In Part 1, linked below, I described the shockingly bad news coming out of Notre Dame. I promised that in Part 2 I would describe the shockingly good news. Instead, in this Part 2, I provide an update on the bad news described in Part 1. The good news will come in Parts 3 and 4.

Since Part 1 was posted, the professor whose promotion was at issue, Susan Ostermann, decided not to “move forward,” as reported to the student newspaper by Dean Mary Gallagher, the dean who had sought to promote her (“Breaking: Ostermann Declines Liu Institute Directorship Following Backlash Over Abortion Advocacy,” The Observer, Feb. 26, 2026). In Ostermann’s letter to Gallagher, she criticized the university community for its objections to her persistent and public pro-abortion views:

[I]t has become clear that there is work to do at Notre Dame to build a community where a variety of voices can flourish. Both academic inquiry and the full realization of human dignity demand this of us…I look forward to collaborating with colleagues across the university to build a campus community where all can speak openly on the issues that matter to them most…

The university for its part made the following brief statement to The Observer:

We respect Professor Ostermann’s decision to decline the directorship of the Liu Institute. We appreciate her deep commitment to the Institute’s mission and her desire to advance its important work. She remains a highly valued member of our faculty, and we are grateful for her continued contributions as a scholar-teacher and member of the Notre Dame community.

In his February 26^th report, Jonathan Liedl of the National Catholic Register (“What Just Happened at Notre Dame? Inside the Reversal of Susan Ostermann’s Appointment”), reminded readers that Provost McGreevy is up this year for a renewal of his five-year contract. It should not be renewed.

Liedl also reported that his sources say Father Dowd had done some work behind the scenes to achieve this result, a fact implicit, Leidl says, in the wording with which he addressed a gathering of 32 bishops, which included the local Ordinary, Bishop Kevin Rhoades, on campus Feb. 23-25 for a conference co-sponsored by Notre Dame’s McGrath Institute for Church Life and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ doctrine committee.

Neither Professor Ostermann nor the two administrators who sought to promote her, Dean Gallagher and Provost McGreevy, nor the president, Father Dowd, nor the Fellows charged with promoting the school’s Catholic mission, nor the chair of the board, nor the board of trustees, nor any individual trustee, nor this statement by the university issued an apology, a promise to investigate what went wrong, a promise that it would never happen again, or a renewal of the commitment of the university to its Catholic mission.

Let us look at two incidents of what we might call “after-action analysis.” In the first, The Observer reported on the regularly scheduled monthly meeting held March 3 of the Faculty Senate. Amy Stark, the chair and a professor of biology, stated, “I have heard from many of you, as well as preliminary discussions within the Administrative Affairs Committee today and earlier last month, regarding concerns across the spectrum with the Ostermann appointment…I…will be reaching out directly to the provost and Fr. Dowd…about what the takeaways of the situation might be moving forward from their perspective…” (Mara Hall, “Faculty Discuss OIT Updates, Attendance policies and Ostermann at Senate Meeting,” The Observer, March 4). I suppose “concerns across the spectrum” include faculty members who approved her appointment and faculty members who rejected it.

Yes, I too, and the world await to learn what “takeaways,” what lessons, for the faculty Fr. Dowd and Provost McGreevy will tell the faculty to draw from this experience. As I stated in Part 1, over 80 bishops and Ambassador Mary Ann Glendon objected to the plan in 2009 to honor pro-abortionist President Obama. Nonetheless, then-president Father Jenkins moved forward with his plan. He said there’d be an opportunity to dialogue with the President about abortion, but no one spoke to President Obama about abortion. The only talking was by the President at commencement. The “takeaway” from this experience was that Notre Dame administrators and faculty were free with impunity to publicly support abortion — which is what Professor Ostermann did.

The second after-action analysis is provided by Thomas Mustillo, a professor of politics and global affairs, in his letter to The Observer published on March 3. His lengthy letter starts with:

As a Catholic, an alumnus [‘91] and a current member of the faculty…I believe this episode diminishes our community, including for those who hold principled views against legal access to abortion. [1] It diminishes our reputation and viability as a leading global Catholic research university; [2] it diminishes our ability to advance the Catholic intellectual traditions, including those pertaining to abortion and human dignity; and [3] it diminishes our internal discourse and cohesion…(brackets added)

He then explains his first point, namely, that this event “chills” discourse, his second point, that there was failure to “rigorously engage” the merits of Ostermann’s pro-abortion publications, and his third point: “Reasonable people can disagree about access to abortion and the qualifications for leadership. However, there is a distinction between good-faith disagreement and the deliberate weaponization of argument” (“Ostermann’s Withdrawal Shouldn’t Have Happened,” The Observer, March 3).

Let me respond bluntly to Professor Mustillo: It was the promotion of Professor Ostermann, not the objections to it and her withdrawal, which diminished the reputation of Notre Dame as a Catholic institution. Second, no devout Catholic can “reasonably disagree about access to abortion” and no devout Catholic, and no member of the faculty sympathetic to Notre Dame’s Catholic mission, can reasonably disagree as to whether someone who is pro-abortion has qualifications for leadership at Notre Dame. There is no need to rigorously engage the arguments of anyone in favor of abortion. There is nothing chilling about being denied promotion based on being pro-abortion.

Neither Ostermann nor Gallagher nor McGreevy nor, apparently, Fr. Dowd or the Board of Trustees understand the gravity of abortion. Devout Catholics regard abortion as abhorrent, reprehensible, abominable. We have the same reaction, as indeed these men and women I just listed would have, to the execution of a defendant known to be innocent. The ban on abortion is an ancient, two-thousand-year-old Christian teaching. It is regarded as so grave a sin that, by canon law (applicable to Catholics), the mother, as well as associated medical personnel, incur automatic excommunication. Yes, it can be forgiven. (See Servant of God Dorothy Day.) That abortion has become commonplace and frequent and legal does not negate the gravity of the sin.

How dare Professor Ostermann bite the hand that feeds her, to think that she could be publicly and persistently opposed to this ancient Catholic teaching on a matter of life and death without consequences. It is indeed a matter of life and death — both for the unborn children and for the mothers, doctors, and others involved — an issue of their eternal glory or eternal punishment. In each pregnancy, a decision must be made: to let the child live or to kill him/her. Abortion is no abstraction. It is not subject to a debate in the academic Ivory Tower. It is existential. Witness the testimony cited in Part 1 of Anna Kelley, the student who serves as president of Notre Dame Right to Life and survived China’s one-child abortion policy. Witness as well my relatives who have had children out-of-wedlock or who have adopted children.

Professor Ostermann voluntarily wrote her articles which were outside her academic field. Dean Gallagher and Provost McGreevy voluntarily promoted her. No one forced them. These were, in tennis parlance, “unforced errors.” Needless. Pointless. Indeed, it is easy, easy I say, for someone sympathetic to the Catholic mission of Notre Dame, as Dean Gallagher and Provost McGreevy should be, to have rejected out of hand Professor Ostermann as a candidate for promotion, any promotion.

Does anyone doubt that if Professor Ostermann’s publications denied the Holocaust or argued that blacks were intellectually inferior she would not have been promoted? No one would claim that severe objections to her are “chilling,” a refusal to consider the merits of her arguments, a violation of her dignity, a silencing of her voice. But being pro-abortion is somehow okay. How dare Professor Ostermann, Dean Gallagher, Provost McGreevy, and any other faculty member or member of the administration fail to respect the Catholic morals held by Notre Dame’s founder, Father Sorin, the Congregation of Holy Cross, alumni, and current students and their parents.

Let me end with a request for meditation on the words of this 1962 song Blowin’ in the Wind:

how many ears must one man have
Before he can hear [unborn children] cry?
Yes, and how many deaths will it take ’til he knows
That too many [unborn children] have died?

[A link to Part 1 is here.]