Catholicism in the College of Arts and Letters
From Our Faculty and Students
Making a Difference | Catholic Intellectual Traditions |
Service and Social Justice | Spirituality and Ministries |
From Our Faculty and Students
"As I examine Byzantine intellectual history or aesthetics or works of art, my responses to this material derive from the conditions set by the things I study and by my own intellectual formation and direction."
-Charles Barber, Associate Professor, Department of Art, Art History, and Design
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"Notre Dame’s Catholic identity allows a rich context economics: as a discipline that seeks to solve problems facing humanity: unequal distribution of wealth and income, poverty, oppression. Here ethics and values are presumed to be at the heart of the economics discipline, not at the periphery."
-Teresa Ghilarducci, Professor of Economics and Policy Studies
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"We cannot be content with truth that remains merely cognitive, theoretical, intellectual; to be real, truth must be lived in community by faculty, students, and staff. Learning and love must meet in life."
-Brad Gregory, Associate Professor, Department of History, authority on Christian martyrdom in early modern Europe
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"To grow in understanding is to grow in love, in selflessness, in self-sacrifice. So love is not only the key to teaching, it is really the subject, the substance of teaching: it is what is taught. "
- Christian Moevs, Associate Professor, Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, Sheedy Teaching Award recipient, 2006
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"Coming to Notre Dame felt like stepping into a deep river of Christian life. The rich heritage of Catholic scholarship, integrating faith and reason, is enlivening."
- Darcia Narvaez, Associate Professor, Department of Psychology
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"If there is anything I can offer to an institution with a strong Catholic identity, it may be the fruits of an academic life carried out under Protestant convictions about the priesthood of all believers—under, that is the conviction that Christian laity have the same motives and capacity for explicitly Christian academic work as the ordained and the religious."
- Mark Noll, Francis A. McAnaney Professor of History
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"How often are we, as scholars, asked to be accountable to larger issues of social justice, the integrity of the human spirit, and responsible innovation? In a world as defined by poverty, political violence and global profiteering, as by creativity, development, and altruism, Notre Dame seeks to take up this challenge."
- Carolyn Nordstrom, Professor of Anthropology
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"Before, during, and after my grant project, I have realized the importance of engaging the world with a committed and faithful heart. Understanding my faith and its implications have been the journey I have taken as a Notre Dame undergraduate. Catholic Social Teaching (CST) was new to me as a non-Catholic freshman, but extremely valuable in outlining basic tenants of human dignity that Jesus echoes in giving the two greatest commands."
-Shannon Reabe, Class of 2006
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"In Uganda, as in much of sub-Saharan Africa, one’s faith typically permeates every aspect of life. Such can’t be said about the U.S. or Europe, particularly in the academy. Yet, Notre Dame proves an exception, and it is this exceptional nature that has both formed us and now compels us to go forward."
-Michael Rossman, Class of 2007 Valedictorian, Theology and Economics
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"As a Catholic, I feel that my faith urges me to pursue issues of social injustice, to learn about their root causes, and to act upon that knowledge to sustain change."
-Kaitlin Shorrock, Class of 2007
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"Notre Dame has provided me with an opportunity to engage in the day to day lives of Christian colleagues and students as they wrestle with what it means to live their tradition in the modern world."
- Michael A. Signer, Department of Theology, Abrams Professor of Jewish Thought and Culture
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"One of the things I deeply appreciate about Notre Dame is that basic worldview issues are brought out into the open, declared, and engaged. With its explicit Catholic identity, Notre Dame publicly positions its approach to education, research, and scholarship somewhere particular."
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Christian Smith, William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Sociology and Director of the Center for the Study of Religion and Society at the University of Notre Dame
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