\nThe Catholic philosopher (and FIRST <\/span>THINGS<\/span> board member) Russell Hittinger emailed me this morning, however, and he is considerably less impressed with the current state of Catholic intellectuals. \u201cI suspect that the early 1960s was the high tide for Catholic influence in (on, through) the secular schools; this was the generation of Catholics who were hired at the best schools, who were near the top of their fields, and who were regarded as \u2018Catholic,\u2019\u201d he writes. \u201cI am very dubious that we compare favorably today. Remember, I am not speaking absolutely of objective merit; rather, objective merit combined with what you have picked out in terms of notoriety, influence, etc.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\nIndeed, Russ suggests, the condition of Catholic academics is at a low point: \u201cYou are right about the function of Catholic \u2018thought\u2019 in the off-campus world in which you work. Catholics and fellow travelers abound. It could even look like a Catholic plot. In numbers proportionate to the industry, you can field an A- and B-team much more quickly and confidently. Unfortunately, academic institutions are an important part of the real world. You can\u2019t reckon with \u2018thought\u2019 just on an off-campus basis. We are dealing with a multi-billion dollar temple at the center of our culture. If Catholics are not faring very well in the temple (or, as I suspect, faring less well than a generation ago), then this cannot be a minor theme in your story.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n
He (Hittinger) then throws down the gauntlet and asks for evidence…go read the whole post and see what you think.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
You might recall Jody Bottum’s Weekly Standard piece of a few days ago, suggesting that the relative political weakness of the Catholic hierarchy in the U.S. is balanced out by a paradigm for thinking through public policy questions that owes much to Catholicism and some current intellectual heavyweights trained in the tradition. Today, in the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5360","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\n
The Scandal of the Catholic Mind? - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/01\/the-scandal-of-the-catholic-mind.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Scandal of the Catholic Mind? - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"You might recall Jody Bottum’s Weekly Standard piece of a few days ago, suggesting that the relative political weakness of the Catholic hierarchy in the U.S. is balanced out by a paradigm for thinking through public policy questions that owes much to Catholicism and some current intellectual heavyweights trained in the tradition. 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Today, in the…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/01\/the-scandal-of-the-catholic-mind.html","og_site_name":"Via Media","article_published_time":"2006-01-18T11:33:56+00:00","author":"awelborn","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/01\/the-scandal-of-the-catholic-mind.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/01\/the-scandal-of-the-catholic-mind.html","name":"The Scandal of the Catholic Mind? - Via Media","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website"},"datePublished":"2006-01-18T11:33:56+00:00","dateModified":"2006-01-18T11:33:56+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/01\/the-scandal-of-the-catholic-mind.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/01\/the-scandal-of-the-catholic-mind.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/01\/the-scandal-of-the-catholic-mind.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"The Scandal of the Catholic Mind?"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/","name":"Via Media","description":"Amy Welborn","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a","name":"awelborn","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","caption":"awelborn"},"description":"Amy Welborn was born in 1960, the only child of a now-retired professor of political science, a teacher-librarian-artist mother,deceased since 2001, was a teacher, librarian and artist. The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5360","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5360"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5360\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}