Catholic Studies Programs and Catholic Identity

After the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965), the structure of required courses dramatically changed at most Catholic universities. Before the council, it was typical that all students, regardless of their major, were required to take at least eighteen credit hours (six courses) mainly in philosophy and some theology (mostly grounded in the thinking of the thirteenth-century theologian Thomas Aquinas). Once those requirements were dramatically reduced and what was then offered covered more than Christian religions, doubts began to spread among some faculty as to whether the university had lost its Catholic character. By the 1980s, Catholic studies programs began to be created that included more disciplines than theology and philosophy and typically also offered opportunities for the moral formation of students. Controversies erupted between faculty who questioned the academic legitimacy of these programs. This chapter provides an evaluation of the nature and academic legitimacy of these programs.

Introduction

This chapter introduces the importance of a continuing substantive conversation on the identity and mission of Catholic higher education. It reviews some of the debates before and after Vatican II (1962–1965) and explains the metaphor of the “open circle,” the danger of mission slippage, and the profound cultural changes over the past seventy-five years. It also offers a diagnosis of the current state of Catholic higher education and describes the Institute for Advanced Catholic Studies (ifacs.com).

Author’s Reflections on the Responses and Questions from the Book Launch

This is the author’s reflections on formal responses, and a discussion, which took place at the book launch for Christopher Insole’s Kant and the Divine: From Contemplation to the Moral Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), hosted jointly, in November 2020, by the Centre for Catholic Studies, Durham University, and the Australian Catholic University. Topics covered include: the aesthetic properties of Kant’s philosophy, the difference between the received Kant and the textual Kant, the theological hostility to (and appropriation of) Kant, Insole’s claim that Kant believes in God, but is not a Christian.

Response to Christopher Insole’s Kant and the Divine: From Contemplation to the Moral Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020)

This is a response given at the book launch for Christopher Insole’s Kant and the Divine: From Contemplation to the Moral Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), hosted jointly, in November 2020, by the Centre for Catholic Studies, Durham University, and the Australian Catholic University. The response focuses on the continuity and rupture that Insole claims to find between Kant’s early and late philosophy, and draws attention to an aesthetic sensibility across Kant’s thought: a Platonic and rationalist aesthetics which focuses on the qualities of harmony, plenitude and perfection that Insole finds to be the ‘base notes’ of Kant’s thought.

Conversation between Jennifer Herdt and Christopher Insole

This is a conversation held at the book launch for Christopher Insole’s Kant and the Divine: From Contemplation to the Moral Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), hosted jointly, in November 2020, by the Centre for Catholic Studies, Durham University, and the Australian Catholic University. The conversation covers the claim made by Insole that Kant believes in God, but is not a Christian, the way in which reason itself is divine for Kant, and the suggestion that reading Kant can open up new possibilities for dialogue between Christian thinkers and contemporary forms of secular religiosity.

Response to Christopher Insole’s Kant and the Divine: From Contemplation to the Moral Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020)

This is a response given at the book launch for Christopher Insole’s Kant and the Divine: From Contemplation to the Moral Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), hosted jointly, in November 2020, by the Centre for Catholic Studies, Durham University, and the Australian Catholic University. The response considers the gap between the textual Kant (as set out by Insole), and the received Kant, and reflects on how theologians have been too quick either to condemn and dismiss (a poorly interpreted) Kant, or to rehabilitate Kant for theological projects, which Kant would have been opposed to, given his deepest philosophical commitments.

The Generational Ties That Bind American Roman Catholics

Roman Catholic Studies has had little interest in or sources on Catholics marginalized by region or age or both. Challenging this assumed wisdom calls for a new orientation to the study of Catholicism, an orientation found in Anthropology. In this paper, I question why scholars have failed to ask questions about how age—different stations in life and varying generational contexts, across space, time and within one historical moment—shapes Roman Catholic practice on the individual as well as communal level? To attempt to answer this question, I use examples from my work; two ethnographic studies with Southern Catholics of all ages to explore how an interdisciplinary, anthropological approach provides scholars with a new set of questions, draws their attention to new arenas of religious action, and broadens the cast of characters who play key roles in religious communities.