On Thursday, May 21, the DSPT hosted a series of presentations by members of the school’s College of Fellows. The broad theme of the afternoon was “the Catholic imagination,” with four Fellows offering brief remarks on how their Catholic faith shapes and informs their professional work.
Dr. Andre L. Delbecq, McCarthy Professor of Business Administration at Santa Clara University, began the afternoon by offering reflections on global business leadership as an emerging vocational challenge. He emphasized that since more than 80% of Catholics are engaged in the business world, business must be recognized as a critical vocation and one of the primary ways in which Catholics can serve their neighbors and build community. He focused his remarks on the new climate of “globalism,” noting that the average start-up company in California operates in seven countries out of necessity; the greatest potential for commercial growth today is international, partly because of low birth rates in the West. This new globalism has profound spiritual implications, yet the Catholic imagination has not yet been integrated in our rapidly changing technological age, and this problem is at the core of our current crisis. Dr. Delbecq compared the American society and Catholic culture of his youth with the vastly different world of our own time, noting that young people today are in many ways well-placed to face the challenges and opportunities of a new world in which economic and social barriers are collapsing and instant communication is changing the way we relate to each other. Where his generation was unprepared for the rise of globalism, today’s youth are saturated with world news, surrounded by diverse cultures, and well-traveled. They are concerned about the common good, interested in collaboration, and critical of the narcissism of their parents’ generation. At the same time, today’s youth tend to be culturally unrooted, spiritually immature but very interested in spirituality, and insecure, and Catholics are ideally placed to help them find an anchor in the midst of a rapidly shifting world. Dr. Delbecq argued that we need business leaders who value collaborative leadership and significance more than success. We must see in the current global situation the movement of the Holy Spirit, leading us as a Church to recognize the principle of subsidiarity of Catholic social teaching as real and viable in ways not previously recognized.
Dr. Velma Richmond, Professor Emerita of English at Holy Names University, spoke about the relationship between Christianity and literature and how the study of literature has changed over the course of her long career. She vividly described the breakdown of her field in American universities as critical theory became the focus of literary scholars most interested in the “triumvirate” of race, gender and class. Undergraduate enrollment in the liberal arts today is less than half what it was in the 1960s, and universities are now more like marketplaces than educational institutions. The very point of literature, she argued, has been missed as scholars have spent too much time on theory and not nearly enough time reading primary texts. Always finding a victimized and oppressed group, literary scholars have for years approached their subject through the lenses of various politically-driven ideologies, valuing change for its own sake and losing sight of the longer tradition. The Catholic imagination and approach to literature has many advantages in this age of relativism, and Dr. Richmond sees a great need for universities to take it seriously as a candidate for the truth as well as a golden opportunity to do so. We have lost a great deal and the challenges of today are much more serious than they were in the 1950s, but she sees signs of hope emerging as new graduate students show an interest in the relationship between Christianity and literature. Dr. Richmond’s passionate call for a return to the long tradition of Catholic literature as a way to revive English studies, and her insistence on the importance of raising children with a deep and rich knowledge of the classics of world literature, was enthusiastically received.
Mr. Ned Dolejsi, Executive Director of the California Catholic Conference, examined the Catholic worldview in the light of the present political order. Following Pope Benedict XVI, he emphasized that Catholic theology is inherently public and universal rather than something private. The exercise of political power, as Archbishop Charles Chaput has written, always has moral content and human consequences. Mr. Dolejsi summarized the Catholic worldview through a series of brief principles: God is God and we are not; life is precious, people are not things; family is important; community is essential; the world is sacramental and grace-filled. Like Dr. Delbecq, Mr. Dolejsi was raised in a world where a much stronger Catholic culture and identity existed, and he suggested that the strong Catholic desire to “belong” in America may have dampened our strength and led to the many compromises we see among Catholics today. Contemporary American society is characterized by radical individualism, consumerism, pluralism, and a strong sense of entitlement, and California is the most ethnically and religiously pluralistic society in human history. Catholics today are a community in diaspora, without the cultural reinforcements of the past. There is no widely accepted definition of the common good and the focus is firmly on individual rights. In a state where about 25% of the population is Catholic, 40-50% of California lobbyists and legislators are Catholic, yet most are uncatechized, selectively practicing, dualistic in their separation of faith and work, sometimes embarrassed by or hostile to Church teachings, and generally secularized. Non-Catholic politicians tend to be partisan and religiously prejudiced, yet they are occasionally willing partners of the Church on particular issues. Mr. Dolejsi noted that the Church has tremendous difficulty getting the facts before the wider population because the secular media are almost exclusively anti-religious and because Church leaders are generally not good at navigating this environment. The Gospel imperative demands our involvement in politics, but we must find new ways of doing so. Mr. Dolejsi emphasized in particular the need to move people from an understanding of personal rights to responsibility, finding new language and images for teaching about the common good, capturing the imagination of young adults, walking with the new immigrant Church, and inviting people who yearn for prayer and community to share this with us. Since most people today do not go to church, catechetical efforts must be located where most people are: in the workplace, not just in the local parish. Mr. Dolejsi noted that the Church has incredible resources and the imagination to do this.
Dr. Kevin Starr, Librarian Emeritus of the State of California and University Professor at the University of Southern California, gave a fast-paced and very entertaining presentation on the Catholic experience in the United States since its founding. He argued that the time has come for Catholics to stop apologizing for their faith and seeking acceptance in the wider society. Catholicism pervades American history, literature, and life, and American Catholics have never lost sight of the universal Church even in the midst of the pluralistic stew in which they have always lived. The North American continent was baptized in the blood of missionary martyrs, and Catholics were thoroughly at home in early America. American orphanages, schools and hospitals were never so well-run as when women’s religious orders maintained them, and American history is filled with the stories of distinguished converts to Catholicism. Dr. Starr offered numerous anecdotes to describe the American Catholic experience and argued with great enthusiasm that Catholics must recover our past and proudly proclaim our faith to the wider American society.
This very enjoyable afternoon was concluded with a few remarks by James Francis Cardinal Stafford, former Archbishop of Denver and now Major Penitentiary of the Roman Curia. Cardinal Stafford was inducted into the DSPT College of Fellows the following day during our graduation ceremony. He focused his remarks on the present debate about the nature of liberty currently taking place in America. Is the American notion of liberty thoroughly compatible with Catholic thought, or are the founding documents of the United States overly contaminated by Enlightenment principles not at all compatible with the Catholic faith? Recalling his recent visit to Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello estate in Virginia, Cardinal Stafford expressed the disturbing contrasts that he saw there, such as the grand classical mansion standing alongside the foundations of slave hovels. Jefferson did not believe in a Trinitarian God, and his notion of liberty was not at all that expressed by St. Paul, St. Augustine, or St. Thomas Aquinas, who understood liberty to be the art of the practice of virtue. Cardinal Stafford noted that lay Catholics are mostly involved in this ongoing debate and that this is as it should be. Catholics are Confirmed to be “the aroma of Christ” in the world. Referring to Fra Angelico’s famous image of St. Dominic praying serenely at the foot of the crucified Christ, he emphasized that all Catholics are called to be poets in this way, to recall the profound beauty revealed in the total self-sacrificing love of Christ on the Cross. The challenge of parish renewal in the Church is immense, and we must make sure that God’s reconciliation with each individual is made tangible in every Catholic parish so that the Christian community itself is the way of forgiveness and life.
About 60 people attended this thought-provoking afternoon, and we look forward to another successful Fellows event next year.
