Catholic Community at Urbana-Champaign?

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Hi Everyone,
My wife and I may be moving to Urbana-Champaign (IL) next year. From our limited research, it seems like the towns have a very active Catholic community. Can someone comment on what their impressions of the Catholic community at Urbana-Champaign?

Any Catholic schools? Are they good? Traditional?
Are parishes orthodox in practice?

Do any of the Parishes offer Latin Mass?

thank you
 
I am not a UofI student at all. I’m actually in Bloomington-Normal. Even I love the Newman Center at UofI. Though geared, obviously, towards college students, the Newman Center is very Christ-filled. At least once a year (that I know of), the Extraordinary Form is offered. I also have family that attends St Patrick’s parish in Urbana and they seem to like it. I’m not exactly sure on whether there is a consistent Extraordinary Form offering in the area, and I’m slightly sure that there is not, but I may be wrong.
 
I have family in the area (mostly non-Catholic) and there seems to be no shortage of Churches. I have visited the Newman Center at U of I, I was very impressed! There was a very long line for the confessional on a Saturday afternoon, and I saw that they offered this Sacrament daily. A friend of mine has a daughter living in the Newman Center, she seems to like it.

I’m sorry I can’t offer more info.

Newsy
 
CSUNGerrie said:
Hi Everyone,
My wife and I may be moving to Urbana-Champaign (IL) next year. From our limited research, it seems like the towns have a very active Catholic community. Can someone comment on what their impressions of the Catholic community at Urbana-Champaign?

Any Catholic schools? Are they good? Traditional?
Are parishes orthodox in practice?

Do any of the Parishes offer Latin Mass?

thank you
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I thought that the people at Urbana-Campaign were exempted from religious requirements because being there is enough penitential suffering. :D:D:D
 
I have never been to campus, so can’t comment on it, but I remember the controversy a couple years ago when an adjunct professor at the university was fired for teaching the orthodox Catholic view of homosexuality. Kenneth Howell taught Introduction to Catholicism, which was a regular course offering for credit, but his salary was being paid by the Newman Center. The salary thing was a historical legacy from decades ago.

Anyway, Howell filed a lawsuit alleging infringement of academic freedom, as well as violation of free speech. The university’s position was that Howell was violating university policy on inclusivity. However, after a national legal advocacy organization got involved, the university re-hired Howell, and also began paying his salary 🙂

As I recall, the Newman Center was also very supportive of Howell, continuing his salary and offering space to him to teach during his fight with the university.
 
Hi!

My husband and I lived in CU for a couple of years after we got married and he also went to school there (before we married). I’ll agree that the Newman Center on campus is wonderful and they don’t really care if your aren’t attending school there and want to attend mass with them. They don’t celebrate the EF on a regular basis, but the do have Latin daily mass once a week (I think it’s on Thursday). We attended there for a while and sang with the 9pm Sunday choir; and I really enjoyed that mass always felt like it was full of people who really wanted to be there.

For regular parishes, there’s St. Patrick’s in Urbana, and St. Matthew’s and Holy Cross in Champaign. I’ve been to all three and I think I recall that maybe Holy Cross or St. Patrick’s is a little more traditional that St. Matthew’s, but it’s been a few years since we lived there, so I can’t say for sure.

Holy Cross and St. Matthew’s both have grade schools through the 8th grade and there is a Catholic high school called St. Thomas More. I don’t know about how faithful they are to Catholic teaching as schools because we didn’t have the baby when we lived there, so we never really looked into it.

I hope that helps.
 
sapphirevelvet said:
Holy Cross and St. Matthew’s both have grade schools through the 8th grade and there is a Catholic high school called St. Thomas More. I don’t know about how faithful they are to Catholic teaching as schools because we didn’t have the baby when we lived there, so we never really looked into it.
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I can’t speak for the grade schools, but I know that St Thomas More high school sends students to DC every January for the March for Life, which is at least one good Catholic teaching.
 
Hi Everyone,
Thank you for your responses. It is very reassuring to hear that the area has such a strong Newman center.

I did hear about the Howel incident. It is very disturbing that someone could be fired for teaching Catholic social doctrine in a … course on Catholicism. It does concern me what may lie ahead if I were to hypothetically bring up issues of faith in my classroom. I was very tempted to bring up the whole Howell issue with the Dean and ask if the University values freedom of speech. I figured that probably would not have worked out so well for me if I did. =)

I love that the area has two K-8th grade schools. Does anyone know what the homeschooling scene is like?
 
CSUNGerrie said:
Hi Everyone,
My wife and I may be moving to Urbana-Champaign (IL) next year. From our limited research, it seems like the towns have a very active Catholic community. Can someone comment on what their impressions of the Catholic community at Urbana-Champaign?

Any Catholic schools? Are they good? Traditional?
Are parishes orthodox in practice?

Do any of the Parishes offer Latin Mass?

thank you
Click to expand...
I was surprised to see this thread, because it’s not everyday someone asks about my hometown on CAF! To answer your question, St. Pat’s in Urbana is nice, and it’s where I go when I go back to visit. I’ve also been to Holy Cross, which is in Champaign. I don’t think you can go wrong with either. However, I don’t think either offers the TLM.
 
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