Words, both spoken and written, mark human persons, each of whom has been created in the image of the Divine Word, who was made flesh and dwelt among us. Today, owing to increasing educational options and ever-advancing technologies, human persons and their use of words face opportunities and threats of a degree never encountered before. Are we up to the challenge? Have we adequately grappled with this brave new world of the human word?
Come explore these questions with accomplished Catholic professionals.
Dr. Kelly Anderson is an Associate Professor at the Major Seminary of Saint Charles Borromeo Seminary, Chair of the Department of Sacred Scripture, and a member of the Board of Trustees. She translated a book from Italian (“…Perché io sono mite e umile di cuore” (Mt 11,29) Studio esegetico–teologico sull’umiltà del Messia secondo Matteo. Dimensione cristologica e risvolti ecclesiologici), co–authored James, First, Second and Third John for the Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture Series, and participated in the Revised Translation Project of the New Testament for the USCCB. In addition to publishing several articles, she regularly contributes to the Catholic Preaching Institute, and she has a podcast where she releases videos every three or four months on the nexus between Sacred Scripture and Liturgy. She is currently in her nineteenth year at Saint Charles Borromeo Seminary.
Title: Word of God at Pentecost; Word of God in the Eucharist
Abstract: There are a few similarities between the gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost and the gift of the Eucharist. The Holy Spirit gives various words to the apostles and enables those receiving the word to hear what is proper to each, while the Eucharist, also called the Word of God, deeply satisfies those receiving it, giving spiritual nourishment proper to each. This talk will examine the various yet similar capacities of the gift of the Eucharist and the gift of the Holy Spirit.
Dr. Margaret S. Chisolm is Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and Professor of Medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, where she directs the Paul McHugh Program for Human Flourishing. A board-certified psychiatrist with more than three decades of clinical experience, she works at the intersection of psychiatry, medical education, the humanities, and the moral dimensions of care. Her scholarly work has focused on psychiatric diagnosis and treatment, clinical excellence, and humanistic medical practice. She is the author of more than 200 scientific, clinical, and educational publications, including the textbook Systematic Psychiatric Evaluation and the award-winning book for patients and families From Survive to Thrive: Living Your Best Life with Mental Illness. Through her teaching and writing, she seeks to illuminate what it means to be human, what it means to be a physician, and how clinicians may serve patients with rigor, wisdom, and compassion.
Title: The Trouble with Trauma
Abstract: This talk examines the history of “trauma” in medicine as a case study in how language shapes conceptions of the human person. From Charcot to psychoanalysis to contemporary trauma discourse, clinical categories have functioned not only as descriptions of suffering, but as accounts of memory, agency, and selfhood. I argue that medicine is vulnerable to conceptual drift when well-written, emotionally compelling narratives are used to support explanations that are not falsifiable yet acquire clinical and moral authority. Trauma illustrates how such explanatory frameworks can gain legitimacy despite limited scientific grounding, shaping both professional practice and public imagination. Revisiting this history may help clinicians better recognize, and more carefully question, reductive explanations that can obscure the truth, complexity, and dignity of the suffering person.
Joseph E. Davis is Research Professor of Sociology at the University of Virginia and Director of the Picturing the Human Project of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture. His research explores the intersecting questions of self, suffering, and cultural change. Recent projects include Chemically Imbalanced: Everyday Suffering, Medication, and our Troubled Quest for Self-Mastery (Chicago), the co-edited volume The Evening of Life (Notre Dame), and a special issue of Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry on “Being Human in the Age of the Brain.” He writes a blog at psychologytoday.com called “Our New Discontents,” and is working on a book about growing up in our society.
Title: Languages of Suffering: Neuro Talk as Self Suffocation
Abstract: Languages of suffering are those vocabularies with which we interpret, explain, and deal with our experiences of distress, deprivation, and discontent. There are any number in circulation. The existential, for instance, in which distress like grief is conceived as an inescapable part of our reality. The religious, expressed, for example, in Pope John Paul II’s apostolic letter, Salvifici Doloris, where he writes of “pain of a spiritual nature” that finds its meaning in the revelation of divine love on the Cross. Or what is sometimes called the “moral,” which was our common-sense way of speaking about the reasons for our struggles. Until recently.
Over the last half century, a new language of suffering has arisen in psychiatry that roots mental disorder in faulty neurobiology. This language not only displaced depth psychology but brought a profound shift in the way that ordinary people explain personal struggles and grapple with the very nature of selfhood—of who we think we are and what shapes us. Now, people often frame their suffering in terms of a malfunctioning brain. Though championed as more scientifically sound and humane, reductionist neuro talk has many troubling consequences, a kind of “self-suffocation,” to borrow a phrase from Kierkegaard.
Chad Engelland (Ph.D., The School of Philosophy, The Catholic University of America) is professor of philosophy at the University of Dallas. He is the author of many books, including Divine Hiddenness: God the Creator and Phenomenology (Cambridge 2026), Phenomenology (MIT 2020) and Ostension: Word Learning and the Embodied Mind (MIT 2014), and the editor of Language and Phenomenology (Routledge 2021). His writings have appeared in such journals as the Review of Metaphysics, The Thomist, New Blackfriars, Journal of the History of Philosophy, and the Journal of the American Philosophical Association.
Title: Just What Is ”Interesting,” Anyway?
Abstract: Alan Turing said a machine could be said to think if its programmer regarded its output as interesting, and this claim raises an interesting question. What makes something interesting? This address will argue that the word “interesting” indicates that something calls for perceptive thinking rather than merely calculative or associative processing; it is something that makes sense within the recognition of part-whole relations including the frame of reference of human life and, ultimately, reality as a whole. As with anything else, there is good reason to find our machines interesting; they do, after all, give us much to think about, but to elucidate that interest is something that only we perceptive thinkers can do.
Michael Gorman holds the Pritzl Chair in Philosophy at The Catholic University of America, where he has taught since 1999. He had doctorates in philosophy and theology, and he is the author of over forty scholarly articles and two books, Aquinas on the Metaphysics of the Hypostatic Union (Cambridge University Press, 2017) and A Contemporary Introduction to Thomistic Metaphysics (Catholic University of America Press, 2024).
Title: Kripkean Thoughts on the Name “Jesus”
Abstract: We human beings are most naturally suited to talking and thinking about individual material objects, and the most fundamental way we fix our thought on them is through sensation. How, then, can we think of God, who is immaterial and therefore beyond sensation? There are, in fact, a number of ways in which we successfully do so, but this success is bound up with certain limitations and obscurities. Building on the thought of the philosopher Saul Kripke (1940-2022), I propose that at least some of these difficulties can be overcome, and a kind of privileged access obtained, through use of the name “Jesus.”
Dr. Reinhard Hütter is Visiting Professor of Catholic Theology at Duke University Divinity
School and Professor Emeritus of Fundamental and Dogmatic Theology at the Catholic
University of America. He held a tenured full professorship at Duke University, a visiting
professorship at the University of Jena, the Randall Chair at Providence College, and the
Paluch Chair at Mundelein Seminary/University of Saint Mary of the Lake. His research
specializes in systematic and philosophical theology, emphasizing the relationship
between faith and reason, theological anthropology, and the enduring legacies of St. Thomas Aquinas and St. John Henry Newman.
Appointed by Pope Francis, Dr. Huetter served on the Vatican’s International Theological
Commission (2021-26). He is an ordinary academician of the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas
Aquinas and a past president of the Academy of Catholic Theology. His recent publications
include Bound for Beatitude: A Thomistic Study in Eschatology and Ethics, John Henry
Newman on Truth and Its Counterfeits, and the forthcoming Tradition in Act: The Development of Doctrine and Its Counterfeits, After Newman.
Title: “A Message from across the Seas:” Pope Leo XIV’s Encyclical Letter Magnifica Humanitas—
Fecisti Nos Ad Te—An Augustinian Ressourcement for the 21st Century
Abstract: The interrelatedness of the Sacrament of Matrimony and the Sacrament of the Most Holy Eucharist are not just abstract connections but necessarily entails translations into the reality of life. The canonical laws of the Church are among the most distinct and effective tools of regulating such translations into the lived experience of the faithful, not to substitute for grace but to order the life of the ecclesial society and the members of the Body of Christ such that grace can flourish. This presentation explores how the Church’s beliefs about Marriage and the Eucharist necessarily call for canonical disciplines that foster the truth about these and avoid the scandal of inconsistency between what is believed and what is lived.
Dr. Veronica Roberts Ogle is Associate Professor of Political and Social Thought and the Augustinian Catholic Intellectual Tradition in the Humanities Department at Villanova University. She is author of Politics and the Earthly City in Augustine’s City of God (Cambridge University Press, 2020) and has published on Augustine in journals such as Journal of Religious Ethics, Augustinian Studies, and The New Ressourcement.
Title: Two Cities, Two Construction Sites: Learning to Build with Augustine and Pope
Leo
Abstract: In this presentation, I will draw out the Augustinian resonances in Pope Leo’s
social vision to make sense of his recent Magnifica Humanitas, drawing on other addresses from his pontificate that further flesh out this vision. What I will argue, in brief, is that Pope Leo has taken Augustine’s teaching on the two cities, and transposed it in Magnifica Humanitas onto his concept of the two building sites. Exploring the difference between the two building projects that
are there undertaken, Pope Leo invites us to carry them with us as we consider what it would mean to cultivate a “civilization of love” in today’s world. Ultimately, Pope Leo offers us a social vision and a prayerful mode of discernment that are of a piece, and further, indispensable if we are to navigate the thorny questions that AI poses well.
Dr. Amy Gilbert Richards is a Faculty Fellow in the Master of Arts in Teaching in
Classical Education program in the Templeton Honors College at Eastern
University, where she also teaches in their undergraduate Great Books core
program. She received her PhD in Philosophy from the University of Virginia.
Her research focuses on the intersection of philosophical anthropology,
philosophy and theology of disability, and classical education. She is the author
of Disability and Classical Education: Student Formation in Keeping with our
Common Humanity. Dr. Richards lives in Havertown, PA with her husband and
their three girls.
Title: Disability, Telic Attention, and the End of Education
Abstract: As our understanding of disability serves as a crucible to reveal our anthropology, so the patterns of attention in our classrooms serve to reveal our understanding of the nature of
education. In light of these joint claims, I will argue that true education demands grounding in telic attention–attention to another in light of her telos, in light of the kind of being she is. And failure to consider disability risks obscuring the nature of this telos. For, as St. John Paul II argues, “The disabled person, with all [his or her] limitations and suffering . . . forces us to question ourselves . . . on the mystery of man.” This truth comes to the fore when we put the Incarnate Christ, especially Christ as the Crucified, at the heart of our understanding of our own telos. And the telic attention that proceeds from this heart has deep implications for our practices of education.
Dr. Andrew T. Seeley, is President and Senior Fellow of the Boethius Institute for the Advancement of Liberal Education. He received a Licentiate from the Pontifical Institute in Medieval Studies in Toronto and a Ph.D. in Medieval Studies from the University of Toronto. Over his three decades as a Tutor at Thomas Aquinas College in California, Dr. Seeley completed teaching every subject in its demanding, integrated Great Books curriculum. Desiring to share his love of learning and teaching, Dr. Seeley co-founded the Institute for Catholic Liberal Education in 2005, where he served as Executive Director for 12 years. He has taught Master’s courses in education for the University of Dallas and the Augustine Institute. He is coauthor of Declaration Statesmanship: A Course in American Government. In recognition of his work in the renewal of liberal education, he was named the 2023 recipient of the Circe Institute’s Paideia Prize.
Title: The Permanent Relevance of Education in the Word
Abstract: In A History of Education in Antiquity, his classic work on the original classical education, H.I. Marrou emphasizes “its surprising emphasis on the idea of speech – λόγος – its predominantly literary tone. The Word was regarded as the prime instrument of any culture and any civilization, the best means of ensuring contact and communication between men.” This education, which came to be known as the
Trivium, was the dominant form of general education into the 19th century. The scientific spirit of the Enlightenment, as expressed by men such as Bacon, Descartes, and Lavoisier brought such education into contempt and eventually drove it out of our schools, replacing it with training in scientific jargon and symbolic expression.
In my talk, I will argue for the permanent relevance of the Trivium while indicating the role it is playing and can play in the current renewal of education that has adopted the name, “classical”.
James Matthew Wilson is the Cullen Foundation Chair in English Literature and the founding director of the MFA program in Creative Writing at the University of Saint Thomas. The author of sixteen books, his most recent collection of poems is Saint Thomas and the Forbidden Birds (Word on Fire, 2024). The Strangeness of the Good (2020), won the poetry book of the year award from the Catholic Media Awards. The Dallas Institute of Humanities awarded him the Hiett Prize in 2017; Memoria College gave him the Parnassus Prize, in 2022; and the Conference on Christianity and Literature twice gave him the Lionel Basney Award. In addition to his role at the University of Saint Thomas, he serves as poet-in-residence of the Benedict XVI Institute, scholar-in-residence of Aquinas College, editor of Colosseum Books, and poetry editor of Modern Age magazine. He has also served as writer-in-residence at Grace College, Hillsdale College, and Oklahoma Baptist University and as distinguished visiting professor at Holy Cross College.
Title: Memory and the Living Word
Abstract: Readers of the Phaedrus will know that the miseries, vexations, and losses that threaten the intellectual life in our day are modern permutations of ancient ills. Technological innovation
and the accompanying post-literacy of modern societies have put in question both the end of
human life and the kind of formation that allows for our flourishing. In question is both the integrity of logos and the vitality of it. At the risk of special pleading for a minor art form in an age with major problems, I will consider the nature of poetry (in its essence) and what it tells us of the relation of spoken to written word and what both these things have to do with the formation of our memory to make us ever more human.
Dr. Elizabeth Shaw currently serves as interim provost for Catholic International University. She is also a member of the faculty and associate dean for accreditation. She is an associated scholar of the Hildebrand Project and associate editor of two journals, The Review of Metaphysics and the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars Quarterly. Dr. Shaw has taught in the School of Philosophy and the Busch School of Business at the Catholic University of America, and for several years she was research assistant to Catholic intellectual Michael Novak. Dr. Shaw earned PhD and MA degrees in philosophy from Catholic University, and a BS in mathematics from Georgetown University.
Dr. Shaw’s publications include Social Justice Isn’t What You Think It Is (2015; Michael Novak and Paul Adams, coauthors) and three edited volumes: Interpretations: Using the Past to Understand the Present (2018; essays by Jude P. Dougherty), An American and Catholic Life: Essays Dedicated to Michael Novak (2015), and The Myth of Romantic Love and Other Essays (2013; essays by Michael Novak). She is also the author of several scholarly articles, reviews, and book chapters.
Founders Award Recipient
Randall Smith is Full Professor and holds the Miller Endowed Chair of Theology at the University of St. Thomas in Houston, Texas. He did his doctorate under the direction of Ralph McInerny, David Solomon, and Alasdair MacIntyre at the University of Notre Dame. He is the author of six books, among which are Reading the Sermons of Thomas Aquinas: A Beginner’s Guide, Aquinas, Bonaventure, and the Scholastic Culture of Medieval Paris; From Here to Eternity: Reflections on Death, Immortality, and the Resurrection of the Body; and Bonaventure’s Journey of the Soul into God: Context and Commentary. He also writes a regular column regularly for The Catholic Thing.
Title: Eucharist, the Heart of Catholic Education
Abstract: In this talk, Prof. Smith uses visual images of the liberal arts tympanum sculpture from the Cathedral of Our Lady in Chartres to explain the continuing value of the liberal arts and why the Eucharist is the best, perhaps the only, foundation for this kind of “university” education.
Born in Honolulu, Hawaii on May 16, 1952, Fr. Robert Spitzer is a Catholic Priest in the Jesuit order, and is currently the President of the Magis Center of Reason and Faith (www.magiscenter.com) and the Spitzer Center for Catholic Organizations (www.spitzercenter.org). He is also the Chief Educational Officer for the Ethics and Performance Institute (www.learnepi.com).
Cardinal O’Boyle Award recipient
Title: The Bread of Life and the Laboratory: Eucharistic Belief and Modern Science
Abstract: Over the last 30 years, medical and scientific experts have had a unique opportunity to examine miraculous Eucharistic hosts in Buenos Aires, Argentina (1996), Tixtla, Mexico (2006), and Sokolka, Poland (2008). Fr. Spitzer will discuss the scientific evidence validating the occurrence of living heart tissue growing out of consecrated Eucharistic hosts in these three areas. He will describe the tests performed, the scientific teams performing them, and the remarkable results, indicating the very likely authenticity of all three hosts, particularly the one in Sokolka, Poland which cannot be replicated by either natural or artificial means.
Stacy Trasancos holds advanced degrees in science, philosophy, and theology and is an interdisciplinary writer and educator. She holds a Ph.D. in chemistry, M.A. in systematic philosophy, M.A. in dogmatic theology, and is a doctoral candidate at St. Patrick’s Pontifical University in philosophy. She is the author of six books and has numerous contributions to other books, papers, and interviews. She teaches in the Catholic Studies program at Seton Hall University and for Holy Apostles College and Seminary, where she is the Undergraduate and Dual Enrollment Program Director. Stacy is the wife of Jose Trasancos, mother of seven, and grandmother of seven and counting.
Title: Eucharistic Miracles: Exaggerations, Myths, and Unanswered Questions
Abstract: After being tasked with researching the accounts of Eucharistic miracles for a new book, Dr. Trasancos was disappointed to discover the lack of sound scientific evidence to support the claims repeated uncritically on the internet by Catholic scholars, authors, and personalities. In her talk, she will present her findings, reasoning, and argument that exaggerations, myths, and unanswered questions are doing harm to the faith of believers and would-be believers who seek the truth. Her plea is that Catholics promote the certainty of faith and not succumb to the scientism so rampant in our times.
Paul C. Vitz is Professor of Psychology Emeritus at New York University and recently Senior Scholar Emeritus at Divine Mercy University. His work has focused on integrating Christian theology, especially Catholic anthropology, with psychology. His present interest includes:
The psychological importance of fathers; chastity; analog and digital experience. Dr. Vitz’s
books include: Psychology as Religion: The Cult of Self-Worship 2nd ed.; Sigmund Freud’s
Christian Unconscious; Faith of the Fatherless: The Psychology of Atheism 2nd ed.; and The
Self: Beyond the Postmodern Crisis. And recently, 2020, A Catholic Christian Meta-Model of
the Person.. Eds., Vitz, Nordling, & Titus; and Vitz, Ed. 2021. The Complementarity of
Women and Men.
Cardinal Wright Award recipient
Title: The Past Seventy Years of Psychology: A Review by a Catholic Psychologist
This paper describes the 70 plus years of the author’s involvement in and understanding of the development of psychology starting in 1953 with behaviorism and Freudian psychoanalysis. The different theories and approaches, especially to psychotherapy, are briefly noted going from a humanist psychology, to cognitive/behavior, up to and through narrative psychology, forgiveness therapy, and positive virtue based psychology. The recent contributions of a religious nature, such as those that are explicitly Christian and Jewish are then noted. This includes the understanding of Christian redemption as relevant to therapy. This is clear in view of existing secular forms of redemption, for example, self-realization, self-actualization, redemptive narratives, and flourishing through virtue growth. The conclusion presents five major reasons for being optimistic about an increasing acceptance of religion, especially Christianity, in the psychology of the future.
Dr. Savage is currently a Professor of Theology at Franciscan University of Steubenville. She is a recognized scholar of the work of John Paul II.
Title: The Eucharist and the Work of Human Hands: The Sacred Task of the Lay Professions
Abstract: That the mission of the laity is to transform the temporal order has been an explicit teaching of the Church since Pope St. Paul VI promulgated the Second Vatican Council’s decree On the Apostolate of the Laity (Apostolicam Actuositatem) in 1965. Pope St. John Paul II’s own 1988 Apostolic Exhortation on the Vocation of the Laity, Christifideles laici, both affirmed this teaching and gave it new life. Both documents declare that all Christians are baptized into the three-fold office of Christ as Priest, Prophet, and King, tasking them with the great responsibility of advancing God’s plan for the world. The laity discover their vocation in the world; this is their mission field, the place where they live out their baptismal promises. And this is all to the good. But what are the practical implications of this teaching? What is the “sacred task” at the heart of every profession? What is the meaning of human work?
All sessions will take place at St. Mary’s Seminary
1:45 p.m. – Mass
3:00 – 4:15 p.m. – Plenary Panel I: Teaching the Creatures Who Use Words
Andrew Seeley and Amy Richards
5:30 Dinner
7:30 p.m. – 8:45 p.m. – Plenary Lecture I
Chad Engelland
8:45 p.m. – Compline
8:15 – 9:00 a.m. – Breakfast
9:00 – 10:15 a.m. – Plenary Panel II: Language of Self and Suffering
Joe Davis and James Davison Hunter
10:45 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. – Plenary Panel III: The Holy See’s Response to AI
Reinhard Hütter and Veronica Ogle
12:15- 1:30 p.m. – Lunch
2:00 – 3:30 p.m. – Contributed Papers
4:00 – 5:15 p.m. – Plenary Lecture II
James Matthew Wilson
5:45 – 6:45 p.m. – Mass
7:00 p.m. – Awards Banquet
7:30 a.m. – Mass
8:15 a.m. – Breakfast
9:15 – 10:30 a.m. – Plenary Panel IV: The Word and the Words of God
Michael Gorman, Kelly Anderson
11:00 a.m. – 12:15 p.m. – Plenary Panel V: Medical Threats to Persons
Meg Chisholm & TBD
St. Mary’s Seminary and University Center for Continuing Formation
Those attending the convention may reserve a room to stay at the seminary when they register for the convention. Rooms are available Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights September 24-27, and the rate is $100 per night. Rooms are simple and include a queen bed and private bathroom. If you have already registered for the convention and would like to add a room reservation, please email convention@catholicscholars.org.
Other nearby hotel options (convention rate not available):
