Closing thoughts on the congress

We returned last night from the congress; there were some excellent papers given, others were so-so. I wish I had had an opportunity to attend the Scotus and the other medieval philosophy sessions, but on Saturday I stayed with the Aquinas sessions. I met Dr. David Gallagher, who labels himself an independent scholar--evidently he is now working full-time for Opus Dei, so his scholarly activity is somewhat restricted because of time constraints. Dr. Steven Long, who is now over at Ave Maria University, gave a very good paper on Aquinas, grace and freedom. Janet Smith is an excellent speaker; she gave a critique of Martha Nussbaum's interpretation of Aristotle and an exposition of exceptionless moral norms. I had wanted to hear Dr. John Jones's paper--evidently his texts have had a major impact on the understanding of Aquinas by certain Orthodox apologists/polemicists on the Internet.

If someone else were to pay for the trip and fees, perhaps this would be a good conference to attend every year. Marquette and CUA have strong contingents there. As far as I know, there were only two medievalists from Boston; Dr. Marrone from Tufts and Dr. Coolman from BC theology. There was some discussion of the ACPA meeting in 2007, as Dr. Noone will be president of the ACPA then.

With rising oil costs, I suspect that conferences and the like will suffer. Not that conferences have been that helpful--there have been plenty of conferences in the past, and yet the divisions within academia and between various schools and interpretations remain. Then again, was it like this in the medieval period? After all, how many Scotists were persuaded to become Thomists and vice versa?

I would like to get that paper on Catholic colleges finished and published... in a declining economy some tough choices will have to be made. If any Catholic universities survive, they will be very reduced in size--perhaps some reforms can be introduced then. Who will have the money to pay for dissenters and poor philosophers on their faculty? It's unfortunate that no one is taking preparation now, when there is still time. Then again, no one in the major political parties has really brought the question of economic retooling to the forefront--people are more concerned with Iraq and with economic numbers and surving the month--who can look ahead and see what is needed?

On Friday night we went to Bell's in Kalamazoo, which did have a Cinqo de Mayo party, plus bluegrass music in the evening. Unfortunately, it got crowded fast, and the wait for food expanded from an hour to an hour and a half. Unbelievable... some of us decided to walk around and see if there was food elsewhere; we ended up eating at Subway's--not exactly our ideal for dinner. But, there was a nice get-together later in the evening, with people from Marquette and CUA in attendance. That evening I met a Japanese professor of medieval philosophy, Dr. Yamamoto(?)--he did his studies in the ethics of Aquinas, and is now doing a fellowship at CUA on Aquinas and the Arabic philosophers. (Hrm, no info on the Net.) The state of the Church in Japan apparently is not so good--Catholics still make up a very very small percentage of the population. I wonder what prevents them from making great strides in evangelization.