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Photos/Matt Cashore

Spring came to South Bend on Saturday, March 20 -- with a chilly breeze but bright blue skies and a radiant sun. Students emerged from winter seclusion to study outdoors, to toss Frisbees, to hang out on the quads, to savor the liberation of spring. But about 250 students spent the day inside the South Dining Hall. They, too, had come to celebrate -- to sing, to pray, to hear testimonials, to break into small groups to discuss their lives and their Catholic faith, then to come back together at Mass, sharing in "No Greater Love," a day-long program of Christian renewal.

They were stirred by the preaching of Michael Baxter, CSC, who spoke of his mother's final days and of ways to live in the shadow of death and in the light of the Resurrection. They were moved by the music of Cyprian Consiglio, the Camaldolese monk who led them in song (shown at left). They responded with tears and hugs to the story of freshman Kelly Rich, who told how her faith helped her overcome severe eating problems. They bowed their heads and they prayed and they talked about God and how Christ worked in their lives.

On the following Monday -- as on every Monday during the school year -- a few dozen students sat in silent meditation in Fisher Hall for the Adoration of the Eucharist. Taking turns throughout the 24-hour period, the students prayed, read Scripture, said rosaries and contemplated their lives in the presence of Christ upon the altar.

Eight days later, at dusk on the Tuesday of Holy Week, a large crowd of students gathered at the Grotto to pray, then moved in candle-lit procession around campus, bearing a large wooden cross and reciting the Stations of the Cross, reenacting Christ's march up Calvary.

Then there were the students who went every morning at 7:30 all year long to say the rosary outside a South Bend abortion clinic. And the thousands volunteering for community service, where acts of faith help those less fortunate. And the thousands who attended Mass weekly, filling hall chapels late at night, jamming the Sacred Hear Basilica three times each Sunday.

It is hard to imagine a time when the religious life of Notre Dame has been more genuinely vibrant than during the past school year. The manifestations are numerous, diverse and sometimes surprising. They are evidence of a trend in recent years among Notre Dame students toward a more devout faith life, with expressions of Catholicism as varied and as rich as the church itself. It is clearly a new generation of students, observers say, one hungering for God and not bashful about living out their faith -- whether going through their daily routine of class and meals and study with ash-smudged foreheads from the ancient Ash Wednesday observance or kneeling at the Grotto, eyes shut, hands clasped, or even challenging University policies regarding sweatshops, sexual orientation and other justice issues.

The Campus Ministry staff has more than doubled over the past decade. The number of choirs has grown from three to 10 in that same period. More students sign up to do service work than there are opportunities available. The number of students attending not only Sunday Mass but also daily Mass has grown considerably -- exact counts hard to calculate because so many Masses are offered each week (in 26 residence halls, at the law school, for example, or for MBA students, for African-American or Hispanic students). "Going to Mass together really is a social thing here. The weekend Masses are a big part of a student's life," says Hunt Hanover '01, from Mercer Island, Washington.

The annual enrollment for Campus Ministry's catechism program has increased from 12 to 80 students over the past three years. The Emmaus program that Campus Ministry coordinates now includes some 200 students divided into about 30 small prayer groups meeting weekly to pray and to discuss Catholic teaching and Scripture. In addition, other Bible study groups are thriving as are Catholic religious education programs. The number of students participating in RCIA (Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults), which prepares people to join the church, has doubled in recent years, with 40 or 50 persons seeking inclusion annually.

One of the most dramatic indications that the spirit is sweeping through campus has been the remarkably popular series of weekend retreats, often held at Fatima Retreat Center or Moreau Seminary across the lakes from Notre Dame. Consisting of talks, prayer and reflection, these "get-away" opportunities provide students with a quiet refuge from daily demands and pressures and with a place to refocus attention on God in their lives.

The annual freshman retreat, for example, was started in the fall of 1995 with a few dozen students; this past year about a third of the 2,000-member first-year class participated. In addition, residence hall and other class-year retreats are well-attended as are those designed for specific student groups, such as those for ROTC, Latino, or gay and lesbian students. It is not unusual for the University to schedule three religious retreats on any given weekend, and at least once during the past year six occurred simultaneously.

One of the most popular programs is the Notre Dame Encounter (NDE). Student-planned and student-led, these tightly structured weekends are intended to move students through three areas of development -- inward, upward and outward -- through testimonials, small-group meetings, prayer and a few unexpected turns intended to deepen the experience. The effect is spiritually and emotionally intense, often life-changing. Some students try three, four or five times before they can get in -- sometimes by way of a lottery. The small, close-knit groups that form during an NDE will stay together informally until graduation.

"College life is so hectic, with school and so many other distractions," says Hanover, who has led an NDE, "that most people go away from their faith and get caught up in other things, like football games, going out, parties. They'll realize something is missing -- their spiritual life. The NDE is a way to get back to that bedrock, to the foundations of our Catholic faith. My best weekend here was leading an NDE."

That turning back toward the foundations of Catholicism is, in fact, one of the remarkable movements among this generation of students, a rapidly mounting revival of tradition and orthodoxy. Perhaps the most visible demonstration of this allegiance to the traditional church has been the number and vehemence of students writing in The Observer, the student newspaper, championing the tenets of their faith, citing papal encyclicals and canon law, advocating loyal obedience to Pope John Paul II and the Catholic hierarchy, and urging the University to get in step with Ex Corde Ecclesiae, the church's document outlining stricter control of Catholic colleges and universities. The paper is indeed a lively battleground for debate, with intelligent, articulate and impassioned students defending the faith as well as using their faith to argue various sides of snarled and vexing issues.

Another indication of this revival is the increasing number of students involved in the devotional aspects of their Catholic faith. The Children of Mary, started in 1991, has focused on Marian devotions and "trying to lead holy lives," says Tim Monahan '99, who was the group's president last year. When Monahan came to Notre Dame as a freshman from Illinois, he says two or three people met to say the rosary together. During his sophomore year a group of about 10 began a Eucharistic Adoration in a residence hall for about five hours every Tuesday, silently worshipping the host exposed in the monstrance on the altar. "As Catholics," says Monahan, "we believe the Eucharist is the real presence of Christ, his real flesh and blood, just as his divinity was hidden in his humanity while on earth."

This past year about 200 participated weekly in the 24-hour Eucharistic Adoration in Fisher Hall and another 20 or 30 would spend Friday afternoons at Sacred Heart Basilica for a Eucharistic Adoration there. "There is a great need," Monahan explains, "for silence, for every person, every day -- to say the rosary, to read the Bible, to meditate on it and sit quietly for a time."

Today almost 300 students participate weekly in a variety of such prayer observances, including the Children of Mary, the Knights of Immaculata (a similar and somewhat overlapping group but one more intent on religious education), and others who simply want to be there on those occasions when their lives draw them there. Such activities, students say, bring a vitality to their faith missing before their arrival at Notre Dame.

Many students say they had been given a "watered-down" version of Catholicism before coming to Notre Dame and want both a faith that moves them and one whose teachings really mean something. Many say they want to know more about church history, scripture, the sacraments and the lives of the saints.

"We had been given scraps, something not satisfying, not fulfilling," says Monahan, a finance major and member of the fencing team. "But now we've been given this great treasure and, once you find it, you keep going, you keep digging to find what the core of this faith is. And the history goes back 2,000 years, with the Holy Spirit there every step of the way, and the traditions that go back to the apostles, and the priests who live as Christ did, and for this whole group the pope is the hero. The church hierarchy for some may come across as a negative thing, but for me it's beautiful.

"The students here and elsewhere, and the younger seminarians," he continues, "want orthodoxy; we want this faith." The recent Catholic catechism, he adds, is "the greatest gift that could be given. If you had questions, here are the answers all laid out so beautifully."

Some older members of the Notre Dame community see this as a resurgence among the students for a pre-Vatican II Catholicism, a brand of Catholicism they are too young to know. "There seems to be a growing hunger," says David Scheidler, CSC, '87, rector of Saint Edward's Hall, "for retreats, for Bible study and some sorts of retroactive practices. Students seem nostalgic for a church they couldn't possibly have known."

Scheidler, who heads the freshman retreats, adds, "They also want boundaries. There's security in that and this generation wants security. Their desire is for a more traditional church, a church that looks like a strong foundation, that looks like a pre-Vatican II church -- with stability and security, going back to rules and regulations."

David Freddoso '99 is a South Bend native and a member of Opus Dei, a Catholic organization he says is "a vehicle God has chosen to bring the church into the 21st century." He says that too often young people have had to take the initiative to learn about their faith. "I'm too young to know why this stuff hasn't been going on for the past 20 years," he says. "It's almost like there's been sort of a reaction to the old church, to the pre-Vatican II church that I don't think people of our generation understand because they've never seen it. What I know is that I largely learned about the doctrines of faith on my own and they lead me to believe that to worship Christ in such a way is very important. And I know from Lumen Gentium that the responsibility falls on us, the laity, and that the challenges of this pope are revivifying students in their faith lives."

The aim, says Freddoso, is to be as Christ, to pray with faith, to sacrifice oneself, to "have a life of piety," to "be a burning coal that sets what it touches on fire," to "give to friends what is of most value to you," and to work hard. "This work I do is really prayer," he says.

There are those who say the most impressive element of Notre Dame is its students -- and not only their intelligence, their talents and their desire to do good but also the fervency of their religious beliefs which, for many, animate all they do. Their comfort with conformity refutes the perennial image of college students as being rebellious experimenters opposed to authority.

"People feel a certain need for some kind of religious experience," says Freddoso, "and a need for a guiding light in their lives. We don't feel repressed today. In most cases, we feel a need for more guidance, more help. Also, students are generally willing to listen to authority. Students at Notre Dame don't have an anti-clerical attitude or mistrust of our rectors. They can go ahead and challenge us more than they are."

Indeed, a small but vocal minority think the institution not stringent enough in instilling an orthodox disposition throughout University affairs. Some see this -- a generation of students more "conservative" than their elders -- as an ironic twist to the age-old dispute between the young and the old, in which it is typically the young seeking freedom from restraint and governance. But, some students counter, for them this is going against the grain. It is a rebellion of sorts, a defiance of what the preceding generation provided them.

"A generation ago students were skeptical of norms, traditional values and the rules," says Scheidler. "This generation today is skeptical of rebellion -- unless they are rebelling against what they saw in the preceding generation that didn't work. They are not into money, power and pleasure. There is definitely a heightened sense of the bigger picture here."

Many observers, however, warn against the old liberal-conservative labels and say they do not apply here. In fact, many of those students involved in the pietistic devotional practices are the very ones also active in what have been considered "liberal" causes and various expressions of Catholic social action. They go to prisons to protest executions; serve the homeless; and volunteer through the Center for Social Concerns, doing Summer Service Projects and spending spring break building homes in Appalachia. The truth is, a good many Notre Dame students are simply putting their faith on the line in a multitude of ways.

"I come from a Catholic background," says Mary Margaret Nussbaum '01, whose mother has a master's in theology and is a chaplain at Colorado College in Colorado Springs, "and I've still been surprised at how Catholic Notre Dame is."

It would be misleading, of course, to say that all Notre Dame students are devotedly religious. Best estimates put weekly Mass attendance at perhaps two-thirds of the undergraduates living on campus, with fewer off-campus students making it to Mass when it is much less convenient and less of a communal practice. And there are those, just as there are adults, for whom obligatory Mass attendance does not necessarily translate into a burning faith commitment.

There are still "the seekers," says Don McNeill, CSC, director of the Center for Social Concerns, who are somewhat restless in their faith but who are earnestly asking the right questions. And there are those with strong religious convictions who challenge church teaching on the role of women and various social justice issues. "The part of Catholicism at Notre Dame I like most," says Nussbaum, who spent a year in Namibia through the Center for Global Education, "is when you get into the social justice issues."

She adds, "Sometimes I do ask myself why I go to a Catholic school, but one thing I do like is that questions about God can be taken seriously. I like that. I like that a lot of kids here get challenged in their theology classes, more than they thought they would be challenged, that so many go through periods of doubt. I know a lot of people who are deeply seeking, and what could be more important -- looking for God or truth or what-not with all your heart or going to church out of habit? But I also know kids who come here and, by the witness of this community, they find their faith."

This, says Nussbaum, a regular on the pages of The Observer and at the Center for Social Concerns, "is the hybrid that is Notre Dame." And that amalgam is as variegated as the student population. "As Notre Dame has become more diverse," says Richard Warner, CSC, director of Campus Ministry for nine years, "we have tried to respond to that diversity."

Catholic liturgical services, for example, are tailored for Asian, African-American and Hispanic students. And, because 15 percent of Notre Dame's undergraduates are not Catholic, arrangements are made to help get them to off-campus churches, synagogues and mosques, and nondenominational prayer and Bible-study groups meet weekly. The Campus Ministry's new facility at the site of the old bookstore will have a space for Islamic worship.

"I don't think Notre Dame is an island," says Warner of the religious revival among this generation of students. "I think something is going on at a broader level and it's just beginning. There is a tremendous amount of interest among these students in developing their spirituality -- and not just among the Catholic students. We really do draw a higher percentage of students who are interested in this, whose major reason for coming to Notre Dame may be academic but also the whole package of academic, spiritual, holistic formation. And it's not just a possibility here; we see it taking place."

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