GOD AND (WO)MAN ON CAMPUS: Boston College:
Appleyard, J A
J. A. Appleyard BOSTON COLLEGE IT'S difficult to generalize. One man's trend is another man's fringe group. With 8000 undergraduates here, and half as many graduate students, you can assemble two...
...This year 80 percent say they do...
...About 25 seniors planning to join some kind of volunteer group after graduation are taking part in a course arranged by the chaplaincy this semester to give them some idea of the psychological, political and social problems they will face...
...The department's Institute for the Study of Religious Education trains teachers and parish coordinators...
...Here is some of it: The Jesuits founded B.C...
...Theology is required of all students for two semesters, as part of the liberal arts core...
...The charismatic community numbers about 30 regular attenders at a Tuesday evening mass and prayer meeting...
...A campus this big is really a microcosm of everything that's going on in the culture at large...
...Notes on style: Crosses around the necks of stu-dents are definitely in...
...In some classes teachers don't want to talk about religion...
...The campus security office says that vandalism and student crime have increased, but less so than on other campuses and far less than in the country as a whole...
...and of the positivist values that the departmentalization of the curriculum seems to have brought with it...
...Comment from a Jesuit living in a student dormitory: "There's a harsh impersonality to dorm life that's different from previous years...
...Sixty Jesuits teach, out of a full-time faculty of 525, and another 25 are involved in administration...
...The Jesuits themselves are uneasy and cautiously optimistic...
...Clerical dress is neither in not out...
...Currently they are assembling a meatless cookbook and trying to get the campus food service to provide alternate meatless meals...
...it's just hard to tell where the mainstream is and which phenomena reveal the authentic Spirit-a very old problem for Christians, of course...
...The market value of that difference may turn out to be crucial: though no one seems to keep figures, administrators estimate that as many as 85 percent of the students here are from Catholic families, which suggests that B.C.'s religious identity is still part of its attraction...
...Maybe the problem is the students' lives are getting to be just like the lives of Americans generally...
...Comment from one of the chaplains: "Students who believe in God are beginning to come up out of the ashes...
...Students buy a lot of books on pop religion and spirituality, he says, and outside of required texts the biggest-selling category of books is philosophy...
...It organizes interdisciplinary courses for credit and students can minor in it...
...Retreats are popular...
...Comment from a philosophy instructor: "I always ask my students whether they believed in God...
...many are applying for the Jesuit Volunteer Corps which has graduates living in communal style and working in service projects among the poor in different parts of the country...
...And so...
...The bookstore has a steady problem with shoplifting, but the manager says it is less than a few years ago ("when Jerry Rubin's Steal This Book was on the shelves...
...Two rabbis teach in the department and it is possible to major in Jewish studies, though only one course is offered in Islam...
...Since reasons for these decisions are never made public, there has been a predictable flurry of motive-assigning...
...Newest arrival among religious groups is the Campus Crusade for Christ, which recruited particularly among campus athletes last year, scrimmaged the basketball team to advertise itself, and this year has formed two bible-study groups...
...They're looking around for each other, and they're not afraid to identify themselves...
...Hardly anyone says anything interesting about the Catholic Novel...
...It locates this distinc-tiveness especially in the faculty, and carefully suggests that even more important than academic credentials as a Criterion for hiring and promotion may be the extent to which the attitudes of faculty members "support or at least do not conflict with" the goals of the university...
...A number of students are acutely lonely and apathetic...
...What little public discussion there was on campus was mostly favorable...
...The statement argued for a better-integrated core curriculum of liberal subjects, and put great emphasis on value-centered teaching and on the moral and spiritual education of students as individuals...
...This year she was denied promotion to full professor...
...There are a dozen daily' and Sunday masses in different styles...
...Somehow the people one knows well seem to be coping, even flourishing...
...The alumni newspaper printed the whole statement and reserved a large section of its next issue for replies, but there weren't any...
...Five full-time chaplains (four Jesuit priests and a married layman) and three part-time chaplains (two women religious and a Jesuit scholastic) work there on a variety of projects...
...Theology is popular beyond the core requirements: there are over 1500 additional course registrations this year, and there are 50 undergraduate theology majors...
...Anonymous Christianity isn't fashionable anymore...
...For eighteen months a university-wide self-study has been underway here...
...God isn't dead or absent...
...It sees the Jesuits as a "creative minority" and says that departments should have a policy of actively recruiting them...
...Perhaps the Jesuits' proposals are ideas whose time has come, so far as campus opinion and the world at large are concerned, and only professional academics find them novel and debatable, Two thousand students fasted for 24 hours on World Hunger Day, organized by the chaplaincy in November, certainly the largest manifestation of student idealism in recent years, A group of 40 students has been organizing follow-up activities to raise consciousness locally and influence rational policy...
...it's the others one wonders about...
...There are more than 65 courses to satisfy the requirement, from biblical Hebrew to sociology of religion...
...Talking about "the Lord" is okay...
...It's more like living in a housing project: there's not much concern for each other, a lot of vandalism, a crude male camaraderie or an attitude of don't-bother-me-and-I-won't-bother-you...
...With 8000 undergraduates here, and half as many graduate students, you can assemble two dozen enthusiasts for anything from a charismatic prayer meeting to an old-fashioned holy hour, and around any issue from gay students' needs to the Boston busing problem...
...Implementing these principles will be a delicate business, but the goals statement outspokenly insists that "our institution is different...
...For the second year it has arranged, for turn-away crowds, a theology-credited course given by two Mary-knoll priests called "Developing Nations: Their Value and Ours...
...One of the spin-offs from the chaplaincy is the Program for the Study of War and Peace, a child of late-sixties activism that turned institutional...
...The chaplaincy is very visible on campus, with a string of offices right outside one of the cafeterias...
...It would be surprising if religion weren't affected...
...but no longer control it, entirely...
...For better or worse, students are free to dress the way they want to, do what they will in dormitories, and construct a curriculum almost to their liking...
...But my impression is that they won't talk about their own beliefs in class until they know what the teacher's attitude will be...
...The evidence is diverse...
...The president and two of the six vice-presidents are Jesuits, but only one of the six principal deans and three department chairpeople out of 20 in the arts and sciences...
...This freedom imposes on students (on all of us for that matter) a terrific responsibility for defining our own styles and commitments, without much help from the culture and its institutions...
...On the other hand, more than 500 copies were requested by other college faculty and administrators...
...As for readings from Kahil Gibran in wedding liturgies, celebrants have moved from tolerance to active resistance...
...this year there have been eight weekends away from campus, and some 200 students will have taken part...
...Confession isn't very popular, but reconciliation services are Merton is very much in, also occasional massive liturgies with the university chorale, sacred dance and clouds of incense...
...Boston College is certainly different from what it was in the early fifties, but then what isn't?but then what isn't...
...Response to the statement was puzzling...
...Last fall they published a 20-page statement, "Jesuit Education at Boston College...
...Chaplains estimate that weekend mass attendance is about 1000...
...The explanation the editors of the student newspaper have settled on is discrimination against her because of her feminist and anti-Christian opinions...
...It surveyed post-World War II growth and post-Vatican II changes and took a dirt view of the loss of shared religious belief and practice at B.C...
...The report begins with the assertion that B.C.'s first goal is "to remain a strong and distinctively Catholic university...
...with 390 degree candidates enrolled, it is the largest program of its kind in the country, A current issue on campus is the status of Mary Daly, She teaches courses in feminist ethics and revolutionary ethics from a "post-Christian" point of view in the theology department, and is the author of Beyond God the Father...
...Eleven Jesuits sit among the 32 trustees...
...Institutional certainties have diminished everywhere, and universities are no exception...
...Some are candidates for the Peace Corps or Vista...
Vol. 102 • March 1975 • No. 1
