GOSPEL ACCORDING TO TOMMY

It's nighttime when a crowd of young people clumps together on the plaza outside of the Caruso Catholic Center. The group meets in the courtyard facing the chapel's entrance -- a pair of wooden doors, medieval and grandiose. Above them is the building's signature ovate window of darkened stained glass, peering down on the parishioners as they form a line.

The night is quiet. It's Good Friday -- the day that Catholics honor Jesus' death before his resurrection is celebrated on Easter Sunday. This ultimate memento mori is meant to remind them that God, too, walked in the shadow of the valley of death.

The line proceeds into the parish hall. The doors swing open, and the group is flanked by parishioners that fill the pews. Matt Maceda, then a sophomore, can make some of the silhouettes in the crowd as people he recognizes. As Matt moves forward with the line, he fixates on the giant wooden crucifix hanging above the stage of the parish -- the memorial of a writhing, suffering Jesus suspended 50 feet in the air. The impact on Matt is profound.

"I felt like that's what heaven would look like when I die," Maceda said. "You see all the people you love, and you're heading towards God. And I'm like, 'This is the epitome of faith. That's what the resurrection is actually supposed to look like.'"

It was the first time he truly felt Catholic.

The Caruso Center at USC

Maceda's experience is one that the Caruso Center at the University of Southern California thrives on: students arriving to campus and having a spiritual encounter with their faith. It is one of the reasons why the center, named after it's billionaire founder, Rick Caruso, prides itself on being one of the top-ranked collegiate Catholic centers in the U.S.

In fact, about one in every five USC students identifies as Catholic -- an estimate of 10,000 students out of USC's total enrollment of 48,000. As bible study groups are formed and graduate students are invited to share a beer over theological discussions, the Caruso Center welcomes students with events like silent retreats and Christmas tree lighting ceremonies catered by In-N-Out burger.

Meanwhile, reality for Catholicism at large couldn't be more different. Four of every five Catholic college students broadly are expected to drop their faith while in school. Only 8% of U.S. Catholics say they are "very close" with the clergy of their church, while 38% say they "are not close." According to PEW Research, Catholicism has experienced a greater drop in numbers than any other religion in the United States.

The church's hobble to recover from abuse scandals and traditional views on gay marriage and women's rights has turned thousands away from the faith of their parents and grandparents. Meanwhile, the dedication of those who still consider themselves Catholic is questionable at best. Only one-third of Catholics are reported to believe in transubstantiation -- the paramount belief that the Eucharist is the body and blood of Christ.

As crowds pack the Caruso Center for mass and spiritual events, then, the question is worth asking: does Catholicism beat the odds at USC? And if so, how?

CATHOLICISM ON CAMPUS

"We have had a long history of devoted Catholic alums who want to see the Catholic center at USC succeed in the same way USC has had this trajectory," said Jamie Capetta, president of the Caruso Catholic Center.

Capetta arrived at USC in 2013 -- the year after the Caruso Center was completed. He was brought on as part of a larger plan to expand the Catholic Trojan community, led by residential pastors and a group of influential alumni.

"They had this vision of building the premiere Catholic Center in the country," he said.

As a former consultant for campus ministries and director of development at Yale's student chapel for eight years, Capetta was qualified to ensure growth. Over the next seven years, he achieved this through two methods: funding and strategic recruiting.

"Finance is always a part of it," he said. "Money follows mission."

According to Capetta, the Caruso center has an annual budget of $3 million -- 5% of which is covered on interest by a $10 million endowment given to the center when the building was opened. This means that the majority of Capetta's year is spent collecting funds to meet a $2.5 million quota. Strapped-for-cash college students can't afford to be generous at the donation box, so Capetta leans on a robust alumni network to secure funding.

Through various organizations such as the Caruso Parent Association or the annual Trojan Saint Dinner - in which a USC alum is given special recognition for their contributions for the church -- the center stays afloat. Yet recent scandals from USC and controversy over its board of trustees, which includes Rick Caruso, haven't made this easy.

"A lot of our donors have stepped back from giving to USC, which includes the Catholic Center," Capetta said. "Anybody who has a negative connotation of the trustees or the decisions that are made -- there is a direct tie for many people."

Once funding is secured, the becomes recruiting new students through FOCUS -- a model of spiritual guidance that begins with easing students into their faith through small discussion groups before opening them up to the broader Catholic community. Informal meet-ups, such as hikes, bible studies, Socratic dialogues or 5 p.m. dinners hosted after mass, are designed to introduce students to Catholicism in an environment that isn't overbearing. Once a student catches on in a small cohort, the hope is they will then spread their message to other groups on campus, creating a ripple effect.

"That's been the driving force, I think, of the resurgence of Catholic campus ministry," said Capetta. "You have to have several talks before you're ready to engage with your faith."

STUDENTS COME INTO FOCUS

Matt Maceda is the perfect example of FOCUS at work.

Caruso has three Sunday masses in addition to daily masses and a wealth of other opportunities for students to join.

Like many college students, Maceda grew up with an apathetic relationship towards his faith.

"Church is boring as a kid," he said.

Growing up in San Diego, his relationship with Catholicism was half-hearted. Sunday church, when he went with his mother, was often squeezed in between travel soccer games. Technically, he wasn't even Catholic officially because he never received confirmation -- the sacrament in which teenage Catholics decide to enter the church on their own.

"I didn't actually take it seriously until I came to college," he said.

Once Matt arrived at USC in 2017 to study human biology, things changed. His main group of friends ended up being Catholic, too, and they were all actively involved in the Church. So, Matt started attending FOCUS group meetings. At first, FOCUS was just a social outlet, but soon, he was attending daily mass and signing on to be a eucharistic minister. By his sophomore year, he even got confirmed.

Now, one year later, he plans to apply to be on the Catholic center's student leadership board.

"I really like how the Catholic center just sort of runs things," he said.

"They're very welcoming and they do take in anyone," said Becca Mann, a junior at USC studying screenwriting. "We generally disagree, and we don't change our opinions in the end, but we understand where both of us are coming from."

Mann is a devout Catholic and a regular attendee to mass and Caruso's events. Yet, many of Mann's core beliefs vie with the traditional teachings of the church. In her view, gays should be welcome, women should be priests, and abortion -- not considering its moral implications -- should be the woman's choice.

"I think that it's my job to challenge those beliefs and make the Catholic Church a better place,"" she said. "I stay with the Church because I feel God there and I want to make it better."

For her, the openness in which other ideas are accepted by the staff who are hired as FOCUS group leaders is refreshing.

"We both have the same morals, we just have different ways of thinking about it," she said.

Mann is not alone, either. One PEW survey in 2015 measured that 46% of American Catholics recognize the marriage of gay and lesbian couples, while 59% believe women should be permitted to the priesthood and 76% believe Catholics should use birth control.

Similar to Mann, this is a substantial body of Catholics who remain with the faith and hope that it's traditionalism will bend to society's progressiveness. To them, this change comes from the ground-up.

"Everybody should be allowed to experience Jesus, and I think the institution gets in the way of that sometimes," Mann said.

For others on campus, however, this misconstrues what it means to be Catholic.

"Efforts to enculturate our faith, to perhaps try to make our faith more accessible by watering down and adapting to modern culture, I think it earns us pats on the back from those who identify as secular," said Nick Solari, a senior studying narrative studies at USC who is also the president of the student executive Board at Caruso.

Since a young age, Solari has been a by-the-book Catholic. Attending Catholic high school, he was drawn down a path of life that he felt would lead to a deeper understanding -- one that wasn't underage drinking and hookups in a parent's basement.

"I was seeing these teachers, these adults and priests who seemed to be encouraging us to live out a different lifestyle, and they seemed like their lives were more stable," he said. "Maybe these people are on to something, maybe me and my friends don't know better than this 200-year-old tradition."

From then on, Solari was all-in. He received confirmation and, when arriving to USC like many other Catholics, found a welcoming environment in Caruso.

"The Catholic center is like the primary community where I centered my identity in college and found my friends," he said.

Yet, unlike Mann, Solari is more dogmatic. For him, gay marriage is hard to foresee, abortion is out of the question, and it's difficult to imagine a woman as a priest.

"A woman could never be Jesus any more than a man could be the Virgin Mary," he said.

Solari also believes that the hopes for Pope Francis, who is often viewed as a reformist leader for the church, to alter Catholicism are unfounded and exaggerated.

"We need to be careful about not listening to people who aren't interested in Catholicism about what they would like to see in the Catholic Church," Solari said. "I think the church is more attractive when it stands as an alternative to the things that are dissatisfying about our culture."

SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND FAITH

The divergence on these core beliefs by Mann and Solari create an image of two students attending the same mass at USC who may disagree on fundamental aspects of their faith.

The question then becomes how many of the students attending mass at USC are, by the traditional sense, Catholic?

"I'm not sure how to count [it]," said Father James Heft, a professor of religion at USC and residential priest at Caruso. "I'm not sure that I would describe the Catholic center as vibrant, except for a small group of people."

Heft estimates that, of the 10,000 USC students who identify as Catholic, there are about 650-to-750 students who attend mass each week. Of those, he guesses that about 35-to-40 are truly engaging with and practicing their faith.

The success of Caruso, he believes, comes in part of its physical powress and ability to collect funding. Yet this doesn't guarantee that all attendees are heeding to a traditionalist's view of the faith.

"I think the beauty of the place helps, I would never discount that," Heft said. "At the same time, the early church grew in the catacombs where they were hiding for their lives."

Therefore, the packed masses at Caruso are often by students who may be split on core tenets to their religion. On one end is Nick Solari, and the other, Becca Mann -- unified by house of worship, yet separate in what they perceive that worship to mean.

In the middle is Matt Maceda, a student who believes that change is possible, but isn't sure of how that will come. While actively involved in a church that has been defined and harshly criticized for its rigidity, the question how students like him are counted, Catholic or not, may be up for interpretation.

"I think one thing that makes Catholicism feel special is the fact that it is so traditional,"" Maceda said. "I mean, we are the first Christian church – but there is room to make little tweaks that make sense."

Little tweaks are hard to come by for a church with a 2,000-year-old history. It is perhaps why Catholicism, perhaps unknowingly, now has members that disagree on their own faith, yet come together for mass each week -- defining the church by the inherently fragmented nature of belief.

"The bigger picture is regarding being close to God," he said.