St. Gregory's University in Shawnee, Oklahoma recently added two new board members: F. Russell Hittinger, Warren Professor of Catholic Studies and Research Professor of Law at the University of Tulsa and W. Perry Hodgden, Associate Director of Investments at Oppenheimer in Kansas City, Mo. And, I was elected to the Board's Executive Committee.
At yesterday's meeting, the Board of Directors unanimously adopted a statement of identity, confirming clearly its Catholic and Benedictine foundation. This statement, "May Faith Grant Light: The St. Gregory's Difference," will provide the vision driving academic and co-curricular planning, hiring, allocation of resources, fundraising, and student recruitment. Here is the statement:
May Faith Grant Light: The St. Gregory’s Difference
“Only in faith can truth become incarnate and reason truly human, capable of directing the will along the path of freedom.” Pope Benedict XVI
Welcoming all who want to take advantage of the excellent opportunities afforded by St. Gregory’s University, the university especially seeks students from all walks of life who have a burning desire to go into the world and bear witness to Christ’s love and faith’s light with their very lives as they pursue vocations of marriage, parenthood, and consecrated life, utilizing their passions and talents as entrepreneurs, managers, and other members of the business community; teachers, doctors, nurses, lawyers and other members of the professions; and painters, dancers, actors, and other creators of beauty.
St. Gregory’s strives to educate and form the whole person in the context of a Christian community in which students are encouraged to develop a love of learning and to live lives of balance, generosity, and integrity. The Benedictine motto, ora et labora – pray and work, is taken seriously as those who serve the university as faculty, staff, and administrators endeavor to model a balanced life of prayer, study, work, and leisure in a spirit of hospitality, community, reverence, attentiveness, and service.
St. Gregory’s University, with its motto, fides lumen praebeat – may faith grant light, continues in the United States and Oklahoma a 1500 year old tradition of organically establishing life-giving cultures rooted in an integration of faith and reason and grounded firmly within the Catholic Church. In those “dark ages” after the fall of the Roman Empire, small lights of faith and learning flickered throughout Europe as Benedictine monks kept the embers of civilization alive by collecting and preserving manuscripts, opening schools, and planting the seeds for the development of vibrant Christian communities. Several times during his pontificate, John Paul II spoke of the coming of a great springtime for Christianity, the Church, and the human spirit. He said: “The mission that the Church, with great hope, entrusts to Catholic Universities holds a cultural and religious meaning of vital importance because it concerns the very future of humanity” (Ex Corde Ecclesiae). We invite you to join us here at St. Gregory’s University to bear the first fruits of the seeds planted so many years ago by living out the Great Commission in the 21st century.
Truth, goodness, beauty, and unity shape our classical liberal arts curriculum. Pope Benedict XVI reminds us of “the intrinsic unity that links the different branches of knowledge: theology, philosophy, medicine, economics, every discipline, even the most specialized technologies, since everything is connected.” The Core Curriculum serves as the lens through which students come to see this unity. It includes a four semester sequence of seminars –“Traditions and Conversation”- based upon the literary and cultural heritage of Western civilization and four courses in “Faith and Reason” encompassing introductions to theology, philosophy, scripture, and ethics. Throughout the curriculum, excellence is expected of both faculty and students as we strive to provide an academically rigorous education. Our favorable student to faculty ratio provides ample opportunity for students and professors to get to know each other both inside and outside the classroom.
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Thursday, September 2, 2010
Mark your calendars! The Sixth Annual Conference on Catholic Legal Thought will be held at the University of Oklahoma College of Law May 17-19, 2011. I am pleased to announce that Paul Griffiths, Warren Professor of Catholic Thought at Duke University and Steven Smith, Warren Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of San Diego are confirmed as the two featured speakers.
The conference is designed primarily for those faculty who currently teach or have an interest in teaching courses in Catholic Social Thought or Catholic Legal Theory as well as those whose scholarly work involves a direct engagement with the Catholic and more broadly Christian intellectual tradition.
More details will follow as we get closer to the time of the conference.
In the meantime, if you have questions, I can be reached at [email protected]
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
“We are awake to the hypocrisy and schemes of that designing, crafty, subtle, far-seeing and far-reaching Power, which is ever-grasping after the whole world, to sway its iron scepter with blood stained hands over the millions of its inhabitants.”
OSV's editorial tells us that these words were written not in protest to the proposed building of a mosque near ground zero but in protest of "of a gift by Pope Pius IX of a block of marble for the Washington Monument. The outrage felt by true-blue Americans was so great that the marble was reportedly tossed into the Potomac."
The editorial does not propose a solution to the mosque controversy but rightly hopes that legitimate dialogue and debate will trump heated rhetoric.
Sunday, July 11, 2010
If you have been reading MOJ for some time, you know that I walked 500 miles of the Camino de Santiago last October. I have been asked to link all my Camino blog posts in one place. They are linked starting with the oldest first: here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.
And, here is the YouTube video of "Buen Camino: The Happy Pilgrim Song," written by Mark Gardner, Bill Stavinoha, and yours truly and performed on Nov. 1, 2009 in front of the Santiago Cathedral..
Finally, the trailer to Emilio Estevez's film, "The Way" starring his father, Martin Sheen, which will be released later this year. Filming corresponded roughly with my walking the Camino - they were filming in St. Jean Pied de Port, France when I started the Camino and they arrived in Santiago five days after I did.
Friday, July 9, 2010
In response to my question, “What gives this court the authority to determine whether a particular religious interpretation is misguided?," Aidan says:
I think that by using the word “misguided” the court is not suggesting that the views expressed are not in fact true expressions of the particular religious beliefs described, but rather that those religious beliefs when acted upon are morally wrong because inimical to the proper respect for individual human dignity that is incumbent upon all States and societies. The (anti-relativist) realization that there are absolute moral values (captured in the concept of “human rights”) which are not culturally relative or religiously specific and which States and societies and religions must protect and promote in order to have legitimacy is a post WW11/post-Nuremberg phenomenon common to the political/legal cultures of the civilised world.
There are two problems with Aidan’s response, as I see it. First, there is no universal –or near universal - consensus in the “civilized” world that “respect for individual human dignity” requires recognition of same-sex sexual relationships. In the aftermath of WWII, the “civilized” world did come to recognize that certain rights were necessary to give “respect for individual human dignity,” but recognition of same-sex relationships was not among these recognized rights. By contrast, in the asylum context, the world community recognized the right to political and religious freedom as constitutive of human dignity. The “enlightened” West has for a long time tried to promote abortion as a fundamental right necessary to the proper respect of individual human dignity and now it is trying to promote same-sex relationships on the same ground. But, without the same sort of consensus that came together in the aftermath of WWII, what gives this court the authority to determine whether a particular religious interpretation is misguided? Aidan, I look forward and hope for your response.
Second, as Mary Ann Glendon pointed out in her chapter of “Recovering Self-Evident Truths: Catholic Perspectives on American Law,” the post-WWII/post-Nuremberg consensus involved a pragmatic consensus about some important but minimal international human rights. What they didn’t decide – and didn’t even discuss much – was the foundation for those rights. In other words, the anthropological questions, which would have addressed “why human beings have rights and why some rights are universal” (p. 317), were rarely discussed and never resolved. Aidan states that “An expression by the court that the actions by another State or significant religious or cultural or political non-State institutions within that state contravene fundamental human rights is very much the province and duty of the judge, and I see no usurpation of power in their so doing in this particular case.” Hmm? On what ground does the court presume to develop (evolve?) the list of fundamental human rights or legally binding “absolute moral values” beyond those agreed to in treaties without a guiding principle or criterion for determining what rights human beings have and what rights are fundamental. Isn’t the court really engaged in an exercise of raw judicial power (maybe for good or maybe for ill) without some foundational premises from which to derive their specific conclusion? Thoughts?
