The de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture at the University of Notre Dame hosted its 20th annual Fall Conference on November 7-9. The purpose of this forum is to delve into the full range of the Catholic and Christian intellectual traditions and thereby provide a means of engagement with wider communities in discussions of ethics, culture, and policy. Past topics have included Beauty, Justice, Poverty, the “Culture of Life,” Modernity, and Freedom. The theme this year was “I Have Called You Friends.” Conference speakers surveyed friendship from Aristotelian concepts of it to current descriptive ones; the subject was examined across a myriad of disciplines, including philosophy, the arts, the sciences, and theology. Learned scholars from across the United States and Europe came to opine on permanent questions: What is the meaning and value of friendship, and what does it reveal in light of Christian and Catholic teaching? What are the ancient, modern, social, political, and spiritual truths about it?

Over the three days, there were multiple groups of one, two, and three lecturers, with a chairperson/facilitator and question-and-answer periods. The keynote speakers were Stanley Hauerwas of Duke Divinity School, the Most Rev. Borys Gudziak of the Ukrainian Catholic Archeparchy of Philadelphia, and Whit Stillman, writer, director, and filmmaker of “Metropolitan,” “Barcelona,” “The Last Days of Disco,” and “Love & Friendship.” Each keynote speaker contributed a distinctive perspective on the intellectual ecosystem of friendship.

Just as a sampling, the colloquium sessions ranged from When I was in Prison You Visited Me: Incarceration, Ministry, and The Abolition of Friendship, to Beauty Beheld in Common and Friendship, to Building Social Capital, to “If You Love Those Who Love You”: The Problem of Preference. The Beauty Beheld in Common and Friendship colloquium had two erudite scholars and art historians, one from Paris and the other from Rome, Jennifer Donnelly and Elizabeth Lev. Donnelly’s topic was “Moldy Relics and Modern Art: Mass, Museum, and Friendship with Objects,” and Lev’s was “The Art of Friendship: The Sacred Conversation.” As a Hamilton ‘19 graduate in Art History and Classical Studies, I found their presentations on how art, architecture, and objects can cultivate and inspire dialogue, model friendship, and provoke a spiritual response both noteworthy and moving. These talks were followed by a lively question-and-answer period.

The conversations and exchanges were enhanced by the size of the roster and the audience: more than 100 speakers and more than 1,000 attendees. Past and present speakers at the annual conference have included such intellectual lights as Alasdair MacIntyre, Sir Roger Scruton, John Finnis, Mary Ann Glendon, Charles Taylor, James Heckman, the aforementioned Jennifer Donnelly and Elizabeth Lev, John Waters, Monsignor Timothy Verdon, Rémi Brague, Giulio De Ligio, Pia de Solenni, David Bentley Hart, Etsuro Sotoo, Gilbert Meilaender, and Jean Bethke Elshtain.

Each contributor fulfilled the Ethics and Culture center conference’s purpose: to reinforce the habit of intellectual and philosophical inquiry; to define, ask, clarify, and add to the discussion of the question: What is humanity’s ideal road map in the modern world? The annual conference, as I see it, has sought to broaden the Christian and Catholic moral anthology and thereby recognize the power of the individual, of institutions, and of art and other human products to inform and mold the culture--not to the current zeitgeist, but toward more coherent ways of thinking and being.

The Christian canon, as conference participants attested, could be an antidote to moral failure and societal chaos. The moral imagination was shown as relevant to such discussions, with examples including Aristotle, Plato, Vergil, St. Paul, St. Augustine, Dante, Michelangelo, Raphael, Waugh, Chesterton, Weil, Yeats, Jane Austen, Dickens, Dostoevsky, Jean Vanier, and T. S. Eliot. They spoke to us across space and time.

The Fall Conference offered those who attended it a conversation about what is possible, about the values lost and longed for in humanity, and a respite from political rows and scorched-earth rhetoric. It was a courageous venture intending to influence minds and change hearts--by fostering dialogue and asking: What do the common good and friendship look like on campuses, in broader communities, in the United States and the world? Perhaps venues such as this conference can serve as a conduit, link, or passage “between those who believe in values realizable in time on earth, and those who believe in values realized out of time ...” (Eliot). A resounding “amen” to that labor is owed.

Sienese artist Giovanni di Paolo painted “Paradise” in tempera and gold in 1445. A copy of the artwork was on the cover of the Fall Conference program. The original artwork can be seen at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.