Saint Michael’s College: Catholic in What Sense?

In the last blog, I noted that Society of Saint Edmund (Edmundites) founded Saint Michael’s College as a Catholic college.  It was also noted that Dr. Reiss, the fourteenth president of the College, remarked that what it means to be Catholic “changed and developed over the past one hundred years.”  Accordingly, we can ask:  What changed at Saint Michael’s College?

To answer this question, we need to appreciate the original sense in which the College was Catholic.  Typical of Catholic institutions of higher education in the United States prior to the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), the aim of Catholic universities and colleges was to deepen a primarily Catholic student body’s understanding and commitment to the Catholic faith.  Some call this an emersion approach to educating students in the Catholic faith.  As part of the College’s curriculum, students took classes in religion, and attendance at religious services on campus was expected.  The culture of the College was almost exclusively Catholic, and students received a Catholic education as was the norm before Vatican II.

With the promulgation of Vatican II documents such as Gaudium et spes, the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, the Catholic Church proclaimed a new openness to and a desire to engage with other Christian denominations and other religions.  Catholic higher education in the United States accordingly undertook to reinterpret how best to educated Catholic students and also how best to provide students from different religious and cultural backgrounds with a meaningful education at Catholic institutions of higher education.  Like other Catholic universities and colleges, where Saint Michael’s College formerly sought to educate students “in the Catholic faith,” the College sought to educate a diverse student body “in the light of the Catholic faith.”

This change in direction was sparked by a document that came to be known as the “Land O’ Lakes Statement” (1967).  The leaders of Catholic universities and colleges who had gathered for the purpose of re-envisioning Catholic higher education in the United States proposed that Catholic higher education in America needed be free from the constraints of the Catholic Church with regard to scholarship to ensure academic freedom while at the same time preserve the Catholicity of the Catholic Church’s institutions of higher education.

The “Land O’ Lakes Statement” led to Saint Michael’s College changing its curriculum to better reflect an openness to all learning.   Additionally, to improve the quality of a Saint Michael’s education, the College began to hire professors with doctoral degrees on the basis of their expertise in their academic fields.  Students no longer took Catholic religion classes but studied Catholic theology and history as well as other world religions.  Also, students were no longer primarily Catholic with an enrollment of a more religiously and culturally diverse population of students, as is now the case at Saint Michael’s College.

Given the diverse religious and cultural backgrounds of the faculty and students, educating students “in the light of the Catholic faith” necessitates that great care be taken in relating the Catholicity of the college to the pluralism of beliefs and cultures represented at the College.  The hospitality model developed by Douglas and Rhonda Jacobsen in No Longer Invisible:  Religion in University Education is helpful.  Saint Michael’s, as host, seeks to make welcome and at home a diverse body of students, faculty, and staff, respectful of the religious and cultural backgrounds of each.  For their part, students, faculty, and staff, in their diversity, seek to respect the home into which they have been invited, here the Catholicity of Saint Michael’s.

The decision to educate students at the College “in the light of the Catholic faith” was a significant change in the history of the College.  However, we need to unpack what this means.  This will be the purpose of the next blog.  Any comments you would like to make at this time can be addressed to me at dtheroux@smcvt.edu.  Let’s talk.