Keeping Faith: A Religious Profile of Holy Cross Students

By John A. Schmalzbauer and Royce A. Singleton Jr.

In recent years, a debate has raged about the spiritual health of Catholic colleges. While many have observed a heightened focus on religious mission during the 1990s, others are much more pessimistic. Pointing to the secularization of formerly Protestant institutions such as Harvard and Yale, these critics warn that Catholic schools are in danger of suffering the same fate. As the premier Catholic liberal arts college in America, Holy Cross has not been exempt from such claims. While some of these critiques are grounded in solid academic research, many more are based on anecdote, conjecture or speculation.

One of the shakier claims is that Catholic college students are losing their religion. Statements about student religiosity are especially problematic given the lack of systematic data. Equally problematic is the tendency of many critics to ignore the larger context of American higher education and contemporary youth culture. Criticizing the lax piety of Catholic college students, they do not bother to compare them to students at non-Catholic colleges and universities. Blaming Catholic colleges for the religious illiteracy of their graduates, they ignore recent studies which identify the same problems among Catholic young people everywhere.

To shed some light on student religious life at Holy Cross, we draw on a survey of 223 Holy Cross undergraduates conducted in the spring of 2002, as we compare the religious attitudes of Holy Cross students to those of students at other institutions, to 18-22 year olds nationally, and to other young Catholics (see Box for a description of data sources and limitations). The data are quite striking. In sharp contrast to the secularized student body described by the critics of Catholic higher education, Holy Cross students are more religiously engaged than their counterparts at non-Catholic colleges and universities, not to mention most 18-22 year olds. While sometimes critical of official church teaching, they enthusiastically embrace Catholicism’s core emphasis on the sacraments, community and social justice. Combining above average levels of religious belief and practice with critical reflection on Catholicism, they possess a religious faith that is simultaneously committed and questioning.

Overwhelmingly Catholic

Several questions on religious identity, belief and practice show that religion is a vital part of the lives of Holy Cross students. Not surprisingly, 74 percent of Holy Cross students identified as Roman Catholic, making the student body one of the most Catholic in the nation. According to the General Social Surveys (1993-2000), only 27 percent of 18-22 year-olds and 31 percent of 18-22 year-old students are Catholic. Also, many other Catholic colleges have a lower percentage of Catholic students than Holy Cross. On the 2001 College Student Survey, Catholics made up just 66 percent of seniors at four-year Catholic institutions in America. Ten percent of Holy Cross undergraduates identified as Protestant, while 4 percent identified with other religious traditions (including Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam and Eastern Orthodoxy). None identified as Jewish (a troubling statistic in a state where Jews comprise almost 5 percent of the population, according to the 1990 National Survey of Religious Identification).

In an age of religious and ethnic pluralism, Holy Cross remains remarkably homogenous. This homogeneity is reflected in the large proportion of our students who have attended Catholic schools (50 percent), were raised Catholic (83 percent), and applied to at least one other Catholic college before coming to Holy Cross (73 percent). While the boundaries of the Catholic subculture have weakened, its parishes and schools continue to serve as feeders for Holy Cross. Moreover, Holy Cross students continue to come from the same white ethnic groups that have historically dominated the Catholic Church in the Northeast. Fifty-nine percent of students named Irish and 31 percent named Italian as one of their ethnic identities. Though Latinos now comprise as much as 30 percent of the American Catholic population (this estimate comes from William D’Antonio in the National Catholic Reporter), they make up only 5 percent of the Holy Cross student body.

Atheism is extremely rare among Holy Cross students. On the survey, 83 percent confessed belief in God (when those who believe in a “higher power” are included, this number rises to 96 percent). Likewise, 85 percent believe in an afterlife compared to 81 percent of 18-22 year-old students in the General Social Surveys. Only 13 percent of Holy Cross respondents gave a religious preference of “none” compared with 21 percent of 18-22 year-olds and 20 percent of 18-22 year-old students. Nine in 10 Holy Cross students reported that they considered themselves to be either “religious” or “spiritual”; nearly three-quarters reported they had either a “strong” or “somewhat strong” religious identity.

Masses, Retreats and Soup Kitchens

Whether attending Mass at St. Joseph’s Chapel, building homes in Appalachia or making an oceanside retreat in Rhode Island, Holy Cross students are more religiously involved than many college students. One-half of the respondents said they attend religious services at least 2-3 times a month, compared to an estimated 35 percent of U.S. college students and 28 percent of U.S. 18-22 year-olds. Likewise, 44 percent have participated in the Student Programs for Urban Development (SPUD), Holy Cross’ signature volunteer program, while 21 percent have been involved in one of the liturgical ministries—as a member of the church choir, a liturgical dancer, a Eucharistic minister, greeter, or lector. One in four students reported taking religious studies courses in addition to the one-course College requirement. Finally, one-fifth of the student body has participated in a retreat, reflecting the centrality of the Spiritual Exercises to the Jesuit tradition. Moreover, for each of these activities, the percentage who participated increased with the students’ academic class year. Nearly twice as many seniors as freshmen reported participating in a retreat, and over 50 percent of the fourth-year students, compared with 39 percent of the first-year students, had participated in SPUD. Thus, by many measures, Holy Cross students are living the College mission: creating an active worshipping community and engaging in the life and work of the contemporary church. Given the 30-year decline in college student religiosity nationally (documented in UCLA’s American Freshman survey), this is all the more noteworthy.

The impact of religion also is reflected in the life goals of Holy Cross students. When we compared students who were most involved with those least involved in campus religious life, we found that the most religiously active students were much more likely to regard these life goals as “essential” or “very important”: Developing a meaningful philosophy of life, performing community service and integrating spirituality into my life. The least active students, on the other hand, were more likely to value being very well off financially. Further, it is the life goals of the religiously active students that distinguish Holy Cross from other colleges and universities. According to the UCLA Freshman and Senior surveys, Holy Cross students as a whole are more likely than students elsewhere, including those at Catholic colleges, to value the development of a meaningful philosophy of life and the integration of spirituality into their lives and are less likely to want to be very well off financially.

Holy Cross Catholics: Committed to the Core

In American Catholics: Gender, Generation, and Commitment (2001), William D’Antonio and his co-authors make a distinction between the “core” and the “periphery” of Catholic identity, arguing that Catholics “distinguish faith from the rules of the institutional Church.” For most American Catholics the authority of the hierarchy “is seen as more peripheral than the sacraments, spirituality, and action for social justice.” According to the Gallup data they report in the book, this is especially true of the post-Vatican II generation of young adult Catholics.

Like their counterparts nationally, Catholics at Holy Cross distinguish between the core and the periphery of Catholic teachings, affirming the centrality of the sacraments, spirituality, community and social justice while parting company with Rome on other issues. When asked, “As a Catholic, how important is each of the following to you?” Seventy-six percent of Holy Cross Catholics described the sacraments as “very important,” followed by “spirituality and personal growth” (67 percent), the “spirit of community among Catholics” (64 percent), the “Church’s involvement in activities directed toward social justice and helping the poor” (53 percent), and the “Church’s teachings about Mary as the Mother of God” (41 percent). Like American Catholics nationally, over 90 percent rated each of these elements of Catholicism as at least “somewhat important” to being Catholic.

The authority of the hierarchy is somewhat less important to Catholics at Holy Cross, especially on the hot-button issues of birth control, women’s ordination and married priests. Like most American Catholics, they practice a form of what Andrew Greeley calls “selective Catholicism,” picking and choosing among church teachings. Over 80 percent agreed that “it would be a good thing if married men were allowed to be ordained as priests,” while nearly 90 percent agreed “it would be a good thing if women were allowed to be ordained as priests.” Only 16 percent of Holy Cross Catholics said that the teaching authority of the Vatican was “very important” to being Catholic, though 67 percent said it was at least “somewhat important.” Likewise, a majority felt that a person could be a good Catholic without obeying the church’s teachings on birth control (95 percent), divorce/remarriage (86 percent), and abortion (61 percent), and without believing in papal infallibility (69 percent). On most of these questions, the views of Holy Cross Catholic students closely matched those of young Catholics nationally. The major exception to this pattern is the tendency of Holy Cross students to see the teaching authority of the Vatican as somewhat less important.

Not surprisingly, the priest sex abuse scandal has tarnished Holy Cross Catholics’ image of the Catholic Church. When asked if reports that “a number of priests have abused children sexually” had strengthened or weakened their commitment to the church, 82 percent said their commitment had been weakened.

Despite such feelings, the vast majority of Catholic students at Holy Cross have continued to see church teachings as relevant to their lives. Ninety-one percent described the teachings of Catholicism as very or fairly important to them personally, and 80 percent said such beliefs had at least some influence on their daily thoughts and conduct. Moreover, a sizeable percentage of Holy Cross Catholics said they had heard of the United States Catholic Bishops’ pastoral letter on the economy (25 percent). By contrast, only 11 percent of post-Vatican II Catholics surveyed by Gallup in 1993 for the study Laity: American and Catholic had heard of the 1985 economics pastoral, suggesting that Holy Cross students are more literate in Catholic social teaching than Catholic young people nationally.

Not Losing Their Religion

A final issue addressed in the survey is the impact of the Holy Cross experience on the faith of students. Listening to the critics of contemporary Catholic higher education, one would expect to find a sharp drop-off in religious commitment among Holy Cross students. Yet such is not the case. A majority (60 percent) of Holy Cross students reported that their personal religious faith had not changed since coming to Holy Cross. Of those who did report a shift, 32 percent said their faith was stronger. Only 8 percent said that it was weaker.

To be sure, attendance at religious services was somewhat lower among seniors than among freshmen. Forty-two percent of seniors reported attending church at least 2-3 times per month, compared to 52 percent of freshmen. Yet this decline is quite modest compared to that experienced by students at many colleges. In How College Affects Students (1991), Ernest Pascarella and Patrick Terenzini note that the literature “fairly consistently reports statistically significant declines in religious attitudes, values, and behaviors during the college years,” including “changing (usually dropping) affiliation with a traditional church, a reduction in church going or prayer, alterations in beliefs about a supreme being, or a decline in general religiosity.” In the Holy Cross survey, 61 percent of respondents (and 65 percent of Catholic students) said that their participation in religious activities had either increased or remained the same since coming to college, suggesting more continuity than change.

What does change at Holy Cross is the degree to which students critically reflect on their faith. When asked if they had become more critical or appreciative of the teachings of the Catholic Church since coming to Holy Cross, the vast majority of students (68 percent) said that their view of the church had changed, with 27 percent becoming more critical, 9 percent becoming more appreciative, and 32 percent becoming more appreciative and more critical. In this way, Holy Cross students combine strong religious faith with thoughtful questioning, articulating a faith that is simultaneously critical and committed.

In his inaugural homily as president, Rev. Michael C. McFarland, S.J., said “We must learn to live in the tension between commitment and openness, between witness and dialogue, between faith and critical inquiry.” As the data from the survey make clear, Holy Cross students have lived in this tension. Consistent with the mission statement’s emphasis on “fundamental religious and philosophical questions,” they have critically investigated the truth claims of their faith communities. Consistent with the Jesuit emphasis on “finding God in all things,” they have held on to their religious convictions. Whether they have struck the right balance between faith and critical inquiry is an open question. That they have reflected on the place of faith in their lives is beyond dispute.

A Note on Methodology

The data reported here come from a personal interview survey of Holy Cross students conducted in spring 2002 by students enrolled in Singleton’s course in methods of social research.1 Because students were selected randomly, and the completed interviews represent a high percentage of the targeted sample (89 percent), the survey provides reliable data with an estimable margin of error. For most questions the error is about 6 percent. This means that in 95 of 100 cases, results based on a sample of this size (223) should not differ by more than 6 percentage points from the results that would be obtained if all Holy Cross students were interviewed. For example, with data from the spring survey we can be 95 percent confident that the percentage of Holy Cross students who identify themselves as Catholics is 73.5 plus or minus 6 percent—that is, between 67.5 and 79.5 percent. (Other surveys of Holy Cross students suggest that the actual percentage is closer to 80 than to 70 percent.)

The sample closely resembles the Holy Cross student body on several known and suspected characteristics. Among the 223 respondents, for example, 54 percent were women and 89 percent were white, as compared to 52 percent women and 88 percent white for the student population. Eighty percent of the sample, as compared with 77 percent of the student body, lived on campus.

Many of the questions we asked were drawn from national surveys, including the General Social Survey, the American Catholics Surveys of 1993 and 1999, and the CIRP Freshman Survey. Using items from these surveys enabled us to compare Holy Cross students with other sample populations, as we have done in Tables 1 and 2. There are limits, however, to the comparisons we can make. Although we would like to have known whether Holy Cross students are more or less religiously engaged than students at specific other colleges, especially Jesuit schools, this was not possible because no one to our knowledge has gathered such information. Several questions in the survey were asked only of students who identified themselves as Catholics. In this case, because we obtained the raw data from the 1999 American Catholics Survey, from which these questions were taken, we were able to show where Holy Cross Catholic students stand in relation to various other national cohorts of Catholics.

You can learn more about the Holy Cross Student Survey Project online at this Web site: http://www.holycross.edu/departments/socant/rsinglet/survey.htm. Findings from the American Catholics Survey can be found at http://www.natcath.com/NCR_Online/archives/102999/AMCATH.htm.

John A. Schmalzbauer and Royce A. Singleton Jr. are members of the department of sociology and anthropology at Holy Cross.

The authors wish to thank Kelly Gillespie ’99, Rev. Michael C. McFarland, S.J., and Professors Alice Laffey and David J. O’Brien for offering helpful feedback on this piece.

1 The following students served as interviewers on this project: Stephanie Baker, Karen Cesary, Maria Chavez, Rachel Covino, Stefanie Cruz, Yolanda Dawkins, Nick Desimone, Karen Farley, Mike Fedigan, Ashley Klecak, Kathryn Lang, Caitlin Leonard, Lizzie McCawley, Erin Mooney, Ana Moriarty, Nicole Mortorano, Jordan Nestor, Matt Ney, Kristen Norris, Steve Noto, Deirdre O’Connor, Erin Palank, Annette Quatrano, Catherine Ryan, and Sara Stockman.