The Edith Stein Project and Catholic Legal Theory

I am humbled in the face of a conference like the Edith Stein Project for a number of reasons.  (I’ll mention two). 

First, the profound insights of these young women (and men) in their late teens and early twenties leaves me awestruck.  (not to mention organizational ability to pull off a major conference).  At their age, I was an observant Catholic but my mind was 1) less developed, 2) less serious, and 3) more secular.  With these young people, we see the fruits of John Paul the Great as these young people take their places in the world as part of what has been dubbed the JP II generation. 

Second, the major work of cultural transformation and renewal will NOT come (IMHO) from the part of the vineyard that I have been given to till (my vocation in the law) but from changing hearts and minds in the broader culture.  To be sure, we in the law have much work to do.  Some of us are involved in a sort of rear guard action, defending against legal attempts to further marginalize the religious voice from the public square and/or defending the Church from those who would impose currently fashionable secular norms on the life of the Church.   Others are involved in critiquing secularist (agnostic or a-theistic) legal thought.  Still others are imagining a legal system that took seriously the integral humanism proposed by the Church (and others).  But, the seeds we plant will not bear fruit unless the soil of our culture has been tilled by those working outside the law.