Word: weigel
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...commenting on Father Weigel's criticism of American Catholic scholarship, your Letters correspondents [July 29] made the unscholarly assumption that his strictures touched Catholic scholarship as such. The criticism, which is now a commonplace among American Catholic intellectuals, does not bear on the admirable Catholic scholarship of Europe. Now that Catholic intellectualism in the U.S. is on the point of coming to maturity (and criticisms like that of Father Weigel are signs of this maturation), our remaining problems are largely financial. If someone were to give me one-fourth of the funds of Harvard, we would, in this graduate...
...Jesuit Weigel's objective statements concerning the Roman Catholics' small contribution to U.S. scholarship [July 8] are to be highly commended. Could the reason for this be that the totalitarian nature of Roman Catholicism, with its thought-control mechanisms of censorship, blacklisting, "excommunication" threats, etc., creates an atmosphere in which the necessary spirit of truly free inquiry cannot exist...
...fact," says the Rev. Gustave Weigel, S.J., professor of ecclesiology at Maryland's Woodstock College, "that in the United States, where the Catholics form something between a fifth [and] a third of the population, the proportion of Catholics in American scholarship is nowhere near the overall figure." Why is it that, aside from theology, American Catholics have made such a comparatively small contribution to U.S. scholarship? In the current University of Notre Dame quarterly, The Review of Politics, Jesuit Weigel gives his answer: "The general Catholic community in America does not know what scholarship...
...double duty to perform. "He should use scholarly method to introduce into [the] sciences Catholic teachings which are really derived outside of them, and negatively he should refute, in scholarly fashion, the work done by those whose findings apparently are hostile to the faith." For too long, says Weigel, the American Catholic has regarded himself as a' member of a "beleaguered community" constantly on the defensive. "It is not too extreme to say that in many cases [Catholic] classes of philosophy are used to form defending debaters of Catholic positions. Philosophy is not envisaged as a personal quest...
...persuading more young Catholics into the life of true scholarship, says Weigel, there must be no urging "with the whip of the Church's need ... It is essential to woo young men and women to this vocation because it is good in itself ... for next to the contemplation of God, the contemplation of God's creation is the noblest action of man. This we must preach. This our youth must hear. Hearing, they will be attracted...