New Orleans, La., Sep 22, 2019 / 04:01 pm (CNA).- This week the country marked National HBCU Week to recognize the accomplishments of historically black colleges and universities throughout the United States.
Earlier this month, leaders from the country’s 101 HBCUs convened in Washington, D.C. for the annual National HBCU Conference, where they spoke to Congress of the ongoing importance of HBCUs, and where President Donald Trump announced that religiously affiliated HBCUs would now receive full federal funding.
“Previously, federal law restricted more than 40 faith-based HBCUs and seminaries from fully accessing federal support for capital improvement projects. This meant that your faith-based institutions, which have made such extraordinary contributions to America, were unfairly punished for their religious beliefs,” Trump said in his Sept. 10 address to the conference.
“This week, our Department of Justice has published an opinion declaring such discriminatory restrictions as unconstitutional. It was a big step. And from now on, faith-based HBCUs will enjoy equal access to federal support,” Trump added.
Among the leaders present was President Reynold Verret of Xavier University of Louisiana, the only Catholic historically black college or university in the United States.
In his testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Education and Labor, Verret emphasized the “critical role” of HBCUs in education.
Verret told CNA that in his testimony, he emphasized that as the U.S. grows in diversity, “the majority of our talents will be black and brown. And if we fail to cultivate that talent, we will actually do ourselves a great damage,” he said.
Students are not always fortunate enough to attend good schools, he added, and if black talents, such as those of Dr. Ben Carson, are not fostered, they will be lost. Carson was a prominent pediatric neurosurgeon before his run for president in 2016 and his current position as U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary,
Speaking about Xavier in particular, Verret said that the faculty encourages their students to consider the needs of their communities and their country when choosing their majors.
“The education of the student at Xavier or at a school like ourselves, it’s not just a benefit to that individual student, but a benefit to the larger community that he is contributing to, and to the nation,” Verret said.
The notion of putting one’s talents at the service of another is a critical part of Xavier University’s Catholic foundation, Verret added.
“It’s very much in our legacy at Xavier, that that expectation of contributing to more than just me…and we speak of that to our students,” he said. “That the majors that they engage in, whether it’s preparing for medicine, preparing for law, or becoming a major artist, will only have meaning when they put it in service of people. It’s not so much about my BMW, or my salary.”
The seeds of Xavier University were planted by then-Mother Katherine Drexel in 1915, when she and her Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament founded schools to serve Native American and African American populations throughout the United States, including a Catholic secondary school for African-Americans in Louisiana.
By 1917, she also established a preparatory school for teachers, one of the few career tracks available to Black Americans at the time. A few years later, that school was able to offer other degrees as well, and became a full-fledged university in 1925.
In a sense, Verret said, Mother Katherine “rescued the Church from herself” at the time, because she opened an institution where students of all colors were welcome. Xavier University was also the first Catholic university where men and women studied together, he added.
The spirit of Mother Katherine, now St. Katherine Drexel, and her mission to provide a quality education to those in need is still foundational to the mission of Xavier today, Verret said.
“Mother Katherine, when she came here with her sisters in 1915…she had in her mind those who needed an education,” Verret said. “…and every 15 years, maybe even 25 years, we look at ourselves and say – who else needs our service? If Mother Katherine was beginning today, she would have others on her list as well, because this is our mission.”
When it comes to academic performance, Xavier is a school that “is punching above our weight,” Verret said.
Though the school enrolls only 3,000-some students, Xavier ranks first in the country for the number of black graduates who will go on to complete medical school, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges.
It is also ranked among the nation’s top four colleges of pharmacy in graduating African Americans with Doctor of Pharmacy (Pharm D) degrees, and is number one in the nation in awarding bachelor’s degrees to African American students in the biological and biomedical sciences, the physical sciences, and physics, and number three in the nation for the number of African American graduates who go on to earn a Ph.D. in science and engineering fields.
Verret said that Xavier’s achievements show the important role that smaller, specialized colleges, such as HBCUs, or women’s colleges, or other religiously-affiliated colleges, can play in American higher education.
“That diversity of education (options) to satisfy young people’s needs is important to us, and HBCUs are one part of that landscape.”
HBCUs were founded at a time where it was illegal for black students to attend other institutions of higher education, and so they catered to black students out of necessity. Xavier is still predominately black, Verret said, but it always has been and continues to be accepting of students of all ethnicities and creeds, which was something Mother Katherine anticipated.
“We have an important reservoir of experience and knowledge and intuition about what America should become, which came from the children and descendants of former slaves,” Verret said, but students of all races and creeds are able to receive a good education at Xavier.
Among the other ethnicities at Xavier are a large group of Vietnamese students, as well as students from Iraq who came to the United States during the Iraq war, Verret said. More than 71 percent of Xavier students are African American, while just 19 percent are Catholic, in large part because African Americans in the south are primarily from Protestant or Evangelical ecclesial communities, Verret said.
Still, Verret said, it is important to have HBCUs as predominately black institutions, where black students who are still a minority in this country can go and not feel like they stand out.
Speaking from his own experience as a young college student, Verret said that HBCUs offer students a place where their race is “not an issue.”
“I’m not the representative (of blacks or African Americans). I am the editor of the school newspaper. I am one of the members of the chemistry club, I’m not the black member of the chemistry club,” he said. “It’s a certain freedom that many whites in the United States cannot understand because they’re not experiencing that.”
As for it’s Catholic identity, Verret said the school has a strong sense of Catholic service and social justice engrained into its mission.
As one example of service, Verret said that every year, student deans and other peer leaders volunteer their time to help move in new students on campus. When asked why they did so, Verret said one of the student leaders told him: “So that they’ll know next year, it’s their turn.”
The school’s sense of service can be seen in its mission statement, which notes: “The ultimate purpose of the University is to contribute to the promotion of a more just and humane society by preparing its students to assume roles of leadership and service in a global society.”
Another example of the school’s Catholic mission, Verret said, is in its spirit of camaraderie and solidarity in its successful pre-med program. Often schools will try to scare off medical or pre-medical students by telling them: “Look to your right and look to your left. One of you won’t be here (by the end),” Verret said.
“That notion, that doesn’t exist at Xavier. We gather and pull each other so that we should all go cross that finish line together.”
Enrollment is back up at Xavier after a couple of years of decline following Hurricane Katrina, Verret noted, and the way that the school, as well as other HBCUs, will preserve their legacy is by “telling their stories” and telling of their current successes, Verret said.
“The other HBCUs are of very different sizes and very different complexions. But at the same time, what I can say is the uniting theme is that they continue to educate and graduate students who go on and are at the core of what America needs to be.”
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Engagement can be a good, moral idea. If two parties have mutual respect and can truly discuss ideas and circumstances it can be the absolute best path toward conversion. If one side of the “engagement” de-humanizes the other then “engagement” becomes something closer to the nazi guard engaging a mother at the train station asking her to pick which child will be saved and which will die. Former Vice-President Biden is a complete political animal and the pro-life people did not help him to this point where it looks like he will become the president. The party that now embraces the dehumanizing of pre-natal babies and increasingly the dehumanizing of those who want to spare those lives are the people who got him to this point. He will clearly based on his history bend to those who elected him and likely with a pleasant smile.
As Catholics and the USCCB, and people of good will, engage president-elect Biden regarding abortion and much else(e.g., mandatory gender theory; and especially including access to the Eucharist…?), perhaps the thinking of St. Francis—the namesake of our Pope Francis—can be of some help in something even more than any “grand bargain” (pact with the world?):
“To all mayors and consuls, magistrates and rulers throughout the world, and to everyone who may receive these letters: Brother Francis, your little and despicable servant in the Lord God, sends (his) wishes of health and peace to all of you.
“Pause and reflect, for the day of death is approaching (cf. Gen 47:29), I beg you, therefore with all possible respect, not to forget the Lord or turn away from His commandments by reason of the cares and preoccupations of this world, for all those who are oblivious of Him and turn away from His commands are cursed (cf. Ps 118:21) and will be totally forgotten by Him (Ex. 33:13). And when the day of death does come, everything which they think they have will be taken from them in this world, so much the greater will be the punishments they will endure in hell (cf. Wis 6:7).
“Therefore, I firmly advise you, my lords, to put aside all care and preoccupation and receive with joy the most holy Body and the most holy Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ in holy [that is, for Biden and for all of us: non-routinized, non-double-lived, non-scandalizing and non-sacrilegious?] remembrance of Him [….].
(Source: “Letter to the Rulers of the People: to All Leaders and Representatives of the People,” from Francis and Clare: The Complete Works, translation by Regis J. Armstrong, O.F.M. Cap. And Ignatius Brady, O.F.M.)
Camosy reasons that if material support (particularly by conservative Catholics) for mothers of would-be-aborted children were to increase, the demand for abortion would decrease. Camosy knows economic terminology but fails to grasp its principles. He either ignores or is truly ignorant of the U.S. welfare state. Tax money began to support unwed mothers and their children in the 1930s. LBJ’s 1964 Great Society opened the floodgates. That social-political program took money from middle-class working families to support fatherless children and unwed mothers.
Result? Increased numbers of unwed mothers, increased numbers of children from fatherless and broken homes, and increased numbers of families in poverty. Concomitant with those social ills was a decline in the number of middle- and working-class families.
Add to the above elixir the increased number of non-practicing and non-faithful Catholics, and the increased number of apostates, homosexuals, and heretics within the Catholic hierarchy. Now we have a university Catholic theology Ph.D. fronting delusions of Marxism as the answer for which the world awaits. A Ph.D. in Catholic theology by any other name, doing the same, still stinks.
I suppose an attempt must be made but why would Biden listen? His record on listening thus far doesn’t inspire confidence.
Me again.
Just read Mr. Camosy’s interview with Terrisa Bukinovac, founder of Pro-Life San Francisco and new leader of Democrats for Life. Maybe there’s hope yet.
Make that Bukovinac.
why because biden is catholic? He ain’t. Biden has been excommunicated latae sententiae the instant he supported abortion. He should be treated like an apostate.
Let’s note that this piece was written on Jan 1, meaning Biden was not yet president.
“Catholics must engage Biden on extreme abortion position” “expert” claims.
That is the job of the Bishop, and on numerous occasions before and since this article he has made it extraordinarily, unmistakably clear that he has ABSOLUTELY NO INTENTION of doing so.