Observations of an Aggie Domer: University Cultures, Evangelization, and the Shape of Faith
This college football season, a gilded statue of the Blessed Mother, standing high atop her dome, will glimmer as she greets thousands of Catholics heading to Sunday Mass following Saturdays’ nationally televised games in the stadium nearby. If you consider yourself a Fighting Irish fan, you may be picturing the wrong statue. A thousand miles south of Notre Dame’s Main Building, this golden Mary adorns the newly built church of St. Mary’s Catholic Student Center at Texas A&M University. While Notre Dame’s golden Mary overlooks student life from the very heart of campus, Texas A&M’s gilded statue stands across the street in the Northgate District (analogous to Eddy Street Commons, south of Notre Dame’s campus), nestled among apartment high rises and more closely overlooking bars than classrooms. There, she welcomes the thousands of students who venture across University Drive to the Catholic student center looking for sacraments, spiritual direction, or simply a place to study.
As a graduate of both universities, I am certain of this: Catholicism is alive and well at Texas A&M and at Notre Dame. The dozens of students at each school who receive the Sacraments of Initiation every year serve as a tangible marker of the Gospel’s transformative presence in both places. As these two schools prepare to face off to open the college football season, it seems an opportune moment to reflect on how the Church’s deepest identity as an evangelizing body is realized on these two campuses, one secular and the other widely-recognized for its Catholic identity. From the perspective of an Aggie Domer, the interaction between the Catholic faith and the microcultures of either university is essential to understanding the lively Catholicism at each.
At Texas A&M, campus culture is in no short supply. Like any college campus, A&M has its own set of traditions proudly passed down through generations of students. Even the Aggies’ rivals acknowledge that there is something unique—and perhaps excessive—about the culture of Texas A&M. In light of the university’s enormous 70,000+ student population, there are significant efforts to retain a sense of shared identity through its traditions. The most notable of these is Fish Camp, during which thousands of incoming students are bussed to a retreat center for an intensive immersion into A&M’s campus culture before ever stepping foot in their dorm rooms. This was not a formal college orientation—Fish Camp felt like an invitation to a new way of life.
Over three days, counselors led our crash course in everything Aggie. They taught us how to “saw ‘em off” during the War Hymn, every yell we would need to know for sporting events, and that we should not dare “whoop!” until “pull out day” at the end of sophomore year. We learned to honor fallen Aggies each month at Silver Taps, and each April 21st at Aggie Muster. The rhythm of “hullabaloo caneck caneck” was etched into our minds, along with the words of the poem recited at the Muster ceremony: “softly call the Muster, let comrade answer ‘Here.’”
“Howdy!” quickly became our default greeting to students and professors alike, and a camp session was dedicated to teaching us two-step—a crucial skill for the social Aggie. Stories of figures like Sul Ross and E. King Gill populated our collective imaginations of what it meant to be “the twelfth man,” stirring up the desire to be “redass” and never risk being called “2%ers” like the “t-sips” in Austin. We learned to hiss at the mention of any rival, “because Aggies are too classy to ‘boo.’” Also etched into our minds were the Aggie Code of Honor and the Core Values: respect, excellence, leadership, loyalty, integrity, and selfless service were part and parcel of what it meant to be an A&M student.
In the midst of this robust Aggie microculture, St. Mary’s Catholic Center sets out to evangelize (or re-evangelize) the student population. Fresh off our time at Fish Camp, Catholic students attended the Connect Retreat at St. Mary’s. Like any welcome retreat, it was a chance to meet other Catholics and be plugged into life at the student center. Integral to the retreat, however, were the traditions we had just been introduced to at Fish Camp. Alongside Mass, adoration, spiritual talks, and small group discussions we practiced yells, two-stepped, and sang the War Hymn. Homilies often began with a loud “Howdy!” which the congregation eagerly echoed. Students hissed at the mention of sin, Satan, or spiritual drought. In fact, it would be difficult to imagine a St. Mary’s retreat that was not permeated by Aggie traditions.
From my very first moments at St. Mary’s, it was clear that the best parts of A&M’s campus culture had a home within the walls of the Catholic student center. “Howdy and God Bless” adorned the front of St. Mary’s t-shirts, and seemed an accurate—though perhaps a bit cheesy—representation of the emerging synthesis between our Aggie and Catholic identities. While the relationship between these identities was articulated in homilies and at ministry events, it was most effectively conveyed through the embodied practices of the community.
The Catholic faith, already in dialogue with campus culture at St. Mary’s, was readily brought to bear on campus life. Aggie Catholics gathered to pray rosaries before Silver Taps ceremonies honoring deceased students, grounding the campus ritual in our Christian hope. The Eucharist, processed through campus, blesses all of student life from dorm to classroom. We embraced the Aggie Core Values: a local articulation of the life of virtue that the Christian tradition takes up and orders to Christ.
When the St. Mary’s priests began to bless Kyle Field at the start of the football season, the videos posted by St. Mary’s racked up hundreds of thousands of views across social media platforms. To some, Catholic priests sprinkling holy water on a Texas college football field may read as a rare meeting between competing religions. For others, it may seem to confuse the holy and the mundane: what does football have to do with the one true God? For Aggie Catholics, these field blessings made visible the student center’s familiar evangelizing approach. As a St. Mary’s Facebook post explained, the priests blessed Kyle Field “to ask for protection for all players on the field, encourage the virtuous behavior of hard work and sacrifice, and give thanks to God for the camaraderie and fun that this sport brings.” If all aspects of our lives ought to be ordered to Christ, even the secular liturgy of A&M football has something to teach us about virtue, communion, joy, and sacrifice—each essential to the Christian identity.
Amid its hospitality to the university’s culture, the St. Mary’s community was willing to offer critique when necessary. For instance, the Aggie Ring Dunk, an unofficial rite of passage for A&M students, entails racing to the bottom of a pitcher of beer where a student’s newly earned class ring lay after being “dunked.” Instead of admonishing the ubiquitous tradition altogether, leaders at St. Mary’s recognized the milestone it aims to celebrate, earnestly proposing modifications that circumvent its excessive drinking. While the typical Ring Dunk certainly has not gone away, the proposed Ring Blessing (including a “dunk” in holy water) and “Ring Toast” have gained traction among Aggie Catholics looking to align the tradition with their Christian worldview.
Like any culture’s practices, those at Texas A&M convey to students a sense of meaning and purpose. They offer implicit answers to fundamental questions every human asks: what constitutes a good life? For what do I exist? How am I to relate with those around me? In the work of evangelization, the St. Mary’s community—indeed the whole Church—aims to present definitive answers to these questions found in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. In doing so, St. Mary’s does not neglect the cultural practices that already communicate various aspects of those answers. The joy, fraternity, humility, and sacrifice essential to the Christian life are not entirely foreign to A&M students, no matter their relationship to the Christian faith. They are experienced—whether profoundly or inchoately—in the shared practices of mourning, celebration, commitment, and responsibility within the A&M community.
The Catholic student center’s unabashed engagement with the Aggie microculture presented an embodied vision of the Christian life, illuminating for me the essential unity between faith and my everyday activity. If my Aggie identity could come to bear on my Catholicism, my Catholic identity would inevitably spill over as well. With this, the modern dividing line between sacred and secular, which I had unwittingly internalized from the Western milieu in which I grew up, began to blur. Aggie Catholics learned to view the various aspects of student life through a Christian lens, precisely because the strict boundaries often placed between church and world were made penetrable for us through a robust engagement with the culture. As the faith touched our own culture, we were formed to see Christ imaged in the world around us: in the good, true, and beautiful aspects of our everyday lives.
Still, Texas A&M is not, in fact, the Catholic Church. If the faith is to be incarnate in the various aspects of Aggies’ lives, St. Mary’s recognizes the call to enrich, purify, and order this secular culture’s practices and ideas in light of the Gospel. Its efforts to do so are grounded and animated by rich participation in the Sacramental life of the church and robust catechesis. As the Catholic community is renewed and sanctified by the Holy Spirit, students are empowered to faithfully navigate the mingling of faith and culture within their own dorms, classrooms, and campus organizations. Importantly, St. Mary’s engagement with Aggie culture facilitates shared life with all A&M students, whether Christian or not, opening the door to dialogue and rendering the Gospel more approachable.
In light of my A&M experience, my transition to Notre Dame as a graduate student began with a dose of Catholic collegiate culture shock. The Jesus we had asked to bless our joy and camaraderie during Aggie football games was already watching over Notre Dame stadium from the “Touchdown Jesus” mural on Hesburgh Library. We swayed in the stands to the words of the Alma Mater as they described the Blessed Mother: “tender, strong, and true.” The student body frequented the Grotto on campus to light a candle and ask for the help of Our Lady. Catholicism and the campus culture I now inhabited were inseparable by design.
As I adjusted to this change, I was forging a new relationship to the faith in light of my surroundings. What did it mean to be Catholic in a place that, in many ways, already was Catholic? What did evangelization look like in a place teeming with saint statues, crucifixes, and priests who also went by “professor”? If students were searching for answers to fundamental human questions, the Catholic answers seemed to linger around every corner. Still, it was clear that the campus’s symbols and student traditions alone did not guarantee a compelling presentation of the Gospel to every student. Thankfully, Notre Dame’s Catholicism—and thus its evangelism—is not exhausted by its murals of Jesus or the words of its Alma Mater.
As a graduate student, I have admittedly experienced Notre Dame as a relative outsider, without a dorm to call home or shared meals at South Dining Hall. Still, the unique nature of undergraduate life is difficult to miss. I quickly learned that, unlike A&M, dorms at Notre Dame function as more than cinder block walls to shelter students’ sleep and study. Each residence hall carries its own character, formed in part by unique traditions like Fisher Regatta, Dillon’s Milkshake Mass, and Siegfried’s Day of Man. A student’s dorm affiliation is part of their Notre Dame identity, since much of one’s campus experience is shaped by the life of their hall community.
At this locus of student life, the Sacraments and spiritual formation are regularly on offer. rectors, priests-in-residence, and hall staff work to facilitate these opportunities, aiming to ground the life of each dorm community in the life of the Church. As students gather for dorm Mass in their respective chapels, they share pews with the friends who accompany them in the most mundane and exciting moments of their Notre Dame experience. These liturgies are imbued with the hall’s particular character, from the Mass’s music to the Sign of Peace. Within the very heart of their campus life, all Notre Dame students encounter a community whose shared life—from late-night study sessions to mid-afternoon spike ball—is enriched by its shared participation in the Eucharist.
Notre Dame’s academic reputation is certainly not lost on its student culture, either. In an environment known for attracting and producing “the best of the best,” academic success is of particularly high value among Fighting Irish undergrads. As part and parcel of their academic pursuits, the various disciplines are placed in deep conversation with the Christian tradition, uniting the questions students explore through coursework to the deeper human search for Truth. Engineering, business, and political science majors alike take courses that place the questions of their field in conversations with the concerns of the Church. As the Notre Dame student carefully lays the foundations for her career, she encounters a fundamentally Christian vision for engaging the world’s challenges and pressing questions. Her exploration in the classroom is itself a way of living the Gospel in the world, together with her peers.
Between classroom and residence hall, each Domer comes in contact with a Catholicism that seeks to embrace the totality of student life. When students adopt this Christian way of living alongside their community, Notre Dame’s culture is enriched and renewed in its Catholic vitality. These various efforts on campus work in tandem to ensure that Notre Dame’s symbols, practices, and traditions comprise a genuine expression of the Gospel truly alive in this particular place, that when students sway to the Alma Mater in the stands, cheer for Fr. Pete on the scoreboard during the third-quarter Mass promo, or light a candle at the Grotto, they encounter these traditions as a genuine participation in the Body of Christ, as present in South Bend, Indiana.
The Church’s presence at Texas A&M and Notre Dame entails two noteworthy responses to the Christian call to share the Gospel in every time and place—not least the U.S. college campus. Admittedly, the curated mini-society of a university campus offers a rather limited glimpse into the integral relationship between evangelization and culture as it exists throughout the global Church. Still, these examples serve to illustrate the important reality long articulated by the Church: “Grace supposes culture, and God’s gift becomes flesh in the culture of those who receive it.”[1]
The Church is ever called to creatively engage non-Christian cultures, finding new avenues for dialogue with the ultimate aim “that the Gospel, as preached in categories proper to each culture, will create a new synthesis with that particular culture.”[2] In cultures already imbued with the Catholic faith, the Church aims to renew and enrich those practices that already carry something of the Christian message through catechesis and its Sacramental life.[3] In any place, when the Gospel comes in robust contact with the life of the community, the reality of the Incarnation is made present in the lives of God’s people, inviting others to share in this reality as part of the Body of Christ.
While Texas A&M will have my allegiance on the football field this Saturday, I will long be grateful for the two communities—with their respective golden Marys—that showed me a faith that comes to meet us anywhere, and in doing so, shapes everything.