Evangelization Supplement
Shining the light:
‘Being there’ is at heart of spreading faith on college campuses
Notre Dame Sister Carolyn Sur, campus minister at Saint Mary-of-the Woods College, is shown with students on a trip to Chicago in 2006. Sister Carolyn is standing in the center of the back row. (Submitted photo)
By John Shaughnessy
The light sometimes shines in unusual ways—like the way Notre Dame Sister Carolyn Sur uses a combination of nature, prayer and readings from Christian literature to bring people closer to God on weekday mornings at Saint Mary-of-the Woods College.
The light also peeks through in unexpected places—like the classroom where Dominican Father Bob Keller celebrates Mass at noon at Indiana University in Bloomington.
As a college student, Melissa Hintmann shines her own light of evangelization by planning and leading Catholic faith-related events at Butler University in Indianapolis.
And Don Markovitch will never forget the night of April 18 when he was literally surrounded by the light of glowing candles that students at Marian College in Indianapolis held during a vigil to remember the people who were killed at Virginia Tech University two days earlier.
“Evangelization is part of the Gospel, to not only speak the word but follow up with the action,” said Markovitch, the director of campus ministry at Marian College.
“There were 50 people for the vigil during what was a busy time for students and faculty. They had tears coming down their cheeks. When it gets down to it, we turn to God to get us through the pain,” he said. “There is always hope in God and our faith. The students exemplify that hope and love of Christ by being there. They witness the grace of God through their actions.”
Those two phrases—“being there” and “witness the grace of God through their actions”—are at the heart of spreading and enhancing the Catholic faith on college campuses.
Yet the call to evangelization on college campuses is a challenging one, according to Sister Carolyn, the campus minister at Saint Mary-of-the Woods College.
“There are great needs on a college campus,” she said. “There’s so much competition from the media these days promoting commercialism, violence and secularization of society. The parish church and the nuclear family don’t have the same power as in the pre-television era. We need to compete with that and expose them to the values of leading a simpler, more meditative lifestyle.”
In three years of ministry at Saint Mary-of-the Woods, Sister Carolyn has brought 13 people to the Catholic faith, including a 57-year-old security guard. Sometimes, the connection starts in one of the theology classes she teaches or through a service project. But the religious sister of 45 years also uses creative, less traditional approaches to share the faith.
She does a morning meditation on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays—a meditation that involves readings from Scriptures, Christian literature and her own spirituality.
“I do it outside in nature,” she said. “It lasts about 15 to 20 minutes. … We pray about world events, about events in the family. For this, we have more people who are adults from the village surrounding the college. Some people tell me that that’s their main meditation, that they’re not affiliated with a Church. That’s a form of evangelization. Hopefully, they’ll become more formally Catholic down the road.”
She also reaches out to students from other Christian denominations.
“Since less than 50 percent of our campus is Roman Catholic, my goal is to offer something that’s meaningful to everyone,” she said. “I need to offer programs outside formal liturgy. I feel that the seeds of faith the family has planted need to be honored.”
At 21, Melissa Hintmann sees her Catholic faith as the core of her being, a faith she wants to share with others. When she first came to Butler University in 2004, the Newman Center for Catholic students had recently been closed and the archdiocese asked the nearby parishes of St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Joan of Arc and Immaculate Heart of Mary to fill the void at a campus where about one-third of the 4,000 students are Catholic.
Several adult Catholics accepted that challenge, including Jane Clarke, a member of St. Thomas who is an adviser to the Butler Catholic Community. The group was also helped by the college’s Center for Faith and Vocation, which is led by another St. Thomas parishioner, Judith Cebula.
“We missed what had been going on on campus,” Clarke said. “We wanted to provide a Catholic community for the students on campus. I think there’s a Butler Catholic Community identity at this time.”
Hintmann has seen that community grow during her three years at Butler. She has also helped spur that growth as the president of the Butler Catholic Community.
“It was difficult my freshman year to uphold my beliefs so I had to seek it out and defend it when it was questioned,” she recalled. “It inspired me to learn more. When I was a freshman, we had 30 to 40 people at Mass on Sunday. Now, it’s 70 to 100. Now, there’s a board committee of students. We delegate different social programs. We started saying the rosary once a month. Ash Wednesday is probably our biggest Mass of the year. More than 300 people come.”
The Butler Catholic Community was also recognized this year as a diversity organization by the college, a distinction that Hintmann believes will help spread awareness of the faith to non-Catholics.
“We have more dedicated people now,” said the pharmacy student from St. Louis. “I think the students realize the state of the Mass and the state of Catholicism on campus depend on them at this stage. They’re more willing to take ownership,” she said. “I also see the faculty and staff taking a more active, public role. I think that’s very important to how we have developed.”
Leading people to Christ is also the focus of the Dominicans’ efforts at Indiana University in Bloomington and Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind.
“We want to be the Catholic presence to higher education—students, faculty and staff,” said Dominican Father Bob Keller, the pastor at St. Paul Catholic Center in Bloomington. “To do that, we think in terms of programming and creative loitering. I’ll go on campus and go to an office to visit a professor. Or we’ll go over to the food court and just sit there and hope to meet students. It’s not an agenda. It’s just being there.”
Father Bob shared those comments during an interview last fall at St. Paul’s, where the center offers weekday morning Masses, a meditation prayer service on Tuesday evenings, Bible study groups on Tuesday and Wednesday nights, and six regular weekend Masses, including a Spanish Mass.
“When you’re dealing with students of that age level, they have a tremendous amount of freedom,” Father Bob said. “To get their attention and be persuasive is a challenge. They have a lot of groups interested in them.
“The other challenge is to be intellectually in pace with them. You can’t say, ‘The Church has always done this or the pope says this.’ You can’t lose credibility with them. One of the things I find a lot—which I’m happy about—is that there’s a consciousness of justice. They aren’t satisfied with the way things are. They want to make a better world.”
In a recent conversation, Father Bob noted that 11 Indiana University students were baptized at St. Paul this school year. Another eight IU students from different faiths were received into the Catholic faith.
“There’s something going on,” Father Bob said. “It could be we’re on campus more or it could be the students who are Catholic. Other students see the way they are. Whatever it is, God is at work here.”
The challenge of evangelization on college campuses usually can be met by one important approach, according to Sister Carolyn.
“I think it’s very important to live your faith passionately,” she said. “If that happens, evangelization will be a natural overflow.” †
