Fraternity Once for Excluded Catholics Enjoys Spiritual Revival in U.S.

BY Kimberly Jansen
NCRegister.com
October 4-10, 2009 Issue

On a college campus, it isn’t uncommon to hear of a 21st birthday “bar crawl” where a group of students stops at as many taverns as possible in one evening — often leaving the guest of honor so intoxicated he can barely walk home.

Members of the Phi Kappa Theta fraternity at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL) often end up on their knees at the end of the night, too, but for a different reason. Each month the group hosts a “church crawl” in which members attend Mass together at a different Catholic parish around the city.

Nationally, Phi Kappa Theta (PKT) traces its history to the late 1800s, when Catholic men were actually denied admission to most college fraternities. In fact, the group’s original letters were the Greek initials for “The Catholic Fraternity.”

Don’t get the wrong idea though, said Matt Litt, a UNL graduate student and founding father of PKT’s Nebraska Pi chapter.

“We’re not just nerds or holy rollers,” Litt said. He emphasized that PKT stands on four pillars — fraternal, academic, social and spiritual — and that maintaining proper balance is crucial.