How Catholic identity reinvigorated one Catholic college

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After deciding ten years ago to thoroughly implement Pope John Paul’s guidance for a Catholic university when it comes to its Catholic identity in “Ex Corde Ecclessiae,” Benedictine College in Kansas has had an extraordinary success, its students increasing in number each year and its offerings expanding.
see www.benedictine.edu/benedictine.aspx?pgID=1186&newsID=2610&exCompID=358
A report on this is also at blog.cardinalnewmansociety.org/2011/10/25/how-catholic-identity-reinvigorated-one-catholic-college/
 
👍

"Among the information highlighted in the document:

• Required courses for all students in a philosophy department centered on St. Thomas Aquinas.

• Required courses for all students in a theology department that was in early, robust and public compliance with the canon-law mandatum.

• A retooled business curriculum with philosophy and Christian Moral Life requirements.

• A residence life program that forbids coed dorms and trains all students in theology of the body.

• Student life policies that require crucifixes in every dorm room and two spiritual programs in each residence hall floor, such as the Rosary and morning prayer.

• New campus art and architecture including: A grotto built on the 150th anniversary of both the school and Our Lady of Lourdes, the Mother Teresa Nursing Center featuring a commissioned painting of Mother Teresa, and a new 8-foot statue of St. Benedict in the center of campus.

• The compilation of the Benedictine College Values, a framed copy of which hangs in every classroom and staff department along with a crucifix.

• Extensive service to the poor, including nearly 600 students in a skip-a-meal program this year.

• No other school sends as many students from as far away to the March for Life in
Washington.

• The school honors Catholic identity through six awards, including the Humanae Vitae Award, the John Paul II Distinguished Speaker Award and the Do Something Beautiful for God Award.

• The school is the birthplace of the Fellowship of Catholic University Students and remains a leading FOCUS school; more than 400 students have attended the FOCUS national conference in the last two years."
 
This is awesome! Yay for Benedictine College in Kansas! :extrahappy: 👍

The daughter of one of our Perpetual Adorers is a student there. Sounds as if this was a good choice of school.
 
Were there earlier two colleges, St. Benedict (men) and Mt. Saint Scholastica (women) that became one? Maybe I’m thinking of some other institution(s).
 
A little history.

The downfall of the Catholic university system can be traced to one event, “The Land O’Lakes Conference and Statement” of July 23, 1967.

The event was organized by the North American Region of the International Federation of Catholic Universities

The introduction to the Statement reads -

*The Catholic University today must be a university in the full modern sense of the word, with a strong commitment to and concern for academic excellence. To perform its teaching and research functions effectively **the Catholic university must have a true autonomy and academic freedom in the face of authority of whatever kind, lay or clerical, external to the academic community itself. **To say this is simply to assert that institutional autonomy and academic freedom are essential conditions of life and growth and indeed of survival for Catholic universities as for all universities.
  • [Emphasis Added]
It declared that Catholic universities are to be independent of the authority of the Church.

The signatories of this statement weren’t some fringe group. It included the presidents of Georgetown, Notre Dame, Fordham, St. Louis and Boston Universities.
 
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