By Thomas M. Landy
Twenty-one years ago this spring, America magazine published a short essay of mine, titled "Lay Leadership and Catholic Higher Education: Where Will It Come From?" The essay fretted about how very little was being done to prepare lay leaders, and outlined my first ideas about a summer "institute" that eventually developed into Collegium.
I suppose we're far enough away, as we approach Collegium's 20th anniversary, to take a stab at addressing the status of lay leadership in Catholic higher education. Where do I see things now, compared with what I anticipated – or feared – in 1990? This is a question that merits a longer response than is possible here, but it is still possible to outline some of my basic beliefs.
With very few exceptions, I think that Catholic higher education is in a much better place today than I feared it would be.
Today, of course, the vast majority of senior positions at Catholic colleges and universities are occupied by lay people. Those administrators are diligent and generally chosen with an eye toward fit in terms of mission. At annual meetings of presidents, the most noticeable thing over two decades has been the decrease in the number of women religious. Priest-presidents are certainly fewer in number as well.
Faculty, too, are recruited with much more serious attention to mission. Senior faculty at many colleges tell me that their schools are much more focused on hiring for mission and making sure that faculty understand something about the institution's aspirations as Catholic institutions.
As a whole, Catholic colleges and universities are remarkably more strategic in terms of how they think about developing lay leadership. A few months after my America article, Pope John Paul II issued his major document on Catholic higher education, Ex Corde Ecclesiae, which called colleges to pay more attention to their mission as Catholic institutions. Over the years since, Collegium has been joined by a host of new programs dedicated to developing leadership in Catholic higher education, in student affairs, for administrators, and more. Notably, too, a remarkable number of colleges and universities have appointed directors or coordinators for mission, to make sure that someone has the full-time responsibility and the resources for thinking about mission. Religious orders have been much more strategic about using their donated funds to provide for education in mission.
One of the most important shifts in these twenty-plus years, I think, is that it has become abundantly clear that focus on Catholic mission in higher education does not have to be a restorationist project, intended to turn the clock back to a lost utopia. I know that Collegium and the people who have been part of it have imagined and lived out a vision that is progressive without turning its back on the long, rich tradition we inherited. I think we have modeled that it is not only desirable, but possible to run pluralistic, yet Catholic centered colleges and universities.
I can't say that from a mission perspective all things look sunny. Melanie Morey and John Piderit, SJ, are certainly right when they note that many lay administrators lack the theological depth of their predecessors. Yet they bring – and need to bring – a wide array of talents. I am struck that these same administrators have been smart about seeking help from people who do have that depth – often, but not exclusively, through offices of mission.
Some things are worse than I could have imagined, but often not the result of things the colleges have done. The sexual abuse crisis in the church is an event I never saw coming, and one that has done the church lasting damage. I worry about the larger cultural attitudes toward Catholicism, and at times about the church's own ability to adapt to new insights from the world.
The biggest change within Collegium is that there are far fewer graduate students applying to Collegium for fellowships than was true in the 1990s, despite the fact that all the feedback we can gather tells me that graduate students have had a remarkably positive experience at Collegium. Part of our original goal was to help nurture and hire such grad students for Catholic higher education. Despite some notable exceptions, we were never able to achieve that goal as fully as we hoped, in particular because of the mismatch between those graduates' academic specialties and the needs of universities in any particular year. But it does seem to me that far fewer graduate students today have the same interest in Catholic higher education. That alone is reason to worry.
I'm confident that I can say that the faculty I do meet at Collegium are remarkable people. When presented with what I see as some of the best of Catholic intellectual traditions and its hopes, they respond with great interest and generosity. They do give me a great deal of reason for celebration and hope.
I don't know how close I still am to the midway point in my journey with Collegium on Catholic higher education, but so far, I can say it's been a remarkable and rewarding journey, more than worth the work I put into it.
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