Launch of the Loyola Institute
Long Room Hub, Trinity College
Monday, 12 November 2012
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Welcome to the Trinity College Dublin for this truly historic occasion.
Today we launch the Loyola Institute and its academic programme in Catholic theology.
It is 420 years since the foundation of Trinity College, or to give our university its full title, the ‘College of the Holy and Undivided Trinity of Queen Elizabeth near Dublin’. Catholic students were welcome to study at the new university from the start – but they were not, initially, welcome to study Catholic theology.
It is also – and it’s not exactly a coincidence – almost exactly 420 years since the followers of Ignatius of Loyola established the great Irish Jesuit Colleges in Salamanca and Lisbon to educate Catholics from Ireland in their own religion. Because they could not receive such an education at home.
On the one side, Trinity and the Reformation. On the other, Salamanca, Lisbon, and the Counter Reformation. We don’t always find it easy to contemplate that difficult century and circumstances in which our university was founded.
But today we can look equably at the past and at our foundations, because today we move confidently into a new engagement Today we launch, in Trinity College, the Loyola Institute for education and research in theology in the Catholic tradition.
With today’s launch we significantly extend the range of theology teaching in the university. Theology is, together with Philosophy, the oldest School in Trinity, dating back to the foundation of the college. Originally called Divinity, theology was initially only concerned with the education and training of clergy of the Church of Ireland. Today the College maintains that educational link with training for the Church of Ireland through the current ‘Masters in Theological Studies’.
In the past half century, the study of Theology in this university has been greatly extended. This is reflected in our nomenclature: Divinity became Biblical Studies, and then, after 1978, the non-denominational ‘School of Hebrew, Biblical and Theological Studies’. In recent years the Department of Religion and Theology joined together with the Irish School of Ecumenics to become our current ‘School of Religions, Theology and Ecumenics’.
This School provides teaching in the third monotheistic religion, Islam, and offers modules in world religions, as well as teaching theoretical approaches to the study of religion. The study of theology in Trinity now embraces the multidisciplinary studies of Ecumenics and International Peace and Reconciliation Studies.
And now the Loyola institute is to be incorporated into this confederal School, to expand and complement the College’s teachings on theology. The Loyola Institute’s aim is to engage in critical reflections on the Christian faith, social justice and contemporary culture, using the intellectual resources of the Catholic tradition.
It is, as I have said, an historic occasion in light of the college’s history, and it’s a tremendously exciting opportunity in view of our aim to become an international centre of excellence in teaching and research in religion and theology. Trinity now joins other universities, such as the Universities of Harvard, Chicago and Durham, which have established professorships of Catholic theology.
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The Loyola Institute came about as the result of discussions, over the past number of years between representatives of eight Catholic congregations associated with the Milltown Institute of Catholic Theology, and with Trinity College Dublin.
These Congregations have established an independent trust, the Loyola Institute Trust, which will work with Trinity, to support and facilitate the development of the new Institute, funding both teaching positions and academic activities such as conferences and scholarships.
I know that the chair of the new trust, Fr Thomas Layden, SJ, and the Director of the new Institute, Dr Con Casey, will be addressing you shortly so I will leave it to them to take you through their vision for the institute and their approach to education and research.
This Institute is committed to dialogue with other religious traditions and to mutually enriching collaborations with other schools and institutes in the College. Benefitting from such collaborations, students in this Institute will take a pluralistic approach when it comes to analysing the role of religion in our culture today, and analysing the challenges facing societies in an age of globalisation and technological advances.
Hence this Institute will participate in, and strengthen, the interdisciplinary approach which is, increasingly, a hallmark of a Trinity education.
Trinity is recognised as having particular strengths in a number of interdisciplinary research areas. As an example, our Institute of Neuroscience has Principal Investigators hailing from Psychology, Physiology, Biochemistry, Engineering, Psychiatry and Genetics.
And our longitudinal study on Ageing, which we call TILDA, has made Trinity a first port of call for researchers from anywhere in the world seeking information on ageing. TILDA researchers come from a range of disciplines including Epidemiology, Geriatric Medicine, Demography, Social Policy, Psychology, Economics, and Nursing.
Other interdisciplinary research areas include sustainable environment, digital humanities, cultural heritage and arts, international development, and themes led by the Trinity Long Room Hub Arts and Humanities Research Institute such as “Identities in Transformation”. I await with great anticipation the contribution of the Loyola Institute to these research areas.
It’s not hard to envisage how the great Catholic intellectual tradition, drawing on thinkers from Aquinas to Newman to Bernard Lonergan, will illuminate our understanding of all these areas, and more.
Indeed, in the realm of Catholic debate and international development, I am reminded of John Paul II’s interventions in the lead up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. He had strong words:
“War is not always inevitable. It is always a defeat for humanity. War is never just another means that one can choose to employ for settling differences between nations. War cannot be decided upon… except as the very last option and in accordance with very strict conditions.”
In his opinion, the invasion of Iraq did not satisfy strict conditions, was not the last option. The US State Department dispatched a mission to the Vatican to explain why the invasion of Iraq would be a “just war” of self-defense. The Pope rejected their arguments. In America hawkish commentators tried to minimise his rejection by saying blandly that the pope was “a man of peace”. But John Paul II, while ardently anti-war, understood the need for a nation to act in self-defense, and had invoked Thomas Aquinas to uphold “legitimate defense” in certain circumstances. His point was that the invasion of Iraq did not fall into this category. He had behind him not only his own immense moral stature but centuries of Catholic teaching.
I would like to thank all those who have helped with the establishment of this Institute. From Trinity - Professor Juergen Barkhoff, former Registrar, Professor Shane Allwright, current Registrar and Mr Michael Gleeson, former College Secretary; from the Jesuit Province in Ireland - Fr John Dardis SJ and Fr Tom Layden SJ. Mr John Hayden & Mr Chris Curran who worked through the discussions on their behalf - and everyone else who has given of their time, effort, and insight, and of course Dr Con Casey, Inaugural Director.
I’ll end with Ignatius of Loyola: “Go forth and set the world on fire”
Thank you very much.
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