When the school was granted relief this fall and continued providing coverage anyways, observers on both sides were quick to cry hypocrisy. Prior to 2014, it had not covered contraceptives at all, outside of those prescribed to treat medical conditions. “This decision unmasks what now appears to have been a pretend lawsuit and accordingly a serious abuse of the judicial process,” wrote Timothy Dempsey, the executive director of the Sycamore Trust, a group founded out of concern over Notre Dame’s allegedly declining Catholic identity. “It now appears that Notre Dame was perfectly willing right along to do what the government wanted it to … If that is so, the lawsuit was a sham.”

Jenkins argued that the moral issues at stake in this decision are not so clear cut. Catholic teachings, such as Pope Paul VI’s 1968 document Humanae Vitae, clearly indicate that birth control is counter to Catholic teachings.** In his letter, Jenkins wrote that the encyclical’s “prophetic quality is clear,” challenging cultural tendencies toward the objectification of women, the decline of marriage, government intervention in procreation, a lack of respect for “the natural processes of our bodies,” and the threat of technological manipulation.

But, Jenkins argued, the Catholic tradition also prizes the importance of individual religious conscience—including, potentially, those who choose to take birth control. “It’s wrong to think that we get orders from the pope and march in lockstep,” he told me. “To say simply, well, Humanae Vitae is against this, and therefore it can’t be provided—it does seem to me that this is a more complex decision, requiring consideration of a larger number of factors.”

In an email on Wednesday morning, one Notre Dame professor—who asked not to be named out of fear of retaliation—wrote that the new policy represents mainstream American Catholics’ views: Abortion and abortifacients are bad, but contraception is okay. “That is not what the Catholic Church teaches, of course, but the generation that now occupies positions of power at Notre Dame probably never really believed the Church’s teaching,” he wrote. “Those teachings require a level of commitment that Fr. Jenkins’s generation simply lacks.”

A professor of liberal studies, philosophy, and theology, Gretchen Reydams-Schils, offered tentative approval. “If at least the regular pill would be covered, then this is a very important concession. In that case, I as a Catholic could endorse the president’s decision and respect his discernment process (which does not mean that I agree with all his points), and the careful weighing that has gone into it,” she wrote in an email. “The devil will be in the details, and once again women’s bodies will be on public display.”

Faculty and alumni have speculated that donor pressure influenced Notre Dame’s decisions on its birth-control policy, but Jenkins categorically denied that claim. “Benefactors … did not play a strong role in pressuring one way or the other,” he said. Although Church leaders “had an interest in what we do,” he said, he hasn’t heard directly from members of the Catholic hierarchy in the U.S. and Rome beyond his local bishop.