By JAMES K. FITZPATRICK
There have been some indications of late — in spite of all the student protests and expressions of political correctness — that the inmates are not yet in complete charge of the asylum on our college campuses.
An article in The Daily Signal (dailysignal.com) on November 21 by Kelsey Harkness gives an example of a professor who did not bend to the left-wing campus protesters — and who survived. There is a lesson to be learned by other faculty members and administrators who hold back from criticizing the protesters in fear of the consequences.
Harkness tells of Carol Swain, a black conservative professor at Vanderbilt University who responded to student protests demanding her resignation with a short and sweet “Grow up.”
Among other allegations against Swain, a professor of law and political science at Vanderbilt for nearly 27 years, were charges of “unprofessional intimidation on social media.” It seems, writes Harkness, that “Swain actively posts her Christian conservative viewpoints on her public Facebook page and website called BeThePeopleTV.”
Swain answered the charges of “bigotry, intolerance, and unprofessionalism” made by the protesters by pointing out that “the students behind the protests never took any of her classes, all of which are elective” and that “no one has to go to my blog page or go to my Facebook. I feel that I have been defamed by the students and the petition has been filled with lies, and they ought to be held accountable for what they’ve done.”
Those students, she said, “don’t get to decide whose speech is more valuable than someone else’s.”
It calls to mind Hans Christian Andersen’s story of “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” doesn’t it?
The reaction? Swain has not been fired or suspended. In fact, the university president defended her right to her personal opinions expressed on social media. Beyond that, a petition in support of her has gained more than 1,000 signatures.
Another example: If you are among those frustrated by what is happening at many Jesuit colleges — the ongoing performances of Vagina Monologues and the sponsorship of LGBT pride activities, for example — and left wondering if anyone in authority in the Church knows what is going on at these schools, there is reason for some hope. The Cardinal Newman Society reported on its web page (cardinalnewmansociety.org) on November 18, 2015 that “Pope Francis’ ambassador made a forceful appeal to the U.S. bishops for the renewal of faithful Catholic education.”
According to the Newman Society, the Pope’s envoy, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, “strongly urged the American bishops to help Catholic schools regain the luster of their true identity . . . and ensure that Catholic colleges are faithful to the title of ‘Catholic’ that they bear and teach the same doctrine of the universal Church.”
Viganò made a specific call for Jesuits to “take the lead” and to “reaffirm the Catholic identity” of their schools and colleges. Viganò went on to remind Catholic educators that they cannot “hesitate to say openly what is right,” because they fear losing the “the favor of men.”
It is too soon, or course, to conclude that Viganò’s statement indicates light at the end of the tunnel on the secularizing of our Catholic colleges. But it does make clear that Rome is aware that not all is well in Catholic higher education in the United States. We’ll see what happens next.
On another topic: J.M., a reader from Wikieup, Ariz., writes to ask us to consider an ironic dimension to the Second Vatican Council’s teaching that “parents are the first to pass on the faith to their children and to educate them in it” — which is used each week as the headline banner for First Teachers.
J.M. proposes that there are challenges faced in our time that were not yet obvious at the time of Vatican II. “Just a couple of statistics and observations,” J.M. writes, “64 percent of mothers under the age of 30 now have a child out of wedlock and over 50 percent of women in the main cohort do not live with the biological father of their child! I am beginning to worry that the quality of the ‘teachers’ for the first teacher job is rapidly deteriorating. It would also appear that the parents who educated the previous generation did a less than sterling job instilling moral and societal norms.”
J.M. asks us to consider how the “grownups” in our time have reacted to the figures about broken families he cited above. Rather than seek to change the sad state of affairs, they have instead removed the sense of shame once associated with children born out of wedlock and men abandoning their families, in fear of being seen as judgmental. “Society has always recognized the special needs of widows and orphans, but these abandoned women and children are now treated as a new norm in some segments of society.”
Also, J.M. asks us to confront the price of this new norm: “The single parent, usually the mother, and the irresponsible father make poor building material for a healthy society. Ignoring for the moment the cost to the greater community (higher incarceration rates for boys without fathers, higher rates of pregnancy for girls born out of wedlock from single-parent homes, lower educational performance, greater poverty, greater substance addiction), the cost to the individuals and their soul is enormous.”
What does J.M. propose as a mechanism to deal with this deteriorating situation? “One proven solution from the past,” he writes, “is training and the proper instruction on moral matters (virtues) for children. It is hard to deny a correlation between the drop in Catholic school attendance from the sixties (over 5 million) to the present (about 1.2 million) and the drastic fall in Mass attendance over the same period (more than half depending on the survey).
“But that’s only addressing the problem after it has already begun; children need teachers before school age. And without a proper family structure that’s very difficult.”
We must keep in mind, he adds, “The Church provides backup for parents in raising the children in the faith. These are godparents.” But “this works on the assumption that the child has been baptized, that the godparents are serious, that the godparents actually have a part in the child’s family life, etc. A lot of assumptions that are usually not met these days.”
J.M. proposes that we consider what he calls “foster godparents,” as a way to address this problem. HIs logic is that “if children can have foster parents, why can’t they have foster godparents? Why not create a system of multiple foster godparents in the parish for young children without spiritual mentors?”
What would a system of foster godparents look like in concrete terms? J.M. continues, “A form of Catholic day care? Maybe. Does it mean involving volunteers? Yes, since single mothers usually don’t have the resources to pay for this spiritual guidance. Does it involve commitment? Definitely. But the kind of commitment that might provide local parishes with a sense of purpose that many no longer possess.”
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Readers are invited to submit comments and questions about this and other educational issues. The e-mail address for First Teachers is fitzpatrijames@sbcglobal.net and the mailing address is P.O. Box 15, Wallingford, CT 06492.
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