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In The Idea of a University, Newman defended the idea of an exclusively Catholic university, secured over against secular or religiously plural forces, and his account relies upon a distinction between the natural end of intellectual formation and the religious end of ecclesial formation. The latter, the formation supplied by the Catholic church, curbs, steadies, and supplements the former, but intellectual formation in and of itself is painted in non-theological colours. The intellectual aspect of human being is distinguished too neatly from the whole weave of human life before God, and the relationship between intellectual formation and Christian faith is as a consequence unnecessarily uneasy. In other words, the deepest problem with Newman’s account of university learning is not that it is too theological, but that it is not theological enough.

This chapter highlights the principal images, arguments, insights, and discoveries of the preceding chapters, in which the legacies of Aristotle and Ignatius play a prominent role. It bears down more deeply into the question of shame and outlines how these pedagogical ideas play out and come together in the undergraduate program. It also offers eleven theses on young adult vocational development in the context of Catholic higher education. It looks back, it looks deeper, it looks at a model, it listens, and draws some brief conclusions. It is summative but also explores the theme of shame more deeply, offers one model of what the Pedagogical Circle might look like within a university curriculum, gives students within that program a chance to speak, and concludes with some reflections on young adult vocational development.

This chapter treats the corporatization of higher education in the United States. In particular, the chapter contends that corporatized higher education has imported individualistic practices and models from the business world, modern economics, and more broadly neoliberal capitalism into higher education. A vision of the human person as selfish, hypercompetitive, solipsistic, and unwilling to sacrifice for the common good (homo economicus) undergirds these models and practices. The chapter discusses the so-called Dickeson model and Responsibility Centered Management (RCM) to illustrate the kinds of practices that flow from this anthropology. It also advances the argument that harmful “symptoms” of the corporatization of higher education such as the casualization of the academic workforce (known as “adjunctification”) have been accepted, at least partially, as a result this flawed understanding of human person. The second half of the essay turns to the Catholic social tradition to prescribe some possible “cures” to the “disease” in corporatized higher education.

This chapter begins with a brief institutional history of FOCUS and then examines the longer historical trajectories behind the group. This pre-history of FOCUS traces twinned fears—a fear of “secular” US culture and a fear of “cultural” Catholicism—through five shifts in US Catholic history during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. These shifts are postconciliar expansions of Catholic prayer, efforts to reclaim Catholic exceptionalism on Catholic college campuses, fears about Catholics on non-Catholic and public campuses, late-twentieth-century Catholics’ conflicted interactions with evangelical Protestants, and an increased strength and presence of a Catholic middle class. FOCUS and its evangelization methods were made possible by these trends.

In the years leading to Furfey’s retirement, he adapted his vision for the sociology department at CUA to make broader claims about the social justice mission for Catholic higher education. He continued to model how to marshal university resources for the common good in his own department. Into the 1950’s and 1960’s, Furfey shifted the emphasis in his writing and activism back to science and philosophy without abandoning his theological commitments. While personalism was still the hallmark of Furfey’s and his associates’ community activism at Fides House, the shape of their work changed over time as the operation expanded. Fides House enjoyed tremendous success. Within a decade, their work became more technical and they moved into increasingly larger quarters to serve increasing numbers of people. Furfey returned to empirical sociology on juvenile delinquency and, in his theoretical work, he adjusted his rhetoric to reach a broader audience by adopting a more conciliatory tone. He published his magnum opus Scope and Method of Sociology (1953). As he approached retirement, Furfey vowed to redouble his personal contributions to social justice activism by living in solidarity with the marginalized in his neighborhood.

Very Catholic Campuses create a viable alternative to stereotypical hookup culture and so enable students not to participate if they do not want to do so. More important, most students seem happy with this rejection of hookup culture. However, these campuses cannot serve as a model for all Catholic colleges and universities. Primarily, this is because most Catholic students are not evangelical Catholics, and so there are not enough of them to generate a Very Catholic campus on every Catholic college and university. What Very Catholic campuses can do is provide a model for supporting students on different Catholic campuses who do not want to hookup, a number that hovers around 20% of the student body. The suggestion is for an integration of residence life and academic curriculum for these students, what is often referred to as a learning community, that centers around the Catholic faith.

Somewhat Catholic campuses typically offered masses once a day, had one required class on Catholicism, had very few limits on coed visitation, and had no single-sex residence halls. Students mostly noted the Catholic culture by the crucifixes hanging on the walls in campus buildings. While almost 70% of the students identified as Catholic, Somewhat Catholic campuses had the most religious diversity, with about 15% of the students indicating that they were non-Catholic Christians and another 15% indicating that they were atheist or agnostic. This diversity meant that Catholicism was not as unifying a culture as it was on Very Catholic and Mostly Catholic campuses. Instead, the Catholic culture was present, in the background. It was an accompaniment Catholicism, available for students who were interested in it but not present in the daily life of students. The result was that the Catholic culture had little effect on hookup culture.

For Mostly Catholic campuses, Catholicism is pervasive. They require that every student take two classes on Catholicism, and masses are offered daily. Almost 70% of the students are Catholic. Still, many students hook up, and the dormitory visitation rules are limited or are not strictly enforced. The Catholic culture is primarily experienced in the way students treat each other and not by conformity to the sexual teachings of Catholicism. Students understand Catholicism as “being nice” and “tolerating others.” The result is that the campus’ and students’ Catholic faith surrounds hooking up and transforms it from a high-risk, no commitment act to a low-risk, open-to-commitment act. However, it also keeps students from challenging hooking up as the only way to enter into a relationship.

By studying hooking up on Catholic campuses, four realities about hookup culture can be seen. First, Catholic campuses reveal the coercive aspect of stereotypical hookup culture. Students feel pressure to hook up even if many do not and most do not enjoy it. Second, Catholic campuses reveal that students can and do shape their campus cultures. What determines the Catholic and hookup culture is mostly the result of students, their faith, their friends, and their actions. Third, Catholic campuses reveal alternatives to hooking up. On these campuses, students develop several understandings of relationships and several ways to pursue them. Finally, Catholic culture affects hookup culture—but not in simple or straightforward ways. Sometimes it hinders hooking up, sometimes it transforms it, and sometimes it has no effect at all. It depends on the configuration of the institutional structures and the makeup of the student body.

Students on Mostly Catholic campuses wanted and pursued relationships. They developed several “hanging out” scripts that they employed in their cafeterias, through networks of friends, during campus activities, and by texting. There was even a declaration of a relationship script enacted through Facebook. The difficulty is that only those scripts associated with hooking up appear to be widely shared between students and so made up the socializing aspect of the culture. Mostly Catholic campuses can help by making these alternative relationship scripts more likely to be shared and used by students. These campuses can do this through programs that (a) draw upon faculty and student affairs personnel to (b) help students be more reflective on how they are already pursuing relationships.