The College Fix

A fair number of Catholic colleges these days appear to be suffering from something of an identity crisis. Just recently The College Fix has reported on several troubling developments at American Catholic universities. This graduation season, a full dozen Catholic colleges hosted graduation speakers whose activist efforts directly oppose some of the basic principles of the Catholic religion. A short while ago we reported on a small Catholic college’s debating on whether or not to change its mascot name due to politically correct concerns. At Fordham University, the administration rejected a proposal for a campus Chick-fil-A restaurant after “queer students” complained about the chain; their complaints were based in part on the fact that Chick-fil-A’s upper management believes marriage is between a man and a woman, i.e. one of the core tenets of practical Catholic faith!

It is a troubling trend, one that actually suggests a crisis of faith within the wider Church itself. Indeed, the great issues that once bound the faithful together in a fairly dependable cohesive identity bloc have more or less fractured over the last four or five decades: we recently reported on the astonishing fact that, “out of the 12 Jesuit-educated Senators [currently in Congress], there are only two reliably pro-life legislators.” On such a critical issue, to have only 1/6 of Catholic graduates in line with the Church is something of a scandal, in both the secular and catechetical senses.

Ultimately, as with most critical things in life, the crucial elements of religious education must come the family: we cannot hope to solve the American crisis in Christian identity without first solving it in the home. But religious educational institutions—particularly those with as much prestige, legacy and resources as the country’s Catholic schools—nonetheless must commit to ordering themselves towards genuinely orthodox pedagogy and instruction. It will do the Christian faithful little good to rear their children in the ways of the Church only to have it all unraveled after four years in a school that is Catholic only in name.

It is an odd mark of the times, of course, but any Christian school hoping to transmit orthodoxy to its students must also be prepared to stand against the bizarre and mob-like tide of social progressivism. Religious instruction in the classroom will likely have little effect if the rest of the campus is under the sway of “queer students” who are militantly opposed to a Christian-supported chicken sandwich restaurant. It is hard to imagine a stranger line for Christianity to draw in the sand than Chick-fil-A, but this is essentially where the Church is now. Where the Church goes from here is critical, and it is necessary that she understands the stakes, and acts accordingly.

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