Majoring in Catholicism

Are the nation's Catholic colleges Catholic enough? No, says Thomas Monaghan, who sees his Ave Maria College of Florida as a bastion of traditional teaching.

By SHARON TUBBS, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times
published March 1, 2003

What makes a Catholic university truly Catholic?

A portrait of Mother Mary, daily Mass, the course requirements in religion?

We ask this as Domino's pizza founder Tom Monaghan prepares to bring his own brand of Catholic education to Florida.

In case you haven't heard, he's spending $200-million to create Ave Maria College of Florida on a 750-acre site in Collier County near the Everglades. Initially, about 100 students will learn on a 10-acre interim site this fall. The campus is scheduled to be completed in 2006.

Monaghan told the New York Times that only about 10 percent of the nation's Catholics would even want to attend Ave Maria. The rest would be turned off by its traditional teachings, he said, since he believes the majority of Catholics don't practice their faith's teachings closely enough.

Other Catholic universities "may be fine academically, but I believe that they could be more spiritual than they are," Monaghan told a St. Petersburg Times reporter, shortly after announcing the new Ave Maria in November.

The school is expected to grow to 5,000 students in the years after construction. But in a state that already has three Catholic universities -- St. Thomas in Miami, Barry in Miami Shores and Saint Leo in Pasco County -- how will Ave Maria set itself apart?

To start with, Ave Maria will have a set course schedule for students' first two years of school. Most Catholic schools offer a variety of curriculum tracks based on a student's interests and major. The strict regimen for freshmen and sophomores at Ave Maria will include classes in theology, philosophy, history, natural science, literature, language and math. Students will be allowed to take few, if any, elective courses, said Nicholas J. Healy, the university's president and CEO.

"We have a very strong liberal-arts core curriculum," he said. Classes will be taught from a Catholic perspective to the extent that they can be, he said. (Not much that canon law can add to math.)

Such an intensive core curriculum is rare, but not unheard of, said Peter Casarella, associate professor of systematic theology at the Catholic University of America in Washington.

"It's almost a fixed canon of books they want their students to work through," Casarella said. "I actually think it's a good thing."

In core curriculum programs similar to Ave Maria's, students can discuss the same issues with people who aren't in their classes. "A common heritage is being handed on," Casarella said.

Also atypical is that Ave Maria's religion courses will all focus on Catholic theology. Courses about world religions and classes that explore theories of other faiths will not be offered -- at least for now, Healy said.

"We're Catholic and that's what we're going to teach," he said.

Other Catholic universities, including those in Florida, offer courses that explore other religions.

At St. Thomas, students must take at least two courses in world religions and one Catholic identity course. Saint Leo students have to take several courses in religion and values and one course in Catholic traditions. At Barry, students are required to take at least three credits in theology, as well as a theology, faith, beliefs and traditions course that gives students information about other religions.

The diversity they learn is key to a good education, said Marcia Nance, vice provost for university marketing and enrollment.

"This is an institution that reaches out to all kinds of people and all kinds of beliefs," she said. It is "an institution that is values-based."

Casarella says the Catholicism-only approach at Ave Maria has some merit.

"Many Catholic universities are trying to develop a synthesis of Catholic theology and religious studies," Casarella said. "It's not clear to me that there's an easy way to do this or even a good way to do this."

If you're going to give students a comprehensive view in their college education, he said, "what sources are you going to draw upon?" Should the comprehensive view be based on Catholic teachings, on world philosophy or some other perspective offered at the institution?

Healy said it's possible that Ave Maria will offer courses about other religions someday, but only if learning about those religions is essential to majors that the school might offer. For example, a person who majors in sociology might need to know about other religions, he said.

Like most Catholic colleges, Ave Maria will not require students to attend Mass. But services will be heavily promoted and encouraged, Healy said. So will "mercy work," or help for the needy. Healy said students may volunteer with a large population of migrant workers in Immokalee, also in Collier County. "We're going to encourage and make possible a very active faith life for our students."

Catholicism and education will be so entwined at Ave Maria, he said, "I would be surprised if every staff member didn't start off each class with a prayer."

That would not be the norm at Catholic universities today, Casarella said. He knows of only a few students who pray before class and some professors who lead their students in prayer.

Perhaps among the most telling indicators of a Catholic university's Catholic identity is the percentage of Catholic students, Casarella said.

"We are a true Catholic university," said St. Thomas' Monsignor Franklyn M. Casale. "I don't think anybody on our campus would have any problem knowing that this is a Catholic university."

The school does not keep accurate records of its percentage of Catholic students, Casale said. But nearly 50 percent of St. Thomas students are Hispanic, people who have traditionally followed Catholicism, and another 15 percent are international students from countries where the faith is prevalent. That doesn't even include the American Catholics there. So, Casale says, it's safe to say that the majority of students are Catholic.

About 70 percent of Saint Leo's 10,700 students are Catholic, said Douglas Astolfi, vice president for academic affairs.

At Barry, about 48 percent of last fall's freshman class identified themselves as Catholic, Nance said.

Healy expects the vast majority at Ave Maria will be Catholic. He thinks the school will be attractive to a broader audience of Catholics than the 10 percent of the faithful that Monaghan estimated.

Having a majority of Catholic students helps preserve a school's Catholic identity, Casarella said. He noted a dispute in the late 1990s at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., where, in 2001, about 54 percent of undergraduate students said they were Catholic. A student group rallied the administration to put crucifixes in classrooms there, a common practice at Catholic universities.

The administration had done away with such conspicuous religious symbols in previous years, not wanting to offend members of the college's increasingly diverse student body. Ultimately, the student group won and the crucifixes were displayed in classrooms. Saint Leo, St. Thomas and Barry all display Catholic symbols in at least some classrooms.

In step with traditional Catholic strictures against premarital sex and homosexuality, Ave Maria will forbid coed dorms and gay support groups.

Barry and Saint Leo offer coed dorms in which one floor or wing is all-male and the next is all-female, as well as apartment living where women live in one apartment and men in the next.

St. Thomas no longer has coed dorms.

None of the Florida schools has a gay support group. Officials said students simply haven't asked to form them.

"There are no plans to have one," said Edward Dadez, vice president for student affairs at Saint Leo. "We would deal with that when it came upon us."

Gay support groups are not unheard of in Catholic schools. The University of Notre Dame in Indiana and Georgetown University both have gay, lesbian and bisexual groups.

Monika Hellwig, president of the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities, says opinions about Catholic education vary widely because Catholics have different viewpoints about practicing the faith.

"The key statements that you would have to hold to be a Catholic are very few and the interpretations are very many and complex," she said.

Pope John Paul II wrote about the role of Catholic universities in a 1990 statement, "From the Heart of the Church." But like so many official documents, it leaves room for an array of interpretations.

"In a word, being both a University and Catholic, it must be both a community of scholars representing various branches of human knowledge, and an academic institution in which Catholicism is vitally present and operative," the pope's statement said.

Hellwig said she would classify Florida's current Catholic schools as "middle-of-the-road," rather than either conservative or liberal. There are 235 Catholic universities and colleges nationwide. In the past three months, Ave Maria has gained support from some well-known Catholics, including William Bennett, who was education secretary during the Reagan administration. Bennett has said he will teach or speak at Ave Maria.

The Florida campus would be part of a larger educational network created by Monaghan. The Ave Maria Foundation is based in Michigan. In 1998, Monaghan opened Ave Maria College in Ypsilanti, Mich.; it now has 230 students. Ave Maria College of Florida would open as a branch of the Michigan campus, until it can meet requirements to be called a university. The college has another branch in Nicaragua. Monaghan has not decided whether he would keep Ave Maria's Michigan campus open. He has also opened the Ave Maria School of Law in Ann Arbor.

As for the Collier County project, said Astolfi at Saint Leo, "It would appear that there's a conscious decision to make that a very conservative place," he said. "That's not unhealthy. I think that would be good for all of us. If we stop thinking," he said, "we stop getting educated."

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