Wednesday, August 10, 2005

Georgetown v. Catholic

Amy Welborn and her contributors write today on the difference between Washington DC's two premier Catholic universities- which is interesting if you care about this sort of thing.

I did like this one comment- which is why I am including it. I feel obligated to share all inside curial jokes:

Years ago I attended Dean Jude Dougherty's lecture for the One Hundredth Anniversary of the School of Philosophy of the Catholic University of America.

Afterwards he took questions from the floor, and someone asked, in essence, do you really think you're doing any good?

His reply was patient, that a thousand years from now people will still be reading Aristotle, and moreover, that a thousand years from now people will still be reading Aquinas on Aristotle. The Dean said he and his colleagues try to do their best.

After a brief pause, he added, "and Ratzinger recommends us". At the time it was just a Catholic, curial in-joke, but now it's even more of a point of pride.