U.S. Bishops Urged to Address Crisis in Catholic Education

Most Catholic colleges have become essentially secular, imitating non-Catholic schools rather than embracing their distinct religious identity.

Catholic colleges and universities today are largely failing to fulfill their mission, and the bishops have an important role to play in correcting the problem, the provost of Dartmouth College said Wednesday.

Santiago Schnell, who is also a renowned mathematical biologist, spoke to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in Orlando. He offered his reflections on the state of Catholic higher education today, 25 years after the conference implemented Pope John Paul II’s apostolic constitution on education, Ex Corde Ecclesiae.

Questions of policy, leadership, and culture at Catholic universities continue to be points of contention in the United States. This past year, the University of Notre Dame appointed an outspoken abortion advocate to direct one of its academic institutes, then announced days later that the appointed faculty member would not assume the director role after widespread condemnation of the appointment by students, university donors, and bishops.

Schnell said that although Catholics are present in American public life today – making up, for example, more than a quarter of Congress and two-thirds of the Supreme Court – they lack a sufficient presence in the institutions that form ideas, language and imagination.

“The Catholic paradox is that we have a massive infrastructure of higher education, with average outcomes,” he said.

Roughly 1 in 5 U.S. adults is Catholic, and there are 230 Catholic colleges and universities in the country, enrolling more than 600,000 students, he noted.

But only 35% of adult Catholics in the country have at least a bachelor’s degree – just matching the national average among all U.S. adults. And among Hispanic Catholics, this figure is 20%.

Meanwhile, 43% of U.S. adults who were raised Catholic no longer identify as Catholic today, he continued. And those who no longer practice the faith are more than twice as likely to cite changes in belief than scandals in the Church as the primary reason.

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