I moved to Philly a few years after graduating from Penn State in 2001. I had spent the year after college running a recovery house in Harrisburg and volunteering half-time as an assistant to the chaplain at Dauphin County Prison and living on my savings. It was around this time I was actively discerning monastic life, but had to make a living as well in the meantime. I took a job as a bike messenger, delivering packages and certified letters to law offices throughout the city, from "river to river, Vine to Pine." Then I got a job as a long-term substitute at a Catholic primary school in Oxford Circle, teaching English, Science, and Religion to 7th graders. After that gig was up, I worked in case management for individuals with developmental disabilities and forensic recovery, and it was about this time I started thinking about applying to graduate school.
I told myself if I ever went back to school it would be for something I was actually interested in and passionate about. I was deciding between two different routes--a MFA in Creative Writing at Temple, and a MA in Theology. There were three programs I was considering for Theology--Lasalle, Villanova, and St. Charles Seminary. I was working full-time so wanted to stay in the city, and wasn't willing to move for a program.
Lasalle's program was a little weak, though I did know an enthusiastic guy from the Philly Young Adult group who was in their program for Youth Ministry or something. I visited St. Charles in Overbrook and spoke with the Dean. She said something which at the time did not register, but in retrospect I remember as significant enough to stay with me, "we teach the Truth here." As a left-of-center Catholic at the time, the statement of orthodoxy seemed stiff and off-putting, and while the program at St. Charles was significantly less expensive, I decided instead I was better suited to attend Villanova. I spoke with the graduate program director, applied, and was accepted.
I took one course a semester, working during the day and traveling to campus once a week in the evening. My first class was a summer seminar course on Romans. It was my first theology course ever, and it was not for beginners. Every night I went home and looked up words in the dictionary--I had no idea what 'hermeneutics' was, or 'eschatology' or 'parousia'. I was surrounded by smaht kids and I was out of sorts. To add to the challenge, I was fighting an extreme bout of clinical depression, hardly able to get out of bed, my brain and body like molasses. My mom would have to drive an hour to my apartment, pick me up, take me to class, and wait outside the SAC for me to finish, then drive me back to my apartment...a true act of maternal love. I struggled and struggled, but got an A- in the class. The remaining five years in the program, one course a semester, was a grind, as my diagnosis was just beginning to manifest itself in an intense way. In one bout of mania, I emailed the entire faculty with a frenzied idea for a convoluted thesis proposal. When things started to spiral and I was too sick to continue that semester, I took a leave of absence, but came back the following term and ended up graduating by sheer force of will and grace in 2009 with a 3.8 GPA.
Why did I want to go to grad school in the first place? What was my motivation? As a new Catholic of less than five years, I was enthusiastic about wanting to serve the Church and live for God, and figured it was a logical next step to learn more about how to do that, from an academic perspective. I (naively) figured it would help me be a better Catholic, a better future monk, and to learn effective ways to transmit the kerygma and the tools to teach apologetics, defending the Truth of the Catholic faith I had fallen in love with. I thought even if I didn't end up becoming a monk, I could go into campus ministry or serve the Church in some way.
If anyone in those shoes would ask me today, anyone who cared about their faith and orthodoxy and evangelism and Truth, I'd tell them in all honesty to think long and hard before pursuing a Masters degree in Theology. Here's why:
1) You can learn everything you need to do know about the Faith in the Catechism, which can be accessed online for free, by anyone, anywhere, through the Vatican's website. Or, as the famous line in Good Will Hunting goes when Will encounters a first year Harvard grad student at a local bar: "You dropped a hundred fifty grand on an education you could have gotten for a dollar fifty in late charges at the public library."
2) The program was engaging in the sense that you were encouraged to "ask the questions," but there was a flip side on the negative to this approach. In constantly "asking the questions" while never really coming to definite answers, it encouraged a kind of intellectual or philosophical masturbation. I did have one Thomistic professor, but he was the exception rather than the norm. I realize an academic discipline such as Theology was not akin to catechesis, but I just felt like the exploration came at the expense of definitive Truths taught in the classroom.
3) We probably ended up studying the works of just as many Protestant theologians as Catholic theologians. I think there's value in that in some ways for balance sake, but it's just peculiar looking back. Something to be aware of.
4) It didn't encourage a simple, trusting, child-like faith. My professors were very nice and learned, but devotion and submission to authority were not ideals held up to be emulated. Theology in this context was about pushing boundaries rather than arriving at definitive destinations.
5) I guess I shouldn't have expected this in the first place, but I didn't really learn any effective and practical ways to help make disciples or spread the Gospel. It was a strictly academic, heady kind of knowledge that did me little good in the real world (aside from honing writing and citation style). No one really seemed to be on fire for the faith, but were instead suspicious of it. I was naive, I admit. But still disappointed in the end.
6) Your job prospects are limited. Campus ministry and DRE positions don't pay much, so your ability to support your family is challenged from the start, especially if you have loans to repay. Better to go into something where you can support a family, raise a family, witness to the faith by your family, and study the classics and read about the lives of the saints on your own. If you do want to go into these fields, just do it with your eyes wide open.
7) You really have to be careful about orthodoxy. Some programs are outright dissident, some less so but still not orthodox. I had to 'unlearn' quite a bit as I came closer to the Faith after grad school, and realized nothing I learned in grad school helped me become a better Catholic or encouraged me to practice the virtues personally. If it's not helping you become a saint, and even works against it...well, maybe it's best to leave it behind.
8) Liberal Christianity is a dying game. The days of the Jesus Seminar and all that nonsense have run their course. When liberal Christianity gets conflated and indistinguishable from an MSW program, you know something valuable has been lost and is no longer worth dying for.
This was my experience. I'm sure there are more reasons I would dissuade anyone who cares about their faith and regards it as a pearl of great price thinking about pursuing a degree in Theology. Do I regret it? Like all things, I think God used the experience and brought good out of it in the end, if nothing else. I was also in a different place in my faith journey during that time, so Truth and orthodoxy chaffed, like an itchy shirt that was a size too small. Thank God for His patience with me, and His grace and forgiveness, that I would encounter people in my life who quietly challenged my preconceptions about stodgy conservatism by the way their lived their lives, and the fruit it bore, and the Truth it attested to. As St. John Chrysostom said in his "Homilies on the Gospel of John":
"What shall we then do that we may be saved? Let us begin the practice of virtue, as we have opportunity. And when we have got into the habit of this virtue, let us go to another, just as in the things we learn at school, guarding what is already gained, and acquiring others."
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