Any Catholic college or university presidents bracing for a scolding from Pope Benedict probably breathed a sigh of relief after hearing his remarks at the Catholic University of America today. Benedict made no mention of pro-choice commencement speakers or performances of "The Vagina Monologues." He said that a school's Catholic identity "is not simply a question of the number of Catholic students" and cannot "be equated simply with orthodoxy of course content" -- remarks that surely came as good news to leaders of the many Catholic schools that fall short on both counts.

Yet the pope's decision to avoid a nuts-and-bolts discussion of the controversies dominating headlines in Catholic higher education should not be construed as a confirmation of the status quo. In his speech, Benedict called for nothing less than a fundamental shift in the way Catholic educators view their mission and serve their students.

Benedict reminded his audience that Catholic schools exist to advance the Church's mission of spreading the faith by helping students seek truth through faith and reason. Since students who find truth also find God, the pope said, forming students in the Catholic faith is not a tangential aspect of Catholic education. It is its raison d'etre.

That message may sound uncontroversial in the context of Catholic elementary and secondary education, but on the collegiate level, those are fighting words. On many Catholic campuses, Catholic identity is a bit like the goofy school mascot -- a nostalgic holdover to be trotted out at alumni gatherings and fund-raising drives but otherwise ignored. The notion that a university's Catholic identity should shape what happens not only in the classroom but in every realm of campus life, and that Catholic professors should live as models of the faith and encourage the moral and religious formation of their students inside the classroom and out, is dismissed by many Catholic educators as an impossible ideal or paternalistic pap.

Benedict disagrees. In his earlier homily at Nationals Park today, the pope noted the importance of cultivating in the young "a mindset, an intellectual 'culture,' which is genuinely Catholic." He repeated that theme again in his remarks to educators, wondering aloud why many people today struggle to entrust themselves to God. "It is a complex phenomenon and one which I ponder continually," Benedict said. "While we have sought diligently to engage the intellect of our young, perhaps we have neglected the will."

What the pope seems to be asking of Catholic colleges and universities is a Catholic-identity overhaul, one focused on renewing campus culture and cultivating in students a distinctively Catholic world view. Catholic colleges that undergo this overhaul would bear the obvious markers of stronger Catholic identity, such as greater fidelity to Church teachings among professors charged with teaching the faith and greater consistency between a school's Catholic principles and the events and speakers it sponsors.

Yet the vision Benedict outlined today includes other changes as well: a revitalization of liturgical life on campus, deeper integration between faith and reason in the lives of students, greater openness to exploring the big questions of meaning and purpose too often lost in the minutiae of academic specialties and an educational approach to sexuality that fixates less on what the pope characterized as "management of 'risk'" -- that is, safe sex -- and more on "the beauty of conjugal love."

Benedict did not give Catholic educators a scolding today, but he did give them a tall order for reform. Those who eagerly await the renewal of Catholic higher education can only hope that his pupils were taking notes.