Home again, home again, jiggity jig.

Our son, John, is home from boarding school. He spent the last 2 ½ + years at Immaculate Conception Apostolic School in Center Harbor, New Hampshire.  ICAS, in the old days, would have been called a Minor Seminary.  It is run by the Legionaries of Christ, of recent ill-fame, and is dedicated to the middle and high school education of boys who may be interested in the Catholic priesthood.  John felt drawn to the school as a seventh-grader and attended after he graduated eighth grade at our local public school. If he had finished at ICAS (this coming June), he would have gone on to the Legion’s novitiate to begin more formal studies in philosophy and theology. 

We did not make him come home and there were not “incidents” of any sort that propelled John to change his mind about novitiate.  This past fall John decided, in prayer, that God was not drawing him in that direction and he told us that he wanted to come home at Christmas time.  We were a little surprised, in fact, because he was quite happy at the school. 

If you know anything about the issues (understatement of the year) surrounding the Legionaries, you can guess that Rob and I had misgivings about John going on to novitiate, but we were determined to let God take the upper hand in directing John in his vocation.  Our willingness to allow him to go to Novitiate with the Legion is not a reflection of our ignorance of the unseemly past and uncertain future of the Legion of Christ. However our family’s experiences with ICAS, have been, across the board, positive.  Both John and Vince grew as students, Christians and young men at ICAS.  The learned Latin (a little), how to ski, and that they could actually sing at Mass without flames coming from their mouths.  They played hockey, visited Rome, and climbed mountains all over New Hampshire and southern Maine.  One of the greatest experiences they had was the opportunity to live and work with priests and religious brothers.  They got to know them as human beings who ate, slept, read, worked, prayed, laughed, played sports, watched movies, got tired, hungry, and irritable just like every other person they know.  But they did all these things while celebrating the Sacraments and dedicating themselves to the boys who they daily patiently and wisely formed and guided.  They were able to see the joy, the struggles, and the fellowship of religious life and to see it as a real option for their own lives.  I truly would not hesitate to send my younger sons to ICAS, if the school survives the re-formation of the Legion.  

There are plenty of stories out there of people’s bad experiences and impressions of the Legion and Regnum Christi.   I know that many were legitimately damaged by Maciel’s evil deeds and the system that he put in place to cover them.  Other folks “drank the RC Kool-Aid” and now they feel burned. Others just like to have something negative to say.  I don’t fall into any of those categories.  OK, except for the last one, but I am controlling myself. True, if you caught me privately, I have plenty to say about Regnum Christi, but my gripes don’t really benefit anybody or advance anything.  Our concern right now is for the timely and thorough reform of the Congregation. In the meantime I am grateful for the boys’ time at ICAS. 

So, now John is home, and homeschooling, at least for the time being.  He is a little bored, but September should find him in school again. I wonder if I have bitten off more that I can chew because my Latin ends at Adeste Fideles and my last math class was “Statistics for Dummies” my sophomore year of college. But I am hopeful, and John is patient.

And God is good.  And it is nice to have our boy back home for a short time before he flies the nest for good.  After all, the days are long, but the years are short.

College Road Trips

This weekend our beloved Founder, Rob took our oldest, Mia, back to her college, Salve Regina in Newport RI after a weekend visit.    It was a little sad,dropping her off, he thought, to which you will respond, "Why, OF COURSE it was!"  But then, you have not had to live with this girl for the past year. We are actually thankful that we can now be sorry to see her go.

Aside from the typical travails of teenagedom  I truly did not realize that the college search process was going to be such a psychological trial.   We entered a period of detente at some point last fall in which we simply did not speak of the ever closer-looming decision which was going to impact the rest of her life because if I asked even a neutral question about it I was risking a verbal goring.  I made few suggestions about where she ought to apply, but a couple of her chosen schools I had discouraged outright.  In the end, I just let her do whatever she dang well wanted

When the dust settled she had narrowed down her choice to three schools that had accepted her: Ithaca College, Mt. St. Mary's University and Salve Regina University.

Last Spring, on Palm Sunday, I took her to visit Mount Saint Mary's University in Emmittsburg, Maryland.  The Mount is a small school with a lot to recommend it.  It has warm and friendly community, an excellent and orthodox campus ministry, a long history, good academic reputation, and a picturesque location.  She didn't like it.

Her reasons were mostly legitimate.  She wants to study art.  The art department has two faculty members and tiny little studio spaces.   They graduate maybe seven or eight art students a year.  The campus is well outside of "town", such as Emmittsburg is, there is no public transportation and nowhere to walk except the woods.   I felt agreed that the Mount was just not the place for her. 

 That left Salve and Ithaca .  She has heard some discouraging web-reviews about Salve Regina (no bar scene, boring campus life).   Rob and I had not heard much good about Ithaca ("Cornell to wed, Ithaca to bed", welcome to high school part 2).  What we now had, as we had had since the application process began, was a bad case of competing perceptions. What we considered BAD about Ithaca, she considered GOOD.  To summarize what I mean, here is an actual conversation he had with a work collegue who attended Ithaca:

"So what did you think of Ithaca?"
"Oh, man, I loved it.  It was a non-stop party for four years!"

Words to warm a father's heart.

Of course she sensed this  and insisted that we ought to let her choose her own college.  One of her reasons was, "After all, I applied where you wanted me to apply."

What? What???


I will admit that we pressed her somewhat to apply to Mt. St. Mary's.  The application was free, we knew that the Mount had money to offer students, we have  known kids who enjoyed it there, and on top of all those good things it has a strong Catholic identity. What is bad about that? Otherwise, she chose all of them, (however haphazardly, in my opinion).

If you have ever read Harville Hendricks, the marriage therapist,  he writes about how the primary task in relationships is to understand and accept that the other person as other.  That is that they have their own ideas, perceptions and thoughts, and no matter how long you live with someone or how much they love you or you love them, this will never change.  I will always have my own perceptions while the other (Mia) has hers.  She perceived that she was being pressured into a certain college. I perceived that she was being draw toward Ithaca because it was more prestigious than Salve around her high school and, or course,  because she wanted to party.

We never expected her to attend one of the semi-monastic types of Catholic colleges, but Ithaca seemed like it was approaching the Pro-leagues in the Party School Association.  My brother spent a couple of years at a big Florida university like that.  He called it afterward, "Caligula U".  Would she have had the depth and commitment to retain her faith within a totally hostile atmosphere?  Might Ithaca be that atmosphere?

Thank God, we will never know.  Ithaca just didn't come through with the cash like Salve did.Now we are grateful, so grateful, that she seems to have landed in a good place. They have an excellent art program, good academics, a professional and caring administration and this view:

Not bad.