The College Beat: Article IV
. . .
In the wake of the Charlie Kirk assassination, we asked our College Beat writers the following question:
In an age of ideology and amid appetites chasing power, honor, pleasure, and wealth, how are God and the Catholic Church relevant to the anxious concerns and uncertain direction of college students?
If there’s one thing that Charlie Kirk’s assassination taught us, it’s that politics isn’t enough. Watching the celebratory reaction videos circulate online after the murder, I’ve realized that the divides in our society are much deeper than party lines. We’re torn about a fault line between morality and immorality, truth and falsity, goodness and evil. I am by no means the first to make this point, but I’ve noticed that many who have said this do so with little cause for hope. A divide this profound, they say, is merely a reason to despair the possibility of ever achieving unity again. It’s a reason to point and declare, “Unity is not possible, nor should we even seek it.”
We need to move beyond this. If that finality is true about the divide in America, it simply means that we cannot rely on politics as the remedy. We need to move to the soul—to the faith. Young people in America desperately need the redemption of Christ, more so than they will ever need the solution of politics. It is only God who can change the hearts of man, but he will use you, and the example of faith that you give, to reach what is unreachable for politics.
– Lucy Spence, editor-in-chief, The Irish Rover, University of Notre Dame
College campuses are often—morally speaking—bleak places dominated by the vanities of the world. Yet the Church provides an antidote to these booze-fueled, sex-crazed, ideology-driven institutions. The Church stands as a bulwark of hope and joy to desolate college students, helping them become beacons of joy, fueled by the Eucharist. The Church speaks to the heart, a heart that longs for intimacy and meaning. College students attempt to fill this void in all the wrong ways, yet the Church provides a refuge, a landing place where students flock when overwhelmed by the weight of life. In the storm of collegiate life, the Church is the rock of stability. Christ extends an invitation to step out onto the tumultuous waters, instructing us to keep our eyes on him. When we do, it is a life-changing experience, an experience that brings one more fully alive as they begin walking with Christ; they become missionaries to their campuses promoting not just the truth of the faith but how to live life fully alive.
– Jack Figge, columnist for Benedictine College Media & Culture website, Benedictine College
“Our heart is restless until it rests in you.” There is perhaps no single statement that so succinctly and accurately encapsulates Christian anthropology as this beautiful line by St. Augustine. Man cannot live without God. And we, college students—no matter how experienced we think our twenty-odd years on Earth makes us—are no exception. Above all else, young people are blessed with a wealth of time and energy. But unlike material goods, these two things cannot be hoarded. We must find a purpose toward which to direct our bounty. For some, this aim is money. For others, power and status. And for an unfortunate many, it is the snares of political ideology. But truth be told, these secular goals are far too mediocre. We were made for greatness, and our zealous hearts cannot be satisfied by mere dollars or fame or political wins. This is where God enters the picture. In him, can we find a goal worthy of our energy. Into him, can we unceasingly pour ourselves without the cup ever overflowing. And thus, in God, can we find contentment and peace.
– Evan Kwong, contributor to the Yale Daily News, Yale University
I found myself on the porch of a student house last weekend, debating different points of political ideology with a friend. I left the conversation unsatisfied, both with his reasoning and the inadequacy of my own replies. Other times, I’ve tasted the same bitter feeling after conversations with college friends about relationships, achievements, or future plans.
The common denominator of these conversations has been the way we speak about human life. Too often, I am content to reduce reality to the laws of the world. Through this lens, dating becomes a tangle of pleasure and competition; politics one of profit and power; professional life one of greed and utilitarianism. But what lies not far below the surface—the deepest desires of the human heart—can only be answered by the law of love. Commentators, politicians, and influencers can dance around our greatest drives, but only the Church can meet them in their fullness: by offering us intimacy with God himself.
The Catholic Church has an answer for everything. Unlike many of the popular ideologies of our time, the Church doesn’t presume to give pat answers for young people’s greatest yearnings. She offers a different kind of response: bread for our hunger, solace for our aching, wisdom and silence for our racing hearts.
In the wake of the tragic death of Charlie Kirk—a man who grew to see his God as the greatest and only adequate answer—may we return daily to the law and source of love.
– Caroline Kurt, opinions editor for The Collegian, Hillsdale College
The Catholic faith roots the young, burgeoning minds and hearts on college campuses in a tradition whose source is Jesus Christ—a source that continues to flow anew in their hearts, a source that promises to quench their every thirst. Without the Catholic faith, these young minds and hearts are left dangerously desperate for some other source of meaning. In this culture that doesn’t hand meaning to them, the youth are tempted either toward an over-simplified, narrow-minded ideology or an empty, self-destructive absurdism. We have seen enough violence to condemn ideology, and enough depression to condemn absurdism. What then?
Let us turn our hearts to the heart of Christ. Taking refuge in this heart, we will know in our hearts the true meaning of everything: love. And when this heart sends us into the world, we will sense a latent meaning in everything and everyone; we will hear his heart quietly beating all reality into a beautiful existence with love. Then will our hearts be touched to love as his heart loves. Then we shall have an agenda indeed—not a twisted agenda from ideology but an agenda from and for what is most good, true, and beautiful.
– Richard Taylor, columnist for The Observer, University of Notre Dame
Generation Z has grown up as part of a culture of extraordinary isolation, in the sense of a lack of close relationships. We are “buffered selves” not only in relation to God but in relation to each other as well. Particularly disturbing is a growing apathy toward romantic relationships, including not only marriage but even dating.
Few can deny that human beings deeply long for communion with others. It may be hard to believe, then, that an entire generation could begin to ignore one of the deepest desires of the human heart. The Church’s idea of despair as a lack of desire for the good, however, can make sense of the situation. This phenomenon is indeed despair, brought on by the broken relationships of today’s world.
Catholicism, however, is uniquely equipped to bring us hope. Our God loves the world, proving that human nature, including natural human love, is good. But our God doesn’t just love us; he is in love with us. The Creator of the universe pursues us, his dearest beloved, to offer himself in marriage to us, to give his Body and Blood in the ultimate one-flesh union with us.
No one, knowing that, could despair of romance or look at it with indifference. For no one will ever be more in favor of romance than God himself.
– William Saylor, contributor to The Cor Chronicle, University of Dallas
Young people want the real thing.
Raised in a culture that idolizes safety and embraces the artificial, we thirst for a reality that will challenge us. Social media lets us hold others at a distance. Political tribalism keeps us from encountering ideas we disagree with. Bad therapy tells us when a relationship is difficult, we should cut that person out of our lives.
College students like me are flocking to the Catholic faith because it invites us to engage with reality when every other voice is telling us to hide in safe spaces. The sacramental life of the Church pulls us into close proximity with the person of Christ through the Eucharist, and the teachings of the Gospel demand we look at those around us as gift, entrusted to us and demanding a response.
As he tells St. Thomas, so Christ tells each of us: “Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.”
Distance is not an option with a God who invites us to place our hand in his wounded side. Just as Christ does not condemn Thomas’s doubt but invites him deeper, the Catholic Church presents young people with a difficult truth and invites us to wrestle with it.
Christ through the Church meets us in the challenging reality of the Eucharist so that we can encounter him and exclaim with Thomas, “My Lord and my God!”