As a vibrant and authentic Catholic institution, we provide our students with a faith-filled environment, guiding them to a deeper and more profound understanding of the Truth.
Visitors to Wyoming Catholic College regularly remark on the joyful spirit they see in our students—a joy that can be traced directly to their relationship with God, cultivated and sustained in the faithfully Catholic spiritual life at the college.
The belief that our integrated education has the power to transform students regardless of their faith or religious background is a core principle of our educational philosophy. As a result, we welcome students of all creeds, and are grateful for their contributions to the life and vitality of the College.
Yet we also believe that our mission is best carried out in an environment of true Catholicity. Thus, in addition to educating our students’ minds, we seek to form them into young men and women fully alive in Christ. This lofty goal conforms to the challenge Pope St. John Paul II set in Ex corde Ecclesiae. Students at a Catholic university, he wrote, “are challenged to continue the search for truth and for meaning throughout their lives, since the human spirit must be cultivated in such a way that there results a growth in its ability to wonder, to understand, to contemplate, to make personal judgments, and to develop a religious, moral, and social sense.”
The chaplains at Wyoming Catholic College teach in many ways—by giving homilies rich in doctrine and moral guidance; by offering spiritual direction; by organizing and implementing retreats for the entire College community; and by participating in the College’s theology practica. As the occasion arises, they lead our students in spiritual and corporal works of mercy outside the College community. In a more hidden way, they teach through the brief word of encouragement or advice.
As the Philosophical Vision Statement says, “a Catholic liberal education produces the truly free man who, because he possesses the intellectual, moral, and theological virtues, can direct himself—with God’s grace—to his proper end.”
The Wyoming Catholic College chaplaincy is essential to this aim. Working in close harmony with the curriculum, the chaplaincy “will have spared the student many years of wandering and will have set his purpose firmly in mind.”
“The world looks to the priest, because it looks to Jesus. No one can see Christ; but everyone sees the priest, and through him they wish to catch a glimpse of the Lord.”
Pope Saint John Paul II
We joyfully accept Pope John Paul II’s Apostolic Constitution Ex corde Ecclesiae, striving wholeheartedly to implement its binding norms.
“In ways appropriate to the different academic disciplines, all Catholic teachers are to be faithful to, and all other teachers are to respect, Catholic doctrine and morals in their research and teaching.” – Ex Corde Ecclesiae
I, N., with firm faith believe and profess everything that is contained in the Symbol of faith: namely:
I believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is seen and unseen. I believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten not made, one in Being with the Father. Through him all things were made. For us men and for our salvation, he came down from heaven: by the power of the Holy Spirit he became incarnate of the Virgin Mary, and became man. For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate; he suffered death and was buried. On the third day he rose again in accordance with the Scriptures; he ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end. I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son. With the Father and the Son he is worshiped and glorified. He has spoken through the Prophets. I believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church. I acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins. I look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen.
With firm faith, I also believe everything contained in the Word of God, whether written or handed down in Tradition, which the Church, either by a solemn judgement or by the ordinary and universal Magisterium, sets forth to be believed as divinely revealed.
I also firmly accept and hold each and everything definitively proposed by the Church regarding teaching on faith and morals.
Moreover, I adhere with religious submission of will and intellect to the teachings which either the Roman pontiff or the College of Bishops enunciate when they exercise their authentic Magisterium, even if they do not intend to proclaim these teachings by a definitive act.
I, N., in assuming the office of teacher at Wyoming Catholic College, promise that in my words and in my actions I shall always preserve communion with the Catholic Church
.With great care and fidelity I shall carry out the duties incumbent on me toward the Church, both universal and particular, in which, according to the provisions of the law, I have been called to exercise my service.
In fulfilling the charge entrusted to me in the name of the Church, I shall hold fast to the deposit of faith in its entirety; I shall faithfully hand it on and explain it, and I shall avoid any teachings contrary to it.
I shall follow and foster the common discipline of the entire Church and I shall maintain the observance of all ecclesiastical laws, especially those contained in the Code of Canon Law.
With Christian obedience I shall follow what the Bishops, as authentic doctors and teachers of the faith, declare, or what they, as those who govern the Church, establish.
I shall also faithfully assist the diocesan Bishop, so that the apostolic activity, exercised in the name and by mandate of the Church, may be carried out in communion with the Church.
So help me, God, and God’s Holy Gospels on which I place my hand.
The Code of Canon Law (can. 812) requires that all Catholics who teach Catholic theological discipline in a Catholic institution of higher studies have a mandate, or mandatum, from the local competent ecclesiastical authority, which in the case of Wyoming Catholic College is the Bishop of the Diocese of Cheyenne.
The mandatum is fundamentally an acknowledgment by Church authority that a Catholic professor of theology is teaching in full communion with the Catholic Church, and it concerns both the content of what is taught as well as the professor’s commitment and responsibility to teach authentic Catholic doctrine and to refrain from putting forth as Catholic teaching anything contrary to the Church’s magisterium. While the professor who receives the mandatum is not teaching in the name of the Bishop or of the Church’s Magisterium, his teaching of Catholic theology is considered to be a genuine part of the Church’s mission of evangelization.
All professors and teachers of theology at Wyoming Catholic College are required to seek and obtain a mandatum from the Bishop of Cheyenne prior to teaching students at the College, and must always retain this mandatum if they are to retain the right to teach the students.
