The Allure of the Catholic Intellectual Tradition

During the fall semester of 2013, I began to teach a new course here at Yale: The Catholic Intellectual Tradition. Even though the course had no track record (and therefore no student evaluations), around twenty students dared to take it. Thirteen years later, the enrollment was up to eighty-five, making it the most popular undergraduate course offered by the history department. Yes, history. 

This surprising enrollment fact was made known in Slate by Sergio Infante, one of the teaching fellows assigned to the course: “I Teach at Yale. There Are Gen Z Catholics All Around Me. I Know What Must Be Done.” The subtitle of the essay assertively declares: “Universities need to do more to connect with an increasingly religious student body.” As one might expect, the essay has drawn a bit of attention from the world beyond downtown New Haven.

Ever since 2013, this class has attracted highly motivated students who are eager to explore a dimension of thought previously hidden from them, simply because the texts we read and discuss have not been part of their education. Surprisingly—and shamefully—this applies to Catholics who have attended Catholic schools from kindergarten through high school as much as to those who haven’t. Unsurprisingly, it also applies to Protestants, non-Christians, and others with no religious affiliation. It is easy to notice the intensity with which students in this class grapple with the reading, regardless of their background. I have always gotten the impression that for a large number of them, the reading is more than an assignment. Of course, this can happen in other classes too. But I’ve been teaching for over fifty years, and I’ve never felt or seen this kind of intensity in any other course of mine, including those, many years ago, in which all the students were monks and seminarians. 

This course is one of the best things that has ever happened to me, in many ways. I say it “happened” to me because its creation was an unplanned collaborative effort. My partner in crime was my colleague Jeff Brenzel, a philosopher. He’s the one who provided the flint and spark with which the fire was kindled. It all began as a conversation, initiated by him, about what kind of course could best introduce Yale students to Catholic thought. After several conversations, the two of us and a third colleague who joined us, literary scholar Giuseppe Mazzotta, agreed that the best approach would be to immerse students deeply in the reading of primary texts—the real stuff written by great minds—and then ask the students to analyze them and put these texts in conversation with one another as well as with present-day concerns.