Demythology, Exegesis, Hermeneutics, the Historical Jesus. Sister Mary Ancella sure didn't use words like that in catechism class and they didn't make it into our high school New Testament courses, either.
Carter Lindberg was a bona fide Lutheran minister. He didn’t nail Luther's 95 Theses to the classroom door (something Luther, in fact, never did himself), but the gloves were off. His treatment of the New Testament was jarring. Who was Christ? Did God the father create the Son? Arius thought so and that dispute tore the Christian church apart in its early days. Did Christ know he was God... and when did he know it? We were travelling country not permitted before Divino Aflante Spiritu hit the streets, allowing modern Catholic Biblical scholarship, and we were going places where we might need a visa.
Father Brooks was busy diversifying the faculty in the 1960s, too. In part out of necessity. Vocations were down and it was hard to find Jesuits to fill all the faculty posts. Holy Cross also needed to keep up with the competition. With diversity becoming a watchword for the Ivies, the Jesuits were losing their monopoly on bright Catholic students. The Cross needed a more modern less rigidly Catholic education. Adapting came naturally to the Jesuits.
Something was lost in the process, though. At Holy Cross in the late 60s, Jesuit tradition and influence was slipping away. What inspired Ignatius Loyola and Francis Xavier? Why did the Republic of China memorialize Matteo Ricci with a postage stamp? Who knew that Jesuit astronomers gave us the modern Gregorian calendar (Christopher Clavius), the Big Bang Theory (Georges Lemaitre) , and the spectral classification of stars (Angelo Secchi)? What role did the Guarani Republic, portrayed in Roland Joffe’s The Mission, play in the suppression of the Society of Jesuit in the 18th century? How do we reconcile the scientist, Teilhard de Chardin, who helped discover Peking Man with what he wrote on evolution: "In one manner or the other it still remains true, even in the view of a mere biologist, the human epic resembles nothing so much as a way of the Cross."
Today if we can't find Father Brooks and Holy Cross following in the steps of Loyola, Xavier, and Ricci, then what's the point of there being a Holy Cross. It's just another liberal arts college with a progressive cachet and elite aspirations, catering to the latest whim and mere enthusiasm.
