Non-Catholic Colleges With Excellent Campus Ministry

[ToJesusMyHeart]

Texas A&M!!!! WHOOP!!!! (Class of 2014 here...A-A-A-WHOOP!!!!!)

From George Weigel (John Paul II's biographer), who recently visited Aggieland:

[left]"Where can you find a Catholic chaplaincy at an institution of higher learning that’s looking to expand its church to seat 1,400, because the current 850 just isn’t enough?[/left]

South Bend, Indiana, perhaps? Well, no, actually: College Station, Texas, where the Catholic chaplaincy at Texas A&M, St. Mary’s Catholic Center, is setting a [b]new national standard[/b] for Catholic campus ministry.

Aggie Catholicism is something to behold. Daily Mass attendance averages [b]175[/b]; there were closer to [b]300 [/b]Catholic Aggies at Mass on a weekday afternoon when I visited a few years back. Sunday Masses draw between [b]4,000 and 5,000[/b] worshippers.

There are [b]10 weekly time-slots for confessions [/b](and there is [i][u]always[/u] [/i]a line!) which are also heard [b]all day long[/b] on Mondays. Eucharistic adoration, rosary groups, the Liturgy of the Hours, and the traditional First Friday devotion are staples of Aggie Catholicism’s devotional life.

All this energy has had a discernible effect on vocational formation and discernment.

Since 2000, the campus ministry has averaged some [b]nine students per year[/b] entering the seminary or religious novitiates; [b]132 [/b]Catholic Aggies have been ordained priests or made final religious vows in the past [b]two decades[/b]. And then there is the vocation to marriage and family, which the campus ministry takes very seriously. Aggie Catholics are also a powerful witness to the rest of Aggieland; [b]175 new Catholics[/b] have entered the Church the [b]past two years[/b] through St. Mary’s RCIA program.

The premise that informed John Paul II’s approach to students his entire life—that young people want to be challenged to lead lives of heroic virtue, in which the search for love is the search for a pure and noble love—is the premise that guides Catholic campus ministry at College Station.

Texas A&M is a special place, culturally; in many respects, it seems to have skipped the ‘60s, such that its 21st-century life is in palpable continuity with its past. That’s a deeply Catholic cultural instinct, which St. Mary’s has seized to build a program that is a [i]model for the entire country.[/i]"

[url="http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/2011/02/aggie-catholic-renaissance"]http://www.firstthin...lic-renaissance[/url]

Okay, so I'm bragging. I can't help it. I love my school, and my Catholic campus ministry way more than I can exclaim!!!

Edited August 6, 2012 by ToJesusMyHeart

[tinytherese]

Yale