Students in chapel at the University of Rhode Island

Mike, one of my best college buddies (I only have two left), was a member of the Penn State Swim Team and a life guard at the pool where I had registered for the final phys-ed course of my senior year. Since its founding in 1863 as Pennsylvania’s first land-grant college, it had been a requirement for graduation until recently to be able to pass a basic swimming test. First day of class I sank like a rock. It was Mike, after being assigned as my one-on-one coach, who allowed me to get my diploma. I should mention that it was a women’s phys-ed class and I was the only guy in it, due to my erratic schedule in the College of Arts & Architecture. Mike and I have stayed close over the decades and our ongoing rivalry continues to see which one of us can prove to have been the most prodigal of prodigal sons. Truth be told, neither one of us was particularly prodigal (as in Luke 15:11-32). For years, we have sent each other pictures of paintings depicting the parable of the Return of the Prodigal Son, my favorite being the one by Rembrandt (1669) which I saw hanging in the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia, in 1998.

One version caught my eye recently – on a book cover in the monastic library. It was a new image for me: The Prodigal’s Return, 1869, by Sir Edward John Poynter (1836-1919). This one hangs in the Brigham Young University Museum of Art in Provo, Utah, only forty-five minutes from Salt Lake City where I spent the first week of January. Had I known, I’d have made the time to drive there to see it – perfect opportunity to “one-up” Mike. It was Brandon Vogt’s Return: How to Draw Your Child Back to the Church (Word on Fire, second edition 2021) with Poynter’s prodigal on the cover. As I paged through, I saw that one of the nine endorsements was written by my godson, Dr. Stephen Bullivant, Director of the Benedict XVI Centre for Religion and Society at St. Mary’s University in London. His blurb reads, “Well-researched and realistic, Brandon Vogt’s Return is not just hope-filled, but superbly hope-filling. A resounding answer to many Catholic parents’ most ardent prayers.” Stephen knows well of what he writes. His own published works bear such titles as Mass Exodus: Catholic Disaffiliation in Britain and America since Vatican II; Nonverts: The Making of Ex-Christian America; and Why Catholics Leave, What They Miss, and How They Might Return. (Yes, I’ve read them all.)
Br. Sixtus visits the pool at Penn StateSo, where does this talk of sinking or swimming, leaving or returning, leave us? Turns out it’s not all doom and gloom in the world, at least for now. The first thing I read on Tuesday morning, Feb. 26, was a story published in The New York Times by Ruth Graham headlined “Christianity’s Decline in U.S. Appears to Have Halted, Major Study Shows.” The author writes, “After years of decline, the Christian population in the United States has been stable for several years, a shift fueled in part by young adults, according to a major new survey from the Pew Research Center.” This encouraging news seemed to negate what we have been witnessing first hand, at least in America, with the combining or closing of parishes due to a decline in attendance, to cite just one example. Immediately I shared this information with Stephen across the pond, five hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time, but thinking it might already be old news to him. Thankfully it was new news and his response was, “This was the first thing I'd seen on the new Pew data. I hadn't realized they had a new Landscape study. Excellent.” A “Landscape” study is a wide-ranging survey produced periodically, as opposed to the smaller polls done frequently. It was particularly inspiring to read the sub-heading to the Times piece: “Young people contributed to the shift.”
Return by Brandon VogtCoincidentally, less than twelve hours after reading that story, I was inside The Catholic Center at the University of Rhode Island (URI), surrounded by fifty of those same young people, college age, most of whom had probably never left the faith or even the Church in the first place. The invitation came from Fisher Everin of Middletown, a Dean’s List student in political science who occasionally attends Vespers at the Abbey. He had asked me to be part of a panel discussion on vocations along with Sr. Elizabeth Castro, H.M.S.P., and Dennis Sousa, Director of the Office of Family, Youth, and Young Adult Evangelization for the Providence Diocese. Attending together with his wife, Jennifer, he represented the vocation of married life. Vespers was offered in the beautifully-appointed Catholic Center Chapel, and Mass celebrated by the Center’s Rector, Fr. Ryan Simas, also the Vocation Director for the Diocese of Providence. This Mass included incense, the singing of Pange Lingua as the Communion hymn, and the traditional Prayer to St. Michael the Archangel for Protection. After a bit of socializing and the praying of the Angelus, we sat down to a home-cooked chili dinner.
Catholic Center at University of Rhode IslandThe evening was inspiring for the panelists, and I hope for the students as well. I spoke with senior Simon Tetreault, President of the Student Executive Board, who remembered that we had met at the reception following the Solemn Mass of Reception for Bishop Henning in January 2023. As I drove home across the Newport Pell Bridge to Aquidneck Island, my spirits were buoyed with the knowledge that there is hope for the future of our Church. Four of the students are missionaries with the Fellowship of Catholic University Students (FOCUS), a dynamic ministerial presence on college campuses.

If the fervor and commitment to the faith shown by these fifty students are any indication of the wider movement among college campuses everywhere, then a future Times headline will read: “Christianity’s Decline in U.S. Has Reversed.” These young adults have already learned, as Mike and I began to learn when we were their age, that there’s safety in the buddy system. It works, in the water and in the faith, keeping each other on the right path.

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