Dr Mario Baghos is Senior Lecturer in Theology at The University of Notre Dame, Australia
On Friday 23 August 2024 the Annual General Meeting of the Catholic Scholars Guild was held at the University of Notre Dame in Sydney.
The guild’s president and associate dean of learning and teaching at UNDA Dr Kevin Wagner gave a report on the guild’s activities for the past year before members voted on the new executive team.
Dr Wagner reprised his role as president with Dr Matthew Tan, dean of studies at Vianney College in Wagga Wagga elected vice-president.
Also elected were Dr Peter McGregor from Catholic Institute of Sydney as secretary, Prof Gerard Ryan from UNDA’s School of Law and Business as public officer and Rev Dr Benjamin Johnson OFM Cap from the School of Philosophy and Theology as treasurer.
Attendees included Prof David de Carvalho, executive dean of the Faculty of Education, Philosophy and Theology at UNDA, as well as scholars from UNDA, CIS, Campion College, ACU, and other Catholic education institutions, including priests, religious, and lay persons.
The CSG “is an association of scholars and academics that exists for the edification of its members and the building up of the church.” The guild is under the patronage of Archbishop Anthony Fisher OP.
The lecture for the evening was offered by Oxford graduate Rev Dr Gregory Morgan, parish priest of St Catherine Labouré Gymea and sessional lecturer in philosophy at UNDA.
Fr Gregory spoke on “Inverting Reality: Rescuing the Catholic Genius from Reactionism and Ideology,” which addressed how a sincere Catholic intellectual and theologian can navigate the “Scylla” of knee-jerk reactionism and the “Charybdis” of totalising ideology.
After describing the legitimate Catholic reaction against progressive or “woke” culture that manifests itself violently against the God-given gender distinction and the dignity and rights of the unborn, Fr Gregory simultaneously cautioned against the temptation of nostalgia.
This, he argued, is often expressed as a sincere yearning for the pre-Vatican II Tridentine church but which often leads to the creation of enclaves—especially among Catholic intellectuals—who may not engage with the modern world.
This reactionism is therefore linked to ideology, but Fr Gregory argued that the Catholic genius transcends these categories.
The Catholic genius, especially amongst intellectuals and scholars, should engage with the world with critical rigour, in this way inverting the reality presented to us by modernity.
This inversion, Fr Gregory persuasively argued, finds its locus in St Peter’s gaze as he was crucified upside down.
For the saint saw the dark powers of this world, represented by the obelisk in Rome’s Circus Maximus—a petrified sun ray of the god Ra and used by Roman emperors as a sign of strength—inverted and as if hanging by a thread.
The gaze should thus be perpetuated by the church, founded upon the testimony of Peter and the potestas clavium [the power of the keys] and guided by his successors, the popes.
Fr Gregory concluded that Catholic intellectuals should thus be counter-cultural but at the same time engage with culture for the world’s salvation.
His vision for the members of the guild is to embrace such an approach and to reinforce it with piety and prayer, giving the example of combining such meetings in the future with adoration of the Blessed Sacrament.
In this way, in this author’s estimation, our Lord Jesus Christ becomes the experiential interpretive lens through which the world and its intellectual currents are approached, and embraced or criticised.
The closing prayer was offered by Fr Daniel McCaughan, parish priest of St Patrick’s, Sutherland.
Inspired by the presentation, the members of the executive and all present thanked Fr Greg as they dispersed for the evening, pondering these things in their hearts while discussing them with vivid enthusiasm, some on the way home, others over a pint at the local pub.