“What clearly stands behind the modern era’s demand for freedom is the promise: You will be like God….The implicit goal of all modern freedom is, in the end, to be like a god, dependent of nothing and nobody, with one’s freedom not restricted by anyone else’s….Being completely free, without the competition of any other freedom, without any “from” or “for”—behind that stands, not an image of God, but the image of an idol.” — Pope Benedict XVI, Truth and Tolerance
Our aim with our seventh annual fall conference is to bring together a large number of respected scholars representing all the main academic fields, from Catholic, non-Catholic, and secular institutions, to provide spirited discussion of the underlying causes of the intellectual epoch we have come to call modernity; of the relationship between the main theses of modernity and the Magisterium of the Church in the last century; and the impact of modernity upon work in philosophy, theology, law, literature, the arts, as well as other fields of intellectual inquiry and endeavor.
