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Editor:
Tom McFadden
Managing Editor: Niall O'Donnell
Contributing Editors: Tom O'Connor,
Jack Anderson (Sports Center)
Contributing Photographers: Tom O'Connor
Issue: May 2, 2008
Name: Emily Jaroma
Age: 19
Year: Sophomore
From:Lindsay, TX
Major: Political Science and History
Any Hobbies? Running, traveling, reading, politics
What's your favorite class or professor? New Testament with Prof. Jenislawski. I enjoy this class because I am learning so many things about the Catholic Church and the life of Christ that I never knew before. I went to a public high school so I never had any religion classes.
Do you play any sports? I ran track throughout high school and at Christendom I continue to run on my own since there is no track team. I had planned to play soccer this past fall, but I was recovering from ACL surgery.
What is your favorite thing about Christendom College? My favorite thing about Christendom is the fact that I know that I am receiving an education here that I cannot get anywhere else. Also, this education has already benefited me immensely and will continue to do so in whatever I choose to do in life.
Why did you choose Christendom College? I chose Christendom because my parents have always stressed to me the importance of receiving a Catholic education rooted in the liberal arts and this is exactly what Christendom provides. Also I went to the High School Summer Program which really showed me what Christendom had to offer.
What do you plan to do after graduation? Presently I plan on going to graduate school to get a Ph.D. in political science with the intention of working in Washington D.C. someday.
A Formal Affair
Contra dancing is any of several folk style dances where couples dance in two facing lines. Contra dance became popular in the 17th century, and has been popular in the United States ever since. Christendom’s annual Spring Contra Formal was held Saturday night, organized and setup by the Contra Dance Club.
The St. Lawrence Commons was transformed into an elegant ballroom, exquisitely decorated by the Contra Dance Club, where couples spent the night dancing and enjoying refreshments. The Spring Contra Formal is a great example of the many events held by student clubs at Christendom, providing students with a multitude of different activities during the semester.
The Contra Club also hosts a winter formal, as well as weekly classes for those who wish to learn and practice.
Assisting Those in Need
A group of students lent their time and talent on Saturday, April 26 to help a local nonprofit, The Congregational Community Action Project (C-CAP), move to a new location.
Catholic Charities’ Director of Community Services Sally O’Dwyer contacted Christendom College when C-CAP’s volunteer staff—comprised mostly of seniors—called for help.
The Catholic Charities cargo van met a group of Christendom students at the college and led them to the C-CAP site. The students assisted the volunteers in getting their office moved and set-up in the new location. The students also helped organize C-CAP’s new food pantry, which will now be ready to serve hungry residents of the Front Royal area.
According to Bill Bene, local resident and longtime C-Cap volunteer, the Christendom students were a wonderful help to the organization.
“We did not have either the person power or the financial resources to support the move. The joyful Christendom students lent their muscle to the move and saved all of the C-Cap staff countless hours of hard work,” he said.
For many years, C-CAP operated out of the Front Royal Presbyterian Church but the program outgrew their former small office. After much searching, they finally settled on a nearby location in the basement of the town’s clinic.
C-CAP is a local nonprofit organization designed to prevent homelessness and it regularly feeds the poor. The agency is funded by local churches, civic groups, individuals, and businesses in the Front Royal area.
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Coffee House Cranks Out the Laughs
Christendom College has established many traditions in its thirty years of existence, but none as popular as Christendom’s annual Coffee House. Held in the St. Lawrence Commons Coffee House consists of skits, musical performances, videos and dance routines put on by the students.
A number of staff and faculty members have performed in Coffee House when they were students, and many attend every year to watch the new acts, some of which are even based off of past performances.
Some of the highlights of the evening were: Senior Sam Phillips’ “Christendom Impersonations”, Professor Wunsch’s “Superficial Friend” and “Christendom Jeopardy” with Bridgette O’Donnell, Joby Norton and Chris Dayton. The Christendom College Broadcasting crew (CCB), a Coffee House tradition, finished the night with a news report by Senior John Connolly.
Christendom’s new infomercial (Created by Alumnus Julian Ahlquist) was aired following the performances, as well as the blooper reel, which had the audience in hysterics. Watch it here.
Check out all the fun below:
Protective Legislation for the Unborn?
The Chester-Belloc Debate Society convened for the final time this semester in Regina Coeli Hall on Sunday. Led by Prof. Eric Jenislawski as Faculty Moderator, and Peter Smith, Sean Vieira, and Sam Phillips as Executive Council. Mr. Benjamin Hough sat in as Chairman for the night’s debate, with Amanda Dennehy acting as Secretary.
The topic for the night’s debate was "Can a Catholic Support Legislation that Makes Abortion Illegal?" Among the many students who presented arguments were Peter Smith, Tyler Ament, and Nathan Gniewek.
It was a great evening full of intense debate and intellectual stimulation.
Isabel the Catholic Queen
Christendom's Founding President Dr. Warren Carroll delivered a lecture entitled, Isabel of Spain: The Catholic Queen to students on April 28. The lecture, which was based on his popular book of the same title, concluded a series of history lectures held this spring.
"Queen Isabel was the greatest woman ruler in history and made her country of Spain the supreme power in the world of her time," Carroll said at the beginning of his lecture.
“She is Spain’s national heroine. She sent Christopher Columbus on his epochal voyage of discovery across the Atlantic Ocean, where he found America and thereby changed history. The Pope gave her the title la Catolica, which means ‘the Catholic.’ All her life she was a woman of profound humility and prayer,” he said.
The lecture focused on the many great moments of Isabel’s life—a life worthy of canonization, according to Carroll.
He explain that “her contemporaries uniformly and repeatedly testified to her extraordinary virtues, as have most historians since, Catholic or secular. Even those who vehemently disagree with some of her policies (such as her establishment of the Spanish Inquisition) cannot deny her spotless moral integrity, the harmony of her life with her faith, and the justice and benevolence of most of her rule.”
Carroll spoke of the many challenges that Isabel faced not just as queen, but also as a mother. Her only-son died young and her eldest daughter died at childbirth. Her second daughter went insane. “The succession of tragedies was Isabel’s cross,” Carroll said, “which she carried as true Christian.”
“Studying the life of Queen Isabel will inspire your children, because her life shows that in the midst of a corrupt culture, a person of virtue and determination can change history." Carroll said.
“Isabel’s life and virtues have special importance in an age like ours,” Carroll concluded. “Her achievements as a woman will surely appeal to an age, which is giving special emphasis to the scope of women’s potential to contribute to society... Her care and concern for foreign peoples of different race should appeal greatly in an age, which has lavished care and concern on such people. Yet the memory of Isabel must be as incompatible with compromise on any fundamental tenet of Catholic faith and morals as Isabel herself would have been.”
You can listen to this evocative lecture and all previous lectures at Christendom on iTunes U.
In
honor of the 30th Anniversary of Christendom College
the Chronicler Online takes a peek into the past
of the college each week.
The First Coffee House
From the Christendom College Report, May 1978:
The first coffee house at Christendom College was held on Saturday evening, April 8, in the student lounge. Planned by Joe Stuart of Arlington, Virginia, the coffee house was designed to be a relaxing and enjoyable way of earning money for the Christendom College literary journal. Stuart hopes to publish the journal later this year.
Stuart was assisted by Judy Bushong, Loretta Davison and Chris Foeckler in arranging for publicity, acts, music, decorations. The coffee house featured music and skits by College students, some faculty and guests. The guitar predominated with renditions by Sheila Hobbs, Joe and Bob Hambleton, Joe Stuart and Rick Kephart. Particularly noteworthy were Stuart's original compositions and Kephart's classical work.
In addition to guitar, there were piano performances by Mary Stuart and Leo White; trumpet and piano by Jeff and Barbara Mirus; a comedy routine by Jerry Longtin; and bluegrass banjo by Rick Kephart. Information on other performers was unfortunately not available at press time. About half the coffee house "audience" came from outside the College, marking the first time a recreational activity has drawn a widespread community response.
"We were happy to host many who were not students here," said Stuart. "We hope to continue to develop good relations with our surrounding community, which is so important to the College. "
The entire audience seemed to enjoy sipping coffee and snacking in the dimly lighted relaxed atmosphere of the coffee house. Another similar event is planned for next year.
Students Throttle the Faculty in Annual Clash
Noah Morey and the rest of the Christendom seniors made their last hurrah this past weekend on the Crusader gridiron with a 60-6 pounding of Christendom’s own faculty/staff team.
The seniors wanted to go out with a bang and they did just that as Morey scampered his way to three touchdown runs. He added a dazzling interception returned for a TD on the final play and got extra help with touchdowns by Bobby Lancaster, Pate Quest, and Ryan Doughty.
With Quest leading a proficient offense, the faculty team was helpless in their efforts to stop them. Dean of Student Life Joe Wurtz snagged one interception, but the rest of his day was spent watching Morey run circles around him. Wurtz also quarterbacked the faculty, but had trouble getting into sync as he only threw for one score to Dr. Clark. The students constant pressure harassed him all day, forcing him into several picks.
Solid efforts in the trenches kept Quest’s jersey clean and on the flip side kept Wurtz on his back all game long. Middle Linebacker, John Hepler, kept all developing plays for the faculty in front of him, snuffing out every single chance the faculty had at generating points. Doughty, a sophomore, provided a thrill with his second interception as he knifed through a wave a defenders to take it the house.
In the end, the students were treated to a good old-fashioned drubbing as the old men could only concede defeat. As the seniors trotted off for the final time, they savored their victory over the faculty, thanking them for all the assistance they have received over their collegiate life from them. It was a great game and put a solid punctuation on the seniors’ athletic endeavors for the past four years.
Q: I was thinking about going to the Experience Christendom High School Summer Program this summer and wanted to know what I can expect to happen?
— J.V. , Reno, NV
A: Here’s part of an essay that one girl wrote that I think might sum up what goes on at our summer program. She attended last summer and will be attending Christendom this upcoming fall.
“For as long as I can remember, I’ve desired to attend Christendom College. Since the summer of my freshman year, I’ve received correspondence from the school and by the time I was in tenth grade, I knew I wanted to go to Christendom – I just didn’t know why. Traditional Catholic education, an appealing set of rules, and strong accreditation were certainly reasons I wanted to attend, but it wasn’t until I attended the High School Summer program that I discovered exactly what was drawing me to Christendom. After spending two weeks on the campus this past summer, I now know exactly why I want to attend the school and why I believe God is calling me to Christendom College.
In today’s society, it is difficult to find moral people who live their lives in a virtuous manner. However, in both the students and the faculty at Christendom, I learned that there are still people out there who put God and others in front of themselves. All of the counselors were staunch Catholics who showed complete reverence and devotion to God, setting the example for those of us who weren’t as familiar with certain Catholic customs, such as Benediction. On the other hand, they certainly weren’t afraid to have fun when circumstances allowed and were the most boisterous and cheerful group of people I’d ever met! Like the counselor, the professors were also devout Catholics who unashamedly brought the Faith into their classes. Clearly, they loved teaching us – actively enticing us into classroom discussions with stories and interesting facts, motivating us to learn, and never sitting down on the job. On our last day of classes, one of the girls I particularly bonded with turned to me and said: ‘Who needs rock stars when we have Dr. Cuddeback [A Christendom Philosophy Professor]?’ I heartily agreed with her – at Christendom, we’d found people who we could truly admire, people we could look up to and only hope to emulate. In the students and faculty at Christendom, we’d found people who would help us achieve the ultimate goal of becoming a satin, but let us have fun along the way.
However, as wonderful as the people at Christendom are, the thing that attracts me to Christendom the most is the spiritual life on campus. Originally, when I glanced over the schedule for the summer program, I almost had to resign myself to the fact that we would be attending Mass and praying the rosary daily. Although I had read accounts of program attendees having similar feelings going in, but coming away a changed person, I doubted whether I would be one of them. I’d never been so wrong in my life – daily Mass and frequent prayers brought me a peace I’d never felt before. For the first time, I actually felt truly close to Jesus and Mary – no longer do I go into confession simply because I fear eternal damnation; I go because I love God and I hate that I’ve hurt him with my sins. Also, seeing everyone – the counselors, faculty, and fellow high schoolers – so on fire for God and the Church gave me the courage to be a proud Catholic in an overtly Protestant town. In attending Christendom, I would hope to gain an even deeper spiritual life, to grow in virtue, and have a more passionate love for the Catholic faith.”
You can view the tentative schedules for the one-week and two-week sessions by going HERE. Spaces are filling VERY quickly (last year at this time we had 49 application, we have received 90 already so far – we are only looking for 100 students) so if you are interested in attending, I recommend applying as soon as possible. Also, there is still some financial assistance available (which saves you about 25% off the regular price) on a first-come, first-served basis.
Thanks for asking.
If
anyone has questions about applying, visiting, scholarships,
financial aid, campus life, rules and regulations, majors,
core curriculum, transfer credits, or even about the food
here at Christendom, please do not hesitate to contact me
at any time: 800.877.5456 ext 1290 or tmcfadden@christendom.edu.
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