The Beginnings of a New Renaissance
In the early 1970s, less than 30 years after our founding, Franciscan University was facing bankruptcy and falling enrollment. Problems arising from the dramatic cultural and moral shifts of the sixties and seventies also plagued the school. Our problems were no different from those of most Catholic and secular universities at that time. But our response was.
While other administrators—even at many Catholic colleges—caved in to student petitions for co-ed dorms and an end to campus curfews, Franciscan University’s president, Father Michael Scanlan, TOR, inaugurated “households,” an innovative residence life program requiring students to form small groups for ongoing communal prayer, sharing, and mutual support. He likewise refused the petition to eliminate the Sunday morning Mass, and instead began celebrating the liturgy himself with a longer homily and plenty of time for prayer and worship.
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Instead of rejecting the integration of faith and reason in the classroom as so many of his peers did, the law school graduate also insisted that academic freedom included the freedom to present the teachings of the Catholic Church fully and faithfully. Father Michael restored the primacy of theology in the curriculum and created a new Theology Major. In choosing faculty, he looked for and found scholars who shared his enthusiasm for “dynamic orthodoxy,” an educational approach marked by fidelity to the Church and openness to the Holy Spirit. |
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