Steubenville, Ohio, Oct 3, 2019 / 06:45 pm (CNA).- The incoming president of Franciscan University of Steubenville has spent the past few months speaking, and listening, to students, alumni, and friends of the university.
He’s become well-known for a phrase he uses.
“We don’t just want God to bless what we’re doing, we want to bless what God is doing,” Fr. David Pivonka, TOR, tells students and alumni.
And God, Pivonka told CNA, is doing new things at the Ohio university he now leads.
God “is revealing himself to us and making it clear that he has a plan and a desire for us,” the priest said during an Oct. 3 interview, the day before his inauguration as the university’s seventh president.
There is, Pivonka said, “a newness, or freshness that is going on,” at the university. And, he insists, that newness is not about him, but about God’s Providence.
“In my own life and in the life of the friars in our community, we are just seeing different pieces come together and different people being placed here, and I think God is doing a really great thing, and a prophetic thing.”
Pivonka said God is inviting the university to a “refocusing” of its identity, and its priorities. How that unfolds will depend on prayer and discernment.
“It’s really keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus, being faithful to what he is asking us to do,” Pivonka told CNA.
“I think St. Francis has something to do with that,” he added, mentioning that the saint can “helping us continue to understand what makes a Franciscan university different than any other university.”
Pivonka, 54, has some ideas about what that might look like. Franciscan identity, he emphasized, is about daily conversion, repentance, discipleship, and about solidarity with the poor.
The priest mentioned especially the importance of the university’s relationship with locals in the city of Steubenville, which suffers from high unemployment and economic depression, and the surrounding Ohio valley.
Pivonka said he’s met with local leaders to try to strengthen the university’s place in the region. He said he’s encouraged local leaders to think with him creatively about how the university – mostly set apart from the rest of the city atop a hill – can better engage with, and benefit from the community.
“What can we do in a mutual relationship? What can they do to help the university? Bause there’s gifts and talents here that have not been utilized. And, what can we do to help them?” he asked.
Noting the poverty of the region, Pivonka said that “one of the greatest things to raise people out of poverty is education. Education opens up new worlds, opens up doors. It provides people with options. The poor don’t always have options, and that’s a horrible feeling to have: that you don’t have any options or choices. I think education provides those options.”
“We want to make more resources available for the local kids who can’t afford to come to the university. We already have a grant of 50% off of tuition for any local kid. There’s some people for whom that’s enough to get them over the hump. They can come. But there are still others where that’s not enough. We want to do a better job at making sure that if an individual who lives in the Ohio Valley and wants an education from Franciscan, that we’re able to help them with that.”
He also told CNA that he wants his leadership of the university to emphasize unity—in the Church and within the university community. And he said unity will require a spiritual vision.
“We just find ourselves in a Church in a time that is really broken,” Pivonka said.
“The Church has been really wounded, but she has always been that way. There has never been a time when the Church wasn’t like that,” he added.
“But she is still the bride, and she is still beautiful, and still worth fighting for, and she is still worth protecting, and my fear is that maybe we haven’t recognized that, maybe we have been unable to see that. That is one of my prayers that the university is able to help see the bride, see the Church as she is.”
“The university,” he said, “could be a source of unity and healing.”
He prays that will be the case.
Pivonka told CNA he thinks prayer can also be a source of unity on the university’s campus.
While the Charismatic Renewal has long been associated with Franciscan University, Pivonka said that he’s mostly concerned that students live as Christian disciples, regardless of their spirituality.
“One of the things I said at the beginning of the year to students and the faculty is ultimately that I’m not concerned with people involved with Renewal as a movement, but what I am concerned about is that our lives be animated by the Holy Spirit,” he said.
Acknowledging liturgical “polarization” on the university’s campus, and more broadly in the church, the priest explained that “my prayer, and I think it’s possible but it will take work by us, is that we can, by the grace of God, really give an example that we don’t all have to pray in exactly the same way, and we can approach the Lord differently.”
“But part of being Catholic is embracing one another and giving one another freedom to do that without judgement, without dismissal. And that’s one of the goals and one of the desires I have for the university.”
“The Spirit of God is the same Spirit for all of us,” he said.
In the Church “we are supposed to be most united in our prayer and in our worship, and we are actually becoming more divided. I think that is ultimately the work of the Evil One, I really do. So can Franciscan University be a source of renewal, that we can bring this together? That’s my prayer.”
Pivonka is familiar with renewal at Franciscan University of Steubenville.
The priest graduated from the university in 1989, during the tenure of its well-known and charismatic fourth president, Fr. Michael Scanlan, TOR, who is largely credited with sparking a turnaround in the faith and culture of the university, which was nearly closed when Scanlan took the helm in 1974. Pivonka joined the Franciscans, Third Order Regular, the religious order that oversees the university, and later worked closely with Scanlan in the university’s administration.
The university’s trustees unanimously elected Pivonka president on May 21. The priest acknowledged that Scanlan, who died in 2017, has recently faced allegations of improper conduct during his term of leadership at the university.
Scanlan is alleged to have enabled and covered-up sexual misconduct on the part of another popular Franciscan friar on the campus. While Pivonka said he had not seen direct evidence supporting the claims made against Scanlan, he told CNA that he is sorry that anyone might have been harmed by failures on Scanlan’s part to respond properly in the face of allegations, and that the allegations – and his responsibility to address them- have been the subject of his prayer.
Pivonka said that as president of the university, he is committed to transparency in leadership, and to facing the past directly.
“We want to make sure that if there’s anybody who’s been a victim of any abuse or anything that was inappropriate, that we want to make sure that they’re cared for and that they’re heard and that they’re seen, and taken care of whatever circumstances, whoever was responsible for that to make sure that justice is brought about and healing is brought about,” he told CNA.
He emphasized the efforts made by the university in recent years, especially under the leadership of Fr. Sean Sheridan, his predecessor as president, to address accountability and assure a safe environment at the university.
Pivonka also emphasized the university’s commitment to forming students, to “household” faith communities, to academic freedom, and to “dynamic orthodoxy,” a phrase long associated with Franciscan, but attributed to the late Cardinal John O’Connor of New York.
“I think that when one experiences the beauty and grandeur and the glory of orthodoxy in right practice and right living, then orthodoxy is life-giving.”
“There is a need for an animated orthodoxy, an orthodoxy that’s alive, that’s fresh, that’s engaging. That’s really where we see orthodoxy here at the university,” Pivonka added.
Pivonka will be inaugurated as the university’s president Oct. 4, on the feast of St. Francis. He told CNA that as a leader, he hopes to be an instrument of conversion.
“My prayer is that people will experience conversion. That’s continually my prayer in the work that I’m doing at the university,” Pivonka said.
Calling a Catholic university a “faith community,” Pivonka said that “a faith community needs a pastor. It needs a shepherd, it needs a teacher. I really see my role in the university as that – it’s a priest and a shepherd.”
As a shepherd, he said, he hopes that after they graduate, students of Franciscan University are “engaged in their professions. That they’re outstanding doctors and lawyers and engineers and nurses and teachers and catechists and priests. That they are profoundly competent in their field. That they are influencing the people that they work with, to witness to them, to live the goodness of God’s love for them.”
“That they see the beauty of the Church, are engaged in the life of the Church, participating in their parishes, as lectors and youth ministers and Eucharistic ministers and works of mercy. That they are holy moms and dads that love their kids, that they are raising saints. That they live with hope and joy, purpose.”
He added that he hopes the university he leads will exercise a prophetic mission in the world.
God has placed on his heart, he told CNA, that “the Lord wants to do more, to use the university as a prophetic voice to a culture, to a Church, about what is possible. About hope that the situations in which we find ourselves are not the end of the story. About faithfulness.”
Ultimately, Pivonka said, he’ll measure his success by the holiness of his students.
“I told the students at the opening school year Mass that my goal and my desire is that each one of them hear the Lord say to them, ‘Well done, my good and faithful servant. Enter into joy today.’ So, big picture success is that each of the students and everyone associated with the university ultimately inherits the Kingdom of God.”
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In California, it might behoove the pro-life movement to limit the discussion to minority LGBTQ babies.
Who are registered Democrats.
(Sigh.)
Archbishop Cordileone should punish the students who walked out by denying them communion.
Aside from that, the students should be punished by requiring them to read and write about Archbishop Cordileone’s recent pastoral letter on abortion.
It sounds like Archbishop Cordileone should be more concerned about his own flock rather than a USCCB letter that will never see the light of day and which Bergoglio has effectively rendered meaningless.
Multiple generations of pseudo-Catholicism. Why should we expect the children of the latest generation to not be, well, charitably speaking, airheads?
That is it in a nutshell with the San Francisco location as the topper.
You had to guess it happened in California. Lemming behavior is all they have. A private Catholic school is not a place for this sort of behavior….it was rude, childish and unchristian for the students to walk out on a speaker. Since most left, it has the feel of a planned political action. One would suspect the ring -leaders among the newly admitted girls. Students do not run the school or make the decisions on speakers. In a catholic school one would think that learning aspects of catholic morality would be part of the expectation. The students who walked out should be disciplined with several weeks of detention and a long essay assignment about why their behavior was inappropriate, and their parents should be informed. Those who decline to cooperate should be expelled. .
Their parents are pro-abortion “catholics” who vote Democrat, so this cannot be a surprise. The Catholic Church in America is mission territory, and the USCCB is merely a self-promoting welfare agency of the Federal Government. This is why I now support the SSPX without reservation.
Accepting that their parents are politically Democrats, there is also the propaganda the students are exposed to due to the ubiquitous presence of their cell phones. The world of the woke and progressives is always at the tips of their fingers.
Further evidence of the extraordinary catechetics in place for the last fifty-five years. The new evangelization has so many success stories. Given the locale one can only imagine the other moral issues held in mid-air by the next generation of katholics. Maybe they should be at the synod on synods…
But we don’t want to make them too rigid.
Ah, but these are difficult times they say.
One is left to wonder how less difficult they might be if we had not sold out to the world, the flesh and the devil while we were opening all the windows…
A couple of points. First of all, I graduated from the school in question in 1971. Secondly, the Society of Mary has not been at the school for a number of years. Frankly, I don’t know if they have any role in administering the school. Thirdly, I was disturbed at the idea of the girl who stayed for the assembly, but did not want to be quoted by name. I wrote to the CHRONICLE reporter to point that out. She replied that the girl did not want to be quoted because she wasn’t sure how her parents would feel about her talking to a reporter and that the reporter had witnessed an open discussion among that girl and classmates who felt differently about the issue.
Did Nancy lead the walkout?
Whomever is the spiritual leader of the Catholic kids in the school need to have a serious conversation with them. I, for one, will not be attending their graduation ceremonies.
California. San Francisco.
“We ask that all students listen respectfully to the speaker, who is nationally recognized for her work on this subject.”
Before we even get into the topic of abortion the issue to be addressed is the protester’s lack of respect for and unwillingness to hear an opposing viewpoint. Who empowered them to take such an action? They come across as a bunch of spoiled ignorant lemmings who think that the world revolves around them and their precious opinion, all other viewpoints be damned. There should be profound attention-getting consequences for their action and if they don’t like it then “Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.” Clearly Catholic doctrine is lost on them.
Returning to the topic of abortion, ultimately what a sad statement they make of the condition of their soul. So young to be so poisoned.
Of course, I don’t know what has been going on in the school prior to this incident, but it appears there is not much about the school that is Catholic. How Catholic can these young people be or how Catholic do they perceive they are supposed to be, and then betray a fundamental teaching of the church.
I don’t have a problem making efforts to help them better understand why the church teachers what She teachers, but if there is continued resistance they need to be expelled. If the entire school is infected with compromise, then it might be time to close the school until A proper foundation is established allowing it to reopen as an authentic Catholic institution.
I think your comment could apply to a number of Catholic high schools, and even more so to a great number of the Catholic colleges and universities in this country.
So very sad. Very sad. These students at a CATHOLIC SCHOOL not only did not want to hear about the value of life and why we, as CATHOLICS, believe every life is sacred, they did not want to value the educational ideal of listening to what amounts to a “philosopher” speaking. Like walking out on Plato, for example, because he espoused a Republic. Closing their minds, let alone their spirits, to ideas they don’t want to hear about, so young, so sad. Better to keep an open mind and spirit to the wisdom of others, throughout life.
And their ability to protest a pro-life speaker was guaranteed by a mother who respect their right to life from conception.
And they wonder why people homeschoool…
…And don’t save several thousand dollars a year as well.
It’s very difficult to be a principal or president of a Catholic high school these days. That said, I believe the interim president of this school made two mistakes in this matter. First, he should not have, in effect, apologized to parents for programming authentic Catholic teaching on the protection of life from conception to natural death. The teaching is only “polarizing” in the sense that radical dissenters and apostates do not accept it, and it is relativistic to acknowledge any legitimacy in their positions. Second, the event should not have been a mandatory assembly, but rather an optional lecture during school hours. The walk-out, which was foreseeable, has caused scandal. Yes, it is sad that many people think they can claim to be Catholic and also pro-“choice”, but offering them opportunities like this to cause scandal only wounds the Church. My opinions on this matter are informed by the comparatively successful approaches taken by leaders of Catholic high schools where I have worked or sent my children.
This is happening in a lot of Catholic schools where parents send their children primarily for academic and less of religious studies of learning the Catholic faith. These are children of parents who failed to lay a good solid moral foundation prior to their children getting indoctrinated by the secular society. “… do not weep for me, but for yourselves and for your children.” Lk 23:28
If only Catholic schools weren’t concerned with filling seats in order to stay in business…
As mass population centers continue to lose Catholics more schools will close.
The church has not “led” on this issue, even In the beginning. They left it to grass routes as a way of messaging truth. But too many changes accompanied the decades and for myriad reasons, we lost the young. Morality must be organic for it to be lived. Mixed messages from a video of the Pope and the President lockedin a seemingly harmonious handclaps all but adds a final period to the efficacy of the Church’s teaching authority.
We have been warned about being in the last battle against family and marriage ;
one has to wonder if Christianity is beeing seen by many any more just as a ‘nice , nice ‘ wimpy and effeminate , impractical faith and the related contempt against same .
The Way of the marvelous spiritual warfare in a bloodless manner that we have been blessed with – more focus on same could be one means . There is the occasion of Elisha, the mocking ‘kids’ and and the bears – invoking The Lord to bind and command away the spiritual bears in the lives of the mockers and to heal their wounds can be one good exercise in warfare for all involved –
https://answersingenesis.org/bible-questions/elisha-little-children-and-the-bears/
Similarly , St.Joseph , from the Line of David who tore up lions and bears , to be invoked to help protect the ‘sheep ‘ – the inner thought life and purity of the hearts – being there to tear up all seductive spirits , to restore blessed thoughts and prayers as the saintly children in Fatima , to live in holy and good relatioships .
The Holy Father reminding us to focus on The Cross where in all evils get burned up in the Flames of Love , to bless us with New Life – as the Most Powerful in the warfare – thank God that families too have easy access to these truths and occasions in the Holy Mass and Sacraments .
May The Spirit help to burn away all lukewarmness in many hearts to keep us too from walking away from Life Giving Blessings and protection in The Precious Blood !
The pro- life lecture should not have been mandatory. The school administrators could have turned it into a “pro-choice” moment in which students are told they’ll have a choice, either attend the pro-life presentation or go downtown and work at the soup kitchen feeding the homeless and washing dishes.
Wouldn’t expelling all the walkouts be a life lesson to be remembered for the rest of their lives?
The chaplain of the school needs to be replaced. He seemingly wants woke friends instead of religious Catholics.
As a Catholic high school theology teacher, I would not be too hard on the students or the leadership. Most of the students who walked out were probably just ignorant. The leadership did well to bring in this speaker.
I’d suggest a way forward is to schedule a debate between two competent speakers on each side of the issue.
Kudos to the school for teaching the pro-life stance.
Shame on the students who walked out thus demonstrating they—the woke—cannot tolerate differing opinions. God save us from them. They, terrifyingly, are the future.
Sad commentary on the state of Catholic schools, but great comments except for the suggestions of “choice of activity” and debate. A wise spiritual director once amended my thinking, as he asserted there is no argument for abortion—there is no “pro” position that withstands the objective truth that induced abortion is always murder. How to help women in crisis pregnancies or what society can do to turn around faulty rationale are open to dialogue and debate. As for providing students the option of a corporeal work of mercy is rather than listen to this speaker still misses the larger objective: education. This is obviously sorely needed, as these students—by their demonstration—expressed their lack of a yi comprehensive understanding of abortion—not just as evil—but all of the realities of the procedures and aftermath—lifelong consequences. Yet, an option might have been individual library research that demonstrated a better grasp of those risks, spiritually, emotionally, and physically. Finally, that this walk out caused scandal—for whom? Jesus Christ experienced numerous walk always but still affirmed truth. At least we know who needs our prayers.
Why all this “tolerance” of people protesting on Church property, in support of murder. Please, stop this acceptance of things divisive, destructive, and evil. This is the Church we are talking about! Defend Her, Protect Her, Boldly make our Biblical stand. Expel these students. Closet smokers don’t get as much tolerance.
Abortion is certainly one of the great spiritual battles of our time, and the devil seems to be winning many to his side.
In Ephesians 6:12,St. Paul writes: “For we are not contending with flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in heavenly places.”
In John 8:42-47 Jesus said this to a group who opposed Him: 42 “If God were your Father, you would love me, for I have come here from God. I have not come on my own; God sent me. 43 Why is my language not clear to you? Because you are unable to hear what I say. 44 You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies. 45 Yet because I tell the truth, you do not believe me! 46 Can any of you prove me guilty of sin? If I am telling the truth, why don’t you believe me? 47 Whoever belongs to God hears what God says. The reason you do not hear is that you do not belong to God.”
And in St. Faustina’s Dairy (#1276) there is this:
“At eight o’clock, I was seized with such violent pains that I had to go to bed at once. I was convulsed with pain for three hours; that is, until eleven o’clock at night. At times, the pains that caused me to lose consciousness.
“Jesus had me realize that in this way, I took part in His Agony in the garden, and that He Himself allowed these sufferings in order to offer reparation to God for the souls murdered in the wombs of mothers.”
“If only I could save even one soul from murder by means of these sufferings!”