The summons to responsibility
O'Brien, David J.
CATHOLIC INTELLECTUALS: STATE OF THE DEBATE i0"1 The summons to ...
...opportunities for shaping the public consensus beyond any- It is the height of folly to think that any organization, thing the earlier generations could hive hoped for...
...One hears in their charges a strong echo of the people of God, but more than one has been shocked, if not "fortress mentality" of the old Catholic subculture...
...But neither the education pursued with almost unseemly enthusiasm an aca- latter nor the pope and the bishops could be expected to accept demic excellence devoid of any particular Catholic or even such a prescription lying down...
...Apparently they College in late 1934 that stimulated an interest in outdoor were never tempted to stray from a strict doctrinal party evangelization and led to the establishment of a branch of line, or to grapple with the controversies related to the the Evidence Guild at the college the following spring...
...For lay people, certainly, the once prominent questions sions...
...of Columbus and the pioneers in the Grail to the Christian Although several of my own children gave service Family movements...
...cepted Western values of academic and cultural freedom, in Monsignor Ellis once insisted that most of the time the good most cases from a new location within the university...
...No one who visits university campuses or echoing previous Protestant experiences in the United States, reads a selection of journals could deny that there is some truth and raising within the Catholic church the chronic American to that...
...doing, the Rosary College Guild continued to describe its Although those at both poles of the Catholic spectrum cork as street preaching, and the veterans still use the might enlist the aid of popular stereotypes which emword today...
...what Nathan Hatch has called a "democratic hermeneutic...
...probably worse than a generation ago...
...phasize the salubrious or tragic impact of the council upon The longer one contemplates the Rosary College exper- the church, most of us know that such generalizations beg iment...
...church, specifically to the intellectual life of the church, its cultural enrichment, and its dialogue with the larger society...
...purgatory, and devotion to the Blessed Virgin and both sides of the Atlantic...
...Perhaps a timely look at an experi- emboldened O'Brien and his followers...
...Just as they respond by confining religion to personal faith and private life, so Catholic universities marginalize religion into one academic departCommonweal: 336 cal control and confessional exclusiveness as well as the perils cure which would be the outcome of the sharp separation of of uncritical secularization are real...
...The obvious example would be tional subordination of the last generation...
...and injustice, nor contribute anything more to the nation than Equally important, the church, today's church, for all its resounding "no's...
...It is the separation of faith and reason, so marked in Catholic institutions, which disturbs him, producing what he calls a "schizophrenia" which obtains "by reason of claims made by their duel allegiance to religious faith and academic atitonomy...
...with Protestant history might have enabled reformers to anticiYet, it was less secure than it appeared...
...the overworked mission priests...
...3) there is a separation of religious identity and mission from much of the research and teaching in Catholic institutions...
...While they may and peaked in the 1950s under the leadership of Father not provide a model of female dissent within the church John A. O'Brien of Notre Daire...
...As Vatican 11...
...People of God" and the laity's obligation to assume the and Louisiana with the blessing of the local bishops and burdens of a church bursting its ghetto walls...
...In fact, they think I was pretty for the Catholic press during the thirties and forties, one is weird to have done this --- and there are times I can't struck by how comfortable the Rosary College students believe f did it myself, although it seemed quite appear to have been with the title "street preacher'' in a normal and ordinary at the time...
...Trustees, administrators, religion from secular life championed by Catholic neoconserfaculty, and benefactors all share responsibility...
...so not by lengthy arguments about the precise meaning of the word "Catholic," but by reentering the public life of the T HIRTY YEARS after the publication of John Tracy Ellis's modern church...
...tant than the recognition that the effective utilization of such Thus the problematic element today, even more than in resources - the preservation of memory, the actualization of 1955 when Ellis presented his famous paper on Catholic inteluniversality, the public presentation of wisdom and experience lectuals, is how distinctly and deeply "Catholic" are these - all require organization, leadership, and structured, pur- intellectuals, these universities, and the very public presence poseful action...
...responding to the numerous invitations coming from Life," the challenge of Catholic intellectual life remains unre- popes and bishops...
...the injustices visited upon American sisters is the astonishing vitality of Catholic women...
...In an age of freedom and voluntarism, modifier to a school or to themselves, then, we must conclude the quality and effectiveness of such institutions and organiza- that the project Monsignor Ellis called attention to thirty years tions depend upon the commitment and intelligent participa- ago - a project at the heart of his life's work - has been a tion of their members, especially those whose training and failure...
...The issues welcoming the atmosphere of intellectual and academic free- facing Catholic higher education, particularly the relationship dom hard won after the Council, Ellis has recently commented between institutional commitment and mission on the one that, judged by the numbers of research grants awarded to hand, and the professionalism of the faculty on the other - scholars in Catholic colleges and universities, "the progress of with all that means for undergraduate curriculum, for research Catholic institutions in regard to excellence in the humanities priorities, for faculty development - are of obvious and and the liberal arts has been anything but notable, to put it crucial importance for those who take the intellectual life mildly...
...In short, the institutional church - hierarchy, of Catholic lay people...
...They peer out at us from their photographs, a tornohiles parked in the highways and byways...
...The flip side of misguided Roman gathered his shattered atoms and arose: interventions into American church affairs is the struggling Dr...
...They sent religious believed to open the door to a more intelligent understanding educators and other specialized personnel to summer schools of Christian faith among the people of God...
...Cathoobligations...
...The Rosary College Evidence Guild, a bold experi- A group of former street preachers from Rosary College mental laywomen's ministry, remains an enigma which congregated in Chicago in the spring of 1985...
...Conservatives like James Hitchcock argue the problem in the past, is gone beyond recall, replaced by a that, just as Catholic politicians often win office by ignoring culture of voluntarism whose full weight is only beginning to 6 June 1986: 333 be felt...
...If the experiment represented by the pastorals is to part they pass the buck, blame each other, and settle in practice work, if the middle way of Cardinal Newman and Monsignor for policies which allow them to muddle through...
...come captives of another set of institutions, particularly in a In fact, the problem of the Catholic intellectual within the society where knowledge has become specialized, profes- church has gone well beyond the terms of loyalty and institusionalized, and collaborative...
...If our Catholic laymen and women display Conference of Catholic Bishops in their prepara- similar zeal, we shall win for Christ the vast bulk of tory report for last year's synod underscored the the churchless 80.000.000 people in our land within increasingly problematic role of women in the church, the a few decades...
...States and England...
...Thomas Sheehan's essay on "The End of home for intellectuals...
...sarily anti-) intellectual character of local church life may well The resolution of these tensions is not to be found in a be a permanent feature of American religion, one which intelresubmission to irresponsible ecclesiastical authority, nor in a lectuals will have to attend to with something more construcscholarly professionalism which cuts all ties to the church, but tive than complaints...
...Nor will it attract the commitment of problems, is a vibrant and hopeful community within which to those Catholic scholars and intellectuals it so desperately carry on the intellectual enterprise...
...the hierarchical system which permitted them to speak with Rosary College street preachers represent the vanguard of the consent of the bishop...
...members of the Catholic Evidence Guild of might see the Rosary College Guild as a precursor of the Rosary College (River Forest, Illinois), to spend their spirit of Vatican It with its emphasis on the church as the summers street preaching in Oklahoma, North Carolina...
...They constituted mental women's ministry to the American unchurched, a significant departure from the stereotypical "pay, pray, launched three decades before the council, might provide and obey" ethos of the American laity in the early twenfood for thought...
...Still, many who make this argument seem to cast it . problem of anti-intellectualism...
...Like the Catholic Workers, it serves as a The irony implicit in a retrospective assessment of the reminder that courageous innovation can issue forth from work done by the Rosary College street preachers shines a profound appreciation of the abiding certainties of the through the following statement of Mary Virginia Doyle Catholic faith...
...First, the in domesticated doses, about historical criticism of the Bible, history of Protestant theology, Scripture studies, and ethics in symbolic interpretations of doctrine, or the social and cultural the previous century had forecast the way in which modem contextualization of morality...
...This detachment results no more from the great figures of the liberal Catholic tradition, like John their ignoring the church than from the church ignoring them...
...Theologians might claim to be only in terms of some kind of betrayal of the church and the transferring their loyalty from the institutional church to the Catholic people...
...Furthermore, if the unwittingly wed themselves to a new system of power and Protestant churches provide any evidence, the non- (not,necesprivilege, more subtly resistant to the critical spirit...
...Ellis's confidence is not widely shared in the Catholic aca- The old Catholic subculture, which shaped the definition of demic community...
...straints, and replacing concern about orthodoxy with concern Pastorally, however, there is a wider problem, and it is about tenure, publications, and grants...
...In their working lives, subculture intersects the broader culture of which the church is the laity find themselves less beyond or outside the church than a part...
...Their responsibility the words "Catholic intellectual" are to take on historic meandoes not end with raising questions and opening up debate...
...Sheehan's precise argument, assumed with him that this was In the United States, a growing number of young Catholics the logical outcome of the council's dispensation...
...This is not a problem of left or right, but of public life and must include taking seriously the need to give substance to the genuine shared responsibility within the church...
...The world crises of the twentieth to acknowledge that fact...
...He whistled "I'll tical leaders to recognize the need to affirm and support Catho- be with you in apple-blossom time" lic thinkers and creators...
...it was possible for a small tion represents a lay, as well as a clerical, obligation, a cadre of self-styled "women missionaries from duty for laywomen as well as laymen...
...In the post-Reformation church, Catholicism," published two years ago in the New York Rescholars were expected to provide ammunition for reli- view of Books (June 14, 1984), is perhaps symptomatic...
...Henry Newman, and in the present in one of Newman's most Until church leaders learn - or care to learn - to affirm the ardent American disciples, John Tracy Ellis...
...It was Ward's lecture at Rosary the saints to motley crowds of passersby...
...He correctly believes academic leaders are reluctant to face frankly and openly their institutions' religious commitment because they are fearful of the "ridicule of secular university colleagues or even of a few aggressive members of their own faculties whose norms of judgment are so largely influenced by what they regard as the accepted practices of secular academic circles...
...They could easily be- self-interest of the church...
...russet-faced children, the usual engage in serious dialogue with Rome and sister churches while giving a long-needed focus for the church's public desperadoes: himself in exile...
...There is plenty about today's church that inspires hope: its Charred bag beneath ash knuckles he turn toward the poor, its defense of human rights, the rich stalked where shadows cowered pluralism of its theological scholarship, the challenge of the against still crumbling walls...
...Surely, too, the leaders in Catholic cities and seared flesh stole higher education must translate their...
...Still presence beyond simply the efforts of individuals and those of he whistled as charred steaks hissed local parishes...
...In the and Rahne;, and an apparently appreciative observer of postnineteenth century, ultramontane Catholicism institu- Vatican II "liberal" scholarship, Sheehan argued that the best tionalized such attitudes, reducing scholarship to apologetics contemporary Catholic theologians had undermined the founand driving restless minds and spirits out of the church or into a dational doctrine of the Resurrection, and that it was now time sort of Catholic underground...
...That in turn requires a constructive engagement in in the church rather than a greater involvement in all the building public life within the church, anchored, as it must be, institutions of our country, where the success of the laity has precisely on the boundaries where the self-conscious Catholic sometimes been seen as problematic...
...Nagasaki...
...They were among the today, they do represent a precedent, an example of tine first to hear the challenge trumpeted by father O'Brien in women's ministry approved by the hierarchy...
...Commonweal: 332 Charismatic renewal, scriptural and a peculiarly Catholic doc- Catholic interests, many Catholic intellectuals have succeeded trinal fundamentalism, and stubborn, unreflective loyalty to in the arts and sciences while leaving behind or privatizing "traditional morality" have plagued modernizing reformers, their Catholicity...
...unless intelligent people are dedicated to it, devoting to it at To be sure, the quality of this success is considerably more least some of their time and talent...
...Alafter which those institutional controls seemed to collapse...
...of State: on and on he sailed And, finally, organizations of Catholic scholars and intellec- toward foreign shores: shores tuals should try to make their hitherto modest efforts at cooper- which did not recognize .themselves...
...in a continuing struggle to combine Catholic faith and mem- On a pastoral and ecclesial level, the problem is closely bership with authentic intellectual integrity, to be honest about connected with that of the laity...
...CATHOLIC INTELLECTUALS: STATE OF THE DEBATE i0"1 The summons to responsibility consciousness could erode the historical foundations of ChrisDAVID J. O'BRIEN tian faith and render problematic the whole structure of instituTHE CATHOLIC CHURCH has rarely been a comfortable tional Catholicism...
...2) Catholic higher education has failed to achieve excellence...
...for the most vatives...
...waning of popular interest in evangelization since Vatican The Rosary College street preachers embodied the 11, and the growing need to clarify the meaning of ministry same nascent confidence and competitive spirit which in a changing church...
...In the...
...Maisie gawking rural Southern Protestant crowds gathered outWard first mounted the outdoor platform of the Catholic side Bennett's Drug Store or Waldren's Hotel and trill...
...Against including the church, will act intelligently, or that the quality numerous predictions, the church still has a thriving network of its cultural life will be adequate to the scope of its mission, of colleges and universities...
...She is present/v workyou are all invited to rake part in the big religious revi- ing on a history of latCatholic evangelism in the United val...
...there are no more of them today now in the unaccountable professionalism of the faculty, they than were in years past, perhaps less...
...ation strategic and programmatic...
...The flaming missionary zeal of their memT HREE IMPORTANT questions raised by the National bers...
...Dorothy Golden wrote for The Catholic World in 1938: "We women missionaries are strong advocates of revivals fDefra Campbell, a church historian with a special of the right sort, and the spread of Catholicism is undoubt- interest in modern Catholicism, is an assistatu professor edly the only thing that will revive this country fsic] so of religion Lit Gerrvsbarg College...
...church's moral and social teachings which have so preocPost-Vatican II Catholics who are familiar with cupied subsequent generations of Catholic college feminist concerns within the church approach the Rosary women...
...But if Catholic scholars, writers, thinkers, artists today experience give them particular responsibilities for the corpo- wish to share and reinvigorate such a project, they will best do rate life and public witness of the church...
...to four central points: (1) many Catholics are now successfully engaged in the intellectual professions...
...There were at least pate that not everyone would jump at the chance to learn, even three problems which should have been self-evident...
...They took for granted their right the transitory Catholic convert crusade which gained to be street preachers but never dreamed of extending their momentum in the American Catholic church in the 1920s ambitions to the sacramental priesthood...
...Despite Pope Paul VI's public worries States, initial renewal strategies following Vatican II often about overly venturesome speculation, it seemed intellectuals involved a combination of academic training for church perhad finally found a secure place with the Roman Catholic sonnel and "adult education" for the laity...
...tieth century, signifying a new awareness that evangelizaAs recently as the late 1940s...
...The question seems relatively clear: Will Catholic scholars, writers, and artists be persuaded to partici- Long after Ulysses and his passion pate more energetically and constructively in the church's for upheaval were extinguished public life and ministry and thereby develop a network of Catholic intellectuals in many fields and disciplines who will and long after Virgil sang arms share in the task of making the church's contribution to Ameri- and heroes into flame, my father can culture more creative and effective...
...There are no easy solutions...
...In self-defense scholars call upon commonly ac- stimulation in the local parish than they were in the 1950s...
...Although at least one priest-advisor tried to per- aspect of the little-known story of the Rosary College suade the young women that "street speaking" or "teach- Catholic Evidence Guild is encapsulated in the final ing., were more appropriate terms for what they were clause: it seemed quite normal and ordinary at the rime...
...rebuilding communities of conversation, solved...
...6 June 1986: 335 But there are several missing ingredients, none more impor- ment and into the campus equivalents of home and family...
...In this, followed intellectual careers...
...When more attention to the changing mind of the American some Catholics accused them of compromising the dig- laity...
...all fall down...
...Again, familiarity church...
...Sheehan rather innocently followed century, from World War I to the Cold War, gradually under- where the truth seemed to lead, to a religionless Christianity of mined the legitimacy of Catholicism's reactionary ideology...
...lived nor was he carried home Surely one answer to this pressing question is for ecclesias- upon his shieid...
...Bishops provided opportunities for seri- Second, the end of repression within the church was widely ous continuing education for their priests...
...The above article is adapted from a talk reinterpret doctrine and morality, the people might turn to the given at a dinner to honor John Tracy Ellis by the American Catholic Bible and rely on their own experience to understand it, in Historical Association last spring...
...We didn't think of ourbefore Vatican II, the Evidence Guild represents the best selves as part of the women's ministry in the church, but features of American Catholicism just before and just after perhaps we were," admitted some...
...is being bartered away is valued less for how it may heal the Third, intellectuals - freed from roles defined by the problems of the culture than for how it serves the prestige and church - had to relocate themselves...
...Another is for academic leaders to boyishly and held "Stardust Memories" cooperate with bishops in reforming seminary education and ministry training, emphasizing high academic standards, seri- dear long after the stench of collapsed ous study, and research...
...Sharing priest is a "bookish man...
...a half century later, despite Vatican 11...
...What is the secret of their incredible growth...
...It ing...
...Commonweal: 334 Solution of the problem of Catholic intellectual life, then, dence that the Catholic tradition has great constructive redemands the reinvigoration of public dialogue within the sources to bring to bear on crucial issues of national and church, not for its own sake, but for the sake of all those "joys international life...
...There is a direct connection in doubt than its quantity...
...Martha dignified company clad in light summer dresses and specMoore Avery, a convert from socialism and Unitarianism, tator pumps, clutching their white gloves as they brave thee did similar work in Boston beginning in 1917...
...The meetpartakes of the spirit of Aimee Semple McPherson along ing confirmed the impression that the Guild's public aposwith that of Sister Theresa Kane without surrendering the tolate looks more radical two decades after the close of distinct aura of The Bells of Sr...
...Mary's and Faith of Our Vatican 11 than it did in the midst of the convert crusade Fathers...
...seriously...
...Voluntarism has made the exercise of arbitrary author- word "Catholic," to strengthen 'and reinvigorate Catholic ity less and, less tenable, but in exchange it imposes new organizations for research, teaching, writing, dialogue...
...Guild members boldly upheld their revivalistic street preachers became incredible - in fact, '-pretty methods in the confident tones we now tend to associate weird'' - to the generation raised on the teachings of with American Catholicism just prior to the council...
...It catalyzed a latent activism which had Gorman, an active veteran in the Guild in the #940s...
...Then, like any Ulysses, emergence of our national episcopal conference, providing for he returned to the faithful wife, the first time in a hundred years the organizational capability to the...
...the late 1940s: The Witnesses of Jehovah increased their memberLOST INNOVATION ship in America from 44,000 in 1940 to 500.000 by WHEN CATHOLIC WOMEN PREACHED the end of 1946 --- an increase of more than 1,000 percent...
...the type advocated some years earlier by secular theology and But they left its organizational legacy intact until Vatican II, echoing liberal Protestantism of the nineteenth century...
...ashes...
...If Catholics who are intellectuals ignore the lic colleges and universities, Catholic journals and magazines, church, or deal with it only in private terms, and if they share Catholic research centers and a whole range of institutions for no responsibility for reforming the church and its structures exchange between scholars, artists, diocesan and parish staffs, and renewing its faith and community life, they can hardly are all necessary if mutual disaffiliation is to be overcome and complain if they find no hospitable home...
...church which categorically denied women the right to Perhaps the most important - and most haunting preach...
...It is true there are now plenty of Catholics who are so as to shape the quality of public discourse and to help their intellectuals...
...Andrews as does the church's engagement in the wider institutions of The Hall-Life of Ulysses everyday existence...
...In fact, that history suggests that when the intellectuals took charge of the interpretation of DAVID O'BRIEN teaches history at the College of the Holy Cross in Scripture and ministers became convinced of the need to Worcester, Massachusetts...
...sociable summers end of the First World War, and subsequently worked to enjoyed by their classmates in order to explain the !sacrapopularize the Guild idea among lay women and men on rnents...
...and (4) the church's intellectual life in its parishes remains relatively poor B. A. St...
...If people stumble over this, if they are office, diocese, parish - and independent Catholic colleges, unsure whether "Catholic" adds anything to their work, if universities, associations, and organizations are important, they are uncomfortable with the very idea of adding that indeed indispensable...
...secular lives of the laity, until they take seriously the idea that, as Archbishop Weakland has insisted, the lay person in the I N SPEECHES and papers for thirty years Monsignor Ellis has world is there as church, as much church as the deacon or lay argued that the Catholic intellectual tradition contains valu- minister working within the community itself, the church will able resources for contemporary culture and for the wider not assist the political culture to face matters of war, abortion, effort to preserve and renew the liberal arts and the humanities...
...the more one is struck by the probability that the the important questions at hand...
...One could point to the their parochialism and obsession with the moment...
...She long characterized certain segments of the American recently compared her college activities with those of her Catholic church, from the early lay trustees to the Knights children who grew up in the post-Vatican 11 church...
...to social service agencies and to the poor .. . Today a retrospective glance at the former street through missions during their college years, I can= preachers from Rosary Co1lc3e remains poignant, even not envision any of them standing up on street timely...
...On the one hand...
...Moreover, these young On the other hand, the Rosary College street preachers college women were not the first laywomen to propagate now lurk in the shadows of the church we have lost since the faith on the pavement or from the tailgates of au- the council...
...While universities, publications, and learned societies...
...Catholics who value Most self-respecting scholars wish to resist the subordina- intellectual activity and try to live their faith in an inquiring, tion of truth to power, even if that power claims a divine reflective way are no more apt to find support, appreciation, or mandate...
...The flip side of amidst bone, he knelt in stardust...
...If we are to determine street preaching activities of the students raised fewer how to apply the spirit of Vatican II to the problems and eyebrows within the church in the mid-thirties than they challenges facing the church in the 1980s, we need to pay might today...
...Once and only once supporting, and rewarding scholars who seek to work within the Catholic tradition and define their research and teaching at upon a time he leapt aboard the Ship least in part in response to the needs of the American church...
...Post-conciliar renewal has the responsibilities contained in the phrase "Catholic intellec- often come to mean a deeper and fuller involvement of the laity tual...
...needs...
...They replaced one set of institutional relationships with of ecclesiastical authority and freedom of expression have not another, assuming both different opportunities and con- vanished but are no longer central...
...Christian reference...
...The recent pastoral letters represent an effort to avoid the twin shoals of the sectarian isolation championed by radicals of left and right, and the final accommodation to contemporary cul6 June 1986: 337...
...Rubble recent pastoral letters of the American bishops...
...The church, with its global reach and long and hopes, griefs and anxieties of the men and women of this memory, has the potential to help Americans break through age" of which Vatican II spoke...
...Surveying the articles written by Guild members corners preaching...
...in flame and only shivered when children Yet, these promising movements will bear fruit in the sang (their voices frail as wind United States only if serious people, mature enough to ride out the tensions and ambiguities present in our moment in history, chimes in the slanting August light) decide to devote a portion of their talent and energy to the Ashes...
...United and training institutes...
...They have access to the public culture and to people form their consciences on public issues...
...Models for this often painful struggle exist in the past in simply detached from it...
...Many joined the faculties of ironically, they were in agreement with Catholics United for non-Catholic colleges and universities, and Catholic higher the Faith and some of the diehards in the curia...
...In this, Ellis believes they reflect the experience of contemporary Catholics, now at home in American culture and uncertain precisely how to express their Catholicity in the midst of life...
...seeking out the issues and the problems people famous essay on "American Catholics and the Intellectual confront...
...the council...
...Evidence Guild in London's Hyde Park shortly after the These women sacrificed the leisurely...
...Although it died a natural death over a decade which preceded the council...
...A gious wars, and the critical, imaginative temperament of art- philosopher of Catholic background, a scholar of Heidegger ists and intellectuals seemed dangerous, even disloyal...
...One repulsed, by the experience that at least some of God's people senses that the "distinctively Catholic contribution" they fear are less than appreciative of their work...
...Ellis is to remain a viable option, Catholic scholars must Thus the debate over Catholic intellectual life comes down decide to make it so...
...Scholars or artists the Catholic sociologists who, having welcomed the recogni- who are priests or nuns may not always find a comfortable tion accorded to the discipline of sociology, no longer felt the home within church structures, but in general there remain need for an organization of Catholic sociologists, and carried nonetheless considerable avenues for the expression of dison their work independently within universities and profes- sent...
...though his views were sharply challenged by many of those he Honesty, openness, and dialogue replaced loyalty, solidarity, claimed to be interpreting, one suspects that not a few Catholic and orthodoxy, and Christian scholars joined hands across intellectuals, affected as much by the spirit of the times as by denominational frontiers...
...One way to begin this process is to ask how the nity of the church and sinking to the level of the Salvation ..normal and ordinary" ministry of the Rosary College Army...
...In one sense one Chicago...
...the perils of ecclesiastiEllis, however, remains committed less to achieving excellence by secular standards than to the invigoration of the great tradition of Christian humanism, so that Catholic intellectuals can make a distinctly Catholic contribution to American culture and a uniquely American contribution to the church...
...Catholic enormous contribution Catholic scholars are making to con- experience contains wisdom about things like marriage and temporary Christian theology and Scripture studies, to public family, community and work, which could bring hope and a dialogue on the ethical issues of contemporary medicine, renewed sense of personal and historic possibility to our fellow biomedical research, nuclear arms, and social policy for evi- citizens...
...high sounding words the precise scent of apples from his about Catholic identity into effective strategies for attracting, imaginary garden...
...Andrew Greeley, for instance, has between the quality of church life, the vigor of its evangelical leveled a scathing attack on the quality of Catholic higher proclamation, and the strength and vitality of its colleges and education, a conclusion with which Ellis sadly agrees...
...The Rosary College street preachers utilized the College Guild with mixed feelings...
Vol. 113 • June 1986 • No. 11
