Kathryn Lopez

Kathryn Lopez is editor-at-large of National Review Online and a nationally syndicated columnist.

“You never open the door when there’s a shirt tied around the doorknob!”

So I learned when I went back to my dorm room one morning, in my freshman year at a Catholic college. Evidently sexual activity was so common that it had its own perverse sort of etiquette that every student was expected to know. I appeared the odd man out.

Many a recent graduate or current student of Catholic universities can tell similar stories. It wasn’t just Charlotte Simmons in Tom Wolfe’s all-too-realistic novel who was “sexiled” from her room so her roommate could entertain a boyfriend (and some students have no such modesty issues, as it turns out).

Students deserve better—they deserve to be expected to be better.

Of course, stories like this have always been and will always be told. But it’s something to keep in mind as you choose a college, because there are better options available to Catholic families. And every Catholic campus should be striving to be those alternatives.

As much as every father of a daughter would like to think campus life revolves around the classroom, it doesn’t. The majority of campus life happens outside of the classroom: studying, socializing, making gains and experiencing losses.

For most 18- and 19-year-olds living this new campus life, it is their first go at making moral decisions on their own—without mom and dad to lean on or to set them straight when they go wrong. Is the only direction or safety cushion a monetary fine if students trash the common room or blatantly bring into a dorm the alcohol they have illegally purchased? Is the campus so “realistic” that the health or women’s center offers nonjudgmental “problem-solving” options to pregnant girls?

Students will arrive on campus with all sorts of different influences and varying degrees of formation. But one thing on campus should be certain: A Catholic college that’s confident in its identity will not be just like every other college or university in the country.

It is in the campus culture where many of the habits that will make or break characters for years to come are formed. Is the campus life just another hook-up culture, or is it conducive to the Christian life?

The campus needn’t be monastic—and it shouldn’t be, this is college after all. But it ought to be countercultural, in the sense that it is of this world but actively aware of “the end game.”

So, Catholic families would do well to look for a campus environment where the focus is eternal life and not scoring a hot date this weekend or just passing that one difficult class this semester.

How does a Catholic campus go about being different? First of all, those who direct campus life need to be different. That is, they need to work at a Catholic college for a reason: They believe that there is a point to a Catholic education and that four years on a Catholic campus ought to change lives for good.

Our Holy Fathers’ Advice

Pope Benedict XVI writes, “The Gospel is not merely a communication of things that can be known—it is one that makes things happen and is life-changing. The dark door of time, of the future, has been thrown open. The one who has hope lives differently.”

Presumably you are reading The Newman Guide and considering a Catholic college or university, because you want to grow in your faith and live a Christ-centered life. You deserve that opportunity on a Catholic campus.

But at too many Catholic colleges, the campus life is hardly different than at one of those “top party schools.”

The quote above is from Pope Benedict’s encyclical on Christian hope, and it rounds up with, “The one who hopes has been granted the gift of a new life.” The Catholic campus has to teach about this life-changing gift and provide encouragement for the different life that it makes possible: If not here, where? If not now, when?

In the monumental summer of 1968, at the height of the Sexual Revolution, everything you ever needed to know about Catholic campus life was addressed in Rome. In Humanae Vitae, Pope Paul VI wrote: “We take this opportunity to address those who are engaged in education and all those whose right and duty it is to provide for the common good of human society. We would call their attention to the need to create an atmosphere favorable to the growth of chastity so that true liberty may prevail over license and the norms of the moral law may be fully safeguarded.”

In my work I have spoken to countless students and alumni of Catholic colleges, and I can tell you that the word “chastity” usually doesn’t come up between freshman orientation’s date-rape skit and the first time a student walks in on their roommate hooking up.

This is why it is so critical that whatever college you choose respects the dignity of the student and supports Catholic values in dorm life.

Paul VI continued: “Everything therefore in the modern means of social communication which arouses men’s baser passions and encourages low moral standards, as well as every obscenity in the written word and every form of indecency on the stage and screen, should be condemned publicly and unanimously by all those who have at heart the advance of civilization and the safeguarding of the outstanding values of the human spirit. It is quite absurd to defend this kind of depravity in the name of art or culture or by pleading the liberty which may be allowed in this field by the public authorities.”

Practically speaking for the Catholic college or university campus: A Catholic campus could have chapels in the dorms. A Catholic campus could have examples of moral Catholic living in the dorms. A Catholic campus might have priests or sisters in the dorms. A Catholic campus should have single-sex dorms or (at least!) single-sex floors.

And do not overlook the importance of “visitation policies.”  These are the hours when members of the opposite sex are officially permitted to be in others’ dorm rooms. At many Catholic colleges, the time ranges from early morning until very late at night. What message does this send?

If any place in the world should serve as a laboratory of Pope John Paul II’s theology of the body, it should be the Catholic campus.

The Catholic university graduate today should be prepared not only to have a stable job, to raise a family, and to achieve all the ends that the secular world seeks in a college education, but also to follow John Paul the Great in the way they love and show responsibility in everything they do.

Catholic college graduates should stand out in the workplace and in their apartment buildings not because they wear crosses but because of how they live their lives.

And if the Catholic college you are considering does not do this, you may want to ask yourself why you are paying a premium to attend a private college.

“We observe today a timidity in the face of the category of the good and an aimless pursuit of novelty parading as the realization of freedom,” said Pope Benedict XVI in his April 2009 address to American Catholic educators. “We witness an assumption that every experience is of equal worth and a reluctance to admit imperfection and mistakes. And particularly disturbing, is the reduction of the precious and delicate area of education in sexuality to management of ‘risk,’ bereft of any reference to the beauty of conjugal love.”

Catholic Education: The Future

“Making God Known, Loved, and Served: The Future of Catholic Primary and Secondary Schools in the United States” is the title of one of the more reflective documents in recent years on Catholic education—published by, of all places, the University of Notre Dame.

I say of all places because, as I write, Notre Dame has been in the spotlight for—in a very public and national way—not doing the things named in the title. But there are things that Notre Dame does right, including Eucharistic Adoration, single-sex dorms and Catholic teacher training. The things that make headlines out of South Bend expose a cognitive dissonance—and that is exactly why the Notre Dame commencement scandal in May 2009 caused such outrage. But the seeds are there—as their report indicates.

The document discusses challenges facing the Catholic Church and Catholic education in America: “The religious are almost gone. Pastors are overwhelmed. Mass attendance is down. So are collections. [Catholic-school] faculty salaries are still too low. Costs and tuition are rising. Enrollments are declining. Thus goes the litany.”

The report goes on: “Yes, we know the story well. Has it become so familiar, though, that we could forget its ending is not inevitable?”

Bingo. Wayward Catholic colleges are blithely pursuing a path to destruction, and the impact on both students and the surrounding culture is not often taken seriously.

Consider the current marriage debate: While political movements focus on protecting marriage from courts and interest groups that seek its redefinition, it’s important for Catholic families and faithful of marriage age to ask, “What have we done lately to actually protect marriage?” If the concept of courtship is as laughable on most Catholic campuses as it is in the bars in Harvard Square, the answer is “nothing.”

At the heart of the Notre Dame report are three “deep-seated convictions.” First, “Catholic schools afford the fullest and best opportunity to realize the fourfold purpose of Christian education, namely, to provide an atmosphere in which the Gospel message is proclaimed, community in Christ is experienced, service to our sisters and brothers is the norm, and thanksgiving and worship of God is cultivated.”

Second, “The vitality of the Church is inextricably linked to the health of its Catholic schools because they provide the most effective way to evangelize and form holy men and women who make God known, loved and served.”

Third, “Catholic schools will continue to play a vital role in American civic life, as they exemplify how to prepare citizens for full engagement in democracy and commitment to the common good.”

How well this applies to the colleges and universities in The Newman Guide! But what is the fate of the other Catholic institutions if they do not renew their Catholic identity?

The report adds that the familiar storyline of the last 40 years must be re-thought. In the summer of 1968, Pope Paul VI rightly predicted that men would lose respect for women in the age of the contraceptive pill. Man would get to “the point of considering her as a mere instrument of selfish enjoyment, and no longer as his respected and beloved companion.”

Saving and Losing Souls

The reality of Catholic campus life can be told by touring dorms on weekends (and weekday nights). Before you choose a college, visit and then visit again, paying close attention to the atmosphere in the residence halls. You will learn a lot.

The sad reality of campus life at most Catholic colleges was made all too clear in a survey published by The Cardinal Newman Society in 2008 on “Behaviors and Beliefs of Current and Recent Students at U.S. Catholic Colleges.”

The Catholic campuses unfortunately looked a lot like the rest of the culture: “During their last year at a Catholic college or university, 46 percent of current and recent students engaged in sex outside of marriage (including 41 percent of respondents who say they were sacramentally-active Catholics during that year.).” Almost one of every five said they knew a student personally who had or paid for an abortion!

And the following should break the heart of anyone who knows Christ and understands the power of Catholic education: The survey shows that 57 percent of respondents said “the experience of attending a Catholic college or university had no effect on their participation in the Catholic Mass and the Sacrament of Reconciliation”—and 10 percent said the experience decreased their participation!

Further, 54 percent of students said that attending a Catholic college or university “had no effect on their support for the teachings of the Catholic Church and 13 percent say the experience decreased their support.”

At too many Catholic colleges then, it would seem that students are taking on tens of thousands of dollars of debt to finance their self-degradation!

If the Catholic colleges you are considering see no reason to buck these trends, you should hesitate, and the colleges need to rethink their reason for existence. The graduate of a Catholic college or university has to graduate knowing that he is called to “put out into the deep,” as St. Peter was. He needs to have, along with a diploma, the spiritual and academic tools with which to do so. This is the obligation of the Catholic college or university. Or else it’s just another college or university.

“The overall effort,” says Fr. Matthew Habiger of Benedictine College, should be “to help young men and women discover that the good and satisfying life is one that fully respects all the human goods that fulfill us as well-integrated persons. The virtuous life is the only truly happy life.  If we draw upon all the means available to us to live the Christian life, then it becomes possible for everyone. This applies also to a Catholic understanding of marriage as a permanent, irrevocable consent, requiring total fidelity.”

Is this the attitude of the staff and administration at the Catholic college or university you’re looking at? It makes a big difference.

This Much Is True

In the encyclical Fides et Ratio, Pope John Paul II wrote: “The search for truth is not always so transparent. . . . The natural limitation of reason and the inconstancy of the human heart often obscure and distort a person’s search. Truth can also drown in a water of other concerns. People can run from the truth as soon as they glimpse it because they are afraid of the demands.”

The Catholic college or university student needs to know there is Truth—in the classroom on Wednesday afternoon and in the dorm room on Saturday night.

When Fr. David O’Connell was inaugurated as president of the Catholic University of America in 1998, he took an oath of fidelity to the Magisterium and quoted John Paul II’s apostolic constitution on higher education, Ex corde Ecclesiae: “A Catholic university must have the courage to speak uncomfortable truths which do not please public opinion which are necessary to safeguard the authentic good of human society. . . . Our leadership must include student life and campus ministry. Here we touch not only the mind but also the heart and the soul of our students. Remember, we have not chosen them, they have chosen us. And they do so eager to learn, eager to grow, filed with all the hope and promise of a future yet to be revealed.”

Students show up hungry. And if the Catholic college or university is worth existing, it had better be giving them the Bread of Life. And not just at Mass. Catholic identity and morals need to permeate the campus, so that graduates, fully aware of Christ’s indwelling presence, can be guided by that awareness and change the face of the earth, bucking trends and giving hope.

As Father O’Connell put it: “Could we as a university possibly share our knowledge with students without sharing our faith? Could we teach about prayer credibly without inviting them to pray and showing them how? Could we speak about meaning and avoid providing the direction to attain it? Could we talk about ethics and then fail to support it in the activities that we promote on and off campus? Could we ask them to serve without first serving them?”

Choosing a college is an exciting and challenging process. An authentic Catholic education is a rich gift for students.

And while majors are frequently intensely deliberated during the decision-making, the moral environment of the whole campus is what may make the most lasting impact on the life of the college student.  Most of a student’s college life will be spent in and around his dorm. And so, in choosing a college, you deserve an answer to this question:

Does the residence life at the college you will attend encourage virtue and chastity and help you grow in faith, or is it likely to be a four-year temptation to be a part of the same hook-up culture that has been at the heart of so much heartache?