In Search of the Whole: Twelve Essays on Faith and Academic Life

231 Pages·2011·3.273 MB·English

by  John C. Haughey

In Search of the Whole
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In Search of the Whole
Twelve Essays on Faith and Academic Life
D
John C. Haughey editor
georgetown university press / washington, d.c.
© 2011 Georgetown University Press. All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form
or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including
photocopying and recording, or by any information storage
and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
In search of the whole : twelve essays on faith and academic life /
John C. Haughey, editor.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-58901-781-8 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Catholics—Intellectual life. 2. Christian college teachers—
Religious life. I. Haughey, John C.
BX1795.I57I52 2011
378'.0712—dc22 2011004080
This book is printed on acid-free paper meeting the requirements of
the American National Standard for Permanence in Paper for Printed
Library Materials.
15 14 13 12 11 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 First printing
Printed in the United States of America
In memory of Peter Winter, friend and benefactor

Contents
Preface ix
Part One Whole as Task
Chapter 1 Wholeness through Science, Justice, and Love,
Patrick H. Byrne 3
Chapter 2 From Discovery to Risk, Cynthia Crysdale 19
Chapter 3 Professional Education as Transformation,
Robert J. Deahl 37
Chapter 4 Learning to Love the Law of the Sea, William P. George 51
Chapter 5 Catholicity and Faculty Seminars, Richard M. Liddy 73
Chapter 6 The “Real World” of Business, J. Michael Stebbins 85
Part Two Whole as Identity
Chapter 7 Attaining Harmony as a Hindu-Christian,
Michael Amaladoss 99
Chapter 8 Arriving at a Christocentric Universe, Ilia Delio 111
Chapter 9 Le Petit Philosophe, Patrick A. Heelan 129
Chapter 10 Toward a Catholic Christianity: A Personal Narrative,
Michael McCarthy 147
Chapter 11 The Hunting and the Haunting, Peter Steele 165
Chapter 12 Attaining Harmony with the Earth, Cristina Vanin 179
Epilogue 201
List of Contributors 203
Index 207

Preface
Like clouds, no two of us human beings are exactly alike. This volume
bears eloquent witness to this. As one reads the different chapters in this
volume, one will marvel at the distinctiveness of each consciousness, at how
subjectivities are even more sui generis than our unique sizes and shapes
and other physical characteristics. Although not everyone is gifted at plumb-
ing interiorities and putting them on paper, the twelve writers here certainly
are. The result is a coming together of twelve highly defined individuals
whose rich self-disclosures address the same question, one that had not been
posed to them before I asked it: What is the whole you are seeking to name,
confect, be?
This question had its genesis in a discovery I made and articulated in
Where Is Knowing Going? The Horizons of the Knowing Subject.1 Data for that
study came from deeply listening to some two hundred academics address
a prior question about the good they are seeking to do with their growing
academic competence. I discovered that the common note in their work was
making wholes.
The two hundred people were taking pieces and putting them together
to make meaning, connect dots, get incoherences to cohere. The point goes
beyond Aristotle’s primary insight that human action is generated by a good
to be done. The good when aggregated by behavior makes a virtue, when
articulated by minds makes a whole. Whole-seeking, whole-making, is what
the twelve authors in this volume do with what otherwise is left disassem-
bled. Seven of them were members of the team I brought together to help
me think through that first volume. The other five are equally entrepreneur-
ial, so I invited their entries.
Subjectivity, consciousness, interiority—whatever you want to call it—
tends to be all over the place most of the time in most of us. But it is also
always questing. Readers who are aware of this in themselves—that is, that
their consciousness functions in anticipation of wholes—will be enriched by
learning their similarity to these authors. We are wired to be unidirectional.
I like the way the twentieth-century genius Bernard Lonergan often put
this: There is an anticipation of an entirety in our seeking, thinking, choos-
ing.2 Three strands are woven together in our subjectivities: One looks for
being, the second for value, and the third for meaning. Together these three
strands get very particular in this volume, as each author produces a unique
determination of a sought-for “entirety.”
Readers will see immediately that none of the twelve authors here re-
peats anyone else. But after reading any selection readers will see how this
ix