Catholic campus ministry.

Thank you to Maurice Timothy Reidy for directing Commonweal readers' attention to the important issues of campus ministry at secular schools. Because almost 90 percent of college-aged Catholics attend non-Catholic colleges, it is important to examine the resources available to these students. Unfortunately, by focusing only on elite schools such as Princeton, Reidy paints an incomplete picture of the state of campus ministry. One visit to a Catholic Campus Ministry Association meeting would assure Reidy that, for the most part, Catholic campus ministries are not run by a cabal of conservative Catholics. In fact, quite the opposite is true.

Reidy implies that it is because Princeton's campus ministry is conservative that "only 30 percent of Catholics go to Mass." He might have acknowledged that just over 30 percent of American Catholics attend Mass each week--with attendance rates for eighteen- to thirty-year-olds being significantly lower. Seen in this light, only a successful campus ministry would attract 30 percent of students to Mass each week. Reidy's criticism of the "too narrow" approach of the conservative ministry at Princeton might have been balanced by a critique of the narrow approach of countless other "liberal" ministries across the country. At all these campus-ministry programs--where budgets are tight and staff is thin--it is difficult to be all things to all people. The real pity is that the church does not commit more resources to these programs in light of the sheer number of young Catholics attending secular schools.

ANNA BONTA MORELAND

Chevy Chase, Md.

The writer is former education director of the Catholic campus-ministry program at the University of Michigan.