Changes within Notre Dame’s campus ministry department are having a big effect on the students in all three divisions, says Cathy Zuccaro, campus ministry director. No longer are the students of Notre Dame content with just being “ministered” by Zuccaro and her department colleagues. Above: NDP junior Mary Margaret Payne, left, and a fellow volunteer helped beautify Detroit for a week this past summer as part of ”Summer in the City.”
“Because students play a vital role in the faith formation of their peers, it is necessary that we provide an opportunity for our students to minister to each other in the school and to those outside of school.” So says a line from a new mission statement that helps define a new focus on peer ministry at Notre Dame this year.
“We no longer just ‘do’ retreats in campus ministry,” Zuccaro says. “Instead they are just a part—still an important part—of a comprehensive plan for each grade in the upper division. We emphasize more going into religion classes and prepping the kids before their retreats and then solidifying the message, atmosphere, and purpose of the retreats afterwards.”
And now with a focus on peer ministry, Zuccaro says campus ministry activity also is much more involved in the students than what it used to be. She says that within the new organization, which has a six-student board, there are now liturgy, retreat, service and mentor commissions, each having different committees under them and each having leadership positions as well.
This model also seems to fit well with what has been trending at the university level when it comes to campus ministry. In a recent book written by Stephen Lutz, a campus minister at Penn State University, he notes that “traditional campus ministry treated mission or outreach as something we ‘do,’ while a missional focus is something we ‘are.’ Mission shifts from an activity focus to our identity.”
Identity for NDPMA students, Zuccaro says, is best defined and represented by what is called the Marist Way. “Encompassing all that we do here is the overarching Marist Way,” she says. “Together with Notre Dame pastoral minister Fr. Jim Strasz, s.m., campus ministry will be one of the avenues through which programs will be developed and implemented not only to educate our community on what it means to be Marist, but also give them opportunities to live that out.”
In the upper division, a step-by-step plan was designed to help students live as a Marist. For freshmen, it’s “Learn Marist,” with a religion curriculum focused on the “Revelation of Jesus.” For sophomores, it’s “Live Marist,” and a curriculum centered on “Christ’s Mission continuing in the Church.” Juniors will “Love Marist,” and study “Morality” in religion and how to be a “true man and woman in Christ,” and seniors will zero in on a “Lead Marist” focus and study how to live and lead a “Life in Christ.”
All this does not stop at the school’s upper division. Campus ministry also has greatly expanded its presence at the middle and lower divisions this year. “We are fostering more collaboration between divisions,” Zuccaro says. “And we’re looking at a comprehensive program for all students that promotes the Marist Way—a continuum of ministry from junior-kindergarten through high school.” CAMPUS MINISTRY VISION AND MISSION
Campus ministry developed a specific vision and statement of purpose and mission for its new peer-ministry activity:
To help with this expansion of activity, a few changes were made within the department. Della Lawrence, who had been part time in campus ministry, is now in a full-time position as assistant campus minister. At the beginning of the year, the school also hired Mary Watson, also as an assistant campus minister, to work with younger students and help provide them with mentors aimed at modeling the type of values and behaviors expected of every NDPMA student.
Also, previously, campus ministry’s biggest commission, the service commission, used to be a “club” moderated by campus ministry. Zuccaro has removed the word “club” from all of its commissions, including retreat and liturgy. “They really are commissions with defined missions, not merely clubs,” she says.
For her part, Zuccaro will continue to lead the department, but now with additional help and with students hopefully carrying some of the load as peer ministers, she is looking forward to growing the department into becoming an even more vital part of student life at Notre Dame.
“As I said when I first started here, I get so much pleasure from seeing our students ‘walk the talk.’ Our focus always is on creating a safe atmosphere within the school where students feel completely comfortable sharing their faith with each other,” she says. “Closely aligned to that is ensuring that our students maintain the order of our NDPMA mission statement, ‘Christian person first, upright citizen and academic scholar,’ and that they make decisions based on that order. We want our kids to understand the value of developing and nurturing their spiritual being as well as their physical and intellectual being.”