This is intended to be the first of two or more posts I want to write to address issues raised by the controversy over FUS’s alleged failure to fulfill its Title IX obligations to victims of sexual assault.
The Shoeless Banshee provides helpful insight on this issue for the unfamiliar, and explains why even people that don’t normally read the NCR should take this seriously.
I was a bit of a different animal than most students attending Franciscan University. Most of my fellow students were cradle Catholics or “converts” (a word I dislike, but that’s a subject for another post), and they tended to fall into pretty specific categories. The three most vocal groups, in my experience, were charismatic enthusiasts, traditionalist skeptics, and against-the-grainers (often called “liberals” by those that distrusted them, including me I’m afraid I must admit). The three generally did not mix, at least not very well. Everyone kind of co-existed but complained about the others to their respective peer groups (a safe thing to do since everyone already agrees with you). I think everyone felt a bit self-righteous and justified in their position.
Please understand I speak in generalities. Most of the people I was friends with were actually good people, and I want to be clear that such self-righteousness is honestly something we all stoop to at some point in our lives. Well, all except the most annoyingly open-minded among us, who, let’s face it, probably have something (annoying) to teach us.
But I diverge. My point is that I didn’t quite fit any of those groups. I guess I tended to fall in with the first one, but the fact is that I was an outsider. Not because I wasn’t accepted, just because I, in fact, was from the outside.
I wasn’t born Catholic nor have I ever “converted”. I was born to a Moody Bible Institute graduate and the daughter of free evangelical missionaries to, among others, European Catholics. Actually, given that family background, our family wasn’t that anti-Catholic (for evangelical protestants that is). I mean, we believed Catholics could be “saved”. But you know, protestant evangelicalism and cradle Catholicism are two very different worlds, worlds that usually just don’t understand each other.
Anyway, obviously we weren’t particularly set against Catholics because I ended up at Franciscan by way of a tiny Catholic college in Georgia that shut its doors rather suddenly my sophomore year. I chose a Catholic college for personal reasons that I’ll get into more detail on another time. Suffice it to say I needed a place where my faith would be at home, that was a fundamentally different environment than the evangelical culture I had grown to feel stagnant in.
In that way, Franciscan was a place of spiritual hospitality for me. I was able to enjoy things about it unburdened by the baggage that might have been involved had I been raised Catholic. Appreciation from the outside is really a wonderful thing. And in some ways, because of how I was welcomed into that world,1 I tended to come to the defense of what some snidely referred to as “Franny” culture. I’ve never taken well to critiques that come in the form of slams, and many times those were the only ones I actually heard about a majority group that had welcomed an outsider desperately in need of a place to worship and explore her faith in a deeper way.
That said, as time has gone on and I’ve gotten more perspective on my own faith and the state of Christian culture (Catholic and no) as a whole, I have had some concerns about certain mentalities that I’ve encountered in conservative evangelical Christian culture over the years. Franciscan has not been spared this concern, though I have been and remain grateful to my alma mater for what I gained from my time there. And as I’ve had the time and space to gain perspective (it’s always a good idea to look at things from the outside once you’re not immersed anymore), I’ve come to realize that maybe I didn’t give those “against-the-grainers” enough consideration. Whatever the tone of the criticisms, I’ve come feel there may not have been much room for counter-majority perspectives that may have really had some insight to offer the community. I mean, FUS isn’t special in that regard. Any time there’s a majority opinion, the minority has trouble finding their voice. Still, it doesn’t mean the majority shouldn’t be listening to them.
I give all this by way of background. My experience at Franciscan is a longer story that could be its own post. But I just need any readers to understand where I am coming from as I touch on the main subject of this post: the recent controversy that’s been stirred up over Franciscan’s handling of its Title IX responsibilities, and, it would seem, mishandling of its duty to students relying on those in leadership for justice in the face of sexual assault and harassment.
I want to share my perspective because I think the thoughts of a third-culture FUS alum should be heard, by all affected. Mine isn’t the most important perspective, but it is a different one. And we need to get out of ruts in our thinking when such matters arise.
Several things appear clear to me. From what I can gather so far, people have been sexually assaulted and harassed at Franciscan, and have not been supported in seeking justice. People are concerned about the reputation of the school and certain people in leadership there. Many, maybe most, people on both sides of the controversy, believe that revealing these allegations to be true would show Franciscan to be a sham.
These are the things I want to address.
First of all, I think it’s important to get some perspective on something. If we ever believe a worthwhile institution is inherently immune to really pernicious wrongdoing, we’re believing a dangerous, seductive lie. Oddly, I think it’s the one thing almost everyone I’ve heard speak on this agrees on. No one — on either side — has thought to question the idea that if Franciscan were to become associated with sexual assault controversies, everything it claims to stand for would be a sham. And to be blunt, this is exactly the mentality that allowed these cases to be pushed underground in the first place. And this has to change.
If you are someone who has had difficulty even believing these stories because you feel it’s part of a campaign against what FUS stands for, I want to ask you to really look hard at what you’re implying. If you believe that morally upright institutions can’t fall, or at least fail very seriously, I want you to really ask yourself why it is you believe that. If you feel you don’t believe that, I want to ask: why is it so hard to believe, then, that something like this could have happened at Franciscan University of Steubenville? Why would this place be immune? As long as humans are involved, these kinds of things are possible and they do happen. No one wants to admit it. But at some point, we have to make a choice: will we find every way to explain away the evidence, or will we acknowledge the possibility that someone we trusted let us down, maybe even betrayed us? Like confession, airing out wrongdoing is the only way to drain the infection it causes. It hurts, it’s unsavory, but it’s necessary and health-saving. We cannot champion things like the sacramental nature of confession and reconciliation if we cannot come to terms with this truth.
I’d also like to make an appeal to those that want to chuck Franciscan completely because of this. I just want to remind you that this is the mentality that creates cover-ups. The idea that moral failings erase any supposed good associated with a person or an institution is extremely dangerous. It is understandable to feel this way, particularly when you hear about a cover-up this serious. But it’s also important that in our disgust over such a scandal, we don’t unwittingly become complicit in it. I think this danger is very real, and one that really needs to be taken seriously. 
No one wants to admit they are a moral monster, so as long as we say only monsters commit certain moral crimes, we will continue to push those very crimes underground to protect “reputations”. We will become complicit in the very things we claim to stand against. We will become monstrosities. Our upstanding reputation will become our propped-up façade. Not any of us want that.
This is why I am appealing to everyone, even (maybe especially) those that really love FUS, to please take this issue seriously and open your mind to the possibility that an institution you love let you and fellow students down. It was Christ who first showed us how to swallow a bitter cup. He didn’t want to have to do it either, but he knew the situation we humans were in required it. That it was the only way to save us from ourselves. Let’s not forget, in the very effort to live in that reality, that this means we desperately need to be saved from ourselves. Not even his closest followers were free from betrayal and cover-ups. So how can we claim to be better? The Franciscan bubble is like any other bubble: eventually, it must pop, and if there’s anything behind it worth saving, the sooner it pops the better.
I’m choosing to pause my writing here and continue soon. First of all, I want to allow my readers to think about what I’ve said and — I hope — do some real soul searching. Second, this stuff takes a really long time to write and it’s time your dear Catholic Protestant had a break.
Stay tuned, because I’m not even close to done thinking about this. The fact is that I have concerns that apply more broadly to certain perspectives in conservative Christian culture, Catholic and non. I don’t think this is only your run-of-the-mill institutional moral failure. I think there are also certain accepted mentalities that conservative Christian culture — not just FUS or even Catholicism — allows and even champions that are having some problematic consequences, and this is one illustration of those consequences. So that’s going to be the subject of my next post.
Until then.
- There are some caveats to this statement. Let’s just say that some Catholics are just about as annoying to non-Catholics about “converting” as some Protestant evangelicals are to non-Christians about “getting saved”. But on the whole, I was always accepted warmly and never made to feel I didn’t belong, and that was by far the most defining experience for me. ↩
Musings of a Catholic Protestant 