FTs - On the Square

November 16, 2005
Richard John Neuhaus writes:

When I was a Lutheran, I quite regularly received honorary degrees from Catholic colleges. Giving me an honorary degree was thought to be a very ecumenical thing to do. After I became a Catholic, it was a very controversial thing to do. I’m not complaining, mind you. Honorary degrees are of limited utility, although I am still thinking that something nice could be done with all those wonderfully colored hoods. A very large quilt?

A long time ago I spoke at the commencement and received an honorary degree from Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas, about an hour from Kansas City. I had rather lost track of what was happening there, but after Mass last Sunday the new president, Stephen Minnis, came by with several faculty members for brunch. It seems a great deal has been happening with Benedictine.

Enrollment, now at about 1200, has almost doubled in the last few years, and a big draw is Benedictine’s palpable seriousness about being a throughly Catholic school in line with John Paul the Great’s exhortation Ex corde ecclesiae (from the heart of the Church). Of course President Minnis and his colleagues were making a pitch. That’s their job. And it is a very impressive pitch indeed. In any event, when students and parents ask about seriously Catholic colleges, as they regularly do, I’ll be suggesting a careful look at Benedictine in Atchison, Kansas.