Page 36: Cardinal Newman Society, continued

Another of Archbishop Miller’s pleas to Catholic college officials has been that they develop "benchmarks" of Catholic identity by which regularly to assess their success as Catholic institutions. Among other things, this clearly implies outcomes assessments to ensure that students are graduating with a healthy appreciation of the Catholic intellectual tradition and moral teaching. The ACCU has taken no apparent action to comply with the Vatican’s request, but that could likely change quickly if Pope Benedict repeats the call in April.

Of course, standards among Catholic colleges in the U.S. clearly differ, and the Cardinal Newman Society has taken the important step of identifying model Catholic colleges in its new publication, The Newman Guide to Choosing a Catholic College (available at www.TheNewmanGuide.com). In addition to several essays helping Catholic families make wise college choices, the Guide provides profiles of 21 distinctively Catholic colleges of varying sizes and curricula.

The majority of the colleges in The Newman Guide were established in the last 40 years, a development that certainly has not escaped the attention of Pope Benedict. Father Joseph Fessio, S.J., the Pope’s former student and a founding official of Ave Maria University in Florida, says that the Holy Father’s first question during a September visit from Fr. Fessio was, "How’s Ave Maria doing?" Vatican officials seem to be regular guests of honor at Christendom College in Virginia, Thomas Aquinas College in California and the Franciscan University of Steubenville, Ohio. Contrast that with the astonishing disrespect shown to Francis Cardinal Arinze, Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, at Georgetown University when several faculty members and parents walked out of his 2003 commencement address; thus, one can imagine the Vatican’s excitement about the new, faithfully Catholic colleges in the U.S.

These are "Pope Benedict" colleges, likely to turn out most if not all of their students and faculty at his public audiences and Masses in New York and Washington. A special nod from the Holy Father to these vibrantly Catholic colleges would send the unmistakable signal that the course that they have set—and the reforms sought by the Cardinal Newman Society and thousands of faithful Catholics within the colleges that are still wrestling with their Catholic identity—are the way of the future. It is a message of great hope.