The Good is Always Useful: Newman and the Liberal Arts Today

Speaker

• Andrew Meszaros Dr., Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas (Angelicum)

About the Speaker

Andrew Meszaros is first holder of the St John Henry Newman Chair at the Pontifical University of St Thomas Aquinas (Angelicum) in Rome, Italy. Before arriving in Italy last Autumn, he lectured in systematic theology at St Patrick's Pontifical University in Maynooth, Ireland for nine years. He completed undergraduate and graduate degrees at Boston College, the University of Oxford, and the Catholic University of Louvain, after which he completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Vienna. He has published numerous articles on Catholic theology, especially on the thought of John Henry Newman. His monograph, The Prophetic Church: History and Doctrinal Development in John Henry Newman and Yves Congar was published with Oxford University Press in 2016. He is member of the editorial board of a number of journals including Newman Studies Journal. Recently, he was a consultor for the Congregation for the Causes of Saints in the preparatory work for naming Newman a Doctor of the Church.

Location

Webb Theatre, Abbot Pennings Hall of Fine Arts

Start Date

4-22-2026 7:00 PM

Description

In Victorian England, the liberal arts were criticized for their lack of utility. The same criticism takes on a radically different shape today because of the socio-economic changes that have occurred over the last 150 years. While Newman's university was very different to contemporary university thought, it is worth asking: What can Newman teach us about education in the current cultural moment that is marked by the rise of AI and an impoverished and polarized civil discourse?