About the Fellowship

In January 1977 seven priests from different places of the United States began discussing with their local peers what could be done to help the Catholic scholarly community better serve the teaching authority of the church in an era of dispiriting dissent. This led to the first Fellowship of Catholic Scholars annual convention later that year in St. Louis, Missouri. For nearly fifty years, Catholic scholars from institutions across the United States have since continued to gather for the annual convention, from which have flowed academic collaborations, publications like The Fellowship of Catholic Scholars Quarterly, public engagement, and service to the Church.

We Catholic scholars in various disciplines join in fellowship in order to serve Jesus Christ better by helping one another in our work and by putting our abilities more fully at the service of the Catholic faith.

We wish to form a fellowship of scholars who see their intellectual work as expressing the service they owe to God. To Him we give thanks for our Catholic faith and for every opportunity He gives us to serve that faith.

We wish to form a fellowship of Catholic scholars open to the work of the Holy Spirit within the Church. Thus we wholeheartedly accept and support the renewal of the Church of Christ undertaken by Pope John XXIII, shaped by Vatican II, and carried on by succeeding pontiffs.

We accept as the rule of our life and thought the entire faith of the Catholic Church. This we see not merely in solemn definitions but in the ordinary teaching of the Pope and those bishops in union with him, and also embodied in those modes of worship and ways of Christian life, of the present as of the past, which have been in harmony with the teaching of St. Peter’s successors in the See of Rome.

The questions raised by contemporary thought must be considered with courage and dealt with in honesty. We will seek to do this, faithful to the truth always guarded in the Church by the Holy Spirit and sensitive to the needs of the family of faith. We wish to accept a responsibility which a Catholic scholar may not evade: to assist everyone, so far as we are able, to personal assent to the mystery of Christ as made manifest through the lived faith of the Church, His Body, and through the active charity without which faith is dead.

To contribute to this sacred work, our fellowship will strive to:

• Come to know and welcome all who share our purpose;
• Make known to one another our various competencies and interests;
• Share our abilities with one another unstintingly in our efforts directed to our common purpose;
• Cooperate in clarifying the challenges which must be met;
• Help one another to evaluate critically the variety of responses which are proposed to these challenges;
• Communicate our suggestions and evaluations to members of the Church who might find them helpful;
• Respond to requests to help the Church in its task of guarding the faith as inviolable and defending it with fidelity;
• Help one another to work through, in scholarly and prayerful fashion and without public dissent, any problem which may arise from magisterial teaching.

With the grace of God for which we pray, we hope to assist the whole Church to understand its own identity more clearly, to proclaim the joyous Gospel of Jesus more confidently, and to carry out its redemptive mission of all humankind more effectively.

This award is given annually to a Catholic adjudged to have done an outstanding scholarly service for the Church.

• 2024 Robert G. Kennedy
• 2023 Msgr. Robert Sokolowski
• 2022 John Keown
• 2019 Dr. Douglas Farrow
• 2018 Nicholas and Mary Eberstadt
• 2017 George Weigel
• 2016 Dr. Stephen Barr
• 2015 Dr. Matthew Levering
• 2014 Rev. Brian E. Daley, S.J.
• 2013 Prof. John Haldane
• 2012 Cardinal Raymond Burke
• 2011 Fr. Francis Martin
• 2010 Fr. Kenneth Baker, S.J.
• 2009 Sr. Sara Butler, M.S.B.T.
• 2008 Dr. John M. Haas
• 2007 Rev. Thomas G. Weinandy, O.F.M. Cap.
• 2006 Dr. Patrick Lee
• 2005 Mr. Gerard V. Bradley, J.D.
• 2004 Sr. Mary Prudence Allen, R.S.M.
• 2003 Dr. Elizabeth Fox-Genovese
• 2002 Rev. J. Augustine DiNoia, O.P.
• 2001 Dr. Thomas W. Hilgers, M.D.
• 2000 Prof. Mary Ann Glendon
• 1999 Dr. Robert P. George
• 1998 Mr. Kenneth Whitehead & Msgr. Michael Wrenn
• 1997 Rev. James V. Schall, S.J.
• 1996 Dr. Ralph McInerny
• 1995 Rev. Msgr. William B. Smith
• 1994 Dr. Jude P. Dougherty
• 1993 Dr. Janet E. Smith
• 1992 Rev. Donald J. Keefe, S.J.
• 1991 Rev. Francis Canavan, S.J.
• 1990 Rev. Ronald Lawler, O.F.M. Cap.
• 1989 Dr. John Finnis
• 1988 Rev. John Harvey, O.S.F.S.
• 1987 Rev. Joseph Farraher, S.J. & Rev. Joseph Fessio, S.J.
• 1986 Dr. John Scottino
• 1985 Dr. Herbert Ratner, M.D.
• 1984 Rev. John Hardon, S.J.
• 1983 Rev. John Connery, S.J.
• 1982 Dr. Germain Grisez
• 1981 Dr. James Hitchcock
• 1980 Dr. William May
• 1979 Rev. Msgr. George Kelly

This award is given occasionally to an individual whose actions demonstrate courageous witness on behalf of the Catholic Church.

• 2024 Mary Rice Hasson
• 2023 Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone
• 2022 Mary O’Callaghan
• 2019 Archbishop Terrence M. Prendergast, S.J.
• 2018 Archbishop Joseph Naumann
• 2017 Helen Alvaré
• 2016 Archbishop William E. Lori
• 2015 Bishop Thomas Olmstead
• 2013 Maggie Gallagher
• 2012 Kevin (Seamus) Hasson
• 2011 Jennifer Roback Morse
• 2010 Archbishop Charles Chaput
• 2009 Mother Agnes V. Donovan, S.V., and the Sisters of Life
• 2008 Richard M. Doerflinger
• 2006 Hon. Samuel D. Brownback
• 2005 Helen Hull Hitchcock
• 2004 Hon. Chris Smith
• 2003 Hon. Mel Martinez & Kathryn Tindal Martinez
• 2002 Hon. Rick Santorum
• 1997 Repr. Henry J. Hyde
• 1996 John & Sheila Kippley

This award is given occasionally in recognition of the recipient’s tireless service to the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars

• 2024 Msgr. Stuart W. Swetland
• 2023 Russell Hittinger
• 2022 Russell Shaw
• 2018 Fr. Thomas Weinandy, O.F.M. Cap.
• 2016 Sr. Hanna Klaus
• 2015 Rev. Joseph W. Koterski, S.J.
• 2014 Cardinal George
• 2013 James Hitchcock
• 2012 Gerard Bradley, Esq.
• 2011 Dr. Kenneth Whitehead
• 2010 Rev. John Harvey, O.S.F.S.
• 2009 Msgr. William Smith (posthumously) and Msgr. Michael Wrenn (posthumously)
• 2008 Rev. James J. Schall, S.J.
• 2004 Msgr. George E. Kelly
• 2003 Rev. Ronald Lawler, O.F.M. Cap.
• 2002 Rev. Joseph J. Fessio, S.J.