Catholic Colleges and Tests of Faith A study's findings dismay conservatives

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By DAVID GIBSON A new study on the faith of Catholic college students produced a Rorschach moment in today's church that was neatly typified by contrasting headlines in the Catholic media:

"Catholic colleges weakening students' faith, new study finds," declared the conservative-leaning Catholic World News.

"Study: Catholics at Catholic colleges less likely to stray from church," went the headline from Catholic News Service, the media outlet of the American bishops.

So which is it? Are Catholic colleges undermining the faith? Or are they an effective if leaky levee against the growing tide of secularism? The study, "Catholicism on Campus," was released on Jan. 31 by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA), at Georgetown University, which compiled the data from national surveys of more than 14,000 students at nearly 150 U.S. colleges and universities. Students were surveyed as freshmen in 2004 and then in 2007 as juniors.

The upshot is that while college-age students at all schools tend to move away from Catholic practices and beliefs, Catholic students at Catholic colleges are less likely to drift than Catholics at non-Catholic schools. The CARA authors conclude that "students self-identifying as Catholic at Catholic colleges and universities remain profoundly connected to their faith" by their junior year. While the study's authors acknowledge that Catholic schools could always do better, they "appear to be doing no harm—certainly in comparison to other types of higher education institutions—and at a more subtle level may be increasing their student's Catholicity."

Rebellion tends to define youth in every era, just as marriage and childbearing tend to draw adults back to their faith. But 46% of the Catholic juniors at Catholic schools surveyed said their "religiousness" became "stronger" or "much stronger" during college and 39% said there was "no change." Almost all expressed a strong belief in God, and nearly nine in 10 said "seeking to follow religious teachings in everyday life" was at least somewhat important to them. Overall, they were slightly less likely to pray when they left Catholic universities than when they entered, but slightly more likely to read the Bible and other sacred texts.

Yet nearly a third of Catholic students at Catholic schools were less likely to attend Mass—the baseline of Catholic practice—than they had been before arriving on campus, and just 7% said they were more likely. And the church teachings to which these students at Catholic colleges adhere most strongly are those that, in a sociopolitical context, would be called "liberal." For example, 21% of Catholic students at Catholic schools moved away from the church's teaching against capital punishment, while 31% moved closer to the church's position—a significantly higher shift in that direction than from Catholic students at non-Catholic schools, where it's almost a wash. On a range of social-justice issues, Catholic students at Catholic schools are even more likely to maintain or move toward church teachings and policies: opposing increased military spending; supporting higher taxes on the wealthy; and expressing much stronger support for "reducing pain and suffering" and "improving the human condition."

By contrast, on issues of personal sexual morality generally considered "conservative," students show the furthest drift from Catholic teachings over their college years.

For example, a significant number of all college-age Catholics tended to shift toward a more permissive view of abortion, with 31% of those at Catholic schools saying they were more supportive of legal abortion after their time on a Catholic campus and only 16% saying they had moved closer to the church's teaching. Catholic students' shift away from church teaching on legal abortion was slightly greater at non-Catholic schools. Overall, 56% of Catholic juniors at Catholic colleges say they disagree "strongly" or "somewhat" that "abortion should be legal." On the question of same-sex marriage, 39% of Catholic students at Catholic colleges distanced themselves from the church's opposition and only 16% moved toward that stance—a net change nearly as high as at other universities. By their junior year, only one in three Catholics at Catholic schools disagree "somewhat" or "strongly" that same-sex couples should have the right to marry.

Given that opposition to abortion and gay marriage are now the twin markers of orthodoxy for conservative Catholics—many of whom are also less likely to agree with the church or their kids on trimming military spending, increasing taxes for the wealthy, or ending the death penalty—it's no surprise that conservatives might be dismayed by the survey's findings.

Of course, Catholic colleges have been blamed for instilling "liberal" values since Catholics started attending colleges in large numbers in the postwar years—a criticism that has grown more pronounced as Catholic higher education became an arena for battles in the culture wars. "By inviting Barack Obama to be the 2009 commencement speaker, Notre Dame has forfeited its right to call itself a Catholic university," the noted Catholic philosopher Ralph McInerny said last spring as he prepared to retire after 54 years at the iconic university of American Catholicism. McInerny, who died on Jan. 29, seemed to confirm the predictions of Archbishop Fulton Sheen: Four decades ago he reportedly recommended that his family and friends "send their children to secular colleges and universities where they will be forced to defend their faith, rather than to Catholic ones, where their faith will be taken from them."

The CARA report now suggests that Catholics at non-Catholic schools tend to fare worse as far as fidelity and practice goes. But the larger issue is that Catholic higher education simply can't bear all the weight of passing on the faith.

Parents and families are the greatest single influence on a young person's faith, experts note, and the deterioration of family life often leaves Catholic students religiously adrift even as dioceses, parishes and the shrinking priesthood are increasingly ill-equipped to take up the slack.

Viewed from that perspective, perhaps Catholic colleges should be praised for providing young Catholics a sanctuary and incubator for at least some of the tenets of their faith until, let us hope, these men and women help birth a wider Catholic culture to better support their own children.

Mr. Gibson, a biographer of Pope Benedict XVI, covers religion for PoliticsDaily.com.

Where God Talk Gets Sidelined Sports journalists are reluctant to tackle faith on the field.

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Peter King, a senior writer for Sports Illustrated, admits his own skepticism when players bring up their faith after a game. "I've seen enough examples of players who claim to be very religious and then they get divorced three times or get in trouble with the law," Mr. King said earlier this week. "I'm not sure that the public is crying out for us to discover the religious beliefs of the athletes we're writing about."

Faith is the belief in things unseen. Sportswriters are trained to write about the observable. "One of the problems that we have is determining the veracity of a person's claim that he has just won this game for his Lord and Savior Jesus Christ," Mr. King said.

In the Baltimore Sun before last year's Super Bowl, Washington Post reporter Rick Maese characterized his fellow journalists as "notebook-toting cynics who worship at the altar of the free media buffet." But he softened his language and cut his colleagues some slack when I spoke to him recently. A sports reporter might write one story with a strong religion angle and feel like the idea is no longer fresh for the next athlete he covers, Mr. Maese told me. "It's not like the reporter's going to bring an athlete's beliefs or religious affiliation up out of the blue," he said. But "if that's something the player cites as a motivating factor, I don't think you're telling the full story if you don't explore that angle a little bit."

Reporters might also be apprehensive about giving an athlete a platform to espouse his beliefs. "When athletes give their testimonies in interviews, there's impatience, sometimes an outright hostility to religion, because they feel like an athlete is pushing religion on people," says Shirl James Hoffman, author of "Good Game: Christianity and the Culture of Sports." "Sportswriters who write on Christian athletes might be generally sympathetic to the moral life that they present off the field. When an athlete says anything that hits on their faith as the only way to salvation, now you're in real trouble."

On occasion, an athlete's religion cannot be ignored by the press, as when the superstar boxer Cassius Clay became a Muslim in 1964, changing his name to Muhammad Ali and citing his religious beliefs as the reason he refused to be inducted into the military.

More recently, reporters have found it hard to ignore Jesus-professing athletes like the quarterback Kurt Warner, who retired on Jan. 29. Mr. Warner, who went from stocking shelves at a grocery store to winning two MVPs, is outspoken about his faith. When a reporter attempts to separate the high-caliber athletes from average ones, they begin to look for some intangible qualities, and faith is sometimes a part of that. "There is dishonesty in telling his story if you ignore what drives him, especially if you accept its role in one of the NFL's great success stories," the Arizona Republic's Paola Boivin wrote before last year's Super Bowl.

Sports journalism often lends itself to lengthy profile-driven features. Sportswriters have some of the best opportunities to tell human-interest stories, and in some cases that means connecting the religious dots for people. But when you look closer into what it means to be religious, it usually involves divisive opinions on matters like heaven and hell, and, in some cases, abortion.

Millions of people will watch Mr. Tebow's mother recount her story on Sunday. But fewer people may know that Brett Favre's wife, Deanna, faced a similar decision when she became pregnant after her second year of college, before the couple were married. Their Catholic faith was a key factor in their decision not to seek an abortion, Catholic News Service reports.

In 2006, Mr. Warner cited his faith as his reason for appearing in a political advertisement opposing a proposal that would have allowed embryonic stem cell research in Missouri.

If journalists are asking the right motivational questions (why did an athlete retire? why does he do prison ministry?) they might find religion in the answers. When appropriate, it's the reporter's responsibility to dig out the underlying story and present it to readers.

Despite his expressed skepticism of athletes' God talk, SI's Mr. King recounted on Jan. 8, 2008, how former Washington Redskins coach Joe Gibbs's faith affected his decision to retire. "We don't write things like this very often in this business," Mr. King said in his Web column. "But devout people say and feel devout things and are driven by their relationship with their God. I think Gibbs is one of those people."

Even Mr. King, it seems, admits that faith can force itself into a journalist's notebook—and into the final version of the story.

Ms. Bailey is online editor for Christianity Today and a contributor to GetReligion.org.

Former D.C. Catholic schools seeking identity as charter schools
By Michael Birnbaum
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, January 28, 2010; B01

St. Gabriel's Catholic Church in the District's Petworth neighborhood and the Center City Public Charter School next door share a parking lot and the shade of some trees. Until a year-and-a-half ago, they also shared a faith.

But in 2008, the Archdiocese of Washington gave up control of seven of its financially struggling inner-city schools, stripping down crucifixes and turning the facilities into secular charter schools in three months. Dozens of teachers and hundreds of students departed; 1,000 new students signed up.

The reincarnated schools walked a fine line between staying secular and capitalizing on Catholic schools' reputation for quality inner-city education. The schools made clear that God wasn't part of the picture but focused their curricula on character values and "moral virtue." And many parents flocked to the schools because they believed their children would receive a free parochial education.

"I kind of wish they did keep the prayer in the school," said Catina Butts, a parent at Center City's Trinidad campus, the former Holy Name School. "But they kept the structure, they keep the kids disciplined. They knew my son's weakest points, and they helped bring him up."

Students talk about respect, perseverance and integrity -- a focus that Center City educators say was part of the Catholic curriculum but also fit the charter school model. Every month, the schools pick a value and spend the month working on it, making students write essays and discuss how they live it.

A morning meeting has replaced morning prayer; students chant a code of respect. Girls wear the same plaid jumpers they did as Catholic students, and boys wear pressed shirts and slacks. Some say the dress code is enforced more strictly than it was in the Catholic days. Students unfailingly stand when visitors enter the room in a show of old-fashioned politeness.

"We have the same uniforms," said eighth-grader Amber Sneed, who started at St. Gabriel's School when she was 4 and stayed on to go to Center City. "We have the same discussions."

But the school also made moves typical for charter schools: lengthening the school day, focusing on student performance data and hosting workshops to improve teachers' craft.

At the time the conversion was proposed, it drew fire from all sides. Some critics thought the Catholic Church was forsaking inner-city youth. Others worried that religion would remain in classrooms and that the public money going to the church in the form of rent -- $2.3 million this school year, much of which has been used to bolster the remaining D.C. Catholic schools -- was an unacceptable mixture of church and state.

Clearing the Bibles out of the library brought challenges that neither critics nor advocates expected.

"The response [to the conversion] was unbelievable," with new families streaming in to register their children, many of whom were coming from poorly performing public schools, said Maureen Holla, president of Center City, which has been running the organization since the spring after the conversion.

Holla, who has worked with charter schools and inner-city education for more than a decade but doesn't have connections to Catholic education, said the rapid changes had clearly been tough for the schools. "There are tremors that come from turning a place upside down in four weeks," she said.

Six of the seven campuses that converted remain, each with one class per grade, pre-kindergarten through eighth. The seventh school, the former St. Francis de Sales in Brentwood, closed after a year, the victim of continued low enrollment.

Initial test scores at the schools were unimpressive, something school leaders acknowledge. They blame the results on the turmoil of the conversion. Across the seven campuses that were open the first year, 38 percent of students scored proficient or above in reading on the D.C. Comprehensive Assessment System tests, compared with 48.4 percent of students in traditional public schools. In math, 24.6 percent of Center City students scored proficient or above -- "abysmal," in Holla's words -- compared with 45.6 percent of D.C. public school students.

Holla noted that other promising schools have struggled with disappointing test scores in their early years. Initial internal tests this school year, especially in earlier grades, are more encouraging, she said. Students will have a second crack at the DC-CAS this spring.

In a classroom at the Petworth campus next door to St. Gabriel's one recent morning, eighth-grade teacher Niya White led her class -- two-thirds of whom have arrived since the conversion -- in a discussion about courage, one of the values the schools have focused on. Most of the talk centered on whether students had the guts to 'fess up to parents about typical 14-year-old foibles such as staying out too late and not doing homework.

Although the charter schools are a lean financial operation, they are on much better footing than they were as Catholic schools. White says she no longer has to think twice about ordering a new set of novels for her English class. Principals elsewhere express relief that they're able to hire people to help students who need special education.

At the Trinidad campus, Principal Monica Evans said she had about $2,500 per student to spend each year when she ran a Catholic school. As a charter, the school receives $8,800 to $11,400 per student from the city.

"For someone like me, who's been so used to operating on nothing," she said, "we've been able to do some incredible things with the resources." That includes hiring teacher trainers, expanding an arts program and purchasing classroom supplies.

She also said the charter has become more of a neighborhood school, drawing local students who had been intrigued when it was called Holy Name but were unable to afford the $4,500 tuition.

Though conversations about the futures of seven other D.C. Catholic schools took place this fall, a spokesman for the archdiocese said there were no plans to apply for any conversions this year.

For at least one Center City teacher, Catholicism is a guide even when it's not part of the classroom. Sister Patricia Ralph spent 14 years at Holy Name, five as principal. She stayed on at Center City. Her impeccable handwriting covers the chalkboards of her fifth-grade classroom. A small crucifix dangles around her neck.

"The conversion was hard in the beginning, but children are children, and I made sure that I was focused on that," she said. "It's been a challenge."

One solace: When the school pulled off a blackboard panel to install an electronic whiteboard as part of the conversion, Ralph saw that a cross was drawn directly onto the cement wall. The whiteboard went right over it.

"Y'all thought you took Jesus out of here, but in my heart I know it's there," she said.

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