November 5, 2024 // Diocese

‘Catholic Imagination’ Conference Hosted by de Nicola Center

Clare Hildebrandt

Reporter

“It’s truly a transformative experience,” said Margaret McManaway, who serves as senior associate director of the de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture, on bringing the world’s most renowned Catholic scholars and artists together for dialogue.

From Thursday, October 31, through Saturday, November 2, officials with the de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture at the University of Notre Dame hosted the organization’s 24th annual fall conference, highlighting the Catholic intellectual tradition. Centered on the faculty of the Catholic imagination, the conference allowed for a wide variety of disciplines to comment and discuss.

Around 1,200 registered attendees, along with students, participated in the three-day conference, hearing essays read from experts in their fields from around the world and taking part in engaging and diverse sessions that explored the Catholic imagination from all angles. Speakers from Eastern Europe, Ireland, Italy, Canada, and Africa were in attendance. Topics such as Catholic fairytales, the role of narrative in medicine, and even how to properly treat Catholics with disabilities were discussed.

McManaway’s favorite expositions were a musical performance and a keynote speech given by a poet laureate of California, Dana Gioia.

“I also really loved that there was a piano performance yesterday with a young pianist at Juilliard and a musicologist at Rutgers, and I also loved Dana Gioia’s talk on poetry,” McManaway said.

She told Today’s Catholic that understanding the overall goal of the de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture is helpful to put the annual conference into its proper context.

“The de Nicola Center aims to promote the Catholic moral and intellectual tradition at Notre Dame, and then projects Notre Dame’s voice and distinctive character into the public square on behalf of justice, human dignity, and the common good,” McManaway explained.

The conference focusing on Catholic imagination does just that by placing a diverse range of voices into the conversation.

Indeed, McManaway gave a prime example of two vocations sharing in dialogue with each other.

“You may have a winemaker on a panel with a philosopher,” McManaway said. “We ask, ‘What can these people say to each other?’ Often, [these panels] are where you find the most exciting conversations,” she told Today’s Catholic. “We had bioethicists, lawyers, philosophers, theologians, but also artists, musicians, performers, playwrights, poets, folks working in the publishing industry.”

One of the goals of the conference is for it to be a place to display novel concepts in understanding Catholicism and its role in the public sphere.

“There was a bioethicist who came up to me last night after Judith Wolfe’s keynote and said he doesn’t find much new under the sun in bioethics presentations anymore,” McManaway said. “Yet, his mind was just blown by Judith’s presentation and her framework of viewing the world with the Catholic imagination. It just gave him so much fertile ground for thought.”

Equally as important, the conference brings individuals together for friendship, as McManaway shared that the most fruitful aspects of the weekend are found in the discussions at the dinners and receptions.

“There is no substitute for being together in a room, listening to these papers, having the conversation over reception or coffee at the breaks,” McManaway stated.

Ken Hallenius, communication specialist for the de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture – and a regular columnist for Today’s Catholic – agreed, noting also the fully Catholic aspect of the conference, which again included Mass celebrated by Bishop Rhoades at the university’s Basilica of the Sacred Heart.

“We are not just in these classrooms hearing academic talks and presentations and performances,” Hallenius said. “We’re also praying together, and we’re praying together in such a way that we’re packing the basilica with the chief shepherd of our diocese.”

Hallenius added: “We engage the intellectual world, the academic world, people of faith, and people who are interested in discussing the true, good, and the beautiful. Those things are transcendentals of philosophy, so they’re created by God but not limited by Him.”

Luke Dardis, a senior classics major at Notre Dame, enjoyed the “deep richness” found at the conference and through the university’s de Nicola Center. He said he especially liked Notre Dame philosophy professor David O’Connor’s session titled “Christian Art and the Nation: Maritain Versus Tolkien.”

“I was just really struck by his commitment to the deep richness of the Catholic intellectual tradition and his understanding of that mission as one of honesty and fidelity, but also great charity.”

On Friday, November 1, Bishop Rhoades celebrated Mass for the solemnity of All Saints in a crowded Basilica of the Sacred Heart. In his homily, Bishop Rhoades echoed the voices of speakers praising God for the beauty found in the world.

Bishop Rhoades illuminated the very reason for loving the imagination in the arts and sciences: the stirrings of God himself.

“The Catholic imagination is stirred by faith and reason, and it contemplates the truth about God, humanity, and the world. It is stirred by the life and teaching of Jesus. It is stirred by love – the love of God revealed in Christ who became man, who redeemed us from sin, who came that we might have life and have it to the full. The Catholic imagination is stirred by the Beatitudes, a self-portrait of Jesus Himself, whom we follow and strive to imitate.”