Have you noticed how over the past half-century the trend in religiously affiliated real estate has been one of secularization? Churches have become theatres, chapels boutique salons, and convents office buildings. Even some one-time Catholic campuses have become industrial parks. Could it be the trend is reversing?
Two years ago, who would have guessed that the 284-acre Boeing Leadership Center in Florissant, Missouri would become the new home for the Augustine Institute?
The Augustine Institute (www.augustineinstitute.org) is one of several ‘centers of vibrancy’ we at the National Catholic Community Foundation have come across these past few years. Founded in Denver, Colorado in 2005 as a graduate theology school, it has grown into a major producer of Catholic educational content for individuals, parishes, schools and dioceses.
Accredited by the Association of Theological Schools, the Institute is faithful to the Magisterium and with both on-campus and on-line formats offers master’s degrees in theology, biblical studies, pastoral theology, and Catholic education. For parishes and dioceses around the nation, the Institute develops catechetical curricula, sacramental preparation programs, and evangelization materials. Furthermore, through its media and publishing arm it produces books, podcasts, videos and documentaries supporting the promotion of the Gospel. And the Florissant campus serves as a retreat and conference center and a residence for graduate students.
As its website states: “The Augustine Institute is bringing people to know and love God. From our foundation as a leading Catholic graduate school of theology, we’ve grown to become an educational apostolate defending and promoting the history and teachings of the Church through traditional and new media. We form leaders and grow the faithful.”
The success and growth the Augustine Institute is experiencing does not surprise us given the spiritual state of our nation. With the unusually polarized media coverage we have today available to us in so many forms, it is difficult to gage the religious temperament of our society. However, two seemingly conflicting impressions are irrefutable. One is that our culture has been so thoroughly saturated in relativism and nihilism over the lifetimes of many of us that the resulting sense of unsettled purposelessness swamps us in a devitalizing ennui. The other is that the ‘new springtime’ prophesied at the turn of the millennium by the now sainted Pope John Paul II may indeed be blossoming as evidenced by the much-reported return to (or discovery of) the faith by so many members of the younger generations. The draw of the Institute is a welcomed response to what could prove to be a renaissance of faith in our nation.
Some believe in coincidences; others do not. But it is interesting to note that the current skipper on Peter’s Barque is himself a ‘son of Augustine’. In his ‘Confessions’, written in the late fourth century, St. Augustine wrote the now famous line about his relationship with God: “Fecisti nos ad te, et inquietum est cor nostrum donec requiescat” : “Thou has formed us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless till they find rest in Thee.”
How blessed our nation and the Church are that a center so vibrant as the Augustine Institute is available to help settle our unsettled hearts and to foster the advance of the Kingdom.