GOD ON THE SECULAR CAMPUS

This is a strange book, frequently cynical, even at times bitter, which ends on a constructive and optimistic note. Certainly it is an honest statement from the point of view of a chaplain to Catholics on a secular campus of what is obviously one of the more important challenges to all faiths. What happens to the attitudes of the new breed of college students, ever growing in numbers on secular campuses, is vitally important to the future of our society. Father Butler, the author of The Life and World of George Santayana and Religious Vocation, an Unnecessary Mystery, both written out of personal knowledge of his subjects, considers this new topic with the same scholarship, literacy, thoroughness and insight represented in his other books. All, clergymen, and parents, too, need to heed Father Butler's warning that Americans have failed to face up to the growing ascendancy of secular humanism as the influence dominating the thinking of a large percentage of students. He calls for action now by the Churches to restore religion adequately in the curious minds and hungry hearts of the young people on the secular campuses. The background for understanding what measures should be taken is in this book.