The November 23rd edition of Our Sunday Visitor arrived in my office with some news that shocked me. There was a report about a survey recently conducted by the Center for the Study of Higher Education entitled, “Behaviors and Beliefs of Current and Recent Students at Catholic Colleges.”

Here are some of the survey’s findings:

• 57% said the experience of attending a Catholic school had no effect on their participation in Mass and the Sacrament of Reconciliation;

• 60% of the students surveyed agreed strongly or somewhat that abortion should be legal;

• 57% agreed strongly or somewhat that same-sex  “marriage” should be legal;

• 46% said they engaged in sex outside of marriage during their last year in college;

• 27% regularly viewed pornography that same year.

 I don’t know anything about the survey’s methodology or what Catholic colleges or universities were polled. I doubt any one here was contacted.

So what do you think? Email me and share your thoughts about these findings, ok? It seems to me they raise questions that go to the heart of the mission and identity of Catholic colleges and universities in the 21st century.

Yesterday the College looked back to the middle of the 19th century and celebrated Founders’ Day. The Basilica was packed with attendees as we commemorated the contributions of our founders, Abbot Wimmer and his 18 companions, who left Bavaria, crossed the Atlantic and established Saint Vincent 162 years ago.

Their many sacrifices - continued today by the 170 monks who call Saint Vincent Archabbey home and comprise the largest Christian monastery in the Western world – have been augmented by a procession of students, faculty and staff over the years.

As I continue my third year as president of Saint Vincent, I am in awe of what those who preceded me accomplished and what they now make possible.

Wimmer took a leap of faith in venturing to the Laurel foothills and left to his successors the work of shepherding what he had begun. Some of the fruits of his foundational efforts were foreseeable – missions built, new monasteries established, a flourishing of vocations to the priesthood and religious life, and legions of students graduated.

But I’ll bet some were not foreseen and would have surprised him.

For example, I doubt he could have imagined that women would one day enroll at the college he chartered.

This year we celebrate 25 years of coeducation at Saint Vincent. What a blessing our female students are! During the Honors Convocation yesterday, 33 of the 54 students awarded with “Who’s Who Among Students in American Colleges and Universities” certificates were women. Our campus population is basically now divided equally between men and women and within the last year I appointed the first female Vice-President of the College, Mary Collins, who leads Student Affairs.

This has been the story of Saint Vincent as it has grown and matured through time. Founders’ Day gave all of us a chance to step back and marvel at the advances of the College and what God in His wisdom and grace has accomplished here through the efforts and innovations of so many willing minds, hearts and hands.

Brother Norman told me that the Founders’ Day tradition was inaugurated in 1987 on the 100th anniversary of the death of Abbot Wimmer. Our celebration yesterday concluded with a community dinner in the Carey Center where nearly 1,000 students, monks, faculty, staff and guests enjoyed a traditional Thanksgiving fare.

I thought of how this decades-old tradition ended the same way many Saint Vincent gatherings of yesteryear concluded – with members of the Saint Vincent family at a table together, breaking bread (and, last night, breaking pumpkin mousse!).

Founders’ Day this year came at a time of economic and global turbulence and uncertainty. Indeed, as we were gathered in the Basilica for vespers, the stock markets took yet another plunge.

But a look at our history – being founded as Archabbot Douglas described in his address at the Convocation during the traumatic time surrounding the Civil War and then persevering through crop failures, a devastating fire, and the like – tells us that Saint Vincent will continue to prosper.

And in light of the polling data I cited at the outset, isn’t our mission and identity needed now more than ever?