ATCHISON, Kan. — In a year dominated by headlines of college-bribery scandals, faithful Catholic colleges and universities sought to advance their educational mission in 2019 with new ways of putting their Catholic values into action.

This past August saw Thomas Aquinas College officially start its school year with a West Coast campus in Santa Paula, California, and new East Coast campus in Northfield, Massachusetts. Bishop Mitchell Rozanski of the Diocese of Springfield said the opening of TAC East on Aug. 24 was “indeed fortuitous.”

“It’s a time when Massachusetts, and New England, and indeed our whole country, need the light of the Gospel, need the rays of hope that come from faith, to give us new life, new hope, in the Gospel message,” he said.

On Oct. 27, Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas, hailed a major milestone in its quest to provide STEM-related degrees (majors related to Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) informed by their Catholic faith by dedicating a new $25-million science and engineering building.

Darrin Muggli, professor and chair of Benedictine’s School of Engineering, told the Register the building showcases Benedictine’s commitment to STEM and the Catholic Church’s teaching that there is no real opposition between faith and reason.

“[Students] don’t have to make a choice or a sacrifice between professional preparation and their Catholic identity,” he said.

Franciscan University of Steubenville (FUS) saw Franciscan Father David Pivonka take the helm as its seventh president, helping the university turn a corner on criticism over prior institutional failures to protect students from alleged clergy sexual predators and outrage over an English professor assigning parts of a book in a graduate-level course that contained revolting statements about the Virgin Mary.

Under Father Pivonka, “dynamic orthodoxy” got a shot in the arm in 2019. The university signed a Dec. 6 agreement with the Catholic University of Erbil that will allow FUS students to benefit from language courses in Arabic and Aramaic and provide scholarship funding for Iraqi students to study at FUS and work to rebuild their homeland on the Nineveh Plain after genocide by the Islamic State (ISIS).

“The Christian church has been decimated in Iraq,” Father Pivonka said in a statement. “But the men and women of Iraq are people of great faith who have the desire to learn more about their faith and a desire to be educated, and we are excited to help in any way we can.”

In November, Ave Maria University named Catholic Charities of Kansas City (Missouri) CEO Christopher Ice, 56, its third president. Ice assumed the helm from Jim Towey Jan. 1.

“I am excited about Chris’ selection and believe his experience is well-suited for leading the university,” said Ave Maria founder Tom Monaghan in a statement at the time of the announcement. “He is clearly a man of great character and deep faith. His knowledge gained from working in both Catholic higher education as well as a corporate executive will serve him well as he leads Ave Maria.”

At the start of the 2019-2020 academic year, Wyoming Catholic College started offering both Eastern and Western Catholic liturgies as part of its mission to educate the whole person. In addition to the ordinary and extraordinary form of the Roman Rite, Wyoming Catholic now has Byzantine Rite Divine Liturgy, thanks to the addition of Father David Anderson, a well-known Ukrainian Greco-Catholic priest and lecturer on liturgical theology and the early Church Fathers.

“All Catholics agree concerning the Church’s most central doctrines, such as the Trinity, creation and our salvation through redemption by Christ’s death and his resurrection. But also all Catholics, depending on their particular tradition, have different ways of expressing their faith,” Father Anderson told the Register in an interview.

Students now have the opportunity to spiritually enrich themselves by immersing themselves in these equally Catholic traditions as part of their formation at the college.

“Pope St. John Paul II also said that “the words of the West need the words of the East,” and we must listen together to the cry of those who want to hear God’s entire word,” he said.

The Catholic University of America made new strides in its mission to put Catholic social teaching at the forefront of tomorrow’s Catholic business leaders’ decision-making. This year, the university officially dedicated Maloney Hall as its new home for the Busch School of Business.

Andrew Abela, the provost and senior vice president of The Catholic University of America, said in an essay for the Register that now several hundred students a year will learn there how to be “entrepreneurs and business leaders inspired by the Catholic faith.”

Abela said the Busch School seeks to “breathe new life into a tired understanding of business” by forming students in the relationship between markets and virtue, and the “principle of ‘solidarity,’ which is our responsibility to care for others, and ‘subsidiarity,’ the idea that decisions should be made by those closest to the point of impact.”

In September, Belmont Abbey College forged a partnership with local health-care system CaroMont Health to build a hospital on property adjacent to the college campus. Heather Ayala, chairwoman of the college’s biology department, said in a Register blog post that the lease agreement ensures that “nothing contrary to the Church’s teaching will be done at the hospital.”

Further to the North, the University of Mary brought Catholic social teaching on refugees to a civic debate in Bismarck, North Dakota. University of Mary students, including a sophomore who is a refugee from the Democratic Republic of Congo, and school leaders spoke to the Church’s teaching and helped give it a human face.

“Refugees, by definition, are fleeing horribly painful and dangerous situations,” Msgr. James Shea, president of the University of Mary, told county commissioners.

“They are seeking what we all have in abundance: security, a community of good and welcoming people, education for their children, religious liberty, opportunity and freedom.”

Peter Jesserer Smith

is a Register

staff reporter.