Responding to the Crisis of Faith and Truth on Catholic Campuses
by Fr. Roger Landry - February 19, 2010
The Catholic Church as a whole has its work cut out to respond adequately to the secularizing push of American culture. In Catholic homes, parishes, schools, religious education programs, hospitals, and dioceses, there are plenty of challenges to go around to pass on the fullness of the Catholic faith to the next generation. Since Christianity is not a body of teachings but a way of life, the Church at every level exists to help make disciples, those who not only know what God has revealed through Christ and the Church he founded, but who live in communion with that teaching.
One of the most pressing areas for the Church to rise up to meet this challenge of forming disciples is at Catholic colleges and universities. These ecclesial institutions have the responsibility of forming the young at the time when they are beginning to make life-changing decisions about their future, when they are evaluating the beliefs and values and deciding to own or discard them, and when they are determining what type of person they want to be and become.
A survey published earlier this month by Georgetown University's Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) showed that Catholic institutions of higher learning as a whole are not yet getting the results the Church hopes for and legitimately expects with regard to helping Catholic students grow in faith during their university years.
The CARA study looked at data from students at seven unidentified Catholic colleges and universities who were extensively interviewed as freshmen in 2004 and then again as juniors. On a range of issues of issues regarding the living of the Catholic faith, the researchers examined whether Catholic colleges were helping students become more or less faithful. "Regardless of where students began their college journey," the researchers stated, "Catholic colleges should be helping students move closer to Christ, and certainly doing a better job of moving students toward the Catholic faith than secular colleges do." They sought to determine not merely what the percentages were on metrics of Catholic practice, but more precisely, what changes were taking place in student beliefs and practices during those years. In order to put the results of Catholic institutions into context, the researchers compared them to data taken from Catholic students at public universities, at non-Catholic religious institutions and at private secular ones.
The results showed that Catholic universities were doing slightly better than their non-Catholic counterparts in preventing the erosion of the Catholic faith, but that far more students on Catholic campuses were changing for the worse than for the better.
With respect to Mass attendance overall, only 42 percent of Catholics juniors on Catholic campuses reported that they attend Mass regularly, but the study also showed that for the students who changed their practice, 32 percent said that they attended Mass less frequently over their first two years of college, in contrast to only seven percent said that they were attending more frequently.
These results show that, while there are obviously many issues involved, Catholic colleges and universities as a whole are not doing an adequate job in engaging students and helping students learn how to make Jesus in the Eucharist the source and the summit of their life. The steep challenge they face in doing so was illustrated by the control groups: 42 percent of Catholics in public colleges, 51 percent in non-Catholic religious colleges and 49 percent in nonsectarian institutions stopped going to Mass as frequently during the same two-year period. The erosion in Mass attendance, therefore, while less at Catholic colleges, is still disturbing: one-third of students begin to give up the regular practice of the faith in Catholic institutions. The results also show that Catholic institutions are not really doing an effective job of helping students who are not attending Mass frequently as freshmen to increase their practice: researchers found that was basically no difference between Catholic and non-Catholic institutions in attracting non-practicing Catholic students to Mass.
The survey revealed similar results on the issues of the defense of human life and the Catholic understanding of the institution of marriage. 56 percent of Catholic juniors at these seven Catholic colleges and universities say they disagree either strongly or somewhat that "abortion should be legal," but among those who changed their opinion during their first two years in school, 31 percent moved away from the Church's position and only 16 percent became more pro-life due to the influence of their Catholic school. This was not statistically different from what occurs in Catholics at non-Catholic institutions, where there were net losses of 17 and 19 percent from the Church's position.
On Catholic students' attitudes toward the redefinition of marriage, the results were more stark. "On no other issue do Catholics move further from the Church — regardless of the type of college they attend — than on same-sex marriage," the researchers wrote. Only 32 percent of Catholic juniors at Catholic colleges and universities disagreed somewhat or strongly with the statement that same-sex couples should have the right to marry. During their first two years of schooling, 39 percent of Catholic students at Catholic institutions had abandoned the Church's teaching and 16 percent had grown to adopt it, a loss of 23 percent of students overall (which mirror the changes that occur for Catholic students at non-Catholic institutions). Therefore with regard to helping to prevent the secularization of Catholic students' understandings of marriage, Catholic colleges show no success at all in comparison with non-Catholic institutions.
Jesus' parable of the Sower and the Seed illustrates that no matter how good the seed and how effective the sower, sometimes the seed doesn't take root because the soil on which it falls is hardened, superficial, or thorny (Mk 4:3 ff). That is clearly relevant here. Even on campuses with the most effective campus ministry programs, faithful and energetic faculties, and vibrant Catholic cultures, many students will resist the Gospel. At the same time, however, we would expect, as the researchers did, that time on a Catholic campus should in general help Catholic students grow closer to Christ than drift further away from him — especially in comparison to non-Catholic institutions — and that the changes that occur in the hearts of students would be changes for the better. That's not happening in the seven representative Catholic schools that have been surveyed. It raises the question of whether the proclamation of the Gospel on these campuses has been sufficiently "salty" (Mt 5:13) to counteract the secularizing forces of culture and to help students see why what the Church teaches is the path to true freedom and genuine human fulfillment.
Pope Benedict, when he spoke to leading representatives of American Catholic universities and colleges in Washington, DC in April 2008, called attention to the "crisis of faith" that often underlies the "crisis of truth" on Catholic campuses, which this survey seems to confirm. He encouraged Catholic institutions of higher learning to make as their top priority helping young people grow in faith in Jesus Christ, which will then lead to a deeper trust in what he taught and what he did in founding the Church as the bulwark of truth to continue his saving work.
"A university or school's Catholic identity," he said, "is not simply a question of the number of Catholic students. It is a question of conviction — do we really believe that only in the mystery of the Word made flesh does the mystery of man truly become clear? Are we ready to commit our entire self — intellect and will, mind and heart — to God? Do we accept the truth Christ reveals? Is the faith tangible in our universities and schools? Is it given fervent expression liturgically, sacramentally, through prayer, acts of charity, a concern for justice, and respect for God's creation? Only in this way do we really bear witness to the meaning of who we are and what we uphold."
That's a challenge that needs to be taken up anew, with greater fervor, after the results of the recent CARA study.
Father Roger J. Landry is pastor of St. Anthony of Padua in New Bedford, MA and Executive Editor of The Anchor, the weekly newspaper of the Diocese of Fall River.
