Sending our children to college is probably the worst thing we can do for their faith and it has very little to do with any atheistic or agnostic agendas that they might be pushing. No, it’s not the liberal agendas that are our adversaries, college started threatening our children’s faith all the way back in elementary school; way before they ever went to a wild fraternity party. Interestingly, it’s a system that we as Catholics help set up with every good intention, but which ultimately began to undermine it’s own foundation.
I am becoming ever more convinced that the primary threat to our children’s faith is the entire system of careerism.
To be a Christian is to be a person of the Spirit; to be awake, animated, aware. A Christian is one who is full of the spirit of discernment, constantly attentive to their motives and to the call of the conscience. The Christian is always aware of the needs of the world, they have their hands on it’s heart beat. They are full of visions and imagination, seeking out new works of cooperation, generosity, self denial. They are filled with a desire to bring about the Kingdom of God.
The Christian seeks to heal the world through the formation of profound communion with God and neighbor. They form families and communities of Christian living. The spirit of bachelorism, careerism, and individualism are foreign to them. Their highest achievement is the formation of families, not getting a job; their greatest endeavor is to form communities of Christian life in their parish, not making their careers successful. Jobs and careers are necessary, but they need to flow in and out of what is first, communion with God and neighbor.
The determinism of colleges and careers has this incredible way of killing the Christian spirit of discernment. It is this giant conveyor belt that began when parents started saving up for college, started sending their kids to college preparatory programs, went out shopping for colleges, and so on. This machine pushes us to over achieve in the best high schools, strive for the best colleges, get a nice career so that we might get married (if it fits in our career plan), so that we might have children (if it fits into our career plan), so we can retire, and having retired (after exhausting the best of our energy and effort) we might give some token effort to our parish and charities before we die. In this environment the Christian charism simply dies.
This cycle is even perpetuated by many of our Catholic schools which are often no more than college/career preparatory institutions. All of these schools, public and private load their children up with college preparatory material and extra curricular activities so that they can get a good start at a career; but at the expense of the family and church life. This is a self perpetuating system because the parents are never home anyways because they are ever giving themselves to their careers. In this system the work of forging families and communities of Christian living is made subservient to that of the dictatorship of the school system.
Take for example the way this is reflected in our language. When I was working in St. Mary’s Catholic Church in College Station Texas, people would often say things like “The Catholic church that serves A&M University.” It was a convenient way of speaking, but it betrays an unconscious supposition; i.e. the university is first and the church assists the university. It wasn’t malicious, but a more authentic statement would have been,”St. Mary’s Catholic Church that is served by A&M University.”
If the forging of healthy Christian Community was first we would not be scouring the country looking for the best Colleges to send our children; we would be scouring the country looking for the healthiest Christian Communities to send our children. Only after that would we start looking for a university.
It’s important to note here, that the essence of the problem is not in colleges themselves; it is in the materialistic predetermination that underlines the whole system. Modern colleges are predominately motivated by the demands of the industrial system to produce servants of the market. However, this is not what modern colleges were suppose to be in their inception. Universities came out of monasteries, and in that original vision the first and most important goal of the university was to teach contemplation, philosophy, and theology. It was suppose to teach virtue, community living, and prayer. These are the primary goals of education. Careers and jobs must always be subservient to these goals. It would be better that we spent our days sweeping floors than loose our humanity.
A Christian should not reduce their discernment to finding a job. Their first questions should be, “What does the world need from me?” They ask themselves, “In light of my passions and abilities how can I best serve the world?” However, here is where many people get trapped because they are allured by the vision of material solutions for the world’s problems when the greatest needs of the world are always spiritual. So, our universities are full of business degrees, engineering degrees, medical degrees, psychology degree, teaching degrees. However, all of these; doctors, scientists, politicians, economists, etc. . . only address superficial needs. These professions are good, but they must always be subservient to the real Christian vocation of prayer, liturgy, and communion which nourishes the soul of the world.
I don’t think any Christian young man or woman should run off to college when they leave high school. I think they should put away their college preparatory classes and most of their extra curricular activities. They should go home and be schooled in family life. They should dedicate their after hour time to service of the poor and parish community life. I think that every Christian high school student should fore go college for a year or two and enter a religious community or missionary work. They should obtain a deep appreciation for prayer, the ascetical life, communal life, and service to others. They should check their ambitions at the door for a while and just listen. Listen to the hurt of the world, listen to God’s great vision for humanity, listen to the needs of the Church. They should go do missionary work with the Missionaries of Charity, work with FOCUS and NET mission groups, work with the Franciscans of the Renewal. Not to fall into more activism but to really come to appreciate the Gospel path and to ask, “What does God really want from me?”
Imagine our young people giving their best years for the things of the spirit and not something they will get to when they retire. This is how it’s suppose to be. Our Christian youth should be full of the charisms of the spirit, vocations to the religious life and priesthood should be like leaves off the trees. They should be boiling with a spiritual dynamism. All of this is crushed when our overwhelming question is “what college are you going to?” and “what career are you thinking about?” Our overwhelming questions should be “How are you going to build the Christian community?” “How are you going to heal the world?” “How are you going to grow in virtue and cultivate the interior life?” Unless we teach our children to discern with the right questions their spiritual life will continue to be threatened. 
