AgnosticPreachersKid / Wikimedia College
CV NEWS FEED // Christendom College’s new president, Dr. George Harne, recently explained his vision for a new chapter for the college’s history, saying that students will receive intellectual and moral formation and then be sent out to the world through “partnerships and pathways.”
Harne said in a recent interview published by the Imaginative Conservative that Christendom’s founding mission was to “form and send” leaders into the world by instilling visions in the heart and mind of each student. Formation is achieved by a rigorous liberal arts education and a rich, authentically Catholic culture, but college is only the beginning
“If we do our work well, our alumni will undertake their own formation over the course of their lives,” he said, adding:
But when we form our students we must also send them. If “Christendom” can be considered any place where Christ is honored as king, our students will not only seek to order their own lives and the lives of their families around Christ but will also seek to extend Christ’s reign in their parishes, communities, and the places where they work professionally.
Harne said he has thought of two ways to send students out into the world. The first is through formal and informal partnerships with Church institutions, nonprofits, or professional businesses. Once the foundation is laid with the partnerships, according to Harne “pathways” will begin to appear.
“Most of our alumni will serve faithfully and heroically in places that are more hidden, just offstage, and out of the limelight. They will be salt and light, fulfilling their vocations without public fanfare,” Harne said. “But others will have more public roles and make decisive and pivotal decisions that will redirect the fundamental currents that shape our lives over the course of generations.”
He said that the college has “made a beginning” in sending graduates to several different fields in the workforce, including government, higher education, media, and economic businesses, but added that “more can be done.”
“We cannot give up on [them]… We must renew them by sending those whom we have formed,” he continued.
Harne said that to maintain the college’s commitment to its Catholic identity and rigorous academics, the college community needs to focus on three things. First, the founding vision of Christendom; second, magisterial teaching on higher education; and third, clarifying the “needs and opportunities of our present age” and responding with charity, courage, and prudence.
At the same time, however, this leadership cannot become degraded into a kind of restless activism that wears away the contemplative foundation that must be at the heart of all that we do,” Harne highlighted, later adding:
I believe that Christendom can—if we remain true to our particular founding, our specific nature, and see the present moment with absolute clarity—become the place to which thoughtful people from across our nation (and beyond) will look for wisdom and direction. Christendom can become the source that illuminates, nourishes, guides, and challenges those who will shape our future. And Christendom alumni will take this light and wisdom to the four corners of the globe, wherever God may call them. And once there, they will do the work God has called them to do.
Read Harne’s full interview here.
