Abstract
Scholars have explained many of the differences within the American Catholic population in terms of political division or polarization. Although Catholics are becoming increasingly politically bifurcated, to focus only on the political misses the specifically religious differences that also distinguish Catholics from one another. There have been substantial changes in the staffing of Catholic campus ministry in the last 20 years. To better understand these shifts and their implications for ministry, the Catholic bishops commissioned a survey of Catholic campus ministers in the United States. The survey answered some questions but raised others. A qualitative study that more deeply explored these questions was recommended. Using three “windows”—vocation, prayer and spirituality, and mission—this article explores the overlap and differences in frames of Catholicity among two types of Catholic campus ministers. Forty-five campus ministers from three geographic regions of the country were interviewed. Ten of these forty-five interviewees are “missionaries,” meaning they are recent college graduates who have obtained a several-week training from their missionary organization and are contracted to serve as a campus missionary for two years. Thirty-one of these are “professional ministers,” meaning they have a graduate degree in ministry and intend to have a long-term career in this field. Missionaries’ understandings of vocation, prayer and spirituality, and mission reveal that missionary-formed campus ministers operate out of a frame that emphasizes an individualist Catholicism. The professional ministers employ a frame that amplifies the communal aspects of Catholicism. These findings contribute theoretically to ideas in the framing literature, specifically in the fields of politics, emotions and identity. The way these frames might have an impact on ministry offerings and student formation are also discussed.
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Notes
This primacy on the “relationship with Jesus” should be qualified. Some campus ministers, most often those at Catholic colleges and universities, were responsible not just for Catholic students, but all students (and the faculty and staff, too). In these cases, “relationship with Jesus” was not an appropriate centerpiece for all ministries as they also needed to be sure to meet the needs of non-Christian and unaffiliated students.
To be clear, missional ideas were used beyond contexts of service among the degree-based ministers, with one referring to Sherry Weddell's book, Forming Missionary Disciples, “So, Sherry Weddell… and I had read the book… I've read it a few times, now… And I attended a conference with her out in Colorado Springs, through her St. Catherine of Siena Institute. But I think that really shifted my vision of what the purpose of the Church is, what the purpose of our ministry as an extension of the Church in campus ministry, about the need and how we go about reaching people, and what the aims of our work really are, and that is that building up of disciples and what it takes to go on that journey with people. I think that really also shifted my perspective, and I read that book probably about four, 5 years ago. It was soon after I took on RCIA, and that really shifted, then, even my perspective of how I do RCIA now and really about what's most important in how we prioritize what we do in RCIA.”
It has been noted elsewhere that the missionaries' fervor wanes after their missionary experience (Dugan 2019).
Starks found that 55% of Catholics described human nature as both good and sinful, 43% said basically good (more than the 31% of non-Catholics who described human nature this way) and only 2% said basically sinful.
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Acknowledgements
We would like to thank the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (Secretariat for Catholic Education) and the Religious Research Association (Constant H. Jacquet Research Award) for their generous funding of this study. Thanks also to Dr. Omar M. McRoberts for his insightful comments on an earlier draft of this paper, made possible by the Younger Scholars in the Sociology of Religion Conference at the University of Notre Dame.
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Day, M.K., Kawentel, L.M. Unity and Diversity: Frames of Catholicity Among Catholic Campus Ministers. Rev Relig Res 63, 23–42 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13644-020-00424-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13644-020-00424-z