Keeping the Faith on Campus
Fr. Edmund McCullough, O.P., chaplain at Brown University for four years, on retreat with students. The retreats are a great opportunity for students to disconnect and spend time with the Lord. Photo by Brian Nguyen.
Keeping the Faith on Campus
By Blackfriars Staff
“Prefer Jesus to everything,” was the parting wisdom Fr. Edmund McCullough, O.P., gave to students at his last Munderground talk this past semester. He told the nearly 60 students gathered for the Monday night talk at Brown University that “the spiritual is more important than the material” and he reminded them that “union with God in the sacraments is the main event” in each of their lives.
Fr. Edmund, who served as chaplain for Brown University and Rhode Island School of Design Catholic community for four years, arrived on campus in the summer of 2020. The Catholic community had just bought and renovated a new Catholic Center just a stone’s throw from the Ivy’s renowned “Quiet Green”. Although it was COVID times, and universities were dealing with a temporary mass exodus, Catholic students at Brown and RISD now had a place to call home when they would eventually return to campus.
Almost 400 miles down Highway 95, Fr. Josemaría Guzmán-Domínguez, O.P., serves another group of Catholic college students. He is chaplain at Johns Hopkins University, based at our Dominican-run university parish of Saints Philip and James in Baltimore. The Hopkins students are integrated into parish life, which is served by three Dominican friars. The parish campus houses the Newman Center, a place dedicated to the students, who have access to it 24/7.
College students are all ears at a recent Munderground—a Monday night talk every week at the Brown-RISD Catholic Center. Photo by Brian Nguyen.
“A home away from home” is how the students themselves describe their experience of the Catholic community at Brown and at Johns Hopkins. Oge, a sophomore studying Health and Human Biology, says the Catholic community is vitally important to her time at Brown because she is with others who share her same beliefs and she hears the same advice that her parents would give her, “so it feels like home.” Fr. Edmund agrees, saying “it’s certainly a more welcoming environment than the SciLi” (science library) at Brown. “Students can detect— even people who are not Christians—the spiritual power of the place. It feels different. That sounds subjective, but students tell me it feels better to them,” Fr. Edmund said. Aside from the welcoming community to be found at the Catholic Center, he believes students are also attracted to the solidity of Catholic doctrine found there and it’s also a place where students can get answers to hard questions, which is a very good thing because Brown students ask a lot of questions.
Community is top of mind for Fr. Josemaría in his ministry at Hopkins where, when he first arrived, he noted a trend of isolation among students—this sense of isolation was exacerbated by what he terms “a long COVID” at the university. So, his emphasis these past two years has been primarily on the social and the spiritual. “Hopkins is a unique kind of place,” Fr. Josemaría said. “It attracts very bright students who want to be doctors or engineers and who want to make an impact on the world, so it’s hard for them to take time from their work to learn about God, and to worship, and to be with friends.” He went on to say that this social isolation is a real obstacle to living out and sharing the faith at Johns Hopkins. “It can be a very lonely campus because they’re studying all the time,” he noted. This sense of isolation is not unique to that campus. Fr. Edmund notes a lot of the suffering he sees in general in college students at Brown is because they’re isolated behind their screens all day. So, providing a place like the Catholic Center where students can develop Catholic friendships and where they can “be authentically human, and not just producers” is important.
Every Wednesday night at the Brown-RISD Catholic Center, students fill the chapel to pray before the Eucharistic Lord. Photo by Brian Nguyen.
Moving from the profane to the sacred, the ultimate goal of the Dominican Friars on both campuses is to help students to not only develop authentic Catholic friendships, but to develop a lasting friendship with God. This movement toward friendship with God translates concretely in providing daily access to the chapel, encouraging students to develop a habit of prayer before the Blessed Sacrament, offering daily Mass, and providing numerous opportunities for confession and meeting with students one-on-one for spiritual direction.
The construction of the chapel in the Brown-RISD Catholic Center was one of the milestones of Fr. Edmund’s tenure there. The chapel, which students have access to 7-days a week, gives them the opportunity to have a life of prayer and to talk to God every day, he said. “There are other prayer spaces on campus but to have a chapel with the Blessed Sacrament reserved is something different.” Saints Philip and James also recently established an Adoration chapel. Students and parishioners can access it during the day to pray before the Eucharistic Lord. And as a result, students there are developing a habit of prayer.
Julia, whose concentration is Applied Math and Computer Science at Brown, sees in herself an increase of reverence in prayer and at Mass after witnessing the reverence Fr. Edmund has for what he is doing. “It’s made my faith more real to me, and over the past three years I have grown in intimacy with Jesus because of the reverence I have seen.”
Johns Hopkins Catholic students fielded an intramural soccer team this year. Donning the name, the Holy Goalies, the team made it to the semifinals, cheered on by the Dominican Friars.
Brown and Johns Hopkins students also point to an approachability of the Dominican Friars who serve them. Fr. Josemaría recounted what one international student says when she goes back home to her family. She speaks about the friars with a certain familiarity, calling them “my Dominicans, my Dominicans in Baltimore!,” he laughed. “So that quality of nearness to the students we serve—that access and approachability—then transforms the way they see the faith, the priesthood, and the Church,” he said. The students also see the joy of the friars. What comes to mind for Fr. Josemaría when he thinks about what the Dominican Friars have inherited from St. Dominic, he says “it is not only the charism of preaching the truth but also his joy… the joy of living out the gospel. This is a joyful way of life we’ve inherited as an Order. And I can’t tell you how many times the students have pointed that out.”
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