Ep. 16: The ‘Ave Maria Law Difference’ with Dean John Czarnetzky (Pt.2)
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What is the Ave Maria Law School difference? Find out as we continue our conversation with Dean John Czarnetzky.
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What is the Ave Maria Law School difference? Find out as we continue our conversation with Dean John Czarnetzky.
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Tune into our interview with Dean John Czarnetzky of Ave Maria School of Law located in Naples, Florida. We discuss the story of how the law school was founded, and the importance of sending forth Catholic lawyers in every corner of our culture armed with the ‘Ave Maria Law Difference’!
You can tell a lot about someone by the friends they keep. And you can tell a lot about a college by whom it chooses to honor by delivering a commencement speech or receiving an honorary degree.
The distinctly faithful Catholic colleges recognized by The Cardinal Newman Society in The Newman Guide have chosen outstanding speakers for this year’s commencement ceremonies. Many are witnesses to the Catholic faith and the sort of people graduates should emulate. Here are some examples (more will be added as they become available):
On the other hand, some Catholic colleges continue to reveal their confusion and weak commitment to the authentic mission of Catholic education by choosing commencement speakers who oppose Catholic moral teaching or otherwise model bad behaviors and advocacy. These Catholic colleges persist in violating the U.S. bishops’ policy forbidding Catholic organizations from giving “those who act in defiance of our fundamental moral principles… awards, honors or platforms which would suggest support for their actions.”
Here are a few examples in 2024:
For Catholic families looking for a good Catholic college, take note of the college’s commencement speaker. It speaks volumes about a Catholic college’s identity—and might just be the deciding word on your college choice. Be sure to see the faithful colleges at The Newman Guide.
*Editor’s Note: An earlier version of this article confused Joseph Patrick Kennedy III with Patrick Joseph Kennedy II, both with similar records on abortion. We also incorrectly identified Sister Simone Campbell as a former president of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious; she has been an outspoken defender and informal leader within the group. We regret these errors.
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We continue our discussion with Father Dave Pivonka, president of Franciscan University of Steubenville. We discuss the University’s growth and success, overcoming challenges, embracing his role as priest and president, and much more.
Holy Rosary Academy in Anchorage, Alaska, is recognized in The Newman Guide for its faithful Catholic education from Pre-K through 12th grade. All teachers make a Profession of Faith to the Catholic Church upon hiring. And the fruits are many: in the last year alone, five students came into full communion with the Catholic Church.
While there are many elements of a strong Catholic education, students at Holy Rosary Academy have clearly benefitted from the faithful witness of their teachers. Below are the personal testimonies of Anabelle Pearson, a 10th-grade student who recently entered the Catholic Church, and two high school teachers at the Academy: Dr. Laura Walters and Kevin Quain.
Anabelle Pearson
I had been an atheist for my entire childhood leading up to my years at Holy Rosary Academy…
Many wonderful people took part in my conversion; however, it was Dr. Walters and Mr. Quain, my Church history and medieval seminar teachers, respectively, who guided and strengthened me in faith. In these two classes specifically, I was able to reflect on my past as we studied the history of the Church and the lives of many saints and sinners.
I look up to Dr. Walters as a role model; she is incredibly talented in numerous skills, languages, and academics. Dr. Walters has accomplished a plethora of extraordinary things in all areas from science to art, yet she is the humblest person I’ve ever met. Most importantly, despite all that she has achieved and still strives for in her free time, Dr. Walters dedicates her time to come and teach us teenagers. Dr. Walters cares deeply about her students and guides us toward spiritual and academic success. Dr. Walters has never judged me for asking any questions about Catholicism and the Church, and her responses are always helpful. Her teachings in history allow me to have a firm foundation in Church knowledge, which has proved useful in many situations, including medieval seminar class.
Mr. Quain, my medieval seminar teacher, has greatly contributed to solidifying me in my faith. Mr. Quain is humorous and uplifting and can always brighten the day. In the seminar, he helps our class reflect on our lives as we analyze books containing stories of growth in character and faith such as The Confessions of St. Augustine. He is an excellent role model in Catholicism and has helped me see that believing in God is not a crutch to get through life, rather, God is the reason I have life.
Faith is a path with many twists, turns, and bumps, and rarely is it easy. This spring, Holy Rosary is organizing a trip to Assisi and Rome for Holy Week. We will be walking the pilgrimage that St. Francis completed to ask the Pope to start his order of Franciscans. In years to come, I hope to be baptized and confirmed into the Catholic Church.
Dr. Laura Walters
I view my vocation of teaching as something definitely from God.
I am a naturally shy person, and while I was completing my Ph.D., I always thought that I would spend my professional life with paintings, drawings, and manuscripts in quiet corners of archives and museums. However, when I began teaching at the University of St. Andrews [in Scotland], I ended up loving it, and when I began teaching at Holy Rosary Academy, I felt very clearly that this was something more than my will.
Teaching is a great privilege: to be able to help form students, especially in those crucial upper school years when they are becoming adults. I see my vocation of teaching as a way for me to serve others through love and charity, and thus to serve God.
The ideas of service and charity are incorporated into all I do. I always try to help students understand concepts (whether they’re in Calculus, Biology, Church, History, Art, etc.) to truly teach them and help them learn how to think, rather than what to think. I approach each student as having such great value, as he or she is made in the image and likeness of God, and is a unique and beautiful person.
Students are always learning (and so are teachers!), and I try to remind them of this, and that it’s okay to make a mistake, it’s okay to have questions on things, and that it’s how we respond to that which matters… We strive to find the truth and the heart of a matter together, students and teachers, which is a beautiful model for them to follow as they graduate and leave our halls.
Kevin Quain
I strive to give my students an example of strong character both in the classroom and on the court as a middle school basketball coach. Fundamental traits of a strong character are self-discipline and perseverance. These two traits should guide students in every aspect of their lives, whether in faith, academics, sports, etc. Embodying these traits and encouraging students are the best ways to help them build strong character and an indomitable spirit.
The beauty of Catholicism includes the belief that God created all things, and that creation will help us to know and love Him more. With this perspective, everything in the classroom is more meaningful and tangible because all the subjects, when integrated with our final end in mind, lead us closer to God.
The Catholic University of America recently taught students a tough but valuable lesson about witness and responsibility. It’s a lesson the students—as well as the faculty—are unlikely to forget.
On January 30, university president Dr. Peter Kilpatrick announced the firing of a psychology lecturer following a scandalous incident in her classroom. The lecturer, teaching a course titled “Lifespan Development,” had invited an “abortion doula” to speak to the students. An abortion doula is someone who accompanies women as they undergo abortions. Reports claim that the guest not only advocated abortion but also celebrated “childbirth” by “trans” men.
Critics later accused the university of violating academic freedom by firing the lecturer, and no doubt some students and faculty members agree. But by acting swiftly and decisively—and by publicly explaining the necessity of upholding the university’s mission—the Catholic University of America set an important example for Catholic educators.
“In our rigorous pursuit of truth and justice, we engage at times with arguments or ideologies contrary to reason or to the Gospel,” Dr. Kilpatrick acknowledged in a letter to students. “But we do so fully confident in the clarity given by the combined lights of reason and faith, and we commit to never advocate for sin or to give moral equivalence to error.”
It was an excellent letter. When leaders so clearly articulate the mission of Catholic education and moral expectations for faculty members, consequences for bad behavior and false teaching no longer appear harsh. Instead, it is out of concern for truth and the formation of students that Catholic education leaders must discipline and sometimes even remove teachers when they lead students astray. False witness is contrary to the truth that is foundational to Catholic education.
“Our studies aim at producing wisdom, which includes excellence in living and sharing the truth with others,” explained Dr. Kilpatrick. “May our common study help us to understand life, to love goodness, and to promote and protect the dignity of the human person.”
Responding with heroism
In a culture increasingly hostile to Catholic morality, Catholic schools and colleges are likely to face more conflicts with employees who resist moral expectations. But if teachers uphold the faith, their witness can be all the more influential with students—lights in the darkness. And if leaders remain steadfast in the truth when conflicts arise, their heroic witness can be a valuable education for students and the broader public.
Consider the case of Our Lady of Guadalupe School in Hermosa Beach, Calif. In 2012, the school announced that teachers must obtain catechist certification to ensure the integration of Catholic teaching across all disciplines. One non-Catholic teacher, whose duties included teaching all subjects including religion, failed to get the certification and was fired.
The school’s courageous act of dismissing the teacher, rather than compromising its mission and thereby harming its students, led to a lawsuit claiming age discrimination. On the face of it, this seemed exactly the outcome that school leaders want to avoid to protect their schools. But the lawsuit eventually led to the landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 2020, upholding the ministerial exception and protecting the right of Catholic schools to choose teachers according to religious criteria without court interference.
Sadly, Gordon College lost the opportunity to obtain a similar landmark ruling for Christian higher education. The Evangelical Christian college faced a hostile Massachusetts court, when a fired sociology professor claimed that she had been unfairly denied tenure because of her public attacks on the college’s Christian views of sexuality and marriage. Gordon’s leaders asked the U.S. Supreme Court to prevent the case from proceeding under the ministerial exception, but when the Court declined, Gordon settled the case.
It would be unfair to judge Gordon College’s choice to settle, but standing firm for religious freedom and insisting on the moral witness of all employees is a necessary line in the sand—even if it causes some degree of martyrdom. The ultimate goal of Catholic education is evangelization, bringing students to God by reason and faith. While avoiding lawsuits may keep a school or college going for the short term, defending appropriate personnel policies is necessary to protecting Catholic education for the long term and shows students a powerful witness to fidelity.
In the amicus brief joined by The Cardinal Newman Society, urging the Supreme Court to take up the Gordon case, we attested:
“Faculty are the life-blood of every college and university, without which teaching and scholarship cannot occur. For faithful Catholic and protestant institutions, teaching and scholarship is not an end in itself. Without recognizing the ‘Word’ through whom ‘all things were made’ (John 1: 1-3), teaching and scholarship on any subject is incomplete.”
Leading dioceses
Today many dioceses across the U.S. are instituting personnel guidelines and morality clauses in employee contracts, so that the Church’s expectations are clear to employees. These also help to invite educators to more faithful witness inside and outside the classroom. Still, some employees are unwilling to abide by them.
The Archdiocese of Indianapolis has made a significant effort to strengthen the Catholic mission of its schools, only to face four separate cases of employees entering into civil same-sex marriages. Two dismissed counselors at Roncalli High School filed lawsuits claiming discrimination, as did a teacher at Cathedral Catholic High School. After a difficult legal fight, the archdiocese triumphed in all three cases.
In the Diocese of Charlotte, a substitute teacher’s contract was not renewed after he declared a same-sex marriage and publicly opposed Church teaching. The ACLU is helping the teacher pursue a lawsuit against Charlotte Catholic High School and the diocese, and a ruling is pending in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.
These dioceses know that teacher witness is at the heart of Catholic education. In Ex corde Ecclesiae, St. John Paul II declared, “If need be, a Catholic university must have the courage to speak uncomfortable truths which do not please public opinion, but which are necessary to safeguard the authentic good of society.” This is true of all Catholic education, which “speaks” as much by the witness of its employees as by classroom instruction. Speaking, however, sometimes requires courage to uphold the truth for the good of the students and all who listen.
In one of her last letters, written to a former student, St. Elizabeth Ann Seton did what all teachers are called to do: she pointed to the Truth in love.
“God bless you, my loved child,” she wrote. “Remember Mother’s first and last lesson to you: seek God in all things… If you do this, you will live in his presence and will preserve the graces of your first communion.”
As a teacher, Mother Seton kept a large correspondence that demonstrated a wide capacity for friendship with others and friendship with the Truth, an affectionate relationality that extended to students, parents, and former students. Letter by letter, she continued to encourage, exhort, form, and instruct them far and wide, even though they were no longer together. Mother Seton understood that it is by way of the heart that a teacher reaches a student’s mind, and that all good teaching, whether in person, by letter, or online, is always first personal and relational.
Thus, it is the personal influence of the teacher, rooted in their intellectual, moral, and spiritual excellence, that can move students to desire to know, love, and serve Truth, Who is a Person. Saintly teachers, from Augustine to John Henry Newman to Elizabeth Ann Seton, have provided the teaching, example, and inspiration as to how teachers today can draw students into deeper friendship with the Truth.
Each educational mode or setting, whether a traditional school setting or a nontraditional one such as a home school, a continuing education program, a night school, or an online program, faces challenges in witnessing to the transformative power of Truth. Some of these challenges are shared by all teachers regardless of setting, but some are specific to the nature of the particular mode or setting. St. Augustine noted the challenge of teaching night classes on doctrine to tired adults at the end of a long working day; Newman noted the opportunities and challenges in offering continuing education classes at his proposed university.
Nonetheless, the substance of good teaching remains the same, even as the accidents of mode or setting change. What is true about good teaching in a traditional setting is also true about good teaching in a nontraditional setting. Non-exhaustively:
In order to do all these things, a teacher must first be all these things.
For those teaching in an online or nontraditional setting, the challenge is to first be all of these things that Seton, Augustine, and Newman exhort, and then to communicate it in a virtual mode. This means that teachers must be highly intentional about things that might naturally occur in a traditional classroom. I suggest seven basic habits of intentional (online) teaching:
Mother Seton, St. John Henry Newman, and St. Augustine are three shining examples among a vast number of spiritual and educational witnesses who have repeatedly taught through the ages that it is through the cheerful, generous, and friendly heart of the teacher that students are drawn into friendship with Christ, who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Faithful witness can be accomplished in a nontraditional and virtual setting through thoughtful and intentional teaching practices that reinforce the personal and relational dimensions of education. In this way, teachers in any setting can witness to the catching force of the Truth.
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In this episode, we are joined by Father Dave Pivonka, president of Franciscan University of Steubenville Ohio to discuss what sets Franciscan apart, the university’s success under his leadership, helping students find their life’s calling, and much more.
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Few guests have more passion than President Tim Collins of Walsh University! Join us for part two of our discussion about what sets Walsh University in North Canton, Ohio, apart from other colleges, and how they strive to have their students discover a sense of purpose.
While studying abroad in Rome, Italy, with a faithful Catholic college, the Catholic faith became “more alive” for Joseph Long. Now Long helps others experience the beauty of the Catholic faith through ProRome Tours, a company he founded that leads faith-filled tours and pilgrimages around the world.
Long chose to attend Christendom College in Front Royal, Va., which is recognized in The Newman Guide for its strong Catholic education, because he wanted to attend a college where he could practice his faith, surrounded by others who were also striving to do so. Christendom College’s Rome program was also very attractive to him.
During their junior year, many Christendom students spend their semester studying in Rome and living just 30 minutes from St. Peter’s Basilica. The experience impacted Long, especially seeing the succession of popes since St. Peter, and made him eager to “to share [his] love for the faith through experiences of Rome and throughout Italy.”
“Being in Rome, the faith just becomes something real to you,” explained Long. “You can put the pieces of the puzzle together in a textbook back home, but when you go and actually see it, it becomes part of your fiber. And once you see it, you can’t forget it. It helps you evangelize, and it helps you understand your own faith.”
Christendom College offered Long a whole Catholic outlook for his life—and his work.
“At Christendom, [we were taught] the notion that the center and the most important part of human history is Jesus Christ coming into this world. When Christ came, died, and rose again, that was the absolute apex of human history. All of history at Christendom was taught in this light,” Long explained.
“It is the worldview that a Catholic must have in order to understand everything properly,” Long continued.
After graduating from college, Long became an Italian citizen, worked on his Italian language in Rome, and earned his master’s degree in Church history from the Pontifical University of Santa Croce. In 2014, with a $10,000 loan and “a lot of energy,” he founded ProRome Tours, a faith-based travel business.
By 2019, ProRome Tours was garnering $1.5 million in sales and growing. Then, the pandemic of 2020 hit, pausing international trips, and Long had to switch gears to teaching Italian online. Amazingly, he was able keep ProRome alive and is back to serving more than 1,000 clients annually.
Long’s travel company focuses on providing meaningful trips. In a description of a summer program for high school students, ProRome advertises that the trip will help propel students “in the right direction, increase their confidence in the Catholic faith, and introduce them to good ideas and great friends.”
For those who are considering where to attend college, Long encourages students to “go somewhere that is Catholic, that is very Catholic and is proud of its Catholicism. Go somewhere that you’ll be able to nurture that Catholicism and be able to explore things that interest you.”
Long credits his faithful Catholic education with giving him the tools he needed to start his own business—a business that is a blessing for him and those he serves. “Going to Christendom not only gave me incredible friends and reinforced my faith, but it also gave me incredible education that allowed me to think freely think for myself and challenge the status quo.”