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COMMENTARY:
University and College Chaplains on Virginia Tech
April 20, 2007    Episode no. 1034
Read This Week's November 7, 2008
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In the aftermath of the Virginia Tech tragedy, read the thoughts and comments of university and college chaplains:

What I am saying to my students and others is that our sorrow can only give way to healing through love. Even the smallest of gestures matters in times of great loss, shock and grief. I am certain that there isn't a campus community in the country whose heart does not ache for the people of Virginia Tech. There are no exact right words, nothing can bring back those who have been lost, there is only this, don't abandon one another. We must hold each other, tenderly wipe away tears and embrace life. This can happen in person or it can happen from miles away through prayer and deep concern for our fellow human beings be they on a college campus or in a war zone. In opening our hearts to great pain we can experience profound love.

Sharon M.K. Kugler, University Chaplain
Johns Hopkins University
Baltimore, Maryland

How do you lock down a sprawling campus? How do you make hundreds of campus buildings, replete with entrances and exits, safe from armed attackers or hidden bombs? Is there any defense against malice, and if there is, how can you tell if and when it's coming?

There is evil in the world. Malice can find its way into the minds and hearts of persons young or old. Once there, malicious intent can release destructive force. We are left to wonder why as we ponder prevention possibilities on campuses everywhere.

On April 16, 2007, a campus community of some 26,000 was neither ready nor able to prevent the largest massacre in the history of American education. But was the campus community unprepared? To ask the same question in another way: Was any preparation possible?

The campus community was not necessarily unprepared. Yes, preparation is indeed possible. In the Christian view of life after death, preparation for life through death is a definite possibility. Indeed, it is a necessity for the successful completion of a Christian life.

Prevention, as opposed to preparation, neither is nor was possible at Virginia Tech. Why? Because there is no defense against malice in our world. But preparation is always possible. There is a preparation for anything in a person whose human will is aligned with the will of God. Preparation for any eventuality is the story of a human life lived in accord with the will of the Creator of that life.

That's why campus ministry is as important as the counseling center on a college campus. Certainly, psychological trauma requires immediate attention, but so do the stress on faith and the strain on spirituality. Moreover, the power of faith and religion to ready the human spirit to withstand any assault, physical or psychological, cannot be overestimated. That's why the Church has to provide this ministry in campus settings that are not Catholic.

Liturgically -- especially sacramentally -- the believer must be helped to heal in the broken places. Near-campus parishes and on-campus ministry centers provide the space and facilitate the reflection that students need if they are to permit sacramental grace and the interpretative framework provided by the Christian Gospel to work the wonders they are capable of working.

The physical attractiveness and proximity of Catholic ministry facilities to the students are important. The young must be drawn to them during their formative years so that they can reflect on the meaning of life, their purpose in life, and the laws of God within which the good life is to be lived.

Without ministry, we will be permitting our young to sleepwalk, at their peril, through a world of good and evil. Preparation is always possible -- even where prevention fails.

(For an extended version of these comments see Catholic News Service)

William J. Byron, SJ
President, St. Joseph's Preparatory School
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

We mourn the deaths of students and faculty at Virginia Tech. It is appropriate and natural that we should do so. We identify with the victims and their friends and families, because they are like us. They are students and staff at a university in a very pastoral location. Our own sense of security is threatened by this act of violence.

Already, in emails and blogs, I am hearing calls for greater college security ranging from arming campus police to allowing students to arm themselves. Our sense of invulnerability at Dartmouth has, despite some very tragic events, remained rather strong. Last year I attended my son's graduation from a college in New York City; all guests went through metal detectors and had their belongings examined. This is, of course, a great contrast to the Dartmouth graduation.

While I understand that conversations about campus security will inevitably, and perhaps productively, occur, I hope that one important fact does not get ignored: Senseless violence is horrible wherever it occurs -- whether in Darfur or Israel or Palestine or Iraq. The deaths at Virginia Tech are devastating, but their number is a fraction of those being killed daily in Iraq or Darfur. This does not mean that we should grieve these students' deaths less; rather, it means that we should grieve all violent deaths more. And, unless our grief produces opposition to violence, it is futile. Every life lost at Virginia Tech was precious; the loss is incalculable. But every life lost to violence anywhere is equally precious. Let us remember, and speak.

Richard R. Crocker
College Chaplain, Acting Dean
William Jewett Tucker Foundation
Dartmouth College
Hanover, New Hampshire

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I would respond in general, that is, to a non-specific and perhaps non-religious audience, with the following:

The world is good, the good handiwork of a divine goodness that passes all understanding and endures forever. Yet the world is just not right but somehow off track, wrongheaded, with something "loose" rattling around inside it--the shadow of sin, the specter of evil, the sorrow of death. We have to face both and pray for deliverance from the latter on the basis of the former. So we teach our children to say "deliver us from evil." Robert McAfee Brown said so memorably: "Friends, this is God's world, but it is a crummy world, and we have to live with both realities."


I would respond to a religious, particularly Christian audience (one wrestling with the question of evil in the shadow of the cross, and so wrestling with misperceptions of the cross in the midst of a culture of violence) with the following (cautionary) refrain:

Remember it is not the passion of Christ that defines the person of Christ, but the person who defines the passion.

Remember it is not suffering that bears meaning, but meaning that bears (up under) and bears (with) suffering.

Remember it is not the cross that carries love but love that carries the cross.

Remember it is not crucifixion that encompasses salvation, but salvation that encompasses even the tragedy of crucifixion.

Remember when we pray "deliver us from evil" there is a God to whom we may pray in the expectation of being heard.

The Rev. Dr. Robert Allan Hill
Dean of Marsh Chapel
Professor of New Testament and Pastoral Theology
University Chaplain
Boston University

It is important to remember that church goes on despite our sadness; that life goes on despite our sadness. In fact, it is essential that church goes on, because it is in worship, in fellowship, in song, in prayer that we find ourselves renewed, restored, our very lives affirmed. We do what we do at church not to escape the pain that the world sometimes brings to bear upon us, but to embrace the totality and complexity of all that life yields. Sometimes we hurt, and sometimes we cry, and sometimes laugh, and sometimes we rejoice. All of it, all the vagaries of life, we go through at church. Never alone. Always with each other. Always with God. On this particular week we tremble in the wake of one of the worst tragedies to ever touch an American college or university campus. The psalmists cried out to God for strength, endurance, deliverance:

Do not, O Lord, withhold your mercy from me; Let your steadfast love and your faithfulness Keep me safe forever. For evils have encompassed me without number; My iniquities have overtaken me, until I cannot see; They are more than the hairs of my head, And my heart fails me. Be pleased, O Lord, to deliver me; O Lord, make haste to help me. (Psalm 40)

That is the very real rhetoric of someone who is grasping for deliverance. We all know that feeling, have gone through moments that seemed like epochs when we simply felt overwhelmed by all that has happened, by all that we have had to endure. How we navigate that treacherous terrain is dependent on how we see ourselves in the world, how we understand the very basis of our identity. If we look upon ourselves and see flesh and bone that ultimately must encounter the world alone through our own skill, savvy, determination, and will, I believe that in the end we shall fail. In that case life and loss can overcome us, because we can be depleted of our best resources, abandoned by the personal virtues upon which we always relied. More than anything else, our self-reliance can betray us and leave us famished.

When we are in pain, when we trudge through difficult times, our own concerns scream so loudly that we cannot begin to perceive God's subtle reassurances and affirmations of our value and hope for the future, and so we feel abandoned, betrayed, left alone. But if, even in the midst of our great sadness, we are able to allow ourselves the possibility that God might be reaching out to us despite God's seeming silence, we might hear that still, quiet voice that is God's encouragement and support. God is always at our side, available to come through when we truly need a time of deliverance.

The Rev. Dr. Stephen Butler Murray
College Chaplain, Director of the Intercultural Center, and Lecturer in Religion
Skidmore College
Saratoga Springs, New York

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