Who is Notre Dame’s MVP? I don’t mean the Most Valuable Player on the football team. I mean the Most Valuable Professor on the faculty. If there is any justice on earth, John Cavadini deserves that honor. At a time when many complain of poor university teachers and defections from Catholic truth, he has excelled not just for one season, but for over thirty years. More than any single person during that period, he has preserved and transformed Notre Dame and the Church for the better.
Cavadini earned his Ph.D. in 1988 from Yale University. As a grad student, he rose before dawn to work as a garbage collector to support his growing family. It happened that one day, one of his Yale professors spoke to him amidst a group of other Yale professors and grad students: “John, you do fantastic work.” Waiting to hear praise about his insight into Augustine or his exegesis of Origen, John heard the professor continue, “You always put the lids on the cans and return the cans right where they go.”
Indeed, the other garbage collectors also recognized his talent and elected him the president of their union. As they used to say, “Business
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