About the Fellowship
Who We Are
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History of the Fellowship
The context within which the Fellowship came to be is the sociological history of the Catholic Church in the United States of America. The Church’s efforts to develop a “plausibility structure” for itself in this new world shifts over three general time periods.
In the colonial and republican period, the Catholic Church was clearly a minority. In a country founded on religious principles drawn from the Protestant churches, the Catholic community sought simply to establish a foothold.
In the 19th century, the Church grew into its own “Catholic ghetto.” The rapid and expansive development of Catholic parishes, the Catholic school system, Catholic health care institutions, and a host of other organizations all contributed to the reality that was both Catholic and American. The significance of this growth was signaled by an orthodox Jewish scholar (Will Herberg) in 1957 when he declared that “the Catholic Church in America operates a vast network of institutions of almost every type and variety. … This immense system constitutes at one and the same time a self-contained Catholic world with its own complex interior economy and American Catholicism’s resources for participation in the larger American community.”
In the third period, during and since the Second Vatican Council, Catholicism in America felt the effects of secularization and modernism as there came to be established a “new Catholic knowledge class.” Significant events that marked this established included the reactions to Humanae Vitae, the publication of the Catholic Theological Society’s statement “On Human Sexuality,” and the Land ‘O Lakes declaration from Catholic college and university leaders. Now, it seemed, the religious community was first and foremost American, rather than Catholic, in its outlook.
Amid the prevailing sentiment of the late 1970s, scholars committed to the Catholic Church experienced a sense of intellectual alienation, both from the Church in America and from the colleges and universities in which they worked. In January 1977, in seven different parts of the United States, seven different priests from different backgrounds were discussing with their local peers what could be done to redirect the Catholic scholarly community towards a more friendly approach to the teaching authority of the Church. In each case the priests independently found their working peers isolated and frustrated.
Almost by accident of correspondence and informal conversations, the following decided to meet in St. Louis on May 7-8, 1977 for a discussion of the Catholic academic situation:
- Fr. Joseph Mangan, SJ (Loyola University, Chicago)
- Fr. Robert Levis (Gannon College)
- Fr. John Miller, CSC (Provincial of the Holy Cross Fathers)
- Msgr. George Kelly (New York)
- Prof. James Hitchcock (St. Louis University)
- Fr. Ronald Lawler, OFM Cap (Catholic University of America)
At a subsequent meeting on August 23-24 of the same year, a host of others joined the discussion. It was at that meeting that the decision was made to create the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars. The designation as a “fellowship” was suggested by an Australian layman (Karl Schmude) who happened on the scene by chance and who spoke of similar fellowships in his homeland. This new “fellowship”:
- Elected its first officers: President, Fr. Ronald Lawler, OFM Cap., Vice-Presidents, Fr. Joseph Fessio, SJ / Dr. James Hitchcock / Fr. Earl Weis, SJ and Executive Secretary, Msgr. George Kelly;
- Arranged for the first national meeting, sponsored by John Cardinal Carberry (archbishop of St. Louis), to be held in Kansas City, MO from April 28-30, 1978, with a keynote address by William Cardinal Baum on “The Teaching Office of Bishops”;
- Drafted the documents which would guide its future, including, the Statement of Purpose, written by Dr. Germain Grisez and Fr. Ronald Lawler and the organization’s By-Laws, written by Fr. Henry Sattler, CSSR.
James Hitchcock, “The Fellowship of Catholic Scholars: Bowing Out of the New Class,” in Being Right: Conservative Catholics in America. Edited by Mary Jo Weaver and R. Scott Appleby. Indiana University Press, 1995, pp. 186-201.
Msgr. George A. Kelly. “A Short History of the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars,” in Catholicity and the New Evangelization. Edited by Anthony Mastroeni. Franciscan University Press, 1994, pp. 262-263.
Joseph Varacalli, “Catholicism, American Culture, and Monsignor George A. Kelly,” in The Catholic Social Science Review, 4 (1999): 119-137.
Statement of Purpose
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.
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