Faith and the Intellectual Life

In Faith and the Intellectual Life ten distinguished Catholic scholars, all recipients of the University of Dayton's Marianist Award, explore how their faith as Catholics has influenced their scholarship and how, in turn, their scholarship has affected their faith.

The Marianist Award, presented annually to a Roman Catholic for distinguished intellectual achievement, emphasizes the importance of the balance between personal faith and intellectual pursuits. In the essays presented here the authors reveal how they have bridged the gap-a gap so characteristic of contemporary academic life-between faith and scholarship.

Within these pages the late John Tracy Ellis revises his earlier criticism of Catholic higher education and argues that the moral and formative dimensions of education should complement and balance the intellectual ones. In an autobiographical reflection Rosemary Haughton blends a deep love for the Church with a searing criticism of its shortcomings. Timothy O'Meara calls for a greater rapport between science and religion and a closer relationship between the founding religious orders of Catholic universities and the laity who lead such institutions. Walter Ong, S. J., describes the nature of Catholicism and the importance of Catholic scholarship today, and Sydney Callahan explains the extraordinary intellectual riches she discovered in Catholicism when she entered the Church as a student at Bryn Mawr University. John T. Noonan, Jr., discusses how the personal impact of the Second Vatican Council led him to realize more clearly than ever before that Catholic Christianity presumes a humanism by and through which God acts. Louis Dupre's essay focuses on the joys and responsibilities of being a Catholic teacher, while Monika K. Hellwig explores the challenges of being a Catholic theologian today. Philip Gleason describes how the Catholic Church in the United States has arrived at the point where, after 40 years of extensive change, its very identity has become a problem. Lastly, J. Bryan Hehir, Th.D., situates the Catholic Church in the midst of a rapidly changing world order.