Young people glad they’re finally meeting Christ and learning about the faith 

Whether it was finding the faith-based community they had lacked, the extra depth of understanding they gained, or daily Mass celebrated between classes, students are speaking up about the significant moments of their Catholic post-secondary education.

Catholic Pacific College “is like a family, it’s really needed,” said student Jennifer Nundal.

“Prior to my coming to CPC I was honestly looking at walking away from the faith, so the education I got there made a big difference to my understanding. It filled out catechesis that was incomplete in my young years and basically changed my life.”

Anabella Nootebos is also a student at CPC, the small Catholic college next to Trinity Western University in Langley.

“If I may be honest, my faith formation and education in high school left me with the feeling ‘Is this really it?’ And I didn’t really know Christ,” she told The B.C. Catholic.

“I might not have remained a practising Catholic if not for the opportunity to delve deeper and explore the beauty and truth of our faith in a profound way … it was such a crucial part in my journey towards loving Jesus more.”

A group of CPC students and faculty gathered at a restaurant in Fort Langley September to celebrate the beginning of a new school year and the opening of the college’s new Catholic Formation Track (CFT) program.

Conversations throughout the night revolved around the value that students felt they were afforded through Catholic post-secondary education. Dissatisfaction with past educational experiences, especially Catholic elementary and secondary schooling, was a common theme. 

“It ultimately boils down to wanting to learn more about my faith at a university level. Around the end of high school I had begun watching many more videos of Catholic apologists explaining and defending the faith, and the intellectual background of the faith really interested me,” said student union president Anthony Nootebos.

“Up until that point there wasn’t much explanation for why we believed what we believed, and the few things that were explained weren’t explained very well.”

That’s what CPC hopes to address with the CFT program.

“You won’t find any other university where you get this much theology counting towards your full degree without being a theology major,” said Dr. Andrew Kaethler, assistant professor of theology.

The program will offer students a two-year course of study that integrates with Trinity Western University’s core course requirements. All CFT classes combine theology and Catholic culture with the liberal arts necessary for a well-rounded university education. Some of the classes that make up the program include: Beauty and the Sacred, Virtue Ethics, and Poetry and Drama in a Catholic Context.

Of course, once everything is said and done, above the classes and the work, the students emphasize that the sense of community at the college is the high point of their university experience. 

“CPC is great,” said student Jeremy Joosten, a second-year business major at TWU and CTF student. “The people you meet are very [grounded] in what they believe in; it’s something you can see in their eyes that you aren’t going to see anywhere else.”

Information about CPC and the new program can be found here.

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