Belmont Abbey is not ignorant of these harsh realities. That is why, Solari said, it opened and currently operates an on-campus maternity home and pregnancy resource center to minister to needy pregnant students and local women who may be targeted by the abortion industry.
First opened in 1994, Belmont Abbey’s MiraVia maternity home and outreach center offers free housing, assistance, and material aid to pregnant and new mothers.
As Solari put it, Belmont Abbey wants to create an environment where all can pursue the truth, both for the good of the individual and society.
“[There is] objective truth, objective moral values, which one needs to discover, and to which one needs to conform oneself if you wish to be truly happy and successful,” Solari said matter-of-factly.
Belmont seeks, said the abbot, to teach its young students “the importance of learning how to form a human community that is conducive to human flourishing” and “the obligation of good people to precisely form those communities whether it be their family community, their neighborhood, their professional office community, or the United States.”
Though many bemoan the rise of LGBTQ+ ideology among Generation Z and forecast gloomy predictions for the future, Solari’s outlook is much brighter.
“There’s sometimes nothing more daunting than to go into a class at 8 a.m., [full] of freshmen, and to think these are the future parents of America?” the abbot said with a smile.
“But to see those same students as they mature over their college experience and then to see them later as they come back as alumni with their professional careers underway, with their families underway … is a very hopeful thing both for the Church and for the country,” he said.
Whereas many Catholic colleges have stepped away from their Catholic identity in pursuit of greater academic recognition, higher enrollment numbers, or competitive athletics, Belmont Abbey remains one of the few firmly rooted in the truth of Catholic teaching — without sacrificing the college’s academic integrity or its commitment to competitive sports.
Despite an enrollment of only 1,500, Belmont Abbey has more than 30 different sports teams for students to participate in and has one of the largest college sports programs of any school in the country.
(Story continues below)
Neither does academic excellence need to be sacrificed for true Catholic teaching. As Solari explained, the monks’ monastic vows only strengthen their commitment to academic excellence.
“We founded the college as an outgrowth of our monastic commitment,” Solari said. “Therefore, for those of us who are involved in the college, it demands the same intellectual formation as the professors would have, or the administration or staff at whatever job they do, in fact even more commitment to that because that’s an aspect flowing out of our monastic commitment to service of God.”
Yet, that is not to say that Belmont Abbey has not been impacted by a culture that discourages religiosity and attempts to replace it with ideas antithetical to Catholicism.
During his time as abbot, Belmont has had to fight to continue to be an authentically Catholic voice from the educational sphere.
In 2012, Belmont became the first school to successfully sue the federal government over the contraceptive mandate in the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.
Then in 2016, Belmont sought and obtained exemptions from aspects of Title IX regarding LGBTQ+ issues that would have violated the college’s Catholic identity.
Credit: Source link
