Woodstock to Manhattan

The nation's best-known Jesuit seminary, Woodstock College, last week announced plans to move from rural Maryland to Manhattan, as part of a proposed new interdenominational religious center. Rejecting an attractive offer of affiliation from Yale, Woodstock will be a partner with Columbia University and Union Theological Seminary and other institutions in establishing the center; the partnership will permit Jesuit students to attend courses at both Columbia and Union.

The Woodstock decision was not only the latest and most significant example of ecumenical merger involving U.S. seminaries (TIME, Dec. 29); it also indicated the extent to which Roman Catholics are now interested in gaining the benefits of a Protestant theological education. Yale Divinity School now has 15 Catholics among its 325 students, while the Methodists' Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington D.C. with an enrollment of 248 has 35 Catholic students. Harvard's nondenominational Divinity School counts 33 Catholics in its enrollment of 350. The most striking increase is at the University of Chicago Divinity School, where the Catholic population has grown from fewer than half a dozen students four years ago to 64 today, in a total enrollment of 432. In fact, Catholics now constitute the largest single denominational bloc at the school.

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