Archive for: Newman Guide Articles

The Fellowship of Catholic University Students (FOCUS) is a nationwide ministry to students at mostly secular colleges. But seeds for the project were planted while founder and president Curtis Martin studied theology at a faithful Catholic college, and the first FOCUS chapter was launched at another Catholic college. Both colleges today are recommended in The Newman Guide for their strong Catholic identity.

“My wife, Michaelann, and I were blessed to come to Franciscan University of Steubenville and study under Dr. Scott Hahn, to learn how to teach the faith and reach the world,” says Martin.

“The teachers I studied under and the students I studied with became the friends and partners who helped us launch FOCUS.”

Today, FOCUS is instrumental in bringing about the New Evangelization in the Catholic Church. There are more than 730 FOCUS missionaries on 170 college campuses, sharing the Gospel with college students and inviting them into a relationship with Jesus Christ.

“There is a Catholic Center within walking distance of almost every campus in the country, but most students don’t walk to the Center, so we needed to create an outreach that would walk to them,” Martin explains.

He found fertile ground for the first chapter of FOCUS at Benedictine College in Atchison, Kan. In 1997, Benedictine Father Meinrad Miller watched Martin and Dr. Hahn discuss the idea of FOCUS on EWTN, according to the College. Fr. Meinrad worked with Dr. Ted Sri, who was teaching at Benedictine at that time, to bring Martin to campus.

Benedictine was the “perfect place to launch FOCUS,” says Martin, who explains that the “students were so very open.” The chapter was opened in 1998 with two missionaries.

“Great things begin at Benedictine College,” Martin said last year, as Benedictine’s commencement speaker.

“They’ve developed a reputation here for launching leaders into every area of the culture,” he continued. “Something unique is going on here that is not going on at very many other places.”

Indeed, Martin recognizes that Catholic colleges are not all the same. “Too many Catholic universities have chosen earthly success at the expense of the Lordship of Jesus Christ,” says Martin.

“Many Catholic schools have lost their Catholic identity,” Martin laments. “Until they return to Jesus Christ, and the Church that He founded, they will fail to be the agents of renewal and transformation that they were created, and exist, to be. The renewal of Catholic colleges is critical to authentic renewal.”

When asked about what message he thinks college students today need to hear most urgently, Martin reflects on how our “earthly life is brief,” and “this generation of Catholics is responsible for this generation of people.”

The greatest poverty is to not know God, and Catholics need to respond to “His amazing invitation.”

“I believe that Catholics, even faithful Catholics, lack a sense of urgency,” he says. “Only grace will equip us for the work of rescuing our brothers and sisters. Now is the time, and we need to beg our Lord, through the intercession of our Lady, that we are given the grace to cooperate with Him to rescue them.”

Dr. Michael Pennell is head of The Highlands School, a Catholic school in Irving, Tex., that is recognized by The Cardinal Newman Society’s Catholic Education Honor Roll for its strong Catholic identity. He has also served at another school on the Honor Roll: St. Joseph’s Catholic School in Greenville, S.C. 

It was during Dr. Pennell’s undergraduate years at the Thomas More College of Liberal Arts in Merrimack, N.H., that the “doorway to classical and liberal learning” was swung wide open for him. He recalls that, in his freshman year, he wondered why “this treasure of learning and art” had been kept from him as a youth.

After graduating in 1987, he went on to earn his Master of Arts and Ph.D. from the University of Dallas in Irving, Tex., which is also recommended in The Newman Guide. Impacting everything from family life to career, Dr. Pennell believes that “nothing is left untouched by an authentic Catholic liberal education.”

Now students at The Highlands School benefit from Dr. Pennell’s leadership and especially the formation received at faithful Catholic colleges. Dr. Pennell urges that “faithful Catholic education is important, because arriving at the right destination is important,” and he strives to introduce his students to the “foundations of Christian wisdom.”

We are grateful for Dr. Pennell’s work for strong Catholic identity in education, and for his time in responding to our questions, as a part of our “Profiles in Faithful Catholic Education” series.

Newman Society: Can you share about your experience as an undergraduate at the Thomas More College of Liberal Arts?

Dr. Pennell: Having grown up in the 1970s attending Catholic schools – when classic literature and serious study of the liberal arts had mostly vanished, at least in my Catholic high school – I arrived at Thomas More College in the fall of 1983, suddenly reading with care and thought the encyclicals of Saint John Paul II, the documents surrounding the Protestant Reformation and the Church’s response to it, and among many other things the key works of comedy and tragedy of William Shakespeare under the tutelage of perhaps the greatest teacher of literature in any place and time: Dr. Louise Cowan.

We had guest lectures from John Molloy (friend and colleague of the great Catholic historian Christopher Dawson), Alice Von Hildebrand (from whom we learned of her husband Dietrich’s great works of philosophy), and a personal concert from one of the great violinists of the 20^th century, Yehudi Menuhin. And in weekly “kitchen chorale,” I sang tenor some of the most beautiful polyphonies of our Catholic tradition of sacred music. And that was just freshman year!

My first thought that year was why this treasury of learning and art had been kept from me as a youth? The great light of faith inspired achievement in architecture, music, theology, great literature – and these gifts of human endeavor, I thought, were gathering dust in Catholic seminaries or houses of study, as attention was turned in schooling to the so-called relevant things desired in a progressive world. I recall our philosophy teacher Dr. Mark Roberts (now professor of philosophy at [Franciscan University of] Steubenville) talking about his acquisitions of classic works for our school library for pennies a box.

A doorway to classical and liberal learning was swung wide open for me at Thomas More College, for which gratitude – to my parents and to Dr. Peter V. Sampo (founder and president of the college at the time) – is my deepest and most joyous response. Gratitude. Thanksgiving. Although I recollect finding Thomas More College almost by happenstance, with a hope that this might be an education worth dedicating oneself to – for one can hardly choose deliberately in ignorance – I would traverse the same path again all the same.

Newman Society: After earning your bachelor’s degree, you also completed your Master of Arts and Ph.D. from the University of Dallas.  How has your own education influenced your work in Catholic education?

Dr. Pennell: A Catholic liberal education forms the mind and the heart in such a way that your actions and affections might be governed by (one hopes) the light of truth, both human and revealed, or perhaps natural and supernatural. When entering marriage, in living relationships with integrity and respect for the image of God in others, in raising children, or in doing one’s work with a supernatural outlook – nothing is left untouched by an authentic Catholic liberal education.

In my profession of Catholic school leadership, I see two sides to this influence. The first influence is on my understanding of academic learning. Epistemology, knowing something of Gnosticism and nominalism, reading Josef Pieper’s Abuse of Language, and I could go on: all these experiences with learning on the topic of language and its relation to what is real have affected how I think of young students’ acquisition of language, of meaning and of the habits of living in a Christian culture. By these I am better able to identify useful strategies for reading from early childhood to 12^th grade. A Thomistic metaphysics helps guide my oversight of science learning, knowing that a rigorous study of the material world need not be reductionistic or lead to materialism or Marxism. These are examples, but I could offer many more. 

Second, as a Catholic leader, I hope I see better how to govern an organization of human persons in such a way that human dignity, the truth about men and women and the centrality of family life for children, and our work as both a response to a call and a means of our own sanctification, among so many other things, makes possible for my employees a life that can be rich in service and one of personal happiness and self-satisfaction too. I have never hesitated from saying that the things chosen for themselves or for their own sakes (Catholic learning and the virtues) can also be chosen because they are more practical and useful than what we imagine to be practical and useful without the learning and virtue. I can think of these things, be inspired by great works that I still continue to read, and govern our school in the light of the Catholic faith and the truth that can be so easily obscured in the fog of modernity.

In my field too, one sees the craziest theories about the end of human learning and the means (or arts) to achieve it, and successful navigation of the precipices I owe to my Catholic liberal education.

Newman Society: What role did teachers and mentors play in your formation? What kind of teachers and mentors do you hope students will find at the Highlands School?

Dr. Pennell: I recall my first Franklin-Covey planner. The exercise in the front of the planner asked me to record the names of those who influenced me the most and whose actions or achievements I wanted to imitate and strive for. After writing just a few names, I was not surprised to see that I was writing the names of my teachers. I remember clearly when I first learned what teleology meant and the four causes. I recall Lear holding the dead Cordelia in his arms in Act V of King Lear after receiving Cordelia’s profound but simple statement of his youngest daughter’s love for her father moments earlier. I still see the disobedience of Eve in Paradise Lost. C.S. Lewis’s recollection of the joy of his brother Warren’s discovery of a sprout in a tin container of soil or his mother’s reading of Beatrix Potter’s Squirrel Nutkin: these are memories both recounted in Surprised by Joy. 

My teachers gave me a cosmos, or at least a vision of one. How does one not live a life that lives up to what has been transmitted? This is what I hope for students at my school. But since we are a PreK to 12^th grade school, my hope is that we can introduce our students to these foundations of Christian wisdom even at their young ages. My own experience was one of waking up after a slumber of 1970s Catholic education.

Do our youth know or understand the depth of what they are receiving in a school that is intentional about the permanent things? Do the children’s parents? I’m not always sure, but I hope so.

Fundamentally, however, I hope our students discover Jesus Christ, the image of the Father, the source of goodness and grace, of eternal life and of eternal joy. All human learning and knowledge can support that path to Christ and reveal his face, as Benedict XVI says, the face of beauty I seek that is my Lord’s.

Newman Society: Why do you think that faithful Catholic education is important?

Dr. Pennell: When you have a destination and ask for directions, you want more than anything a true answer. To ask directions and then arrive at the wrong place should get one quite perturbed. Such is modernity: a labyrinth of wrong though seemingly attractive and choice-worthy answers to questions earnestly asked.

Faithful Catholic education points the way to ultimate and proximate goods and unveils for us the many possible pathways to it. We believe that one of those paths was meant for each of us: one meant for me alone. We pray that the wisdom of insight and choice be ours as we make our way. Faithful Catholic education is important because arriving at the right destination is important.

And bringing your loved ones along with you: that’s important too. Let’s go together!

Christopher Jay studied at a faithful Catholic college and gained valuable understanding of the human person and God’s design for sexuality, but he never thought that one day he’d be fighting against a “drag queen library hour” at a New Hampshire public library. Yet, that’s exactly where he found himself just recently, not long after graduation.

“People knew that they were opposed to drag queens targeting children, but they couldn’t enunciate why,” says Jay. “They knew that this was wrong and damaging, but they haven’t received education that would enable them to analyze what is and what is not ‘freedom.’”

Jay graduated from Wyoming Catholic College in Lander, Wyo., in 2012 and from Ave Maria University School of Law in Naples, Fla., in 2018. After passing the bar, he worked with Cornerstone Action and Policy and the Massachusetts Family Institute as a legal advisor and lobbyist for pro-life and pro-family causes.

For Jay, the drag queen event was a “shocking ‘cultural thermometer’ incident.” “I issued a public records request and discovered that the drag queen, who also performs pornography, was suggesting that he and the library should hold a similar future event targeted at 2- and 3-year-olds.”

“One of the more eye-opening things about that situation was experiencing the ‘emperor’s new clothes’ dynamic — where everyone, both opponents and supporters, knew exactly what this was about, but almost no one would talk candidly about it, either because they were afraid of backlash or because they supported a disordered view of human sexuality,” Jay continues.

“Most ended up trying to oppose the event by pretending they had some purely procedural objection (‘this is a waste of taxpayer money,’ etc.) instead of being able to articulate moral dimensions that underpin the enacted policies and laws,” he says.

Wyoming Catholic, a faithful Catholic college recommended in The Newman Guide, teaches students to “read a text, analyze it, challenge it” and involves “critical thinking over and over again.” These are the same skills that are needed for law school and for work as a lawyer, Jay explains.

His senior-year classes on Catholic social teaching and political philosophy opened a “profound philosophical arena” for him and were “central” to his decision to start working in the public sphere.

He also values the conversations he had with the College’s Dr. Jeremy Holmes about “integrating his classical learning with raising a family.” Jay married a Wyoming Catholic classmate, and they are expecting their fourth child. “Everything you’re doing should be ordered towards your vocation.”

The College’s wilderness immersion program also played an important role in Jay’s formation.

“The wilderness experience brings you back down to earth and forces you to come to grips with reality,” Jay explains, remembering some “stressful situations” outdoors that led to community building.

He may never have expected that a drag queen library hour would become a part of his reality soon after graduation, but it has emboldened Jay and taught him that there’s “no such thing as a ‘neutral’ process or human action that can be arbitrated on its own by ‘pure reason.’”

“Every procedure, principle, or policy can only be understood in relation to that which we regard as good and evil,” he said. Mainstream secular education can actually “inhibit” our “ability to understand the world.”

Amid new challenges to priestly celibacy at the Vatican’s Amazon Synod and from other corners of the Church, the graduates of faithful Catholic education—by their deep formation and understanding of Church tradition—are well-prepared to dispel errors and misconceptions about this important discipline of Catholic priests.

One such graduate is Father Gary Selin, S.T.D., author of Priestly Celibacy: Theological Foundations and formation advisor and assistant professor at St. John Vianney Theological Seminary in Denver, Colo. He argues that celibacy “allows the priest to give himself more freely to the Church in imitation of Christ.”

A graduate of Thomas Aquinas College in Santa Paula, Calif., which is recommended in The Newman Guide, Fr. Selin says the College helped him “acquire the virtues necessary in becoming a disciple before learning to be a leader.”

When asked about his time at the College, Fr. Selin recounts how he was “impressed with the way that the students gravitated toward the chapel for Holy Mass and personal prayer.” He also remembers a fire that once surrounded the campus and how the flames “stopped in their tracks” after one of the College chaplains “blessed a hillside with the Blessed Sacrament.”

We are grateful for Fr. Selin’s willingness to respond to the questions below, as a part of our “Profiles in Faithful Catholic Education” series.

Newman Society: Priestly celibacy is one of the topics being discussed at the current Synod in Rome. Why did you decide a few years ago to write a book on this topic, and why do you think priestly celibacy is important?

Fr. Gary Selin: During my seminarian days, I heard Cardinal Francis Stafford give a talk about priestly celibacy, in which he argued that priestly celibacy is more than a mere ecclesial law that can be changed. Rather, it is integral to the priesthood and intrinsically related to the Eucharist. Through my research, I discovered that the principal reason for celibacy is that it perfects the configuration of the priest with Jesus Christ, the Head of the Church. Celibacy consequently allows the priest to give himself more freely to the Church in imitation of Christ. 

Priestly celibacy is important, because it reminds us that we are created ultimately for God alone. There is an interesting interplay between celibacy and marriage in reference to our journey toward heaven. That is, the celibate priest serves as a reminder that marriage is not the end-all, but a sacrament through which people can grow in holiness. Married people are to help each other get to heaven. There are plenty of opportunities to grow spiritually in marriage, as it requires much sacrifice. On the other hand, spouses can remind the celibate priest that he is called to live a life of sacrificial service, and not one of a comfortable bachelor. Married couples have inspired me through their sacrificial love for each other, in imitation of Christ’s love for His Church (Ephesians 5:25).

Newman Society: How did Thomas Aquinas College help foster your vocation to the priesthood?

Fr. Gary Selin: At the college, I found myself within a strong community of students where friendships developed organically and deeply. We were united in our desire to deepen our understanding of the truth. I found that all the streamlets of truth led to a unified vision. The overall structure and dynamism of the curriculum led to contemplation of Divine Wisdom, the Triune God. Of course, God’s grace was present during the whole time.

I was also impressed with the way that the students gravitated toward the chapel for Holy Mass and personal prayer. The many hours that I spent in prayer in that chapel helped me see how Jesus Christ is the Truth, the source of the wisdom that we discovered through our studies and on our knees in prayer.

The atmosphere of friendliness and joy on campus helped me see more clearly that God desires our happiness and beatitude.

These experiences, along with serving Mass, having holy priest chaplains on campus, and my devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary, helped me be more convinced that God had given to me a vocation to the ministerial priesthood.

Newman Society: Do you have any particularly impactful memories or stories from your experience at the College?

Fr. Gary Selin: In the fall semester of 1985, a large number of students consecrated ourselves to Our Lady at the Marian grotto. I think that it was the next day that a huge fire exploded on the mountains surrounding the campus. We were not able to leave the campus, because all roads were cut off by the fire. It was quite frightening. Many of us did what we could to fight back the flames. One of our priest chaplains blessed a hillside with the Blessed Sacrament, and the flames stopped in their tracks. The campus was saved from destruction, although everything around us was burnt. I felt strongly God’s presence during that time.

I treasure the memories of the many wonderful hours in the classroom, as I learned from the sources of wisdom of the great books that formed our Western civilization, under the guidance of our well-formed tutors of the college. These excellent conversations continued over meals, during walks, and into late night in the dormitories. One can never put a price tag on these conversations that made life worth living.

One regular visitor to the campus remarked how the students at the college were always joyful. I think that this was due to the good spirit among the faculty and students, rooted in Christ as the source of all joy. The sunny southern California days certainly helped as well!

Newman Society: How does your own formation help you in the formation of seminarians?

Fr. Gary Selin: St. John Berchmans once said, “My penance is community life.” Indeed, common life in the seminary can be difficult, but the blessings of forming and building a community overcomes the challenges. But my role as a mentor of seminarians demands of me a constant spirit of charity and self-forgetfulness. My time at the College helped me begin to acquire the virtues necessary in becoming a disciple before learning to be a leader. I am very grateful to the College for giving me the environment in which I was able to grow in those virtues. In my seminary formation work, I try to be a servant-leader, following the words of Jesus in His discourse at the Last Supper. In order for me to be an instrument of the Holy Spirit in the work of forming future priests, I must learn to serve and not to be served.

The Swafford Family

Today Dr. Andrew Swafford teaches students the same theology course that inspired him to convert to the Catholic Church years ago. He and his wife, founder of Emotional Virtue Ministries, are grateful for their life-changing experiences at Benedictine College in Atchison, Kan.

They both graduated from the Newman Guide-recommended college and say that their experience at Benedictine transformed their “entire vision for the future — most especially dating, marriage, and raising children.” The couple recently welcomed their fifth child.

Today, Dr. Swafford is an associate professor of theology at Benedictine. He is the author of several books, host of Ascension Press’s newest Bible study series on “Romans: the Gospel of Salvation” and a contributor to the Great Adventure Catholic Bible and a new book on the sacraments.

Sarah is a popular national speaker to teens and young adults on “Emotional Virtue,” dating and relationships, and interior confidence. Her ministry had its beginnings at Benedictine College and has since impacted the lives of countless young people.

We are grateful to the Swaffords for telling their story of the faithful Catholic education that they received.

Newman Society: Dr. Swafford, can you share about your conversion experience while a student at Benedictine College? 

Dr. Swafford: I came to Benedictine as a student for one reason, namely, to play football. My first season went well—I made the travel roster as a freshman, as well as the more limited 48-man playoff roster, though I certainly could tell even at that point something was missing.

In May after my freshman season, we played an exhibition game in Paris, France. At the time, I really didn’t want to go—I wanted to get home to Ohio in order to train for the upcoming season (that was my frame of reference then). In the game, however, I broke my fibula in France. My world was crushed.

Earlier that semester I had happened to have had two theology classes with Dr. [Edward] Sri that spring (just before I broke my leg). I was intrigued intellectually, but not ready to change my life yet. Over the summer (after my broken leg), what had intrigued me intellectually began to move from my head to my heart.

When we came back to school, I went out to lunch with Dr. Sri. I had all sorts of questions for him. Over this conversation, he suggested I consider adding his class called “Christian Moral Life,” which at the time was full, but he thought he could get me in. I had decided to redshirt that upcoming football season, after not having been able to train all summer. Consequently, I had more time and went ahead and added the class, bringing my course load up to 20 hours.

That class singlehandedly changed my life. I thought it would be about “rules” of the Church and the Bible; I couldn’t have been more wrong. It was about freedom, friendship, virtue, happiness—all of sudden I could see why I wasn’t happy.

About this time, I also got involved with FOCUS and noticed that those guys had a certain stability, joy and peace I didn’t have—and it was because they knew Jesus. By the end of that fall semester of my sophomore year, I was ready to go all-in with Jesus and the Catholic faith. That set me on the journey I’m on today. In fact, I now teach the same class that changed my life so many years ago—”Christian Moral Life”!

Sarah transferred into Benedictine the following year. I look back fondly at God’s work in preparing me to meet her, since she only knew me “post-conversion.”

Newman Society: Sarah, why did you decide to transfer to Benedictine College? How has your education impacted you?

Sarah Swafford: I went to play basketball at a Catholic college in Iowa, and I came to find out that not all Catholic colleges are created equal. I longed for authentic Catholic fellowship and an environment in which I could go deeper in my faith, both in prayer and fellowship as well as intellectually.

At Benedictine, I discovered the riches of real Catholic friendship, with both women and men. And I received my deepest spiritual and intellectual formation here and really found my mission in life—to know Jesus and bring others to him.

The fact that my husband and I both had this common formation has been so important. We’ve always been on the exact same page, which has paid massive dividends in terms of raising our kids, but also for our marriage and ministering together to others, such as our current Benedictine students.

Newman Society: Sarah, your work on “emotional virtue” has become a very popular resource for young people. How did working at Benedictine College help shape this work?

Sarah Swafford: My ministry certainly has its roots in the formation I received as an undergraduate at Benedictine, but it really was birthed in my time as a Resident Hall Director—where I was the “dorm mom,” so to speak, of a 142 freshman women. Watching them transition from high school to college, I kept giving the same advice over and over again.

Eventually, one of the girls suggested I give a talk on “all this”—namely, the repeated advice I kept giving. To my surprise, some 300 women showed up that night, and in truth, my ministry took a life of its own from there. Men and women were hungry, and they latched on to the idea of someone guiding them through the waters of dating and life with social media. Drawing from my formation at Benedictine, I see myself as just paying it forward.