Latinos, who tend to go to more conservative churches, account for almost half of Catholics under 40. This shift, too, is evident at Notre Dame, where the Hispanic population has grown by 50 percent in the last 10 years. (Today almost 1 in 10 students is Hispanic.) …
[University President Rev. John I.] Jenkins reflects on this change. He recalls reading the letters of the Rev. Edward Sorin, the Frenchman who founded Notre Dame in 1842. Father Jenkins notes: “He was complaining about the Irish immigrants. ‘They don’t work very hard; they’re not very good students. Germans are the hard workers.'”Father Jenkins laughs at the irony: “Of course we came to be dominated by the Irish.” He credits waves of immigrants with “reinvigorating” the church in this country, and he expects that Hispanics will continue that tradition. …
Notre Dame has a contract with NBC to broadcast every one of the school’s home [football] games through 2010. Father Jenkins won’t say whether he thinks the agreement will be renewed — he tells me that “viewership has stayed strong.” But if Notre Dame really wants to increase its market share, Father Jenkins might think about changing the team’s name to the Fighting Latinos.