Want to be a Techno-Evangelist?

Back when I was in my mid-teens I would often take the train from Larchmont, our Westchester County suburb, to New York City. It was a short trip to Grand Central Station, less than a half-hour, and in those days of low crime rates there was little reason for my folks to worry about my safety. I know I never felt the least bit threatened. Anyway, I never went alone, and was always joined by one or more friends.

On one of these outings, after arriving at Grand Central my friend and I took the subway down to Cortlandt Street in lower Manhattan. The two of us were ham radio fanatics and in those days Cortlandt Street was the home of a number of unique stores where you could buy military surplus radio equipment at very low prices. Called "radio row' the area later became the site of the twin towers of the World Trade Center. After spending our scarce dollars on a few electronic treasures, we strolled around lower Manhattan making our way toward Greenwich Village, stopped to buy a hot dog and orange drink at a local Nedick's (a now-defunct early fast-food chain), and sat in a park to eat and watch the people.

A slice of "Radio Row" in lower Manhattan

It was then and there that I encountered my first street-corner evangelist, a man who seemed pretty old to me at the time. (He was probably in his 50s.) We watched as he entered the park carrying a wooden easel-like stand which he set up at a strategic location where two paths intersected. A sign on the front of the easel read, "Catholic Evidence Guild." He stood on a step behind the sign and began to speak. Completely captivated, I listened as he spoke about Jesus Christ and the promise of eternal life in the Gospel. At the time I had never heard of the Guild which I later discovered was popularized in both England and the US by Frank Sheed and Maisie Ward, the famous husband and wife publishing team who founded Sheed & Ward.

Within a few minutes a small crowd of perhaps ten people had formed, seemingly interested in what this lone, enthusiastic apologist for the Catholic faith had to say. Even my friend Eric -- a Jewish boy from the very upscale town of Purchase, NY -- was impressed and later on, as we rode the train back home, asked me a steady stream of questions about what this street-corner preacher had said. As a product of a Catholic education, I knew a bit more than the basics and answered as well as I could. One thing my friend said has remained with me over the years: "When he began to talk about religion, it just seemed so out of place there in the park. But then listening to him I realized that religion is really about everything, isn't it?"

I found myself revisiting this 50-year-old experience when I read about a conference that will be hosted by Thomas More College in Merrimack, New Hampshire. The conference, "Christ and the New Media", is scheduled for August 4-7 and will focus on the use of new media, particularly the internet, to "serve the Church and spread the Gospel." The Catholic Evidence Guild used -- and I presume still uses -- more traditional means to accomplish these same ends, but the times, they are a-changin'. We can still speak to people gathered in the park to eat their lunch on a nice summer day, but we can reach millions more around the globe through the internet. Websites, Facebook, Twitter, email and, yes, even blogs can help the Church carry out its mission to take the Gospel to those who might never hear God's Word. This is something Pope Benedict has been encouraging from the beginning of his papacy. After all, Christ's call to evangelize is universal; no Christian is exempt. And the internet offers a wonderful opportunity for Christians to respond to the command to evangelize "all nations."

It's too bad the conference isn't being held right now, because we're currently visiting one of our daughters who lives only a short drive from Merrimack. Unfortunately, in early August Diane and I will be on our way to Iowa to attend the wedding of the son of dear friends. But even though I can't be there, it would be fitting for the conference highlights to be published online. We'll see.

Our "New" Catholic Colleges and Universities

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Sean Cardinal O'Malley, the Archbishop of Boston and a man for whom I have much love and respect, visited Florida last week and received an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Ave Maria University during their commencement ceremony. Ave Maria is a relatively new Catholic university located in Ave Maria, Florida, near Naples. If you would like to read Cardinal Sean's comments on his visit, you can do so by visiting his blog: Cardinal Sean's Blog. (In the spirit of full disclosure, let me add that Cardinal Sean -- then the Bishop of Fall River -- ordained me and my class of brother deacons back in 1997.)

Ave Maria University has grown rapidly since it first opened its doors in 2003, thanks to the vision and generosity of Tom Monaghan, the founder of Domino's Pizza. Like so many of the new Catholic colleges and universities that have sprung up around the country, Ave Maria is faithful to the magisterial teaching of the Church and committed to providing its students a solid liberal arts education guided by Catholic principles. The school now has nearly 800 students on its Florida campus, plus another 500 in Nicaragua. It also has a law school located in nearby Naples. One of our parishioners, a bright young man who is graduating from Trinity Catholic High School in Ocala, Florida, will attend Ave Maria University in the fall. I know he and his family are thrilled that he has been accepted and will become a part of this thriving Catholic educational community.

As I mentioned above, Ave Maria University is just one of a number of relatively new Catholic colleges that were formed to fill the void created when so many of our ostensibly "Catholic" colleges and universities decided to sever their Catholic roots and become instead secular institutions with Catholic-sounding names. This decision to separate themselves from the Church and repudiate their duty of obedience to her was a conscious decision made in 1967 when the major Catholic universities declared their autonomy from the Catholic Church in the Land O’Lakes Declaration.  The declaration was the brainchild of Notre Dame's Fr. Theodore Hesburgh who believed that Catholic colleges and universities, to be "effective," should no longer submit to the Church's teaching authority. This was clearly stated by the declaration:

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.

As a result, these schools, acting like rebellious teenagers, quickly began to dismantle their core curricula and separate themselves from the teachings of Mother Church. Within a few short years they became indistinguishable from most secular institutions. This left the believing Catholic with few choices when it came to higher education...until Ave Maria University and other similar schools arrived on the scene.

In addition to Ave Maria, this new crop of colleges and universities includes: Franciscan University of Steubenville -- (1946) Steubenville, OH; Thomas Aquinas College -- (1971) Santa Paula, CA (from which our elder daughter graduated in 1993); Christendom College -- (1977) Front Royal, VA; Magdalen College -- (1974) Warner, NH; Thomas More College -- (1978) Merrimack, NH; Wyoming Catholic College -- (2007) Lander, WY...and many others whose names escape me right now. If you're unfamiliar with these schools, just visit their websites and you'll quickly recognize how different and how Catholic they truly are.

Over the past 30 years or more I've watched these schools, and others like them, grow and flourish, supported by those who realize there is a great, unmet need for rigorous Catholic higher education that still maintains a strong Catholic identity. This, of course, is exactly what Pope John Paul II demanded in his apostolic constitution, Ex Corde Ecclesiae ("Out of the Heart of the Church"), which he issued twenty years ago in August 1990. It's a wonderful document that places the Catholic institution of higher learning in its proper context where the search for the truth and its transmission are the institution's primary responsibility. This is a responsibility that makes little sense to many of those who lead and teach in our secular institutions where relativistic thinking has made the search for truth meaningless.

I encourage all faithful Catholics not only to support these institutions and others like them, but also to encourage our young Catholic students to consider them as they make their plans for higher education.

Blessings...