Final (draft): Catholic on Campus

(Audience: The Index, or the Gazette)

Two days before 43 Catholic groups nationwide filed a lawsuit against the Obama Administration for its mandate requiring some religious institutions to offer health insurance that covers contraception, anti-gay protestors appeared at the site of Kalamazoo College’s annual Crystal Ball dance. For one night every spring, students can dress in drag to reclaim their identity and look beyond the limitations of gender stereotypes. One protestor wore a t-shirt that said, “Stop sinning! Trust Jesus!” and gripped a sign with the rainbow-colored words, “Homo sex is sin!” Tempers on campus subsided by that morning, but that same protestor was met with a hot resistance a few days earlier during his first of two campus visits that week. He shouted that K's students deserve hell, that they support AIDS, that they are a load of sinners. A mildly composed female student sat on the grass waving a sign that read, “Homo sex is fun!” while one gay couple flaunted a kiss in front of the protestor and another laid entwined at his feet. During his visit the next day, after receiving emails from administrators urging the campus to pay no heed to this man, students stood near him in silence holding posters with the message, “God loves everyone.”

Sophomore student Marissa Dawson remained quiet, not so she could get her peaceful point across or deflect the attention from him, but because, as a practicing Catholic, she feels silenced by the campus community.

She only heard about the protestors in conversation and read about them in Facebook and Tumblr posts, but that already left her upset about the campus’s reception of its unpleasant visitors. She saw a student blog, “Variety of Reactions to Those Damn Evangelicals,” followed by pictures of Lady Gaga saying, “Go Fuck Yourself”, Steven Colbert jolting wide-mouthed from his seat, and Ryan Stiles joyfully whipping out his middle finger. She wondered if her peers actually knew his denomination, or if they were just stereotyping.

“We do not need something else on this campus to add a stigma to religion,” she said, half grinning. “I was never taught to hate.”

Marissa’s relationship with her Catholic faith began like many others’; born to Catholic parents, she had no say in the matter. She went to Mass and Sunday school, prayed and read the scripture. Early on she learned that religious practices extend to how she lives her life; they are a combination of institutional and individual things. She admits that she would have given up her religion if not for certain spiritual experiences. It was not a coincidence, she says, that she was able to lift herself out of dark places like depression and self-deprecation at a young age.

Her religious life transformed after she was confirmed in her freshman year of high school. Grade school religion classes failed to remind her that she still had the individual power to choose, and that the Church’s institutionalism is not black and white.

“There’s a space for personal decision among all those big issues [like gay marriage and contraception]. The judgment is left up to God.”

Despite her strong religious convictions and unwavering relationship with the Church as an adolescent, the protestors reminded Dawson why being Catholic on K’s small campus has never been easy, and why she no longer feels a passion for practicing. Support is scare, she says. People are not that accepting of religion.

“I don’t blame them. I’ve been made aware of the issues people have with the Catholic Church. But just because I do believe in God doesn’t mean I don’t understand the doubts that people have.”

She just wishes her peers understood why she believes what she believes. But her recent insecurities surrounding her religion and the backlash against the anti-gay protestors on a small campus in the small city of Kalamazoo lend themselves to an escalating nationwide discourse involving the Catholic Church.

One week ago, Catholic organizations around the nation—hospitals, universities, and charities—sued the Obama Administration over a mandate requiring birth control coverage in most health insurance plans, charging it for violating their religious freedom. Several sources assert that the lawsuit is not about preventing women from having access to contraception; it is based on the conviction that the Government is imposing values onto these organizations that conflict with their religious teachings. If the Supreme Court upholds the mandate, they believe it will set precedent for future administrations to undercut the values of religious organizations. Catholic institutions were still displeased after Obama’s proposal to allow religious universities and charities to have their health insurers offer the coverage instead, seeing as many of them, like the archdiocese, are self-insured.

Dawson’s strongest frustration, stemming from her personal experience as an impaired Catholic voice on a liberal college campus, is that people do not understand why the Catholic Church has its stance on contraception and abortion. Behind its pro-life stance is a compassion for the child and its mother, a desire to protect and keep sacred the inherent beauty of life. Conservative viewpoints are vilified, she says, twisted to sound like people want to deny medical care and are against women’s rights.

But Dawson prefers not to politicize her religious views, even though they are closely tied to her politics, because she has doubts. She stays away from arguing for the Catholic Church, like she stayed away the day of the protests, because she has the same doubts as her gay best friend and other liberal friends when it comes to Catholic teachings; Catholic institutions should not be forced to provide contraceptives, but a woman should have access to abortion if she wants one. God did not create man to be with man, but she knows that gay couples often live a more Christian lifestyle than straight couples. She believes in sin, but in love just the same.

If people see her doubt, Dawson thinks people will ride her off. They will play up her insecurities and inner conflicts. They will look at her interactions, experiences, and relationships, and pass judgment, call her hypocrite.

“We don’t celebrate the student with doubts. We’re oriented towards believing something 100%. We’re high achieving individuals. We’re rational, logical. Faith and religion don’t work that way. They require an amount of intangibility. But that doesn’t necessarily follow the logic of how the world works, and how this school thinks.”