Abstract

Among the various benefits of this collection of essays is that for Catholic philosophers working in the teaching trenches of Catholic institutions, it can offer a welcomed intellectual respite and a much-needed reason for hope. Over the past three decades, Catholic professors of philosophy at Catholic schools throughout the nation have been barraged by fierce assaults on their philosophical vocations, their religious faith, and their pedagogies. Catholic philosophers have sadly endured the wholesale dismantling of philosophy core curricula, curricula which were once respected as being integral to the vital center of Catholic liberal arts education. They have been the targets of a vicious calumny which charges that “Catholic philosophy” of any stripe is proselytizing religious indoctrination which ought to be anathematized in the tolerant, open-minded university. They have been marginalized by the ideological bias in contemporary Catholic higher education which privileges a politicized “social justice” activism over philosophical reflection, so that the Catholic identity of an institution is believed to depend on what it does, or more accurately, what it requires its students to do, to achieve “peace and justice.”