When the Pope was visiting, I had fully intended to comment on his address to Catholic educators. But I did not.

To some extent, since I am no longer part of a Catholic educational institution, and since I am no longer part of the Catholic faith, I didn’t feel like I had a place to speak from. This wasn’t something that really affects me or any of you (unless some of you out there are hiding something from me…); nor was it, like the sex abuse scandal, something of broad interest to people. So, while I intended to continue to comment on the Pope, he kept a low profile (which is impressive in itself), and didn’t do much of note (to me).

But yesterday, I was speaking to one of my sisters about Pepperdine, where I will be attending school come fall semester. And she asked me if I had to sign a statement of faith. I did not, but I did have to write an essay about Pepperdine’s stated mission and how I would contribute to it. I deftly (if I do say so myself) sidestepped the issue of my own (lack of) faith and focused instead on the brotherhood of ethical people regardless of faith:

Studying the Sources of Christian Ethics [a course I took at a Catholic university] drove this point home even more: our access to most philosophical texts from the Greeks is only because of the work of various Arabic scholars. One of the foremost Aristotelian scholars was Ibn Rushd. Today, when there is so much strife among nations, and especially between the traditional “West” and “Middle East”, we would do well to remember that the ethics of a deist (Aristotle), translated through the tradition of a Muslim (Ibn Rushd), has informed the ethics that this Christian nation holds so highly. Universities like Pepperdine help remind us that people joined in common ethical cause are brothers.

My sister continued, indicating that friends of hers who had worked there were required to sign statements of faith. This was odd to me, since I had spent quite some time trying to figure out just what faith Pepperding purports to have: they say that they are a “Christian university” but don’t go any further. Having come from a sect within Christianity, I was curious what sect they were. But I was unable to find any information about this.

This, again, was odd to me, since they make such a big thing out of the fact that they’re “Christian”. I was trying to articulate this to my sister: it’s such an important thing to them but they don’t tell anyone what it is. To me, it is like a politician saying, “I am a staunch supporter of a particular position! …but I won’t tell you which one.” When I went to visit, I found myself watching them closely to see if they might betray some hint: one even went so far as to say that he was not a Christian (but he has Bible study at his house every Wednesday evening…you can bet I’m showing up to that!). I told my sister that I felt like tossing bacon at them and seeing who didn’t catch it! I finished with the fact that it was so important to me because they’d made a big thing of it: it was important to me because it was important to them.

I brought up my alma mater, where her husband still works, I knew it was a Catholic school, but I also knew it wasn’t a big deal. Some of my teachers weren’t Catholic, some were, it didn’t matter. Somehow, they managed to be more subtle about their faith than the nebulous Pepperdinian Christians. Subtle Catholics, you read that right.

She then tried to describe what kind of Christians they were (I was expecting a denomination: Protestant, Baptist, Unitarian). She hemmed and hawed, then said to her husband, “What kind of Christians would you call them…?” “Heretics!” he quickly answered, followed by, “Fundamentalist.” Which made my skin crawl.

Then we went back to Loyola Marymount: “I wish they were more Catholic.” She lamented. “More Catholic?” I said, “You can’t get much more Catholic than the Jesuits!” (You can, but then you’d be employing thumbscrews and racks.) We both had a good chuckle over that and then discussed a classmate of mine who thought that being Catholic should have been an entrance requirement and the fact that about 50% of my professors were Jesuit priests or Marymount nuns. But religion was never a big thing in class (except the Sources class I mentioned above) or out of class. “Of course it shouldn’t be a requirement, that flies in the face of all the missionary work,” she said, a few sentences before she claimed that “Forcing our faith on people is against everything the Church stands for.” Which I let slide.

But, she argued, if you call yourself a Catholic university, just as if you call yourself a Christian university, a certain amount of religion is assumed. My argument was that the tradition of Catholic, and especially Jesuit, education stands apart from religion. A “Jesuit education” denotes a particular attendance to and respect for the Liberal Arts. And in that sense, I felt that I had received a Jesuit education, if not a Catholic education. She conceded this point, but still wished that Catholic values had a higher place within the curriculum.

And this reminded me of the Pope’s visit and speech to Catholic educators. He emphasized the fact that Catholic educators should be Catholic first, and educators second. He indicated that “academic freedom” should be subject to the ethics & values of Catholicism. Which means an end to the kinds of “liberalism” that has long been associated with university campuses (at least, an end to it on Catholic campuses). And that would be a great loss.