One of the great gifts of working at a Catholic college is the opportunity to help students in their development of faith. As a Catholic college, we value, cherish and promote our Catholic values. This is evidenced by our curriculum, our student activities and programs, and our faculty and staff. As a College that welcomes students of all faiths and traditions, we also provide a supporting and respectful environment for each person’s spiritual journey and faith formation, asking only that our Catholic identity always be respected.

Several years ago, a report was issued by a Catholic advocacy group suggesting that Catholic students at Catholic colleges were losing their faith and developing beliefs contrary to the Catholic Church. At the time, I was the President at another Catholic College and found this report both disturbing and contrary to my experiences on Catholic college campuses over the past 25 years.

At the recently completed Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities (ACCU) meeting, a research study was released that provides a different and more positive picture of the impact of Catholic colleges on faith formation. Entitled, “Catholicism on Campus: Stability and Change in Catholic Student Faith by College Type,” the study was conducted by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) at Georgetown University.

CARA was founded in 1964 and affiliated with Georgetown University since 1989. The focus of CARA is to conduct “social scientific studies about Catholicism and the Catholic Church.” The mission of CARA is “to increase the Church’s self-understanding; to serve the applied research needs of Church decision makers; and to advance scholarly research on religion, particularly Catholicism.” I have studied many of CARA’s reports over the years and found them to be well researched, fairly and accurately reported, and very helpful to understanding leadership in Catholic Education.

This research is based on the responses of 14,527 students at 148 colleges and universities. To provide for the comparative data, the survey was conducted with freshmen in 2004 and again with juniors at the end of their 2007 academic year. The data came from the Higher Education Research Institute (HERI) at UCLA, one of the most respected research centers in the country.

The conclusions of this study clearly indicate that students at Catholic colleges and universities do not lose their faith, but, in fact, develop their faith. The data support the conclusion that these students “remain profoundly connected to their faith” throughout their college careers. Catholic students do question some of the Church’s teaching and a good number hold varying views on issues related to contraception and abortion, as well as gay marriage.

But the data clearly demonstrate that during their years on our campuses, Catholic students grow and develop stronger beliefs related to the Church’s social teachings, ethics and morality, and scripture. Their commitments and practices related to prayer and scripture reading increase. And they do so in far more significant numbers than Catholic students who attend public institutions.

All colleges and universities can do better. But we should celebrate the success of Catholic colleges and universities in nurturing the faith for our Catholic students, and providing a welcoming and respectful environment for all people who are dedicating to the search for Truth and the service to the Common Good.

(As always, your comments and questions are welcome.)

This entry was posted on Monday, February 8th, 2010 at 8:26 am and is filed under President's Blogs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.