On the weekend of May 12-14, the College hosted the second annual alumni colloquium. Sponsored by the Center for Religion, Ethics and Culture, the theme of this year’s program was “Change in a Church that Cannot Change”—which is also the title of a new book by featured speaker, John T. Noonan. Appointed to the 9th Circuit of the U. S. Court of Appeals in California by President Ronald Reagan, Noonan has been one of the leading interpreters of Catholicism 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 to shape the minds of Catholics and others on crucial issues in moral theory and in the understanding of American Catholicism.
Other discussants participating in the event were: 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 speaker addressed questions raised by Noonan’s book, and also engaged in discussion with Holy Cross students, faculty and alumni.
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