Anonymous
Satire Column
In an interview April 3, Franciscan University’s president announced plans to establish several new campuses across the globe as the next phase of a recent capital campaign in response to overwhelming over-funding.
The Rev. President Dave Pivonka, TOR announced Thursday that the school will be establishing new campuses in crucial places across the globe in response to overwhelming over-funding in the Rebuild My Church capital campaign.
The first new campus will be set up in Australia. It will operate out of Matt Fradd’s old house, offering students a chance to learn about the Catholic celebrity in a class called “Matthew Fradd’s life and works: how to be a zealous bloke.” This course will be worth three credit hours and will count towards either history, communication arts, catechetics or gender studies.
The Australian campus will also offer a class on the popular television program “Bluey.” The class will be integrated into the human development and family studies curriculum, meaning all HDFS students will be required to take a semester abroad learning about everyone’s favorite dog.
The next campus will be established in Ecuador. The only classes available there will be soccer 101, 102, 201, 202, 301, 302, 401 and 402 — all of which will be in the catechetics department and will be taught by native children. There will also be a plantain cooking class, which will focus on how to make them extra slimy and soggy.
There will not be a Spanish class.
The third campus in the campaign will be strategically placed in the middle of St. Francis University, Franciscan University’s sister school. This campus will offer the full catalogue of classes — St Francis’s, that is, not Franciscan’s — and it will share academic buildings, dorms, cafeterias, clubs and athletics facilities.
Rest assured, though, the two campuses will remain distinct, as Franciscan’s will have a rugby team while St. Francis’ will only have a football team.
“After this,” said Pivonka, “Franciscan will push the frontier of Catholic education all the way to Canada,” where, he hopes, the students will come away with a better understanding of why socialism fails. “This will, of course, be through the economics classes taught there,” Pivonka said.
But if moose (mooses? Meese? Moosen?) and maple syrup aren’t your style, you may want to check out Franciscan’s next campus, which will be established in North Korea. Unique classes will include sign language, morse code, the importance of papal authority, survival 101 and bread making.
The last of the new campuses Pivonka touched on is set to be built in Antarctica. Classes will all be online, but the students will have field work to do, evangelizing the penguins and seals with FOPs and Tuesday night praise. The idea is that if a student can catechize a penguin, then he is ready to catechize the world.
When asked why he chose these locations, Pivonka answered that Franciscan is planning to evangelize the whole world, one campus at a time. Each site will have to focus on different aspects of the main campus to really reach all audiences, with some adopting entirely new programs — such as the guerrilla warfare and new-crusade departments, which will work closely together.
The interviewer questioned the lack of campuses being established in Africa, to which Pivonka replied, “You know, we at the university really thought and prayed a lot about this one, because we don’t want to leave any stone unturned, but then I thought, ‘they’re more Catholic than we are,’ so we really have no need to go over there. Amen?”
“How long do you think it will take to achieve all these goals?” asked the interviewer.
“Well, with the generous donations of our amazing alumni and benefactors, it should only take about two months,” said Pivonka.
“That’s rather ambitious. What are your plans for after these two months?”
“Well, that’s another thing I had to pray a lot about. You know, having evangelized the whole world, what’s left to do? But, then I was meditating on the name of our Church, and I had a realization. We are the Catholic Church — Universal is what we are, so we’re not going to be done until we evangelize the universe.
“That’s why our next move after these two months is going to be to really focus on the diocese of Orlando, which encompasses the moon. We actually have the engineering department working on a prototype rocket right now in the garage of Christ the Teacher.
“These next few months are really going to be a blast. Amen?”