McGrath Institute for Church Life

Overview

The McGrath Institute for Church Life lies at the heart of the University of Notre Dame’s direct service to the Church through outreach in theological education, research, faith formation, and leadership development.

The institute seeks to serve the Church through contributing to the formation of faithful Catholic leadership, assisting the Church in addressing current challenges with responses appropriate to the teaching and research mission of a preeminent Catholic university, and inspiring a renewed Catholic imagination in the U.S. Church through new scholarship and research, both within and beyond the Notre Dame community.

Through its flagship programs, the Institute for Church Life offers unsurpassed opportunities for growth in faith and leadership to constituents on campus, in our parishes, and in most of the dioceses across the country. With programs designed for all age groups, and drawing from a world-renowned faculty, the institute shapes Catholic leadership at all levels through comprehensive intellectual and spiritual engagement of undergraduate students, by providing intensive faith formation and catechetical training for graduate students, by creating opportunities for faculty to engage their Catholic faith, and by offering excellent resources to bishops, priests, deacons and lay catechists. Our conferences originate at the University but ultimately have an impact well beyond our own campus.

Drawing on the resources of the University, the Institute is distinctively able to foster research, education, programming, and conversation that lift the imagination to further the evangelization and healing dynamic within and beyond the Church.

Mission

The McGrath Institute for Church Life bridges the Catholic intellectual life and the life of the Church, in order to form and empower faithful Catholic leaders for service to the Church and thereby the world. In collaboration with our ecclesial partners, we propose and enact a renewed vision of Church life through scholarship, pastoral expertise, and teaching to discern and address the needs of the Church.

Vision

We seek to become, from the heart of the University, a "living institutional witness to Christ and his message." We serve as a vital place of encounter for Catholic institutions and innovative leaders, connecting the best in scholarship, pastoral practice, and teaching to the Church's mission of evangelization.

Goals

The McGrath Institute for Church Life has identified four defining goals as part of its strategic planning process, each of which advances the University-wide goal to "ensure that our Catholic character informs all our endeavors."

1. Nurture an organizational culture of communion marked by candor, respect, generosity, and virtue in order to foster professionalism and strategic collaboration.

Objectives

Establish an on-boarding process for new employees.
Build upon and enrich opportunities for prayer and spiritual life within the Institute, along with opportunities to socialize and build community.
Enhance internal communication within the Institute.
Design and implement a professional development plan within the Institute.
Foster a culture of communal learning among Institute faculty and staff.

2. Discern and strategically respond to pastoral needs of the Church in collaboration with Catholic leaders.

Objectives

Initiate an annual, multi-day summit for all MICL faculty and staff devoted to curricular development, shared programmatic planning, professional development, team building, clarification of goals, and the coordination of calendars.
Establish a clear and reliable process for evaluating new project proposals and growth opportunities, as well as for determining the continued viability and desirability of current projects and programs.
Articulate a philosophy of partnership with a variety of partnership levels to suit the various kinds of manners of partnership appropriate to the Institute.
Identify all the national organizations to which the Institute should belong and participate, then ensure that the Institute is represented in each.
Establish a relationship with social science experts, whether through an in-house initiative or strictly through external partnerships, in order to conduct regular, ongoing pastoral research.
Start creating the foundation to guarantee the cultural translation of future content especially for books and training programs into Spanish.

3. Enact a pedagogical vision of education and formation to promote a culture of affiliation characterized by love of the Church, a clearer understanding of Church teaching, and a creative recovery and re-proposal of the riches of Scripture and Tradition.

Objectives

1. Initiate and sustain an intra-Institute discussion with input from strategic partners about the Institute's pedagogy, emphasizing its attunement to the Eucharist, to generate deeper understanding and development of this distinctive pedagogy.
2. Develop approaches to education and formation that begin with the disaffiliated in mind to open up opportunities for affiliation.
3. Promote a renewed pedagogy of the basics of the Catholic faith and practice.
4. Provide resources, programming, and educational opportunities to build up, sustain, and enrich leadership in the Church to enable them to create pedagogies of affiliation in local settings.
5. As special points of emphasis within the renewed pedagogy of the basics, recover and strengthen scholarship and devotion to Mary, the saints, and Sacred Scripture.
6. Deepen the impact of STEP/Camino through developing new partnerships, digital content, and educational models for the McGrath Institute's outreach in digital education.

4. Nourish the University's educational culture through scholarship and cross-disciplinary collaboration in service to the Church's mission of evangelization.

Objectives

Continue to build and enhance our relationship with the theology department.
Create partnerships with, or outreach to, University constituencies with an interest in academic formation towards the Church's mission of evangelization.
Create programming to make the riches of the Catholic intellectual tradition available to scholars and teachers at Catholic institutions across the disciplines.
Seek role clarification and general protocol for all academic roles within our relating to the Institute.
Develop a plan and rationale for scholarly publication.
Continue to host, sponsor and co-sponsor academic conferences, with partnerships, (both with campus units and off-campus units) as appropriate.

Learn more about the Institute for Church Life by visiting their website.