Saint Michael’s College: Preserving the Education of Students “In the Light of the Catholic Faith”

In a previous blog, I noted the significant change that took place at Saint Michael’s College in the late 1960s, following the publication of the “Land O’ Lakes Statement.”  For students enrolled at the College, this meant that they would no longer be educated “in the Catholic faith,” like previous generations of students.  The mission of the College, captured in the mission statement of the College, stated that students would receive an education “in the light of the Catholic faith.”  Understanding what this means is what I intend to cover in the blogs ahead.

With an increasingly diverse enrollment of students in American Catholic higher education and with a like diversity among administrators and faculty, a major issue in Catholic higher education in the United States was the question of who bore the responsibility of preserving the Catholic faith on campus.  The presumption was that the religious communities of priests, brothers, and sisters who had found most of the Catholic universities and colleges in America would preserve the Catholic identity of their schools by their involvements in administration and the classroom.  However, with the diminishment of vocations to religious communities of priests, brothers, and sisters in the United States, the very persons who were deemed the preservers of Catholic identity on Catholic campuses in America disappeared.

Similar to the experience of other religious communities, preserving the Catholic mission of Saint Michael’s College, understood in terms of educating students “in the light of the Catholic faith,” fell to the Society of Saint Edmund, a religious community similar to other communities of priests, brothers, and sisters who had founded most Catholic universities and colleges in the United States.  Edmundites at Saint Michael’s College, like other members of religious communities dedicated to Catholic higher education, committed themselves to acquiring educational degrees that would further the professionalization of the College as well as to handing over to lay persons the administration of Saint Michael’s.  Fr. Gerald Dupont, SSE, the tenth president of the College, worked with the Society of Saint Edmund to change the makeup of Saint Michael’s Board of Trustees so that lay persons with business acumen and administrative expertise could better govern the College.  And so, with the retirement of Fr. Dupont, SSE, the newly constituted Board of Trustees elected the first lay president of the College, Mr. Bernard L. Boutin, who had led the General Services Administration under President John F. Kennedy.

Fr. Dupont and Fr. Alliot review plans for campus.

Accordingly, it fell to the members of the Society of Saint Edmund to preserve the Catholic identity of the College and to ensure that students received an education “in the light of the Catholic faith.”  However, the decrease in the number of Edmundites available for ministry necessitated that the lay members of the College, administrators, faculty, and staff alike, take up the responsibility of maintaining the Catholicity of Saint Michael’s.  With the completion of the Society of Saint Edmund, however, preserving the Catholic identity of the College eventually will become the sole responsibility of the laity who administer Saint Michael’s and the faculty who do the actual work of engaging students in learning.

The task then is for the College to develop an approach to learning and a culture of education that preserves the Catholicity of the College.  How this is to be done will take a willingness on the part of those who administer, teach students, and support the education of students to take on the task.  For this to happen, all those who work at the College will need to become conversant with what it means for Saint Michael’s to educate students “in the light of the Catholic faith.”  Accordingly, what a “Catholic” pedagogy would look like will be the focus 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.