Dr. Ralph McInerny
Profile -- (Fall 2000 Newsletter)
[interview below]
It doesn’t take a philosopher to solve a mystery, but
it works well when one is writing one. Ralph McInerny is the
Michael P. Grace Professor of Medieval Studies and Director
of the Jacques Maritain Center at the University of Notre
Dame, where he has achieved international stature as a Thomistic
scholar. At the same time, he is an award-winning fiction
and mystery writer whose works have been adapted to a television
series – which is no mystery if you know the many talents
behind the man.
A native Minnesotan, McInerny entered St. Paul’s Seminary
to test a vocation to the priesthood. He eventually chose
a vocation to the lay life, but not before getting his bachelor’s
degree there. He attended the University of Minnesota and
then the Université Laval in Quebec, where he obtained
a master’s and doctorate in philosophy, graduating summa
cum laude.
He landed at Notre Dame in 1955 as a philosophy instructor
and soon thereafter received a prestigious Fulbright scholarship
to study in Belgium. In 1969 he ascended to full professor
and later enjoyed visiting professorships at Catholic University
of America, St. Anselm’s College, St. Mary’s College,
University of Scranton, Catholic University in Belgium, Cornell
University, and Truman State University.
His love for the work of St. Thomas Aquinas led him to focus
much of his academic research and writing on the Angelic Doctor
and on making St. Thomas more and more accessible to both
scholars and laymen. Fourteen of his 23 philosophical books
relate directly to the teachings of St. Thomas. Some of his
more important philosophical works include The Logic of Analogy
(1961), Thomism in an Age of Renewal (1966), St. Thomas Aquinas
(1977), Ethica Thomistica (1982), Boethius and Aquinas (1990),
Aquinas on Human Action (1992), The Question of Christian
Ethics (1993), and Aquinas Against the Averroists (1993).
Other of his scholastic works have been enjoyed by an even
broader audience, such as A First Glance at St. Thomas Aquinas:
A Handbook for Peeping Thomists (1990), and Thomas Aquinas,
published by Penguin Classics (1998). Moreover, he has published
seven non-fiction books also intended for a wider audience,
such as Miracles (Our Sunday Visitor, 1986) and What Went
Wrong With Vatican II (Sophia Press, 1998).
His organizational involvements have been equally extensive.
Among his many distinctions, he became president of the American
Catholic Philosophical Association, the American Metaphysical
Society, the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars, Catholic Education
Television, and he has served on such editorial boards as
the American Journal of Jurisprudence, Center Journal, Rivista
de Filosofia, The New Scholasticism, Truth – A Journal
of Modern Thought, and the University of Notre Dame Press.
He also has been a board member or advisor to numerous organizations,
including American Maritain Society, Catholic Center for Renewal,
Indiana Review Foundation, Wethersfield Institute, The Homeland
Foundation, and The Catholic Campaign for America.
McInerny has published more than 200 articles and stories
in a variety of scholarly and popular publications over the
years. Under his general editorship, the Maritain Center launched
a 20-volume edition of the Works of Jacques Maritain. He is
also publishing a 6-volume edition of Aquinas’ Commentaries
on Aristotle.
Significantly, his achievements have gone far beyond the
halls of academia. In 1982, he co-founded, with Michael Novak,
Catholicism in Crisis, a monthly magazine of lay Catholic
opinion. Crisis magazine, as it is now known, has become a
recognized force for orthodoxy in the Church today. McInerny
received its distinguished P. G. Wodehouse Award in 1995.
In 1994, he helped found Catholic Dossier, a bi-monthly periodical
he currently edits. Each issue is a forum for authors to examine
important and timely religious and cultural issues.
Not surprisingly, McInerny has enjoyed numerous honors and
distinctions, including fellowships with the National Endowment
for the Humanities, the National Endowment for the Arts, and
the Pontifical Roman Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas. He has
received honorary degrees from St. Benedict College, Franciscan
University of Steubenville, St. Francis College, St. John
Fisher College, and St. Anselm College. He is the recipient
of, among other awards, the St. Thomas Aquinas Medal for Eminence
in Philosophy from the American Catholic Philosophical Association,
the Maritain Medal from the American Maritain Association,
and the Faculty Award from Notre Dame. In 1993, he was elected
to a 50-member committee of the Catholic Academy of Sciences.
In spite of such work which would keep any other scholar
busy for a lifetime, McInerny has found time to publish works
of fiction. His first book, Jolly Rogerson, was published
by Doubleday in 1967. His 67th book of fiction came out this
year, Heirs and Parents (2000), following on the heels of
Irish Tenure (1999) and The Book of Kills (2000). His mystery
genre books include the Father Dowling and Andrew Broom mysteries
and the Notre Dame mysteries. McInerny sold his Father Dowling
rights to Hollywood which produced the television series of
the same name. It ran from 1987 to 1991 and reruns are still
shown today. In 1993, he received the Lifetime Achievement
Award from the Bouchercon (Mystery Writers) of America, and
he sits on several editorial panels for judging fiction.
Over the past two years, he received a religious scholar’s
coveted honor: to deliver the prestigious Gifford Lectureships
at the Universities of Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen and St.
Andrews. The Lectures were established in 1887 to “promote
and diffuse the study of Natural Theology in the widest sense
of the term – in other words, the knowledge of God.”
In 1991, the College awarded McInerny the St. Thomas Aquinas
Medallion. Two years later he joined its Board of Governors.
He and his wife Connie have six children and sixteen grandchildren.
-- Qtrly Newsletter, Fall 2000
Interview with Ralph McInerny:
Q. How would you describe the current state of Catholic
higher education?
It is a very mixed picture. The great traditional institutions
are in various stages of the secularization that has been
marked by so many. I think of this as a loss of confidence
in, or perhaps just culpable forgetfulness of, the great educational
and cultural tradition in which we stand. The abandonment
of this has left our universities open to all the sturn
und drang that beset other institutions – the assumption
of the sexual revolution, agitation for recognition of homosexuality,
et cetera. In many institutions the question is whether
we are so far down the road to secularization that we have
passed the point where the makeup of the faculty and the outlook
of administrations make any recovery unlikely.
Q. What role, if any, do you see Thomas Aquinas College
having on this state of affairs?
An alternative to fighting the seemingly losing battle on
traditional campuses is the founding of new institutions on
a solid basis. Here Thomas Aquinas College is in the forefront.
Its curriculum makes a genuine liberal education possible,
one that is animated by the faith and the Catholic cultural
tradition.
Q. To what extent, if any, do you see the College and
its graduates having an impact on Catholic liberal education?
The way in which the influence of Thomas Aquinas College is
felt is principally through its graduates – in religious
vocations, professional life, graduates schools, everywhere.
They are a powerful argument for what the College is doing.
Of course the knowledge of what the College is doing, and
how, has an ever-widening and important effect. In many ways,
Thomas Aquinas College is a rebuke to institutions that have
abandoned the great tradition, and the College is, accordingly,
resented. But even negative reactions – there are of
course positive reactions – are a tribute to what is
being accomplished there.
Q. Why did you think it was important to give of your
time and reputation to serve as a member of our Board of Governors?
I am the least of those on the board and often feel totally
inadequate to the expectations with which I was named to the
Board. But to the degree that I can, I am at the disposal
of the College, and frequently refer to it as a beacon in
the present darkness.
Q. What do you think are the biggest challenges Thomas
Aquinas College will face in the future?
The main one is what Herman Melville put to himself: be true
to the dreams of your youth. Thomas Aquinas College has proceeded
with great care to retain and strengthen the original inspiration.
It is of course essential that this be done. With success
and support come temptations to be pulled off in other directions.
Only a school that has a firm grasp on what it is doing will
stay the course – and Thomas Aquinas College is such
a place.
-- Qtrly Newsletter, Fall 2000
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