Massachusetts News 
By Paul Moreno 

December 1--Emmanuel College, a Catholic women’s college in Boston, has released a "report" saying that most young Roman Catholics feel alienated from their church. 

They warn, "While younger people tend to feel attached to Roman Catholic rites and theology, they find church leaders deaf to their concerns."  

According to them, young Catholics are unhappy about the church’s teachings on abortion, birth control, sexuality, and feminism. 

Sister Mary Johnson, a sociology professor at Emmanuel, says that the study should serve as a "wake-up call" to church leaders. 

Of course, she feels that way. Liberal Catholics like Sr. Mary and groups like "We Are Church" are the ones telling young Catholics that they should dissent from the church’s teachings on these questions. So it’s hardly surprising that they are able to find what they are looking for. 

Indeed, this report should serve as a wake-up call to the Roman Catholic hierarchy –to make sure that the catechism of young Catholics is not left to people like Sr. Mary. Then the church will be less likely to face the problem of Catholics who think that they can take the church’s "theology" apart from its authority on moral teaching. 

A theologian at the Catholic University of America says, "Some people we talked to have the conception that you have to be a good Catholic in every possible way. And that’s not easy today." 

But, being a faithful Catholic isn’t supposed to be easy. 

Meanwhile, an attempt by the bishops to make sure that Catholic colleges and universities actually teach Catholic doctrine has been attacked by leading Catholic scholars and administrators. 

It has been ten years since the Vatican instructed the American bishops to write guidelines to ensure that Catholic colleges maintain some semblance of Catholic identity. The only real requirement of those new guidelines is that the local bishop give a mandate to teachers of Catholic theology. 

How could anyone regard this as exceptional? 

"We cannot ignore the history of institutions of higher learning that were founded in the Protestant faith that are now secular," said Boston’s Bernard Cardinal Law. 

But the Boston Globe reports that, "Observers who opposed the new rules said the church was wrongly blaming the universities for the number of young Catholics straying from their faith." 

Do these critics really believe that any attempt to teach Catholic doctrine at Catholic schools will alienate young Catholics? 

Rather, it’s more likely that these observers fear that young Catholics might actually understand Catholic doctrine, and reject secular liberalism. 

Unfortunately, leaders of Catholic colleges are saying that the new guidelines will be ignored or resisted. 

The Rev. Joseph O’Hare, president of Fordham University, told the New York Times that he thinks his institution will remain a largely secular one, and a theology professor at Notre Dame swears that he will not even attempt to get the required mandate from the local bishop. 

The Rev. William P. Leahy, president of Boston College, says that he believes the guidelines will make non-Catholic professors feel like second-class citizens. 

Massachusetts News' Editor Emeritus, Paul Moreno is a Professor of History at Hillsdale College 
 

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