Religious ROTC

TODAY'S CATHOLIC, Feb. 15 — In a unique program, the University of Notre Dame trains Reserve Officers' Training Corps students to be lay prayer leaders for the military units to which they will be assigned, reports the newspaper of the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend, Ind.

The program, which may serve as a model for other ROTC programs, includes six 90-minute sessions in which students study the history and theology of the Eucharist and focus special attention on the rite for Sunday Celebrations in the Absence of a Priest.

Lay President

THE UNIVERSITY OF DAYTON, Feb. 18 — Daniel Curran, executive vice president at St. Joseph's University in Philadelphia, has been appointed Dayton's first lay president, according to a university announcement.

A sociologist by training, Curran will become the university's 18th president in its 152-year history when he replaces Marianist Brother Raymond Fitz, who completes a record 23-year stint.

Curran has spent the past 23 years in various administrative and faculty positions at St. Joseph's.

Closing Seminary College

THE DIOCESE OF OGDENSBURG, N.Y., Feb. 15 — Wadhams Hall Seminary College in Ogdensburg will close June 30, according to an announcement by Bishop Gerald Barbarito.

Bishop Barbarito cited low enrollment — 15 students — as the reason for closure. He also praised the college for a spirit that kept the school going even as “many other larger dioceses ... had to close such institutions many years sooner.”

‘Sense of the Tragic’

THE CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION, Feb. 9 — In a book review, Boston College theologian Alan Wolfe takes on what he considers an excessively optimistic view of religious life and studies in American higher education, which tends to be earnest, tolerant and service-oriented.

This reveals, he says, “the absence of a sense of the tragic” in the face of religious deformation that fails to challenge the relativism and self-centeredness of the larger culture.

He cites an unidentified Jesuit to illustrates the superficiality of religious understanding, even at Catholic colleges: Contemporary students are “dim, fourth-carbon copies of religious people. Certain things remind them of religion — crosses and statues. But theology is in desperate straits [at the Catholic university where he teaches]. It would die without Buddhism and other religions to discuss.”

Expanding Vouchers

ASSOCIATED PRESS, Feb. 14 — Florida lawmakers are considering a bill that would make every student in Florida eligible for a state-funded voucher to attend a private school.

Current law — the first-in-the-nation statewide school voucher program — limits state-funded vouchers to students at schools that receive failing grades two years out of four.

‘Monologues’ on Campus

WORCESTER TELEGRAM & GAZETTE, Feb. 15 — An Ash Wednesday staging of “The Vagina Monologues” at the College of the Holy Cross sparked protests by students and area Catholics who thought the play was not appropriate fare for a Jesuit university, especially on the solemn inauguration of Lent, reported the Massachusetts daily.

Many objected to the play's graphic language and sexual themes, including homosexuality.

Countered Susanne Calabrese, student director of the Holy Cross performance: “Ash Wednesday is not a holy day of obligation.”