Pagan Catholicism at Loyola

, Malcolm A. Kline, 1 Comment

When Catholic colleges and universities embrace diversity, Catholics should worry.  “Loyola University Chicago recently christened a new pagan student club, with its student organizer saying the group aims to help pupils at the private Catholic college find the God they seek, not just the one featured in the Bible,” Dominic Lynch, a student there, wrote on The College Fix on October 23, 2014. I’ll bet they didn’t have a hard time finding a faculty advisor.

pagan student club at loyola chicago

“The Loyola Student Pagan Alliance was granted official recognition by the university earlier this month by its Student Activities and Greek Affairs board,” Lynch reported. “However, shortly after the group’s approval, it changed its name and deleted a reference to the word ‘pagan’ on its Facebook page, which is only accessible by Loyola University Chicago students.”

“The alliance now calls itself the ‘Indigenous Faith Tradition Alliance.’”

“When asked whether colleges should be concerned with facilitating students’ spiritual development, just 18 percent of faculty members at public universities agreed, compared with 62 percent at Catholic colleges, according to the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA,”  Beth McMurtrie wrote in the Chronicle of Higher Education on October 17, 2014. “That meshes well with what students want: Four out of five say they have an interest in spirituality.” Yes, but so do the pagans.