader
from the beginning:
“I began to think about writing of Father Ted and Notre
Dame out of a presentist concern to understand for myself
and, I hope, to explain to others how events had come to
pass that Notre Dame’s mission as a Catholic university had
become so contested,” Miscamble writes in his introduction.
“Readers must be aware of this perspective at the outset
because it still operates and unquestionably it influences the
perspective of this book.”
Anyone familiar with Miscamble’s work, not merely as a
historian but as an activist for Catholic education, knows
that Notre Dame’s invitation of President Barack Obama for
its 2009 commencement address is a sticking point for the
biographer in terms of Notre Dame’s Catholic identity.
Miscamble, like many others who protested and disavowed
the invitation, was aghast at the decision by the country’s
most well-known Catholic school to award a politician who
26 • ANGELUS • October 25, 2019