GOD AND (WO)MAN ON CAMPUS: Princeton University:
Murphy, Francis X
Francis X. Murphy PRINCETON UNIVERSITY IN Murray-Dodge Hall, the chaplain center at Princeton University, the other evening, a group of Catholics had just finished the second chukker of...
...and nowhere is this more noticeable than at this Ivy League, former bastion of Presbyterian righteousness...
...in English, the Chaucerian scholar, D. W. Robertson, Jr., is accused of calvinizing the medieval Church...
...Totally independent of the Princeton Seminary that separated from the University in 1811, the new department was recruited from the Yale Divinity School, and at first concentrated on comparative religious studies...
...Another five hundred individuals and families with or without university connections from as far away as Trenton and New Brunswick attend the Aquinas Center masses whose liturgy is structured by student committees and conducted by one of the five priests now connected with the Catholic chaplaincy...
...in politics, professors Paul Sigmund, Walter Murphy, and Sheldon Wolin pursue medieval and modern papal policies...
...Oops," said the leader, backing off, "this must be the traditionalist service...
...With the current "catholic" character of religious stirrings on campus, a host of equally competent scholars prod student consciousness in all phases of intellectual endeavor "any different sentiments of religion notwithstanding...
...Gene Outka who represents the newer generation's approach to the Social Gospel...
...He inherited the open dormitory policies in vogue since the integration of women in residence in 1969, and has approved of sex education and counseling services, frequently consulting Father Charles Weiser, the Catholic chaplain who is the senior in service among the non-university-supported religious advisors...
...The change in student attitudes over the past decade is total...
...and Thomas Roche cultivates Petrarchan and later romantic studies...
...A graduate of Liverpool University, Taylor had been invited to Princeton in 1914, made a full professor at age 32, and served as chairman of the department of Chemistry, and dean of the graduate school until his retirement in 1958...
...He presides over the Gothic University Chapel built by Ralph Adams Cram in 1928...
...Its reaction to the religious nouvelle vague seems high...
...On Father Begley's retirement in 1955, another Dominican, Father Hugh Halton was strongly recommended for the chaplaincy...
...Jonathan Dickinson, the new institution was directed to "free and equal liberty and advantages of education . ". . any different sentiments on religion notwithstanding . . ." Excluding Jews and Catholics, this prelude to a liberal education was pursued religiously by a series of outstanding presidents from John Witherspoon (1768-1794), a signer of the Declaration of Independence, to James McCosh (1868-1888) who raised the college to university status, and Woodrow Wilson (1902-1910...
...and Malcolm Diamond, the Jewish intellectual with a Christian indoctrination, whose classes on the philosophy of religion are intellectually tantalizing...
...His polemics had been the source of embarrassment to Catholic students and faculty, and to the Vatican, whose Index of Christian Art was a joint venture with the Princeton Library...
...The Catholic tradition at Princeton goes back to the early 1900s when two outstanding professors-Edward McCabe in Economics, and Hugh Stott Taylor in Chemistry-decided to provide for the religious needs of Catholics on campus by inviting a Dominican, Father Quentin Begley, to come down from New York each week-end for mass and confessions...
...His liberal policies are under attack from conservative sectors of the older alumni who are alarmed over the permissive and non-religious orientation of his regime...
...In sermons, letters and advertisements in the student-run Daily Princetonian, he gradually widened his target to include Catholic professors such as McCabe, Taylor and Maritain whom he accused of serving as decoys for poorly instructed Catholic students who were bound to lose their faith at the university...
...In the social sciences, professor Charles Westhoff keeps a busy eye on Catholic population attitudes...
...He has ambivalent feelings about the separatism represented by the Kosher kitchen and Orthodox prayer room that have lately been introduced into that complex...
...Under his auspices the Aquinas student Center acquired the Thomas Mann Residence on Library Place, and a vigorous apostolate was inaugurated...
...Wilson and Robert Goheen (1957-1972), though sons of missionary clergymen, were the only non-ordained presidents until the present incumbent, William Bowen, who is said to have no formal religious affiliation...
...igion notwithstanding...
...While there is no integration of religious interests with the general curriculum, the subject is unavoidable in courses dealing with the litterae humaniores...
...The official chaplaincy is held by Dean Ernest Gordon, a Scotch Presbyterian, who was a prisoner of the Japanese at the River Kwai and became a clergyman on his return from the war...
...Currently its sights have been lifted by Professor Paul Ramsey whose moral evaluations of war, genetic engineering, and ethico-social problems have a Thomistic structure...
...Between 1965 and 1969, enjoying affluance and stirred to violent reaction against the draft and the Vietnamese slaughter, students by the thousands demonstrated against government policies, got enthusiastically involved in the election process of 1968, and returned to campus in the fall of 1969 thoroughly disillusioned...
...Princeton has been no exception to these campus fads and fashions, although the incidence of major upsets was low...
...Eventually they secured him a residence in Prospect Hall where students were able to make use of his wise counseling...
...Founded in 1746 as the College of New Jersey by a group of "New Side" Presbyterians under the leadership of Rev...
...Pho-tius Orthodox, Proctor Episcopal, Westminster Presbyterian, or Princeton Hillel Foundations, as well as the Lutheran Student Fellowship, the Wesley Society, the Mormons, and the Unitarian Church are in rivalry for rooms at Murray-Dodge to conduct services, counseling, or study groups on a schedule that runs from seven in the morning to midnight...
...Donald Fullerton of the class of 1913, who meet regularly for Bible study and comb the campus for authentically saved Christians...
...This activity includes the missionary zeal of some hundred Princeton Evangelicals under the surveillance of Dr...
...For the moment, at least, religious practice on campus is in...
...liturgy, when a handful of Jewish students entered the premises...
...Pursuing an apologetic critical of secular education a la William Buckley's cry "No God at Yale," Halton began a rabid attack on the philosophy department, centering his fire on an avowed atheist, Professor Stace...
...On an appeal to Rome by Maritain, Halton was removed from the chaplaincy at the insistence of the Apostolic Delegate...
...There is little cross-hatching between campus religious activities and the department of religion, which was established in 1938 at the recommendation of a Select Committee to "return religion to the curriculum...
...Upstairs, liberal...
...The immediate result was a wave of disaffection that took the form of drugs, dropouts, and hippy counter-culture...
...Its Norman architectural appointments with their reminders of medieval Catholicism would have gone down hard with the University's founders...
...It is reported that Bowen prefers to spend his Sunday mornings on the tennis court, and has picked his deans and administrators on performance criteria in keeping with the pragmatic, secularist creed that has predominated on campus since at least the turn of this century...
...A member of the Papal Academy of Sciences, he brought Jacques Maritain to the University after World War II...
...Francis X. Murphy PRINCETON UNIVERSITY IN Murray-Dodge Hall, the chaplain center at Princeton University, the other evening, a group of Catholics had just finished the second chukker of their weekly Lenten meditation on Ashes to Easter, and were gathered round an altar in an upper room for a ten p.m...
...Actually, he is scrupulously neutral-a stance adopted by the university after World War I, and acknowledged with the abolition of the chapel attendance rule in 1966 that had been a farce for decades...
...Of a registered 900 or so Catholic students, between 450 and 500 are counted regularly at the weekend liturgies in the University Chapel, Murray-Dodge Hall, and the Aquinas Center, when the university is in session...
...Sustained by the Bishop of Trenton, and tolerated by Harold Dodds, the university president, Halton was finally banished from the campus in 1957, by Robert Goheen whose wife and family were practicing Catholics...
...An economist, Bowen owes his elevation-first as provost, then as president-to projections concerning the financial crunch that would adversely affect the economic situation of labor-intensive institutions, such as colleges and universities, that he made a decade ago...
...Diamond was instrumental in turning Stevenson Hall, a former Eating Club-Princeton does not have fraternities-into a cultural center in 1968...
...Members of the Chapel, and of the Baptist Student Fellowships, the Christian Science Organization, St...
...With the new college generation of 1975, stung by the depression-plus-inflation, and with few jobs on the horizon, a new seriousness has emerged that is reflected in attention to studies, guilt feelings when they neglect the library for a movie or play, concern about grades, and early decisions as to major interests heading for the professions: law, medicine, engineering, the social sciences, business, and a few clerical aspirations...
...His group had misread the notice on the building's entrance, "Jewish Services: Downstairs, traditionalist...
Vol. 102 • March 1975 • No. 1
