Brag Fall 2021

By Fr. Jeffrey S. Burwell, SJ
Director of Catholic Studies
DECEMBER FIRST IS...
THE FEAST OF
ST. EDMUND CAMPION
to lead him toward the Roman Catholic
Church. At this time in history, it was illegal to
be a Catholic priest in the country, and he
knew much would be lost if he embraced
Catholicism.
Nevertheless, solid intellectual reasoning
finally convinced him to leave his Anglican
tradition and become Catholic as a priest of
the Society of Jesus. Going to Rome in 1573
in order to enter the Jesuits, he was ordained
and celebrated his first mass on September 8,
1578.
Campion knew that England would never
accept him as a Catholic priest, and – despite
knowing the dangers – he obeyed his Jesuit
superiors when they sent him back to minister
to Catholics in the largely Anglican nation. In
time, as was expected, he was arrested for
the role he played in promoting the Catholic
faith. Proclaiming the truth of his convictions
until the very end, Campion maintained that
the enterprise of evangelization would not be
stopped on English soil; he was tortured and
killed on December 1, 1581 at 41 years of age.
Today, much like in the time of Edmund
Campion, we know our students are
bombarded with information that can
be confusing and – very often – quite
contradictory. It is the mandate of both
faculty and staff at our college to ensure that
students do not hold uneducated opinions;
we encourage them to be bold when it
comes to exploring other options.
Secular and religious society is becoming
increasingly divided, and larger numbers of
individuals are entrenching themselves in
rigid perspectives. We encourage each of
our students – past and present – to embrace
Campion’s model of intellectual enquiry;
they are invited continually to explore all
perspectives without bias or fear. Although
the world seems to demand that we pick a
perspective now and hold on to it tightly, we
know the search for truth takes time and it
means holding all things in tension.
There were no easy answers in the age of
Edmund Campion and the same is true
for students of the college that bears his
name. All the same, we look to our patron
saint’s example of courage; we pray that our
students never make the easy decisions in life
but always be willing to risk it all for the right
decisions.
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