Catholic Identity

Another school term was coming to an end this week.  In college, finals had ended at my Catholic alma mater and kids were returning to their place of origin.  It was May.  There was something about a morning in May.  In my place of origin, May was when spring really began.  It was a time of re-birth, of starting over.  One year had ended, in the life of the soil, another was beginning.   For me, there was always a time of the day, a season of the year, when your sense of God was greater.

 

 

Speaking of a place of origin, the greatest commandment was once described as involving a knowledge of God. We were all compelled to know God, to love God and to respond to His love.   And the degree of that knowledge was determined to a large extent by both how much time was dedicated to the pursuit and the institution that provide the setting, a place of origin, for that pursuit. 

 

 

The challenge from these commandments, from a perspective of the institution, of the generations before, was a response –a love for God. It was about trying to teach generosity, based on honed, long–time academic pursuits at an institution.  It was not just a “tradition.”  This weekend, about three days late, the liturgy was centered on Ascension Thursday.  There the last commandment was heard from God.  “Go!  Teach all nations.  In the name of the Father.  In the name of the Son.  In the name of the Spirit.”  Thus the mission that was not foreign to this soil.   It was about what made this land, our land, holy. 

 

 

Graduates, Catholics and non-Catholics, at some point after graduation were asked to lend some financial support to such an institution of learning.  It was how the institution survived. And those in what was now called institutional advancement, once known as the development office, knew it was one thing to write a check, but entirely another to really get the emotions of a donor, the passions, involved.  And that was how relationships impacted the future of a Catholic institution.   I read a quote from a wise man, a philanthropist, who said that it was “in these relationships and with the people that are really impacted by some of the things we’re involved in.”  There were not many young people who could claim to be passionate about life.  It was a true lifetime acchievement, true institutional advancement, to care deeply for the entire community, and not just the tribe, the denomination that share your beliefs.

 

 

Young people, some more than others, got caught up in their credentials that they might one day earn a living.  Scholarship needs a bit of retirement from the spinning of the world’s revolution that kept us from falling off the earth.  A sense of retreat, fleeing from the world, is necessary to truly being scholarly, in search for the unknown.  And the time for scholarship ends to many on the day of graduation.  But first, at some point, a student was required to offer some form of service, with credits extended, in real life experience. 

 

 

So this week, at a Catholic law school, the local paper featured a blog item concerning a student who tried to get approval for time spent working at Planned Parenthood.  When it was rejected by the dean, a tempest broke out at the teapot.  In another age, this student would have been kicked out for her arrogance to challenge institutional identity, that her own personal identity, self-image trumped the law school’s.  There had been a time in her life when she wanted to attend this law school.  The controversy was so self-centered, where the anger of one student arose when her own personal beliefs could not trump the instituion’s.  A number of student felt that because they paid what seemed to be a lot for tuition, they could determine how and where they earned credits.  After all, it was the student’s time, the student’s money, as if the money would determine new ideals of the institution, as it seemed to in much of the leveraged buy-out world they had grown up in.