Stephen D. Minnis
Benedictine University is on a mission to change the culture of America, but I never expected that my commencement speech would place us at the center of the country’s current culture wars. But this experience is a good reminder that our mission is more important than ever. Let me explain.
Benedictine University in Atchison, Kansas, where I serve as president, is where Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker recently gave a commencement speech, and looking back, it had all the ingredients for a buzz: Butker, the leading scorer in the last two Super Bowls, quoted Taylor Swift and offered his views on politics, religion and gender roles.
But no one expected it to become such a big deal. Suddenly, the speech and the reaction were everywhere: on the Today Show, Fox & Friends, The View, The Daily Wire, NPR, the BBC.
For days, talk shows across the country aired their opinions. Everyone seemed to have an opinion, and some of the reactions were surprising: Bill Maher, for example, praised parts of the speech, and Whoopi Goldberg, along with Kansas City quarterback Patrick Mahomes and coach Andy Reid, defended Butker on free speech grounds.
At first, the negative reactions overwhelmed the positive ones. We logged thousands of hateful emails and hours of angry phone calls. But in recent days, the positive reactions have skyrocketed. All the while, reporters, callers, friends and foes wanted to know if they agreed with Harrison Butker.
Colleges weren’t created to be “safe places”
We have decided not to comment publicly on this speech, in part because doing so might once again incite hatred.
The other reason is even more significant: The demand for us to comment on Butker’s speech is exactly the kind of problem Benedict College wants to combat in American culture.
“We’ve invited cardinals and bishops, House speakers and governors, authors and businessmen, entertainers and athletes. Until this year, no one has asked us if we agree with their views, criticized us for inviting them, or demanded that commencement speakers be removed from public life, silenced, or fired. This reaction is wrong.
Butker is right about motherhood.But NFL kickers are wrong about our choices.
Our history as educators dates back more than 1,500 years, when the Benedictine Order founded schools across Europe to teach students the lessons of monks and nuns who followed the 6th century Rule of St. Benedict.
First of all, our universities were not created as “safe spaces” where people could insulate themselves from ideas that challenge them. They are institutions where beliefs are held firmly in place, but where any question is raised and vigorously investigated.
So after the fall of the Roman Empire, the Benedictines founded monasteries, liturgies and schools, and transformed Western civilization through their mission of community, faith and scholarship.
Community is the answer to cancel culture
The response to Butker’s speech reaffirmed Benedict’s commitment to being a university in the fullest sense of the word — the same mission that is as powerful in America as it is in Europe: community is the answer to cancel culture, faith is the answer to the culture of disbelief, scholarship is the answer to the culture of relativism.
As a Benedictine school, cultural transformation is in our DNA, and as an American university, cultural transformation is our patriotic duty. St. John Paul II pointed out that democracy can easily become countercultural because of “the wishes of the few.”
But, he said, “America has a bulwark, a strong bulwark, against just such an eventuality. I am referring to our founding documents — the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights. These documents are based on and embody immutable principles of natural law. Their unchanging truth and validity can be known by reason, for they are the law that God wrote on the hearts of men.”
Education is an end in itself.Young conservatives like me are being told not to go to college. That’s shortsighted.
So Benedict is building a new library with a classical design reminiscent of Independence Hall in Philadelphia, with an assembly room and a replica of the Liberty Bell to teach our founding ideals. We are in the early stages of proposing a new medical school that will anchor Catholic moral teaching about the infinite dignity of human beings as created by God.
Pope Benedict XVI said that the hallmark of a Catholic university is sharing the love of Christ with its students, and I tell every professor we hire that we love our students here.
If we do our job right, we can educate students about our mission on campus, and then they can build community, faith, and scholarship in all sectors of their neighborhoods and cities.
Benedictine University continues to work to transform American culture so that all Americans, not just Super Bowl stars, can speak their minds and interact with one another freely without being yelled at, threatened or intimidated.
I wish I was there already.
Stephen D. Minnis President of Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas.
