At Catholic colleges, a shift to lay leadership

CALDWELL, N.J. — When Sister Patrice Werner retired in June after 15 years as president of Caldwell College, the school founded by the Sisters of Saint Dominic 70 years ago witnessed the end of an era — in more ways than one. A lay person — Nancy Blattner — took over as head of the […]

CALDWELL, N.J. — When Sister Patrice Werner retired in June after 15 years as president of Caldwell College, the school founded by the Sisters of Saint Dominic 70 years ago witnessed the end of an era — in more ways than one.

A lay person — Nancy Blattner — took over as head of the 2,300-student college.


“We’re handing over a position,” said Werner, who was the school’s eighth president, all of whom were Dominican nuns, “but we’re not handing over the college.”

While the shift may be new to Caldwell, it’s increasingly familiar on America’s Catholic campuses. For decades, the number of nuns nationwide has steadily and dramatically thinned. As a result, it has become increasingly rare for a nun to lead a Catholic college.

Of the 18 Dominican colleges and universities in the U.S., Werner said, her retirement will leave just three with presidents from the religious order.

Fewer than half of the roughly 250 Catholic institutions nationwide are headed by nuns or priests, according to the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities, compared with 70 percent in 1993, the year before Werner became president at Caldwell.

At Caldwell, the changing of the guard has sparked a renewed focus on emphasizing the values and history of the Dominican order. There are more lectures about the value of Catholicism and what it means to be a Catholic in today’s world and more visual reminders of the history of the religion.

Several years ago, the college named one of its youngest nuns, 40-something Sister Kathleen Tuite, to a high-level position with the goal of promoting the school’s distinct religious identity.

“Times are changing,” Tuite said. “I really believe Sister Patrice, in her wisdom and foresight, forged the right path by creating this position.”


Looking to ensure that everyone on campus understands the “four pillars” of Dominican life, including prayer and community, Tuite prepares information on traditions and hosts special lectures on topics such as Catholic identity.

She also heads an educational program that annually sends 35 campus representatives to meet those of other Dominican colleges in Fanjeaux, the town in southern France where Saint Dominic sowed the seeds of his education-centered philosophy more than 800 years ago.

Blattner, who served as vice president and dean of academic affairs at Fontbonne University in St. Louis, was selected after a search that revealed just how much attitudes about governance at Catholic institutions have changed.

Committee members knew they would have to launch a wide search, said Alexander Giaquinto, president of the college’s board of trustees. “There was no predetermined notion that if there were good candidates from the clergy, they would be given preference,” he said.

When nearly 50 applications were received, “only two or three” came from members of religious orders, he said.

When Catholic colleges first started hiring lay presidents, there was concern about how the decision would play out on campuses, said Richard Yanikowski, president of the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities. Members of religious communities showed “a great deal of anxiety” over whether their institutions could be maintained by outsiders, he said.


As it turned out, Yanikowski said, the debate was often moot. Campuses simply had to take the risk because the numbers were dwindling.

Since the mid-1960s, the number of American nuns has fallen by nearly two thirds, from 179,954 in 1965 to 61,855 in 2008, according to the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University. The number of priests has also declined, but not as dramatically. During the same period, the data show, the country’s total Catholic population grew by 40 percent.

It’s a shift that’s been felt here at Caldwell, where in 1977, almost half of the 87 Caldwell faculty members were members of a religious order. Of today’s 199 total faculty members, just eight are nuns.

“Religious women in this country have built these institutions. There is a kind of sadness to think that might be lost,” said Sister Catherine Waters, who first arrived on the wooded Caldwell campus in the 1970s.

To prepare for the transition, Blattner said she’s been reading as many texts as she can that are by or about famous Dominicans, such as Thomas Aquinas and Catherine of Siena.

She said she hopes to develop an on-campus “lay associate” formation program, an intensive study of a congregation’s history and traditions, for Caldwell employees. “I think that will be sort of a new approach,” she said. “I’m hopeful people will be interested if the president is interested.”


Waters likened the change to the trustees’ decision in 1985 to open the school to men. Both moves, she said, were risks worth taking.

“The college has matured very beautifully,” she said. “Becoming co-educational was an important part of that. We’ve tried to change with the times.”

(Brian Whitley writes for The Star-Ledger in Newark, N.J.)

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