Quodlibet
Father Scanlan's Legacy
Father Michael Scanlan, who died in January 2017, is one of the heroes of Catholic higher education in America. In the mid-1970s, he took a failing school, the Franciscan University of Steubenville (Ohio), which had lost almost all of its connection to the Catholic faith, and turned it into a model of a faithful Catholic college, one that trains young people not only in such trades as nursing and teaching, but also in living the faith.
What he did was straightforward enough, I believe. He amassed a "war chest," declared that the university would be dedicated to the faith, and bought out those faculty who would not want to teach there anymore. Hiring decisions were put in the hands of those trusted to advance the mission of the college.
And there you go. Upon that solid foundation much can yet be built. Franciscan may find in the coming years that it will behoove the university to dedicate itself to reclaiming more and more of that desert called the humanities, which at almost all colleges have been ceded to the enemies of the faith and of the humanities themselves.
But the model remains. Father Scanlan understood: if you are not hiring for your mission, then your mission will not be worth a spit. If you are faithful to your mission, you will be an outpost of sanity in a land of madness, and people are attracted to sanity, even when they are compromised by the madness.
—Anthony Esolen
Anthony Esolen is the author of over thirty books, including Real Music: A Guide to the Timeless Hymns of the Church (Tan, with a CD), Out of the Ashes: Rebuilding American Culture (Regnery), and The Hundredfold: Songs for the Lord (Ignatius). He has also translated Dante’s Divine Comedy (Random House). He and his wife Debra publish a web magazine, Word and Song (anthonyesolen.substack.com), on poetry, hymnody, language, classic films, and music. He is a senior editor of Touchstone.
Get six issues (one year) of Touchstone PLUS full online access including pdf downloads for only $39.95. That's only $3.34 per month!
Get a one-year full-access subscription to the Touchstone online archives for only $19.95. That's only $1.66 per month!
bulk subscriptions
Order Touchstone subscriptions in bulk and save $10 per sub! Each subscription includes 6 issues of Touchstone plus full online access to touchstonemag.com—including archives, videos, and pdf downloads of recent issues for only $29.95 each! Great for churches or study groups.
Transactions will be processed on a secure server.
more on catholic from the online archives
27.5—Sept/Oct 2014
The Culture of Death's Campaign Against the Catholic Church by Brantly Millegan
29.3—May/June 2016
A Deathbed Reflection on Catholic Social Teaching & Our Future Prospects by Karl D. Stephan
35.4—Jul/Aug 2022
The Death Rattle of a Tradition
Contemporary Catholic Thinking on the Question of War by Andrew Latham
more from the online archives
20.7—September 2007
Paul Didn’t Build Bridges to Popular Culture by Russell D. Moore
31.5—September/October 2018
on the Congregation as a Wilderness by Paul Gregory Alms
calling all readers
Please Donate
"There are magazines worth reading but few worth saving . . . Touchstone is just such a magazine."
—Alice von Hildebrand
"Here we do not concede one square millimeter of territory to falsehood, folly, contemporary sentimentality, or fashion. We speak the truth, and let God be our judge. . . . Touchstone is the one committedly Christian conservative journal."
—Anthony Esolen, Touchstone senior editor
