I am delighted to participate in a panel at the annual conference of the American Academy of Catholic Scholars and Artists which will be convened over the next few days. I’ll be responding to Professor Frank Beckwith’s fine lecture on the legacy of Dignitatis Humanae, the important (and still controversial) Vatican II Declaration of 1965 concerning religious freedom. I’m honored (and just a bit daunted) to be responding just after Professor J. Budziszewski, whose scholarly contributions to the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas have been a great help to me over the years. See, for example, his indispensable Commentary on Thomas Aquinas’s Treatise on Law and his Commentary on Thomas Aquinas’s Virtue Ethics.

I’m particularly excited to be part of this gathering because, by design, it combines scholarly and artistic/literary reflection on the many contributions of Catholicism. I have a new project, just now beginning to take shape (and about which more soon!) that, I hope, will reflect this union of interests and aims in its own way.