FOCUS: College campuses need faithful Catholics to revive true friendship

Fellowship of Catholic University Students (FOCUS) has released a short guide for how Catholics can bring life back to the many college campuses where students feel isolated.

The Catholic young adult outreach program begins the guide it published July 16 with the following question: “Did you know that our Catholic faith can be the leading way to help us forge life-changing friendships in college?” 

The guide aims to explain why college has that unique potential and how to overcome the trend in recent years of campuses becoming more isolating. 

“We have more in common with someone in our class than with almost anyone else — they chose the same professor to listen to and will be reading the same things, studying the same things, working through the same problem sets and writing the same basic papers that we will be,” the guide says. “It’s all the basic ingredients to start a friendship with those whom we sit beside.”

However, although college is uniquely structured to encourage building friendship, the guide argues that in recent years the campus has become almost as isolating a place as the rest of the country. The reasons for this failure are many, according to the guide, which cites the impact of COVID lockdowns, technology addiction, and obsessions with grades.

“To put it plainly, the college campus, built to sustain a certain way of living, is dying,” the guide says. “Fortunately, as Catholics, we believe in the power of resurrection. We believe that love is stronger than death and that we’re meant to have hope when all seems hopeless.”

The way to begin this resurrection is to look toward God, which will in turn help the faithful to better love those around them. 

“God gave us neighbors that are demonstrably loveable, demonstrated by every crucifix we’ve ever seen, and He has invited us to love them too,” the guide states. 

Catholic college students should be inspired by this love to approach fellow students, introduce themselves, and begin friendships, even if it is initially uncomfortable or challenging. 

“It may feel like it will kill us to introduce ourselves to someone sitting next to us,” the guide reads. “It may feel like a kind of death to listen to someone in our dorm or to ask them a deeper question. We may be challenged in ways that we didn’t expect, and we may have to challenge people in return. To really live out the college experience today, there is a kind of dying to comfort.

“There are all kinds of reasons to fear or avoid our neighbors, even pre- or post-COVID. It’s time we also discovered reasons and ways to love them.”

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