While promoting Catholic teachings to students on Catholic campuses serves obvious spiritual needs, there are also important practical reasons why students need to be taught Catholic sexual values and encouraged to live a chaste life.

There is a growing mountain of social science research that shows that not only is the “hooking up” culture immoral, but it can also have devastating effects on a student’s (and his or her children’s) physical, mental, spiritual, and financial health later in life.

Promiscuity leads to less stable marriages, higher incidences of divorce, and a greater probability of developing sexually transmitted diseases. Worse still, the effects of multiple sex partners builds throughout life and can even impact a student’s children years later.

In addition to these harmful personal consequences, promiscuity and homosexual activity—as well as campus activism endorsing them as acceptable behaviors—have broader societal effects. Instead of evangelizing the culture, alumni may join the large number of Catholic voters who support public policy enabling abortion, homosexual “marriage” and civil unions, divorce, and other practices with devastating social consequences. Even the Church becomes polarized as Catholics disagree about important moral issues.

Not only are students at Catholic institutions not growing in their understanding of Church teachings, many are leaving school “less Catholic” than when they entered. According to a 2003 study commissioned by the Cardinal Newman Society and conducted by the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA, students’ fidelity to Catholic teaching declined significantly at the 38 Catholic colleges and universities that participated in the study.

Student support for keeping abortion legal increased from 45 percent to 55 percent by graduation, and support for legalizing homosexual “marriage” increased from 55 percent to 71 percent. Approval of casual sex increased from 30 percent to 49 percent.

And of course it must be noted that many (if not most?) parents send their children to Catholic schools instead of other private or state colleges in (large?) part because they expect the campus environment to reflect Catholic values.

Institutions identified as Catholic have an obligation to provide a campus culture consistent with Catholic values.