Book recalls crucial role of intellectuals in life of Catholic faith

Reviewed by Mitch Finley, CNS

Catholicism, as a tradition and as an institution, has a history of intellectualism that goes back to its very beginnings. St. Paul was an intellectual of the first order. A thousand years before St. Anselm, Paul acted on Anselm’s motto, “faith seeking understanding.” Names such as Ignatius of Antioch, Augustine of Hippo and Thomas Aquinas lead directly to Catholic intellectuals in our own era.

But respect for the role of the intellect in the life of faith has gotten precious little respect in the history of American Catholicism specifically, at least not outside the realm of academia — and sometimes not even there. At the same time, whatever its weaknesses from a post-Vatican II catechetical point of view, one not insignificant virtue of the Baltimore Catechism was that it addressed faith on the level of cognition, thus teaching ordinary Catholics that, at the very least, faith is reasonable and intellectually defensible.

One bright exception to the general American Catholic disinterest in the intellectual life is the subject of “A Catholic Brain Trust,” a book which, unfortunately, will appeal almost exclusively to academics. Still, the intellectually hardy soul among the educated nonprofessorial also will find in this volume considerable inspiration for the ongoing cultivation of the intellect in the life of faith. For, as author Patrick J. Hayes — assistant archivist for the Baltimore province of the Redemptorists, in Brooklyn, N.Y. — illustrates admirably and in well-documented detail, there was, until 2007 when it was disbanded, a group of American Catholic intellectuals from various disciplines who got some respect.

As Hayes writes: “(T)he Catholic Commission on Intellectual and Cultural Affairs (CCICA) [was] founded in 1946 at The Catholic University of America. Specifically, the CCICA sought to draw in the best and brightest Catholics in the country, in and out of academia, to aid in rebuilding the church and the world after the catastrophic losses of the world war. The CCICA grew to become much more.”

Hayes recounts the history of the commission during the first two decades of its existence, highlighting the fact that just as its members were drawn from various disciplines so they addressed a variety of concerns, from war relief to U.N. policies, from theology to American Catholic higher education. Of particular interest is the book’s discussion of a famous lecture on American Catholic intellectual life given in 1955 before the membership of the commission by historian Msgr. John Tracy Ellis.

“More than any other single moment in the organization’s history,” Hayes declares, “the Ellis speech served to rally CCICA members, the larger academic community, and the church as a whole to the question of Catholic intellectual identity. … As later commentators often suggested, it was Ellis’ address that changed the tone and substance of the whole educational enterprise — a decisive move out of the confines of a Catholic ghetto to a more open and courageous quest for scholarly ideals.”

One of the primary underlying convictions that motivated the CCICA was that Catholic intellectuals should bring their insights and scholarship to bear on topics related to religious faith and the church, yes, but to virtually all aspects of human interest and endeavor. Still, Hayes concludes, the Catholic intellectual’s most basic inspiration for the work he or she does is rooted in faith. “Thus, for the Catholic intellectual, toiling for the public good is a measure of one’s love for God.”

“A Catholic Brain Trust” is a first-rate, informative account of adventures in 20th-century American Catholic intellectual life of which too few are aware. We live in an era when many Catholics tend to be satisfied with merely this or that ideology. Thus, to read this book, and become better informed about Catholics who believed in the pursuit of truth for its own sake, can only have positive consequences.

Mitch Finley is the author of more than 30 books on Catholic topics, including “Key Moments in Church History” (Sheed & Ward).

A Catholic Brain Trust: The History of the Catholic Commission on Intellectual and Cultural Affairs, 1945-1965
by Patrick J. Hayes • University of Notre Dame Press (Notre Dame, Ind., 2011)
$75 • 488 page • ISBN: 978-0268031091