Tonight, I gave a presentation to a group of students and staff at Santa Clara, regarding recent research on the relationship between spiritual practice and sexual decision-making in the lives of college students. No one who works with the current generation of college students will be surprised to learn that to a person, and irrespective of political or ecclesiological orientation, everyone was totally tuned in. So many wanted to stay and continue the conversation that we added on an extra 55 minutes. The crux of the conversation was the contemporary “hookup culture” in college life, its characteristics, causes, and spiritual challenges, and what sort of horizon for adult Christian faith and sexuality lies beyond it for these students, and for all of us in American Jesuit higher education. It was another reminder that today’s Catholic college students want to learn to pay attention to their lives–in ways both practical and theological. Tom Beaudoin

 Tom Beaudoin is associate professor of theology at Fordham University, in the Graduate School of Religion. His latest book is Witness to Dispossession: The Vocation of a Postmodern Theologian.