Arriving at the Parousians

I am excited and terrified to discuss how it was coming from a Catholic school to a secular school with the Parousians and how much of a difference it’s made. I am excited because I know it would allow me to share a lot about my experience. However, I am also terrified because I know that it demands that I be personal and share a lot personally, so I hope you’ll forgive my excessive sharing.

I’m going to start at high school. As many of you know, I attended Jesuit High School. Despite the reputation of the Jesuits as an order, Jesuit High School managed to mix Catholic orthodoxy and free thinking in a way that really encouraged growth in the intellectual aspects of the faith. I was blessed to have excellent teachers and excellent friends that helped push me towards a more Catholic understanding of the world as well as supporting me in manifesting that understanding in my life. I really began growing leaps and bounds in Catholicism towards the end of high school years, so I wanted to keep that momentum going as I went into college. I applied to Catholic University of America and another university which I’ll refer to as “Augustine University” as my main two schools. I really wanted to go to a Catholic university so I didn’t even consider LSU as I figured it would lack the vibrant Catholic campus that these universities promised. When the scholarships fell in line to “Augustine,” I figured I was on my way to another Catholic experience in education.

I could not have been more wrong. The vibrant Catholic atmosphere I had expected was nowhere to be found. I searched the emails, bulletin boards, websites, and whatever I could find for any inkling of a group for Catholic thought; I found nothing. The only thing close were groups that though being Catholic were not exclusively so for they promised “mixture and interaction between all faiths,” which was not was I was looking for. During my time at “Augustine,” which would end up amount to a year and a half, I met a grand total of one Catholic person, and that person did not even actually attend “Augustine.” Instead, he was from the seminary nearby and just taking a class at “Augustine” to finish off his requirements. Towards the end of my time at “Augustine” I found out there were some groups and people that was what I was looking for, but by the point I discovered them I was already on my way to LSU. I don’t know if they were too hidden for me to reasonably find them or whether I simply didn’t look hard enough for them; I’ll leave that to wiser powers than myself to judge.

Whatever the case may be, I had no support from a Catholic community on campus and I desperately needed it. It’s hard to say whether Catholicism is hated or dismissed at “Augustine.” When it came up it was hated and reviled but most of the time it never came up as it was dismissed as a relic of the past and unfit for modern intellectualism. For instance, there came up the issue of whether or not “Augustine” should allow a performance of the “Vagina Monologues” on campus. One of the priests at the university sent out a letter defending the decision to host it. I sent a letter of my own to this priest, who was high in the administration, criticizing him for it and asking for a better explanation. He responded by saying that he had spent most of his life doing theology and philosophy and he found it acceptable, implying that I should too. Pulling rank on a Denton is never a wise thing to do, and I pressed him on it, specifically the issue of what is a Catholic university. A few emails were exchanged. He accused me of being ignorant while I looked up Pope John Paul II’s “Mi e Particolarmente” and “Ex Corde Ecclesiae” for definitions and conditions of a Catholic university. Eventually my emails were no longer returned despite his failure to deliver upon any definition of a Catholic university. So I was dismissed and the Vagina Monologues will be performed for the third annual time at “Augustine” on February 14. Similar things would happen in the classroom. The professor would say something, I would respond, and if there were no snickers the class would simply move on as if I had never spoken.

There are many amazing people who can thrive on the truth alone and don’t need others to support them. I confess that I am not strong enough to be one of those people. Having found no one on campus in which to share my faith left me alone. Eventually it grew so that my day went like this: I would park in the garage on campus, walk to a room where I would study for a little while. Then I would go to class and sit at my desk. I wouldn’t talk to anyone; I eventually got tired of hearing of the drunken weekend exploits and the other students did not care to hear about anything I wanted to talk about. So silence became the order of the day. After class, I would each lunch on a bench by myself as I read a book. Then I would go to class again, then walk straight to the parking garage and to my car, grateful for its radio that broke the chain of silence that weighed down upon me the whole day. In other words my only real company while at “Augustine” was my own thoughts. This coupled with the fact that I became increasingly aware that everything I had valued my entire life was hated and opposed by almost everyone around me made for a very unpleasant life. It wore on me emotionally and spiritually, though I’ve given you all just an inkling of the pain it caused; I’m afraid I’m not enough of a writer to transcribe it all.

I became empty and malnourished inside. I began to wonder if that was the way it was supposed to be, if that was the role of the intellectual Catholic in today’s world and in our generation. I’m not a quitter but I decided I needed to take a risk and find out if “Augustine” was indeed an indication of my future. I had attended LSU during my semester in exile due to Katrina and thought it was ok. I hadn’t delved into the life of LSU b/c much of my time was spent commuting back and forth between the various places I was staying. I also felt that I couldn’t get too involved with LSU knowing that in two and a half months I would away from Baton Rouge and back in New Orleans. Still, I had experienced enough of LSU to know that there was something there and had experiences enough of Augustine to know that there was nothing there. So I made the switch to LSU, figuring that if indeed “Augustine” was the standard of business that at least I would get some football games out of the deal.

The first month of LSU didn’t seem to hold much promise. I was still in the same rut. Yet there were rumblings of something happening. My friend from high school, Mark , kept mentioning this group with a name I couldn’t hope to pronounce or spell without practice that seemed promising and he promised that one day he’d bring me along. At the same time I went to see Dr. Stoner. Dr. Stoner is a friend of the only professor I ever liked from “Augustine”. The professor from “Augustine” was never particularly Catholic in his teaching of political thought but he didn’t make attacking Christian thought a mainstay of his teaching. He also knew what he was talking about and for some reason he mistakenly came to believe that I did too, so he recommended me to Dr. Stoner and told me to talk to him when I got to Baton Rouge. It took me a while to see Dr. Stoner due to the finer joys of dealing with Residential Life but eventually I meet with him. I’m not quite sure whether he knew I was Catholic or not before he first met me but eventually as the conversation came around it came out that I was. I told him about my exchanges with the priest at “Augustine” and he told me about the Parousians and how they have this blog and meetings that I would be interested in and that he would give my email to this guy named Toby who ran the show. It was a lot for a first meeting but I felt I was going in the right direction. Between Mark’s mentioning of the Parousians and Dr. Stoner’s recommendation I began to feel that this was something I was being led to. This was further boosted when I sat at Free Lunch to find that I had sat at the table of this Toby guy as well as some other Parousians.

The rest I suppose is history. More quickly than I could have dreamed I had found a niche in the group and was respected and accepted. In almost no time I had given a presentation and had taken charge of the blog and was a full member of the group. More than that though is the idea of the Parousians itself. A group in which students who are pressured by the culture of a university to suppress their faith are instead invited and encourage to express and fulfill that faith with others who are fighting the same battle. Obviously the discussion are tremendous in giving different lines of thought and coming closer to truth but for me they’re meaningful primarily because they tell me that I’m not alone in this fight, that there are other people my age who are seeking an well-reasoned Catholicism and are fighting the same struggles as I am in order to achieve this in the world and in themselves.

That one little thing is so important to me in nourishing and providing support for living the Catholic life in the modern world. When I compare my experience with the Parousians with my experience at “Augustine,” I’ve tried to come up with a proper analogy to explain the difference. Night and day is cliché as is coming out of a tunnel into the light. The best analogy I could come up with is when you read a book or watch a movie or TV show by yourself. You can enjoy that by yourself, but the joy you have when you discover that someone else has read that book and you now have someone to talk about it with is so much greater than the joy you got by yourself. This tremendous and amazing group of people I am now able to share and learn with and that makes it so much more joyful. I cannot thank the Parousians enough for blessing me with the opportunity to have that joy which I once doubted was possible and can only hope that I can help the Parousians spread that joy to others.

God Bless,
Michael R. Denton