THE SECOND ALUMNI/AE COLLOQUIUM

“A CHURCH THAT CAN AND CANNOT CHANGE”

Bishop Fenwick and The Society of Jesus founded The College of the Holy Cross in 1843 to educate young people to make a notable difference to the Church and to American society. The College has tens of thousands of alumni and alumnae today who continue to make that difference. A year ago the Center for Religion, Ethics and Culture hosted a colloquium for graduates of the College on critical issues facing the Catholic Church. The response of the participants was enthusiastic. Once again an alumnus has made a donation which allows the College to invite graduates to participate in another experiment in Catholic higher education: a two day colloquium on the Church.

This year we take our theme from the recently published book of Judge John T. Noonan, A Church That Can and Cannot Change: The Development of Catholic Moral Teaching. Judge Noonan was appointed to the Ninth Circuit of U. S. Court of Appeals in California by President Ronald Reagan. He has been among the leading interpreters of Catholicism for the past half-century since the publication in 1965 of his important research on the history of the Church’s teaching on contraception. Since that time his books and essays have helped shape the minds of Catholics and others on crucial issues in moral theory and in the understanding of American Catholicism. He stands at the forefront of Catholic intellectual life since the Council. As testimony to that eminence the college awarded him an honorary doctorate in 1980.

Judge Noonan has agreed to join us in Rehm Library to discuss a topic which has claimed his attention since his undergraduate studies at Catholic University of America. Because he has graced our invitation we have been able to engage three other leading Catholic thinkers to join him and us in our conversation, each a friend and conversation partner of his for years past: M. Cathleen Kaveny of the Theology Department and the Law School of the University of Notre Dame, Margaret Farley, R.S.M., of the Yale Divinity School and Graduate Department of Religious Studies, and James Heft, C.M., Founding Director of the Institute for Advanced Catholic Studies at the University of Southern California. Each will address questions raised by Judge Noonan’s book, and the four will enter a conversation with Holy Cross alumni/ae, students and faculty.

One hundred alumni/ae and spouses, ten undergraduate student leaders, and ten current faculty members are invited to examine the over-arching intellectual question for the Catholic Church of our time, namely, change, what has changed, what needs to be changed, and how change is accomplished in “a church that can and cannot change.” Under the aegis of the College’s Center for Religion, Ethics and Culture and in the format of an intense dialogue akin to Ignatian discernment we will “seek to find God in all things,” especially in the Church which faces change.

For additional information, contact William Shea, director of the Center for Religion, Ethics and Culture, at wshea@holycross.edu.