Christendom's Warren Carroll: 'Great Worker for the Church'

By Maria Gaetano
HERALD Staff Writer
(From the issue of 9/12/02)

Christendom College Founder Dr. Warren H. Carroll recalls meeting Pope John Paul II several years ago during a private audience in Rome, and being introduced as the founder of Christendom College in Front Royal. The pontiff leaned over, looked into Carroll’s face and said, "You have done a great work for the Church." Carroll’s eyes were misty as he recalled the moment recently. "It was the crowning moment of my life," he said simply. "I am going to put those words on my tombstone."

The fact that the pope, informed by cardinals favorably impressed by Christendom College, knew about the institution was monumental in itself. In the early days, Christendom College was fairly obscure, even in conservative, educated Catholic circles.

Carroll recalls traveling to various Catholic conferences throughout the U.S. in the early 1980s and "no one knew who or what Christendom was. They couldn’t even pronounce the name," he said.

When Carroll was in college, everyone, Christian or not, knew of "Christendom" as another name for the Christian world, and certainly knew how to pronounce it. The fact that people no longer knew what the word itself meant reflected the deterioration of Christian culture, he said.

Carroll, first president, began Christendom College in 1977, because there was a "great need for a college that was 100 percent Catholic," he said. "My goal was to provide a place that would be totally Catholic, where everyone believed in the Faith and used textbooks and talked from the standpoint of the Faith, with the truths of the Faith engraved in every discipline."

Carroll, whose degrees are in history, completed his undergraduate work at Bates College in Lewiston, Maine, and his graduate work at Columbia University in New York.

Carroll’s fervent love of the Faith, coupled with his desire to help preserve and pass on Catholic learning and culture, are fruits of his 1968 conversion to Catholicism. He said his conversion was "entirely due to the influences" of his wife, Anne Carroll, founder of Seton School in Manassas and author of Christ the King — Lord of History. The Carrolls were married in 1967.

Although the idea of founding a "100-percent-Catholic college" was all his own, Carroll’s dream began while he was working at TRIUMPH magazine, a conservative lay-published Catholic periodical that began in 1966 and ceased publication in 1976. Carroll’s involvement with the magazine and its enterprises was an important influence in his realization of the need for a college like Christendom. "TRIUMPH shaped my purpose for a long time," said Carroll. "The original nucleus of Christendom College was drawn from readers and staff of and contributors to TRIUMPH," he wrote in the foreword to The Best of TRIUMPH (Christendom Press, 2001).

In 1970, Carroll, who was born in Minneapolis and grew up in South Berwick, Maine, moved to Virginia and began working at TRIUMPH in 1972. He was the head of its educational operation, the Christian Commonwealth Institute (CCI), for a time. It was through CCI that Carroll met Dr. Timothy O’Donnell, who, by Carroll’s initiative, many years later became the third president of Christendom.

The main challenge during the early years of the college was getting enough students. "I said I would start with 25 students; God sent me 26, the bare minimum. God always gives you what you need, nothing more," Carroll said.

There were many crises in the beginning, including disloyalty and infighting amongst some of those working for the college, trials Carroll attributes to the devil. "A dozen times, we were close to despair," he said.

Funding, almost fully by laymen and women, was also scarce in the beginning. The day after moving into their first location, St. Francis of Assisi Parish’s unused school building in Triangle, Carroll received an unexpected seasonal heating bill for $4,000. "I had no idea how I would pay the bill," said Carroll, who faced the possibility that his dream would end before it had even begun. Carroll prayed about it, telling God that if He wanted the college to work out, he would have to send the money.

Within days, a check arrived from a young teacher, who every year gave half of his income to Catholic charities. The check was for nearly the amount needed to pay the bill. This story is one of the sure proofs that "God wanted the college to succeed. He won’t allow a project He likes to fail for lack of funds," said Carroll.

Retired Bishop Thomas J. Welsh, first bishop of Arlington, said that " Carroll’s vision and leadership were the essential ingredients for the success of the college." As bishop of the diocese when Christendom was founded, he was happy to give his blessing to the college. He admired Carroll’s courage and zeal, and kept in touch with the progress during the time he was the bishop.

"The college was Catholic as its key element," said Bishop Welsh. "The motivation was Catholicism, educating people in the totality of education, with the Faith as the foundation of their education. It very early on began producing vocations and was a very fine source of Catholic presence in the diocese."

Carroll said that he foresaw from the beginning that many religious vocations and marriages would come out of the college. In the early years, he attended all of the "Christendom weddings."

After stepping down from the presidency in 1985, Carroll devoted himself more fully to teaching and writing. Over the years, he taught many classes, including the history of western civilization I and II, classical history, the history of Ireland, the history of Britain, American history, the history of Hispanic peoples, causes and effects of the French Revolution, causes and effects of the Communist Revolution and the history and theology of Pope John Paul II.
Carroll is the author of many history books, including The Founding of Christendom, The Building of Christendom, The Glory of Christendom, The Cleaving of Christendom, 1917: Red Banners White Mantle, Isabel of Spain, Our Lady of Guadalupe, The Rise and Fall of the Communist Revolution, The Last Crusade and The Guillotine and the Cross.

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