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I went to a memorial service today, held by Cornell in honor of the students and faculty killed Monday at Virginia Tech. Non-denominational university “services” aren’t the sort of thing I normally attend, and it actually seemed a little funny to me that a memorial service would be held at all, since we have no specific connection with Virginia Tech. But my choir had been asked to sing for it, and my section was short of available people. The time was convenient for me. So I went. And actually, a surprising number of people showed up for the service.
It wasn’t as bad as I expected. I identified no obvious blasphemy, and the speeches, though basically silly, were at least short. I wasn’t sure how to feel about the fact that my choir was singing the final segment, In Paradisum from the Durufle Requiem Mass. I mean, on the one hand, it was nice to be singing something genuinely religious (and even intended to be sung on behalf of the dead!) but of course it’s distressing to skip all the intermediate stages (the praising and humbling oneself and pleading to be delivered from eternal death) and cut straight to the happy wishes about being welcomed home by the saints and martyrs. On the whole, though, the former consideration wins out. It’s good to be singing a religious piece, and things could get a lot worse. (Last fall, for example, we were asked to sing at a memorial service on the anniversary of September 11, and the selected piece was the setting of some ridiculous poem whose message was basically, “Though I personally have a special affection for my own country, I should never forget to acknowledge that every other country is basically just like mine.” That seemed to me a deeply offensive message to be promoting in honor of the anniversary of a national tragedy, almost like going to the funeral of a child and hearing in the eulogy, “Well, you had a special fondness for her pretty hair and rosy cheeks, but after all there are pretty, rosy-cheeked five-year-olds all over the world so don’t think yours was anything special.” If families of victims attended – quite likely in upstate New York – would that be a comforting thing to hear? I skipped that service in protest.)
One part did make me rather uncomfortable: they asked a member of the local Korean church to sing a song, and made a big point of the fact that it was coming from the Koreans. That seemed rather insensitive to me, and I heard a couple of Korean students later saying more or less what I was thinking: why was it necessary to draw special attention to the fact that the shooter, Cho Seung-Hui, was a Korean immigrant? What difference does that make? I suppose it’s a sort of novelty since Americans aren’t used to seeing Asian culprits in horrible crimes like this, but you can hardly imagine that they would have asked a black student group to make a special contribution at the service had the shooter been black. Anyway, the really ridiculous thing about that song was the selection: Panis Angelicus. This coming from a member of an evangelical-type church, at a service in which the Angelic Bread was certainly nowhere in proximity. I suppose to them it was just a nice song in Latin, but I was certainly aware of the absurdity.
What’s really sad about such events, though, is to see the extreme impoverishment of a “spiritual” service in which there is no tradition to draw on and God cannot be mentioned. We get randomly-selected songs whose significance nobody in the crowd understands. At the front of the chapel sat a table with some burning candles on it, which was never mentioned or touched throughout the service — were they supposed to represent prayers? It was never clear. In the three speeches and reflections (one by a faculty member whose son attends Virginia Tech, one from President Skorton, and one from the provost, Biddy Martin) the message emphasized over and over was: Virginia Tech is an awesome school, and we feel lots of solidarity with them. That was the whole message. Go Hokies.
What else can you say, really? You can’t say that God loves the deceased and died for them, and that we’re praying for their salvation. You can’t reflect on the moral value of bearing the cross for His sake. That means, of course, that very little can be said about why their deaths might have been meaningful. You can’t promise that goodness will prevail on the last day, that the dead will rise again, that justice will be satisfied, mercy offered and the world renewed. With every genuinely comforting message ruled out, there really isn’t anything to say except… Go Hokies. Wear your maroon and orange tomorrow, kids.
Actually, if they were honest, a university might find a lot of material for reflection in a tragedy like this one. School shootings have become a recognized phenomenon in America; Monday’s massacre, though shocking in its way, nonetheless fit into an already-identifiable type. What does this say about our society and our educational system? We can talk about whether guns are too readily available, and whether video games are corrupting the minds of the youth, but beyond these cliché issues, surely there’s something more to be said about a societal phenomenon where every few years some alienated youth both feels and acts upon the impulse to kill his classmates.
One thing, at least, seems to be indicated, and the Doctor and I were discussing this today. We appear to have lost the notion of schools or universities as moral communities. Actually, outside of parishes or families, we may have lost moral communities altogether; certainly neighborhood blocks and workplaces don’t seem to function as such anymore. But for all the talk recently about what a wonderful and warm community Virginia Tech has, it’s obvious that everything couldn’t have been wonderful. One person at least was unhappy in Virginia. And when Cho Seung-Hui’s writing teacher brought some of his extremely disturbing work to the university administration suggesting that he might be psychologically unstable, the answer seems to have been, more or less, “Well, there’s nothing we can do about that.” The young man was, I believe, advised to seek counseling. He declined to do so, and that was the end of it. (I don’t mean to pick on Virginia Tech, by the way – I’m sure it would have been more or less the same at almost every other university in America.)
Well, you can’t arrest someone for writing nasty stories, but surely a college administration could do a little more? Could they, perhaps, make a psychiatric evaluation mandatory for students who show signs of being dangerous or unstable, and, for those who need it, make their attendance of counseling sessions mandatory under penalty of expulsion? Discussing this with the Doctor, I do remember Notre Dame being relatively proactive about looking after freshman students, at least. In my early months at the university I was required to have meetings with a whole slew of people (rector, RA, freshman advisor, senior undergraduate mentor, etc.) who all opened the conversation with the same question (“How are you adjusting?”) and asked me about my drinking habits. (I didn’t drink at all… still don’t.) I found this rather irksome at the time, since I felt perfectly fine and not in need of all these interviews, but in retrospect I can see the reasoning. I happened to be a “low risk” student, but the truth is that 18-year-olds are pretty immature and a lot of them probably need all the help the school can provide. Notre Dame also had some rules intended to raise the level of public morality. The no-sex rules were taken seriously and we had enforced parietals and quiet hours. In my dormitory we were not permitted to write obscene or offensive messages on other people’s marker boards, and students across the university were not permitted to hang pornographic pictures on their bedroom walls.
I do think, then, that Notre Dame was a good step up from many schools in the country, which isn’t to say that the environment was wholesome in every respect. But could a school like Cornell implement even relatively modest “morality” rules like Notre Dame’s? Attending a service like that, one tends to doubt it. In order to foster a moral community, the university would need some kind of moral foundation from which to draw. It is more than evident that they do not, and since they aren’t comfortable standing in loco parentis anyway, they’re not really looking for one. Students are customers, and customers can’t be told what to do, Given the sort of environment this creates, it’s not that surprising that particular people with poor social skills can come to see the university environment as The Enemy, nor is it surprising that such people are allowed to fester in their own hatred until every once in awhile they snap.
Youth ought to be a time when both intellectual and moral formation are given together. These can be mutually reinforcing when they are imparted simultaneously and in the right way. Schools like Cornell have virtually no hope of building such a model in any robust way, simply because they don’t have the spiritual resources, but others around the country might take note. Making people smarter without tending to their souls is a risky business.
President Skorton emphasized over and over in his speech today that Cornell and Virginia Tech are “of one family.” The idea seemed to be that they were alike merely in virtue of both being universities, and that made us a family. It seemed like a bit of a stretch to me at the time, but perhaps it really wasn’t. The memorial service itself, through its essentially vacuous nature, emphasized that Cornell is a community with no moral foundation, no sense of human purpose, and no resources for forming the characters of young people. Perhaps the same was true in Virginia.
St. Louis-Marie de Montfort,
Pope St. Pius X,
St. Joseph,
St. Ambrose of Milan,
St. Thomas Aquinas,
St. Francis (and St. Clare),
St. Catherine of Siena,
St. Alphonsus Ligouri,
St. John Chrysostom,
Some memorial services have featured sending balloons up into the sky. Yes, “Go Hoakies,” says it all Clara. But be careful! The Greeks gave an example of how to counter anyone who would impiously belittle educational mores with irreverent questions. Modern day sages have already prescribed an antidote for disturbed students of today’s godless campus. The natural longing for God will be left void by the professors and filled most likely with an increased dose of Prozac and Ritalin. As with Socrates, such panaceas are proving fatal.
One thing I have noticed too is the absence of the word “evil.” It seems as though very few are brave enough to state the obvious: that evil exists, it is real, and it destroys. We, the victims, somehow are left contemplating how we are to blame for horrendous acts because we didn’t recognize, counsel, befriend, or whatever, a person who goes on to commit evil. The truth is that not only does evil exist, but each and everyone of us, on account of Satan, are capable of evil. It is the much quoted line by Mother Theresa that says it all — she said that when she realized she had a Hitler inside of herself, that’s when she gave her life to God, to help the poorest of the poor. Is the abortionist who dismembers viable babies in the womb one whit better than the Va Tech murderer? No. And every pro-death Catholic politician is as culpable as Cho. I found it ironic that in my local paper, the day when all the pictures of the murder victims at Va Tech were shown on the front page, the bottom of the same page one had a story of the pro-abortion folk protesting the partial abortion ban. It was grisly. The last line of the story said this: “abortionists already have the means of dismembering the fetuses (?) before they are born, so the partial birth abortion ban will not stop term babies from being aborted. This, in fact, is already the most common method of late term abortion.” St. Michael The Archangel! Save us from the wickedness and snares of the Devil! Cast into Hell Satan!
I can appreciate the fact that no one wants to reflect on the sorry state of America’s Universities after the gruesome details of VT duly covered. For a week, it’s been all bad news making the discussion of ideals and solutions seem quite futile. Perhaps at times like this we can be grateful for A Rod and the NY Yankees providing a little upbeat diversion but that’s not going to help in the long run either.
As you pointed out, the notion of schools and universities as moral communities has vanished. Have these institutions gone to the dogs or to the Devil? Mater Marci makes a good comparison between Cho and the pro-death camp—being of the same ball of wax—one that needs to be made because we have lost the shock value of abortion even as school shootings are becoming “a recognized phenomenon in America.” The fact that evil cannot exist in a vacuum but in the good, should keep us from being surprised at finding it (evil) in the halls of higher education. Yet for the most part, the extent of the evil goes unrecognized.
Academia has long been overrated. After the second world war, college education became the sine qua non for every newborn kid. “I don’t want my child to have to struggle like I did just to make ends meet.” College was successful in raising the average income and providing economic comfort but at what price? Faith, family size, and good works diminished. Comfort gave rise to softness and effeminacy. Today’s Academia is the antithesis of the Church; It’s doctrines of Atheism, Evolution and Free Living trump all “Medieval Superstitions.” Modern Education, like Modernism is the synthesis all heresies and yet even many traditionalists fail to see it.
So overrated is college education that most home-schooling parents who spend years of dedicated sacrifice send their children off to college, knowing that it’s like playing Russian Roulette. Why protect them for 12 years from the evils of secular and religious errors and worldly enticements; why pray, “Lead us not into temptation,” and then send 18 and 19 year olds off to be corrupted by astute professors skilled in the art of sophistry? Most are willing to play the odds and many live to regret it. Before a neophyte steps into any arena of competition, a prudent trainer will make sure his man is not outmatched. No boxer starts by getting into the ring with the professionals or is matched with the champions. The result will be a merciless pummeling. It was notable to see in the movie, “The Exorcism of Emily Rose,” based on the true story of Anelisse Mitchell, that Anelisse came from a good Catholic family and was home-schooled until she won a scholarship to college. Not long after entering her freshman year, she became possessed by the Devil. What are the chances?…Where are the mothers like Queen Blanche of Castille who said to her son, King Louis of France, “I would rather see you dead at my feet than commit one mortal sin” ?
One does not necessarily need a higher education to make a living and in fact it sometimes proves detrimental in today’s job market. One does not necessarily need that all-important piece of parchment to be a success in life or to make the world a better place. Look at the unlettered priest of Ars, the flea-ridden beggar, Benedict Joseph Labre, and Saint Francis of Assisi. Look up the credentials of Padre Pio who taught for a while in the seminary and higher education will be taken a little less seriously.
“Cornell is a community with no moral foundation, no sense of human purpose, and no resources for forming the characters of young people. Perhaps the same is true in Virginia” and most institutions like it. I appreciate your frankness.
Discipule, I think you’re right about so many things… now arent you grateful that we, the good soldiers of the Cornell Society for a Good Time, are working to penetrate the dark fortress so that we can work from within to save some of our young people from the clutches of the evil ones? ;)
No, in all seriousness, this is a real problem. Obviously I agree that American universities are mostly morally bankrupt, and sending your Catholic kids to Cornell really can be like sending lambs to the slaughter, particularly since the Catholic chaplaincy provides virtually no moral guidance. Kids need some real spiritual armor in order to get themselves through, and most, obviously, don’t really have it.
So, will the Doctor’s and my future children attend universities? I expect so. If they want to forget college and enter convents or monasteries, we won’t dissuade them, but most will probably go to college like other American kids. We had some discussion of this issue last November when we published Dr. White’s interview in which he rather unambiguously condemns American higher education. I started a fairly lengthy post on the topic, which I never finished, but the draft is still on my hard drive and perhaps I’ll finish it and post it one of these days. But in short, my problem is that, even while seeing the problems in universities, I also truly believe that:
1) Not having a college degree is a real handicap when it comes to finding employment. A great number of possible careers will be entirely closed off to someone with no higher education.
2) The life of the mind is a wonderful thing, and most parents do not possess the knowledge and resources to really foster it on their own. Students who don’t go to college will probably be safer from many evils, but they are also likely to be deprived of some of life’s greatest joys, which may sometimes still be discovered even in our godless atheist universities if you know where to look.
So the risks of sending the kids off to college are rather high… but the cost of not doing so can be quite heavy also. Lots of hard questions to weigh here, and a lot will depend on the child, the available university options, the parents’ financial resources, etc.
My own instinctive feelings are also influenced by conflicting personal experiences. On the one hand, I observe through through interaction with my students and others that there are many, many confused and wayward undergraduates out there. I know from ample firsthand experience the deficiencies of the philosophies and ideals that are often promoted here. On the other hand, it must be said that college was on the whole an extremely good experience for me (and also, I think I can fairly say, for my fiance.) Neither of us were Catholic for any part of our college years, but we didn’t fall into alcoholism or fornication or the other forms of debauchery for which undergraduate life is so famous. I enjoyed college immensely, and really awakened to the joy of learning whilst I was there. And I know, too, that I developed and matured a lot both intellectually and morally during my college years. Seeds were planted in my mind then that eventually came to fruition in my conversion. Notre Dame isn’t perfect, but my years there were truly a blessing.
But of course, I was unusually lucky. I happened to come into contact with particular books and particular professors that helped push me in the right direction. I certainly encountered some who were hostile to the faith, but I also encountered some very impressive people who supported it. That won’t happen to everyone, or even to many people. From the parents’ perspective… I guess you have to play it by ear. For people like us here in the Cornell Society, though (who are already far advanced in our education or, in some cases, already holders of advanced degrees), I hope you won’t think it gallingly arrogant to say that we really might do well to stick around in hopes that we might provide for other young souls the same kind of shelter and guidance that was granted to me.
Clara, I always suspected that you got your theology from Fr. McBrien, and were working to penetrate the dark forces from within as a member of Opus Dei. No, just kidding. But I sincerely respect the militancy of the Society and know that this blog is just a portion of the good you and its members do by promoting true intellectual thought and sticking around the campus. Being insiders, survivors, graduates, and whatever, has given you first hand experience that will help you guide not only students but parents as well.
Your children—Deo Volente—if they attend College will have the distinct advantage of parents who know the pitfalls of today’s education. I realize that college has been beneficial to you by the grace of God but now that you know that it could have been otherwise, you will take precautions so as not to tempt God.
Some of the problems of getting a degree can be circumvented by the wisdom of good parents. I believe that God has a plan for everyone in life and part of a parent’s responsibility is to help the child discover what it is. Where would we be without bakers, plumbers, electricians—the blue collar workers? If all a kid can do is play the tin whistle, then he should be encouraged to play it. If he’s meant to be an aerospace engineer by displaying the proper aptitude, then go for it. But does he have to live on campus? Can he get his liberal arts credits from a more traditional Catholic institution? Should he take a year or two after High School to earn some money? I believe the great Rockne had to earn his education and attended Notre Dame in his mid twenties. Obviously maturity is a big factor.
I won’t deny that I know young men and women who have gone through the system and come out unscathed but I know others and have seen many more who were ruined from lack of parental guidance and the fact they just wanted to get that degree which made them blind to all else. Both parents and students should have a clear goal for what they want from college and be reasonably sure that the dangers can be overcome—something that sounds easier than it actually is. At the risk of sounding simplistic, anyone truly seeking God’s will in life, will be taken care of in His Divine Providence. I’m sure you agree.
Yes, wise words, Discipule, and though we might disagree about the wisest course of action for particular cases, I think in spirit we understand one another. As St. Francis de Sales said, souls differ from each other more widely than faces do; what is right for one will not necessarily be right for another. Parents and young people themselves must therefore consider deeply and carefully in choosing the best course for each. And since the world does indeed need all manner of different people, with different skills and talents, we should be pleased, and not dismayed, to see people devoting themselves to a wide variety of pursuits.
That said, it will always be the inclination of people on all levels to nudge their children towards whatever activities and careers are most common for people of their class and culture. Working class people are more likely to be suspicious or scornful of fancy colleges, whereas people of more education are likely to think it absolutely necessary that their children pursue college degrees. It’s not necessarily a question snobbery or xenophobia; it’s just a matter of what people know. I’m a professor’s daughter, and so it seemed quite natural to me (and to my parents) that I should spend years and years in university; meanwhile, I have nothing whatever against plummers or electricians but it never entered my mind to become one. On the flip side, whenever I end up in conversation with more working-class people (on the bus, at the laundromat, at the Latin Mass or wherever), and they hear what I do, they tend to respond with a resolute “Huh” that pretty much ends that line of conversation right there. I don’t really think they’re either impressed or scornful. People in their social circles don’t spend their twenties in philosophy graduate school, so they just have nothing to say about that.
The norms of the social circles in which we move should not be allowed to rule our lives to the point of jeopardizing our faith or imposing unjust expectations on our children. Even so — and I sometimes think it’s a weakness of traditonalists that they, somewhat ironically, tend not to recognize this — social norms will quite properly have some influence on our behavior. Human society depends on shared norms and shared understandings, and if we refuse to acknowledge these we will find ourselves without community (and thus probably lonely), and with a severely diminished capacity to make an impact on others. From the parental perspective, it’s wrong to urge one’s children to be precise clones of oneself, but at the same time, the parent’s ability to offer guidance and protection is greatly diminished when the child chooses a way of life very different from what the parent knows. And anyway, kids will naturally absorb the habits, interests and general outlook of their parents. So on balance, it’s probably not healthy to undermine too radically the parent’s natural impulse to set his offspring on a path similar to the one he took. The working class parents may not be in a good position to prepare their kids for the errors they will encounter at a modern university, but by the same token, the educated parents will be at something of a loss for how to proceed if told that, on account of the spiritual dangers of college, they must urge early marriages and blue collar careers for their young. But as you said, Discipule, anyone truly seeking God’s will, will be guided and protected by the hand of Providence.
“on the bus, at the laundromat,…” Clara, You mean, no BMW, no maid? This is bad advertising for College related employment. On the other hand, I was giving the plumber a hard time the other day about the bill, “You people make more money than brain surgeons,” I said. He replied, “Why do you think, I gave it up.”
I appreciate the quote for Saint Francis and the points to ponder: “Like father, like offspring.” (How’s that for PC?) and being influenced by the social norms of ones upbringing. Marx would like us to resent the differences and end up fighting. Saint Paul teaches us whether we are bondmen or free, Jew or Greek, male or female, we are all one in the Faith. Knowing this, we still like to keep to our distinct circles and we still like to fight—although family fights are different.
True also: generally blue-collar parents want their children to advance to white-collar professions while the opposite is rare. I guess I’m one of those rare birds, since I consider myself a blue-collar worker and my father not. I boast of no more than a high-school diploma. Early in my teens I ruled out college, thinking I could probably keep my Faith, but would most likely be hoodwinked and become a Liberal, which is perhaps worse than losing the Faith altogether. Some may smile and say “ridiculous,” but teenagers tend to be idealistic. No matter, I have no regrets. And here I am socializing with you people via high technology—or is it the other way around?
Again, I respect everyone’s God given call and in the end I’ll leave to them how they answer it. (Don’t tell anyone about my lack of credentials or they’ll stop taking me seriously in these discussions.) And for some great inspirational reading on the subject of education by a philosopher, patriot and good Catholic, I’ll leave the following link. The Murder Machine refers to the English educational system forced on the Irish.
http://www.ucc.ie/celt/published/E900007-001/index.html
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