From Word on Fire’s Evangelization & Culture

I am a father of two daughters. 

Alongside my wife, I have spent the last eighteen years feeding, clothing, housing, teaching, disciplining, coaching, counseling, and loving these girls. My love for them knows no bounds, and I, like all good fathers out there, would die for my children in an instant. 

From their earliest days, I have dreamt of the opportunities my two daughters might discover in college—the vast things they would learn, the intriguing people they would meet, the myriad ways in which they would grow. Like my college experience, I have always imagined it would be simply wonderful. 

But as my little girls have gotten older and college applications drew nearer, the culture has simultaneously grown darker, more decadent, and relentlessly ideological. What is striking, however, is that higher education has not only fallen prey to this darkness but it has often been a willing perpetuator of it. The august halls of learning that once promised to foster virtue, cultivate knowledge, and enhance faith now enthusiastically disregard tradition, glamorize the banal, and disdain faith and virtue.

The results are grim. Several years ago, Curtis Martin, the founder of the Fellowship of Catholic University Students (FOCUS), mourned that over 85 percent of Catholic students are leaving the faith by the end of their college years. And that is at Catholic universities.

What happened? 

I would propose what French Catholic novelist Georges Bernanos writes in his masterpiece, The Diary of a Country Priest: “Faith is not a thing which one ‘loses,’ we merely cease to shape our lives by it.” Falling out of the habit of prayer, partaking in the sacraments, spiritual reading, and works of mercy—failing to grow—while slipping into the habit of self-centeredness, self-satisfaction, and self-indulgence seems to sum up a lot of the drift. “We merely cease to shape our lives by it.” 

The College Beat seeks to reverse this course. We at Word on Fire have sought out Catholic students in the thick of their college experience who have a penchant for writing and reflecting on faith, culture, and the issues of the day. These writers hail from diverse colleges and universities ranging from Notre Dame to Hillsdale, the University of Wisconsin—Madison to Clemson, Yale to Princeton, Boston College to Benedictine, Catholic University to the University of Texas at Austin. They are the best of the best. And they all write for their college newspapers. They have their finger on the pulse of their campus and a pen in their hand to write about it. 

The College Beat will feature an essay from a college writer every two weeks that will explore various issues: what physics can teach us about God, how sacred music can edify the studying student, the spirituality of “dumb phones,” a young Catholic’s temptation to Marxism, the odyssey of the Catholic athlete, and many, many more. These essays are crafted by the next generation of great Catholic writers who will speak to concerns of yours, your child, or your grandchild in college. But they will also speak to every lifelong learner searching for the true, the good, and the beautiful in a sea of uncertainty, insecurity, and nihilism. 

I am the father of two daughters, and I plan on sending them every offering we will publish. Let’s not resign to dire statistics of abandoned faith. Let’s move the needle. Let’s grow our children’s faith in college and not destroy it. Let’s change their world.

So please read and share our twice-monthly offerings at The College Beat. Become young in your interests, old in your wisdom, and strong in your faith.