By John Oven
Guest Column
During the last week of May, my family and I trekked across Iowa and Missouri to Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas, for Family Week: a weeklong retreat where both parents and children receive formation and families grow in Catholic community and witness to authentically living out our Catholic understanding of the sacrament of marriage. The event is put on by the Benedictine College Center for Family Life and is just one example of how this thriving Catholic college in Kansas has discovered that putting Catholicism at the center of its identity and mission is the key to continued growth and success.
Family Week is a blast for kids and parents alike. My kids look forward to it all year. The kids love staying in the dorms, eating in the cafeteria and reuniting with friends. The younger children experience The Catechesis of the Good Shepherd program each morning and the older children split up into different “guilds” where they learn skills such as acting, music or sports, led by habited religious sisters from numerous orders who travel from surrounding areas to assist with the children’s formation classes.
It is during this morning session that the parents get to listen to a variety of speakers, including professors and religious, on Catholic formation. The afternoons are spent on family activities such as soccer with the monks from the Benedictine abbey on campus and even a meditation hike led by a priest. The entire experience is punctuated by a morning rosary and daily Mass before dinner for a thoroughly Catholic daily routine.
The beauty of all the vocations working together for the good of the Church, especially the sacrament of marriage, really becomes evident during the week. In addition to the opportunities to interact with religious brothers and sisters, there are priests giving talks, hearing confessions, celebrating Mass and eating meals with families.
Attending Family Week has been a great opportunity for my children to experience a truly Catholic college and my hope is that those good memories will impact their college discernment. Many Catholic colleges in the United States today have diluted their Catholic identity to the point that they resemble secular colleges.
In response to this, Pope John Paul II, in his 1990 apostolic constitution, Ex Corde Ecclesiae (Latin for From the Heart of the Church), laid out norms which must be followed by any higher education institution wishing to use the word “Catholic” in their school name or identity.
I would like to draw attention to one of the norms of Ex Corde Ecclesiae in particular: the mandatum. According to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) document, “The Application for Ex Corde Ecclesiae for the United States,” approved in 1999, “The mandatum is fundamentally an acknowledgment by Church authority that a Catholic professor of a theological discipline is a teacher within the full Communion of the Catholic Church.” Benedictine College has embraced this idea and has been very vocal about the fact that all of their theology professors must receive the mandatum from the local bishop. Adherence to all the norms laid out in Ex Corde Ecclesiae and reiterated by the USCCB is a visible sign that the Catholic college is operating under the authority of and in union with its local bishop.
In my opinion, seeking the mandatum for all teachers of theology would be an excellent way to assure students and their parents of higher education institutions’ commitment to transmitting the Catholic faith. Catholic colleges and universities thrive when they embrace their Catholic identity. This is exemplified by the growing attendance at Benedictine’s Family Week (with the event continually being sold out) as well as the college’s increase in student enrollment year over year.
A mandatum for all teachers of theology at Catholic institutions seems to me to be one of the most effective ways to maintain a lasting and vibrant Catholic presence in higher education.
(John Oven is a parishioner of St. Mary Magdalen Parish in Bloomfield. He is a member of his parish’s vocations committee.)
