The Way of a Pilgrim

At this spring’s Breaking Bread event, our semi-annual dinner and evening of spiritual discussion held in the Notre Dame Press Box for Notre Dame students and faculty, Dr. Timothy George, Professor of Divinity and Dean of Beeson Divinity School at Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama provided a delightful reflection on “The Way of a Pilgrim.”

Using biblical models of pilgrimage, such as Abraham and Sarah, Dr. George reflected on the theme of Christian unity, as we are all called to be pilgrims together in the journey of faith. One of the faculty members who attended the event summarized the evening in this way: “It was really a lovely occasion: a beautiful evening in a beautiful place, with a fine, leisurely meal, good conversation, and a really excellent and inspiring talk by Timothy George to lead it off. The students at my table were really great, and we seemed to have a unified, largely serious and largely theological conversation without any effort. I thought it accomplished just the kind of thing that I understand these meals to be for. So I would say: try to keep it going, and keep taking the time and trouble to do it right. I thought Timothy George struck just the right note, of being intellectually nourishing without being overly abstract, and being inspiring without being preachy. The theme was concrete and imaginative enough to get people thinking and exchanging ideas. And the group of students there was nicely inclusive of different ages and interests: at my table we had a master’s student, an engineer, a theology major, a philosophy major - a couple of trombonists, a woman who runs track, and so on. Thanks again, so much, for inviting me to be part of a splendid occasion. We need more of this kind of thing at Notre Dame.”

As part of the evening’s events, each attendee received a copy of Sacred Travels: Recovering the Ancient Practice of Pilgrimage, by Dr. George’s son, Christian George. This spring’s Breaking Bread event was administered by the Center’s undergraduate assistants, Kate Wilson, Stephen Freddoso, and Greer Hannan. The Center once again thanks Mr. Fran McGowen, of Malvern, Pennsylvania, for his generosity in sponsoring this event. Next semester, Breaking Bread will take place on November 13th, and we are pleased to announce that Professor Lawrence S. Cunningham, the Rev. John A. O’Brien Professor of Theology in Notre Dame’s Department of Theology, will provide the evening’s reflection.

The Children of Men: Pascalian Reflections on Contemporary Film

The second installment of this Spring’s Catholic Culture Film Series took place on Thursday evening, April 19, with a talk by longtime Center friend Thomas Hibbs, dean of the Honors College at Baylor University and author of two books on contemporary film and television, along with numerous film reviews.

To a packed lecture room in DeBartolo Hall, Professor Hibbs delivered a talk entitled, “The Children of Men: Pascalian Reflections on Contemporary Film,” in which he noted a recent trend in contemporary film toward in which protagonists grapple with more robust philosophical questions about life’s meaning. Discussing such films as Donnie Darko and the more recent The Children of Men, Hibbs brought to light the way in which certain films are moving away from a simplistic individualist, even nihilistic stance, toward the more heroic question: “Is it worth dying for anyone else?”

Undergraduates Wrestle with Medical Ethics for a Day

The Center’s annual medical ethics conference was the inspiration for this 1-unit Practicing Medical Ethics course, offered each semester to Notre Dame undergraduate students. Because the Practicing Medical Ethics course is only a one-day event, whereas the Conference is a three-day event, students focus on three of the issues discussed at the conference.
It is our hope that this sample of the complex field of medical ethics will encourage students to pursue these issues – and other issues in medical ethics – in greater depth.

The spring course, offered on April 14th, was divided into three main sessions:

Session I: The “Pillow Angel” Case. In the past year, much attention in the media has been given to the case of Ashley, otherwise known as the “Pillow Angel.” Her parents pursued several treatments in order to make Ashley, who is severely mentally and physically disabled, more comfortable and so that they could better care for her.

Session II: Seriously Ill Infants. Much debate around the world surrounds how we should care for seriously ill infants, particularly those who are fated to die shortly after birth, and what their moral status is. In this session, students discussed the permissibility of infant euthanasia, early induction, palliative care, and life support for infants not for their own benefit, but so their organs can be harvested.

Session III: Mandatory Vaccination and Testing. Mandatory HPV vaccination became a controversial issue earlier this year when Texas governor Rick Perry introduced an executive order requiring HPV vaccination for all girls entering the sixth grade. In this session, students discussed this and other similar cases concerning mandatory vaccination and testing and issues of public health.

We are forever indebted to the generosity of Dr. Paul Wright, a cardiologist from Youngstown, Ohio, for graciously funding this course. Additionally, we are grateful to the alumni physicians and faculty members who so generously gave of their time to teach this course: Dr. Mark Lindenmeyer, a lawyer and hospital administrator in the Cincinnati area; Rev. Jim Foster, CSC, MD, director of the Preprofessional Studies Department at Notre Dame; Dr. Tom Murphy, a clinical endocrinologist, and his wife, Dr. Laura David, an OB/GYN, both professors at Case Western Reserve School of Medicine in Cleveland, Ohio; Kevin McDonnell, the Edna and George McMahon Chair in Philosophy at Saint Mary’s College; Rudy Navari, Director of the Walther Cancer Research Center at the Notre Dame; Paul McCauley, who runs a free clinic in Maryland; Keri Oxley, a Notre Dame graduate and current medical student at Yale University; and Center director David Solomon.

22nd Annual Clarke Family Medical Ethics Conference

March 23rd to 25th, approximately 80 physicians, philosophers, hospital chaplains, and other medical professionals gathered here at Notre Dame for the 22nd Annual Philip and Doris Clarke Medical Ethics Conference. The aim of the conference is to allow for discussion regarding some of the complex issues that plague the practice of medicine, in a setting not only where participants can come to a deeper understanding of Catholic teaching on these issues, but where diverse viewpoints can be shared, heard, and appreciated.

The conference’s traditional format involves several small-group discussions of case studies provided by members of the conference audience and reflecting current issues in medical practice. In one session, participants discussed three cases where various considerations external to the narrowly medical features of a treatment situation (such as finances or religious commitments) raised ethical questions for the physician acting in the case. In the next session, participants discussed a range of cases concerning requests from patients for treatments that are based on what some might regard as medically irrelevant conditions. For example, one case involved the much-publicized “Pillow Angel” case and in another case, a mother sought human growth hormone treatment for her “undersized,” but medically healthy, son to avoid psychological damage. In another session, attendees examined a series of cases involving reproductive health. As always, the conference included a discussion of recent initiatives in health care reform. In our final session, participants chose among three concurrent break-out sessions. In the first, we considered ethical issues concerned with using body parts either in artistic displays or in religious settings. The second engaged the ethical issues surrounding vaccinations and HIV testing, and in the third, we returned to the ethical dilemmas raised by medical treatment at the end of life.

The only formal lecture of this conference is the annual J. Philip Clarke Family Lecture on Medical Ethics. This year, it was delivered by Margaret Monahan Hogan, the McNerny-Hanson Chair of Ethics, professor of philosophy and Executive Director of the Garavanta Center for Catholic Intellectual Life and American Culture at the University of Portland. Professor Hogan has been a leading figure in Catholic medical ethics for many years, and has contributed in diverse ways to contemporary discussions in the field.

In Professor Hogan’s lecture, “Bioethics and its Gordian Knot,” she posited that, abortion as an elective surgical procedure – what has sometimes been designated as abortion on demand – is similar to the legendary Gordian Knot, which only Alexander the Great could untie by his famous solution: cutting through it with his sword. Professor Hogan explained how this Gordian Knot of bioethics had been tied by a set of Supreme Court decisions, rendered as a seeming compromise to protect a rising consciousness of the rights of women to be free to develop their potential. The knot was then woven by bonds fashioned and tightened by a set of claims – liberty claims and equality claims, enunciated by a regent liberal philosophy and sustained by judicial decree. Finally, the knot has been reinforced by practices – practices by many in the medical profession and by many women who chose abortion. Professor Hogan suggested that the sundering of this Gordian Knot has found no easy Alexandrine solution to loosen its hold on the American culture. She concluded her lecture, hailed by many as one of the best Clarke lectures in the history of the series, with the following words: “Part of the task is the essential work of building the culture of life. To build this culture requires our engagement in the intellectual controversies – if we think we hold the truth, we ought to fear no pursuit of knowledge. To build this culture requires our participation in the deliberations of the democracy and in its political processes – Catholics have a right in the public square as citizens and an obligation to be in the public square as Catholics – the former is a guarantee of the first amendment and the latter the command of Christ that we ‘render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s.’ To build that culture finally requires that we make abortion unthinkable because it is unnecessary.”

As always, we are grateful to the Notre Dame Alumni Association, and in particular to Mirella Riley, director of the Academic Division, and administrative assistant Janet Miller, for their assistance in coordinating this conference.

An Evening of Angelus at Notre Dame

The state-of-the-art Browning Cinema at Notre Dame’s DeBartolo Performing Arts Center…
A screening of the four prize-winning films in the 2006 Angelus Student Film Festival…
A lively Q&A session following the screening with three of the award-winning young directors and one of the winning films’ lead actors….

Such were the elements of An Evening with Angelus at Notre Dame, a groundbreaking new event which brought the Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture into collaboration with the Angelus Awards Student Film Festival and the sponsors of that festival, Family Theater Productions, a Catholic film production company located on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, California. The Angelus Awards was created by Family Theater Productions in 1996 to showcase and award emerging filmmakers and to encourage them to continue creating visionary projects that honor the fundamental dignity of the human person.

The collaboration between the Center and Family Theater Productions is a natural one, as the national director of Family Theater is a Holy Cross priest, Fr. Willy Raymond, CSC. Fr. Willy first participated in the Center’s activities when he delivered a talk entitled “Young Catholic Hollywood” in the Center’s inaugural Catholic Culture Film Series in the Spring of 2006. At that time, the Center began to talk with Fr. Willy about an event that would bring to Notre Dame the winning filmmakers in the Angelus Awards Student Film Festival. The culmination of those discussions was An Evening with Angelus at Notre Dame, which took place on March 8, 2007.

That evening the Center was happy to host the award-winning filmmakers along with Fr. Willy and three members of the Angelus Awards staff: Monika Moreno, director of the Festival, Kale Zelden, associate director, and Robyn Gibson. The films screened at “An Evening with Angelus at Notre Dame” were the following: The Trojan Cow, written and directed by Barbara Stepansky of the American Film Institute, Los Angeles, winner of the $10,000 Excellence in Filmmaking Award in honor of Servant of God, Father Patrick Peyton, CSC (the founder of Family Theater Productions). The Trojan Cow is the story of two teenagers’ attempt in 1973 to be illegally transported inside a hollow cow across the East German border to freedom.

Queen of Cactus Cove, written and directed by Anna Christopher, also of AFI, is the winner of the $5,000 Priddy Bros. Triumph Award. In this film, teenage chess champ Billie faces the prospect of defeat for the first time when she competes against her best friend at the biggest chess tournament of her career.

Kilroy Was Here, written and directed by Charlie Boyles, North Carolina School of the Arts, Winston-Salem, winner of the $2,500 Fujifilm Audience Impact Award and the $1,500 Act One Screenplay prize. In the film, the characters fought for different causes in the same war. Now together, they will forge a connection that transcends language…and their cause will become one. Kilroy Was Here was represented by its leader actor, Keith Harris.

Silences, written and directed by Octavio Warnock-Graham, City College of New York, winner of the $3,000 Outstanding Documentary Award sponsored by Maryknoll Productions. Silences is an intimate personal journey by the filmmaker to find the one person who can complete his search for answers…his biological father.

After the screening of the films, Monika Moreno moderated a stimulating Q&A with the three winning directors and actor Keith Harris. The Center would like to thank Fr. Willy Raymond, the staff of the Angelus Awards, as well as the Peter Grenville Foundation, for helping make this event possible. A special word of thanks goes out to Jon Vickers, manager of the Browning Cinema at Notre Dame, for his help in organizing this event at the wonderful facilities
of the DeBartolo Performing Arts Center.

The Edith Stein Project: Toward Integral Healing for Women and Culture

A new student group, The Identity Project of Notre Dame (IDND), formed during the 2006-07 school year. IDND’s goal is to promote discussion of the dignity and vocation of men and women in light of Catholic anthropology (i.e., teaching on the nature and purpose of human persons) at Notre Dame and in the community. The students hope to help other students integrate these principles into their daily lives. The founding members of the enormously successful Edith Stein Conference helped to start IDND, and the conference now continues under its auspices.

This year’s conference, held at Notre Dame on February 23rd and 24th, was entitled, “The Edith Stein Project: Toward Integral Healing for Women and Culture,” and focused specifically on healing for individual women and for society generally. During this conference, participants were asked to discuss approaches to healing which embrace a vision of the person as an inextricable union of body and soul and to integrate spiritual, emotional and psychological aspects of the person. The participants were encouraged to weave together intellectual and pastoral elements of Catholic teaching in an effort to re-form our culture’s perception of the person and women’s perception of their selves in light of their inalienable human dignity. Speakers included Paolo Carozza, associate professor of Notre Dame Law School and a member of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights; Wendy Shalit, author of A Return to Modesty: Discovering the Lost Virtue; and Janet Smith, a moral theologian from Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit.

In addition to the conference, IDND also sponsored various social events, an outreach initiative to high school students, and weekly discussions for undergraduate students on various issues concerning the dignity and vocation of human persons, on human sexuality and on marriage.

The conference closed with a preview screening of the movie Bella – an independent, prolife film, and winner of the People’s Choice Award at the 2006 Toronto Film Festival, which is scheduled for general release in August 2007.

Modernity: Yearning for the Infinite

In an address in Guadalajara, Mexico in May of 1996, then Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, spoke about the various ways in which relativism threatens the modern world. He concluded the address, however, with a ray of hope. The Catholic faith still has a chance in the modern world, and that is because in man “there is an inextinguishable yearning for the infinite….Only the God himself who became finite in order to open our fi niteness and lead us to the breadth of his infiniteness responds to the question of our being.” Man's yearning for the infinite, for God, remains present and active not only when it finds its proper orientation in God, but also even when it is misdirected, expressing itself in practices and institutions that of themselves cannot lead to God. Our modern world too often reflects this latter situation. The purpose of “Modernity: Yearning for the Infinite” was to examine the nature of this peculiar dynamic.

The conference, held on the snowy weekend of November 29-December 1 at Notre Dame’s McKenna Hall, brought together an interdisciplinary group of scholars—theologians, philosophers, historians, artists, legal scholars, and literary theorists—who pondered the nature, limitations, possibilities and dangers of the epoch we have come to call “modernity” and what
it means for the renewal of Christian culture in our time.

The weekend began with Center permanent senior fellow Alasdair MacIntyre’s keynote lecture on Thursday evening, “Islam, Modernity, and Us,” for which the main auditorium of McKenna Hall was fi lled beyond capacity. From there the 440-plus registered participants had spread before them a feast of uncommon intellectual delights involving nearly one hundred presentations. Among the many highlights of this copious feast were— Paul Griffiths’ plenary lecture on Friday evening, “Owning Knowledge: Modernity and the Purposes of the Intellectual Life”; Rev. Marvin O’Connell’s guided tour of the Church’s condemnation of the modernist heresy in the early 20th century; Monsignor Lorenzo Albacete’s meditations on modernity’s fear of the Incarnation; Bishop John M. D’Arcy’s reflections on the Catholic priest in the present age; and Joseph Pearce’s engaging lecture on the Catholic literary revival in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

The festive closing banquet on Saturday night featured the presence of Monsignor Charles Brown, former assistant to Cardinal Ratzinger in the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in Rome, currently at Notre Dame to finish his doctoral dissertation, who shared with us some after-dinner thoughts on the differences between the late Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI.

This seventh edition of our fall conference both extended and deepened what has become a rich annual tradition at Notre Dame. It brought together a group of people, not all of whom are professional academics, but all of whom share a deep commitment to retrieving for the modern world some of the most glorious but often overlooked treasures of our Christian heritage. This large and impressive group surely manifested the “ray of hope” that Pope Benedict assured us is more than capable of shining through the darkness of the modern world.

The Center would like especially to thank the Maas Family Endowment for Excellence, as well as the Strake Foundation, for making possible this tremendous experience. We would also like to thank Tom and Megan Eakins for providing travel stipends that made it possible for several students to attend the conference.

After Urbanism: The Strange Bedfellows of Neo-Traditional Architecture and Town Planning

What is the physical form of genuine human community? This was the question explored by Professor Philip Bess in his fall 2006 Schmitt Lecture, entitled “After Urbanism: The Strange Bedfellows of Neo-Traditional Architecture and Town Planning.” Professor Bess’s answer to the question took the form of what he deemed a natural law: human beings should make mixed-use neighborhoods with pedestrian proximity of all activities central to daily life. The home, the school, the place of business, the place of worship, venues for recreation and shopping, all should be accessible within the half-mile radius of a ten-minute, parentchild walk. For only in such neighborhoods, Professor Bess argued, can the virtues of social and political community flourish.

Professor Bess delivered his Schmitt Lecture on Wednesday afternoon, November 15th, to a large and appreciative audience in the main auditorium of Notre Dame’s McKenna Hall. Using an engaging PowerPoint presentation, he vividly contrasted the features of what he called “traditional urbanism” with the dominant form of contemporary urban architecture, namely, “sprawl.” In sprawl, segregation reigns: homes, places of work, worship, recreation, and shopping are all segregated from one another, making the automobile a virtual necessity for most urban dwellers. Th is compartmentalization of the activities of modern life, according to Professor Bess, fosters an individualism inimical to the development of genuine human community. Professor Bess’s presentation took the Schmitt Lecture Series into exciting new territory. In answering the charge of the series—the exploration of the ethical, political and religious dimensions of science and technology—he reminded us that the physical form of how we live is not just incidentally related to our moral, political and spiritual well-being.

The Center was especially pleased to welcome several of Notre Dame’s Schmitt Fellows to Professor Bess’s lecture, as well as to the reception and dinner that followed. Th e Schmitt Fellows are graduate students in Notre Dame’s Schools of Science and Engineering who are the principal recipients of the generosity of the Arthur J. Schmitt Foundation to the University of Notre Dame. It was for the sake of honoring that generosity that the Schmitt Lecture Series was founded.

Shining in Obscurity: Rediscovering Four Catholic Authors

In past Catholic Culture Series, we have focused on such major figures as Flannery O’Connor, G.K. Chesterton, Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene, Walker Percy, and J.R.R. Tolkien. This fall, rather than highlighting a specific, and rather wellknown, literary figure, the series focused on re-discovering four novels by four “forgotten” authors:

1. Michael Foley, Assistant Professor of Patristics in the Honors College at Baylor University, focused on Kristin Lavransdatter in his lecture entitled, “Sigrid Undset: Greatest Catholic Novelist of the Twentieth Century?”;

2. Ralph Wood, the Baylor University Professor of Theology and Literature, presented a talk entitled “The Call of the Desert in the Age of Ashes: The Centrality of Suffering in Walter Miller’s A Canticle of Leibowitz”;

3. Ralph McInerny, the Michael P. Grace Professor of Medieval Studies at the University of Notre Dame, lectured on The Diary of a Country Priest in a lecture entitled “Bernanos and the Noonday Devil”; and

4. David Solomon, the W.P. and H.B. Director of the Notre Dame Center for Ethics & Culture and Associate Professor of Philosophy, reflected on one of his personal favorites, Lord of the World, in “Robert Hugh Benson: Anticipating the Apocalypse.”

Although each of these books has been considered a “classic” at one time, most of them are no longer studied in literature programs or read by the reading public and the authors themselves have fallen into obscurity. As part of its mission to promote the Catholic intellectual, moral and cultural tradition, the Center for Ethics & Culture encouraged readers in the Notre Dame community to rediscover – or perhaps even discover for the first time – these four novels and authors.

We would like to thank Clarence and Frieda Bayer of Arlington, Texas, whose generosity to the Center makes this series possible.

Forgiveness and the Challenge of Loving Enemies

Our Breaking Bread event is by now quite familiar to faithful readers. It is our semi-annual dinner and evening of spiritual discussion, which is popular among undergraduate students for the prestige of the speakers, the quality and depth of the table discussions, the delicious food, and perhaps its most enticing feature– the venue, the Notre Dame Stadium Press Box.

This fall, L. Gregory Jones, M.Div., Ph.D., Dean and Professor of Theology at Duke University Divinity School, challenged students and faculty alike in his moving reflection on “Forgiveness and the Challenge of Loving Enemies.” Dr. Jones’ reflection focused on the Christian imperative of forgiveness. Using rich illustrations from biblical and literary texts, he reminded us that, as Christians, we are called to respond to God’s saving mercy with forgiveness in our own lives. Of course, he noted, this is a difficult task – and no more so than when we are faced with forgiving our enemies. The question & answer session revealed how deeply Dr. Jones’ rich and meaningful reflection resonated with the students as they sought advice on how to live out Christ’s call in their own personal lives and in our broken, war-torn world.

Breaking Bread is chiefly organized by the Center’s current undergraduate assistants, Kate Wilson, Stephen Freddoso and Greer Hannan. The Center once again thanks Mr. and Mrs. Fran McGowen, of Malvern, Pennsylvania, for their generosity in sponsoring this event.