Bishop Olmsted at the University of Mary Desert Rose Social and Dinner

Following is the prepared text for Bishop Olmsted’s remarks at the University of Mary Desert Rose Social and Dinner.

February 11, 2022

Thank you for this honor. Above all, I am grateful for the strong leadership of Msgr. Shea and the good work of the University of Mary here, in North Dakota, and beyond.

In her book “Primal Screams,” Mary Eberstadt argues that the sexual revolution created identity politics. This occurred because, for hundreds of years when a person was asked, “who are you?”, their response was rooted in their faith and family, “I am a member of this church, and these are my parents…”  But with the breakdown of the family due to the corrosive nature of the sexual revolution and the abandonment of faith, we see in the rising number of those who identify with no religious affiliation, people now cling to a secondary identity (gender, sex, or ethnicity) as a primary one.

“Why?” Eberstadt asks, “Why, when you challenge someone’s membership in the LGBTQ community, is the response so vitriolic?” Because for them, with the experience of being unmoored from the traditional pillars of faith and family (and the attendant pain and confusion that accompanies it), they now root their identity in this community and will fight you as if their survival depended on it. When you don’t know who you are and you find something that gives you a feeling of belonging, you feel as if your value as a person is dependent on membership in that community. What is needed is a much more solid foundation on which to build your identity.

Enter Catholic schools.

This evening I would like to share some brief remarks of how Catholic education seeks to answer the most fundamental question of identity and can be a salve to young people growing up in a morass of confusion and pain.

My first point is that Kerygma is key. Kerygma, the Greek word for “proclamation,” refers to the initial pronouncement of the Good News of salvation found in Jesus Christ.  As Pope Francis remarked in  Evangelli Gaudium,

 “We have rediscovered the fundamental role of the first announcement or kerygma, which needs to be the center of all evangelizing activity and all efforts at Church renewal… On the lips of the catechist the first proclamation must ring out over and over: “Jesus Christ loves you; he gave his life to save you; and now he is living at your side every day to enlighten, strengthen, and free you” (#163, emphasis added).

A Catholic school, whether a grade school, high school, or university must have the Kerygma as its center if it desires to be an instrument of renewal in our culture. The best way for a young person to know “who they are” is to know “whose they are:” That God loves them and has a plan for their life, has died for any and all sin that would destroy that plan, and seeks to bring His redemptive healing to any places in their heart wounded by our culture of counterfeit love. Jesus offers to young people the key to discovering their authentic identity. Once a person knows the love of God poured into his or her heart they realize that there is no true personal authenticity outside the authority of God (Romans 5:5).  God alone can tell young persons who they are and for what He made them.

This fundamental mission must constantly be tended so that it remains central. One possible idol for Catholic school is the “idol of enrollment.” The implicit belief that if a Catholic school is going up in enrollment it necessarily follows that it is doing well and if enrollment is going down it necessarily follows the school is not doing well. But a Catholic school should not be judged by how many students it graduates, but how well those graduates were formed to be missionary disciples of Jesus. Considering Our Lord spent an enormous amount of time with His twelve disciples (and among them even more intentional time with Peter, James, and John) it should teach us that it is better to graduate a smaller number of well-formed students than a larger number of students who have been mediocrely formed.

Secondly, out of this Kerygmatic mission, the Catholic school should form authentic community. This communion among its members is nothing less than the communion borne out of living contact with the Holy Spirit with Christ at its center. A Catholic community is one of conversion, one in which people can speak to the real difference Jesus makes in their life. This community is rooted not in our secondary identities of race, gender, or sex, but in our shared communion of being made in God’s image and likeness, redeemed by Christ, and destined for supernatural life.

To safeguard this community, a Catholic school should be very judicious and appropriately critical of the role technology plays in the education of young people. One of the central mysteries of our faith is the incarnation, the belief that God “took flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14). If the God of the Universe drew close to us through taking on a human nature, what message do we send to young people when so much of their education is mediated through screens? This is not about being anti-technology, but about letting a solid Catholic anthropology, which takes the incarnation seriously, drive our educational decisions rather than letting technology lead in discussions of Catholic pedagogy. Young people need real human connection, and contact with real things.

Additionally, because, as Catholics, we know that every person is made in God’s image and likeness, one God who is a communion of three persons and “an eternal exchange of love,” we know that we are made by love, to love, and for love (CCC #221). We experience this love first in our families—our primary community of love. But acknowledging the serious ruptures young people experience in this most foundational of communities, it is important that Catholic schools, from grade schools to universities, partner with solid Catholic counselors to help heal our culture at its roots, that is, in families. In Family Systems therapy, one of their key mantras is, “the problem is not the problem, the problem is a symptom of the problem.” In other words, when a young person is manifesting problematic behavior at school, a person trained in Family Systems therapy would assume there is a dysfunction in their family system, which, if healed, will lead to a resolution of the problematic behavior manifested in this child. Knowing what we know about being made in the image and likeness of a trinitarian God, this approach is commensurate with a Catholic understanding of the human person. Grade schools can partner with Catholic counseling centers to offer to struggling families the healing they need, while Catholic universities can provide counseling services to college students where their pain can be validated and healed.

Lastly, Catholic education can impart to its students both wisdom and virtue. Wisdom is to know the truth, and virtue is to put it into practice. Perhaps the biggest lie in our culture is that God is an enemy to our freedom, that He somehow circumscribes or limits the potential of the human person when He is worshiped and adored. Catholic education forms young people to know true freedom found in Christ. As the Catechism reminds us, “The goal of a virtuous life is to become like God” (CCC #1063 – St. Gregory of Nyssa).  God is not an enemy to our freedom and joy; He is their foundation and principle. As the Second Vatican Council warned, “When God is forgotten, …the creature itself grows unintelligible” (Gaudium et Spes #36).  If we desire young people to rediscover who they are, Catholic education has a decisive role to play.

Matthew’s Gospel begins with the genealogy of Jesus. It is not a list of perfect people…  it has Rahab the prostitute, Jacob the trickster, Moses the murderer, David the adulterer, and so on. No one gets to pick the family they are born into, but Jesus could; and yet He chose this one. Why? Because He came to save it. Despite the brokenness so many young people experience and the subsequent confusion and pain that follow, Jesus desires to bring them healing and peace. May our Catholic schools be places of healing and renewal as they proclaim the Gospel with conviction, form authentic community, and equip their graduates in wisdom and virtue. The only One who deserves all of a young person’s heart is the One who made it.

Thank you.