Last Updated: July 22, 2005

• Elizabeth Anscombe
• Orestes Brownson
• G.K. Chesterton
• Christopher Dawson
• Dorothy Day
• John Paul the Great
• C.S. Lewis
• Jacques Maritain
• John Henry Newman
• Dorothy Sayers

      A History of Notre Dame
      and Her Great Figures:

• Rev. Basil Moreau
• Rev. Edward Sorin
• Rev. John A. Zahm
• Ivan Meštrovic
• John Cardinal O’Hara, C.S.C.
• Leo R. Ward, C.S.C.
• Willis D. Nutting
• Yves R. Simon
• Frank O’Malley

      Ralph McInerny's
      Profiles of Catholic
      Writers:

• Maurice Baring
• Hilaire Belloc
• Robert Hugh Benson
• Georges Bernanos
• Anthony Burgess
• Willa Cather
• Gilbert Keith Chesterton
• Kate Chopin
• Paul Claudel
• Baron Corvo
• Francis Marion Crawford
• F. Scott Fitzgerald
• Ford Madox Ford
• Etienne Gilson
• Graham Greene
• Paul Horgan
• James Joyce
• George A. Kelly
• Jacques Maritain
• Raissa Maritain
• François Mauriac
• Thomas Merton
• Brian Moore
• Edwin O'Connor
• Flannery O'Connor
• Frank O'Malley
• Charles Peguy
• Walker Percy
• Josef Pieper
• J. F. Powers
• Piers Paul Read
• Fulton J. Sheen
• Muriel Spark
• Edith Stein
• Evelyn Waugh

His Holiness Pope John Paul II (1920-2005), born Karol Józef Wojtyla, reigned as pope from 1978-2005. His legacy includes the considerable ways in which his life and work have influenced our own here at the Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture, for the encyclicals Centesimus Annus, Veritatis Splendor, Evangelium Vitae and Fides et Ratio were the inspiration for the founding of the Center. These central ethical encyclicals together with other of his papal writings further articulate the Catholic intellectual and moral tradition. His vision puts the problems of contemporary culture in a particular light, and seeing it entails a concomitant mandate to respond. Yet, in what might seem an ironic twist, these encyclicals encourage us to respond in a manner that also undergirds some of the deepest commitments of contemporary secular culture: the dignity of each person, the absolute character of basic human rights, and the fundamental importance of love and concern for others. Thus, we find that John Paul II has not given us a reactionary return, but further drawing on the principles of the past, a new way forward.  

Centesimus Annus ("One HundredYears"), written to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Rerum Novarum, the great 19 th century encyclical which first explored in depth the implications of Catholic social teaching for modern economic conditions, extends the doctrines of Rerum Novarum to make them relevant to the new problems of economic justice arising in the wake of the collapse of Marxism and the rise of a powerful set of forces allied to international market capitalism in economic affairs, which fuel and often vicious individualism in human affairs.

• "Now, as then, we need to repeat that there can be no genuine solution of the 'social question' apart from the Gospel, and that the 'new things' can find in the Gospel the context for their correct understanding and the proper moral perspective for judgment on them."
• "Leo XIII is repeating an elementary principle of sound political organization, namely, the more that individuals are defenceless within a given society, the more they require the care and concern of others, and in particular the intervention of governmental authority. In this way what we nowadays call the principle of solidarity, the validity of which both in the internal order of each nation and in the international order. is clearly seen to be one of the fundamental principles of the Christian view of social and political organization. This principle is frequently stated by Pope Leo XIII, who uses the term 'friendship,' a concept already found in Greek philosophy. Pope Pius XI refers to it with the equally meaningful term 'social charity.' Pope Paul VI, expanding the concept to cover the many modern aspects of the social question, speaks of a 'civilization of love.'"
• "It is not possible to understand man on the basis of economics alone, nor to define him simply on the basis of class membership. Man is understood in a more complete way when he is situated within the sphere of culture through his language, history, and the position he takes towards the fundamental events of life, such as birth, love, work and death. At the heart of every culture lies the attitude man takes to the greatest mystery: the mystery of God. Different cultures are basically different ways of facing the question of the meaning of personal existence. When this question is eliminated, the culture and moral life of nations are corrupted."
  

Veritatis Splendor ("The Splendor of Truth") focuses on foundational ethical questions and reasserts the traditional Catholic position that genuine human freedom is inseparable from appreciation of the truth. It also argues against many contemporary views -- e.g., various forms of relativism, determinism, and post-modernist skepticism -- that impugn this relation between freedom and truth.

• "Patterned on God's freedom, man's freedom is not negated by his obedience to the divine law; indeed, only through this obedience does it abide in the truth and conform to human dignity."
• "The Church's firmness in defending the universal and unchanging moral norms is not demeaning at all. Its only purpose is to serve man's true freedom. Because there can be no freedom apart from or in opposition to the truth, the categorical - unyielding and uncompromising - defense of the absolutely essential demands of man's personal dignity must be considered the way and the condition for the very existence of freedom."
  

Evangelium Vitae ("The Gospel of Life") reasserts the traditional Catholic doctrine of the sacredness of life and draws attention to the many ways in which this sacredness is under attack in contemporary culture. In its withering attack on what the document calls "the culture of death," it provides both a devastating rebuttal to many current arguments that support technologies and social arrangement inimical to life and a rallying point for those who seek to oppose those technologies and social arrangements.

•  "Man is called to a fullness of life which far exceeds the dimensions of his earthly existence, because it consists in sharing the very life of God. The loftiness of this supernatural vocation reveals the greatness and the inestimable value of human life even in its temporal phase. Life in time, in fact, is the fundamental condition, the initial stage and an integral part of the entire unified process of human existence. It is a process which, unexpectedly and undeservedly, is enlightened by the promise and renewed by the gift of divine life, which will reach its full realization in eternity (cf. 1 Jn 3:1-2). At the same time, it is precisely this supernatural calling which highlights the relative character of each individual's earthly life. After all, life on earth is not an 'ultimate' but a 'penultimate' reality; even so, it remains a sacred reality entrusted to us, to be preserved with a sense of responsibility and brought to perfection in love and in the gift of ourselves to God and to our brothers and sisters. The Church knows that this Gospel of life, which she has received from her Lord, has a profound and persuasive echo in the heart of every person-believer and non-believer alike -- because it marvellously fulfils all the heart's expectations while infinitely surpassing them."
•  "The Church, faithfully contemplating the mystery of the Redemption, acknowledges this value with ever new wonder. She feels called to proclaim to the people of all times this 'Gospel,' the source of invincible hope and true joy for every period of history. The Gospel of God's love for man, the Gospel of the dignity of the person and the Gospel of life are a single and indivisible Gospel. For this reason, man-living man-represents the primary and fundamental way for the Church."

Fides et Ratio ("Faith and Reason") is intended to address the Bishops of the Catholic church, philosophers, scientists, and theologians.  The encyclical entreats all to question secular assumptions that undergird the modern academy.  And it maintains, in a most countercultural manner, the unity of the pursuits of reason and the practice of faith. 

• "Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth; and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth-in a word, to know himself-so that, by knowing and loving God, men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves." (cf. Ex 33:18; Ps 27:8-9; 63:2-3; Jn 14:8; 1 Jn 3:2)
• "With its enduring appeal to the search for truth, philosophy has the great responsibility of forming thought and culture; and now it must strive resolutely to recover its original vocation."
• "What is distinctive in the biblical text is the conviction that there is a profound and indissoluble unity between the knowledge of reason and the knowledge of faith. The world and all that happens within it, including history and the fate of peoples, are realities to be observed, analysed and assessed with all the resources of reason, but without faith ever being foreign to the process. Faith intervenes not to abolish reason's autonomy nor to reduce its scope for action, but solely to bring the human being to understand that in these events it is the God of Israel who acts. Thus the world and the events of history cannot be understood in depth without professing faith in the God who is at work in them. Faith sharpens the inner eye, opening the mind to discover in the flux of events the workings of Providence."
• "Of itself, philosophy is able to recognize the human being's ceaselessly self-transcendent orientation towards the truth; and, with the assistance of faith, it is capable of accepting the 'foolishness' of the Cross as the authentic critique of those who delude themselves that they possess the truth, when in fact they run it aground on the shoals of a system of their own devising."
• "The truths of philosophy, it should be said, are not restricted only to the sometimes ephemeral teachings of professional philosophers. All men and women, as I have noted, are in some sense philosophers and have their own philosophical conceptions with which they direct their lives. In one way or other, they shape a comprehensive vision and an answer to the question of life's meaning; and in the light of this they interpret their own life's course and regulate their behavior."
• "While it demands of all who hear it the adherence of faith, the proclamation of the Gospel in different cultures allows people to preserve their own cultural identity. This in no way creates division, because the community of the baptized is marked by a universality which can embrace every culture and help to foster whatever is implicit in them to the point where it will be fully explicit in the light of truth."
• "Were theologians to refuse the help of philosophy, they would run the risk of doing philosophy unwittingly and locking themselves within thought-structures poorly adapted to the understanding of faith. Were philosophers, for their part, to shun theology completely, they would be forced to master on their own the contents of Christian faith, as has been the case with some modern philosophers. Either way, the grounding principles of autonomy which every science rightly wants guaranteed would be seriously threatened."

"At this moment, humanity should question itself, once more, about the absurd and always unfair phenomenon of war, on whose stage of death and pain only remain standing the negotiating table that could and should have prevented it." -- Upon arriving in Buenos Aires, June 11, 1982 (after the Falklands War)

"Without in any way neglecting the acquisition of useful knowledge, a Catholic University is distinguished by its free search for the whole truth about nature, man and God. The present age is in urgent need of this kind of disinterested service, namely of proclaiming the meaning of truth , that fundamental value without which freedom, justice and human dignity are extinguished." - Ex Corde Ecclesiae. (1990)

"Every generation of Americans needs to know that freedom consists not in doing what we like, but in having the right to do what we ought." - Homily in Orioles Park at Camden Yards, October 9, 1995.

"Even beyond its typically religious expressions, true art has a close affinity with the world of faith, so that, even in situations where culture and the Church are far apart, art remains a kind of bridge to religious experience." -- Letter to Artists. (1999)