Presidential Message on the Founding of the Catholic Institute of Technology

Most Reverend Arthur L. Kennedy, Ph.D.

Dear Students, Parents, Faculty and Friends:

It is an honor and privilege to introduce you to a new and important venture in Catholic Education. While new, its foundations are ancient. The Catholic Institute of Technology is a response from within the Church’s long tradition intended to provide Catholic students with the divine wisdom which she has received and developed from within the relationship of the revealed Scriptures through faith and natural human reason. Through her sacraments she creates the experience and action of God in a grace which opens our hearts to be able to pray: “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” and to follow the Lord.

In that following, we become witnesses to the divine creation of a hierarchically ordered universe wherein humans are affirmed as being in “the image and likeness” of God. At the same time, we are told and become aware that we are “fallen” and as such seek to replace God as the Creator with ourselves, the creatures. Thus, we enter into and participate in a resistance to the divine order and so “fall” into the mystery of evil. 

Jesus Christ reveals the divine response to the “fall” and evil; he does this by His life, death resurrection. He reveals the new wisdom that God is Three Persons: The Father who sends; the Son who is sent to reveal the truth and the Spirit, sent by the Father and the Son, who is to be the very “indwelling” of God in our entire being. Jesus grants us the wisdom that God is the Creator and Redeemer, and the Cosmos is his glory. He creates the Church, thus establishing a community that follows and collaborates in the experience of the divine love and forgiveness, his liberation of us from “the fall” and the power of evil; he establishes the sacraments as outward signs of his self-sacrificing presence. He encourages His followers to seek an understanding of their faith and to live out lives of virtue and authenticity. It is on this foundation that Catholic Tech is built. It will allow us to fully participate in the revealed wisdom; we will live deeply into our faith with daily celebration of Mass, opportunities to pray the rosary together, as well as morning and evening prayer; there will be time for adoration, and availability for confession every day. There will be spiritual guides who students may select. There are two beautiful chapels at Villa Santa Caterina, our residence in Castel Gandolfo; we will also have the opportunity for Mass at the seven major Roman basilicas, as well as the catacombs and other historical churches. 

In addition to our practices of prayer and worship we will undertake the study of Theology so as to learn how the development of understanding the mysteries of Revelation became part of the tradition of the Church and has led to the recent insights of a “Catholic anthropology,” which is an understanding of who we are as human beings living together in the presence of God along with the Communion of all Catholics throughout the world.  

In addition to Theology, we will engage the works of the great philosophers both ancient and modern, who developed a natural human wisdom, one without Revelation. Such wisdom and learning has been of great importance and deeply appreciated in Catholic life and studies. The Scriptures themselves testify to the importance of this relationship of the sacred and the secular intelligence.  St .Paul, for example, in his first letter to the Thessalonian remarks (5:19) “Do not quench the Spirit. Do not despise prophetic utterances. Test everything; retain what is good. Refrain from every kind of evil.”  One can find other encouragement in the Acts of the Apostles with the account the conversation of St. Paul with the philosophers in Athens (Acts 17:16 – 34.). 

As the Church grew in membership and strength even as the Roman Empire collapsed; as the emperors weakened, as the Roman Senate was disbanded, the Church was the public leader in both the sacred and secular spheres. St. Benedict (480-547) and his followers established monastic schools that flourished throughout Europe under his motto, “ora et labora” (pray and work); bishops established cathedral schools, Pope Gregory the Great (540-604) administered both the growth of the Church and an exercise of the secular legal order for the remnants of the Roman Empire. 

It is interesting that as early as the First Ecumenical Council in Nicea in 325, the 1700^th anniversary which will be celebrated in 2025 philosophical terms were already being used by the Church to clarify the reality of the divinity of Jesus. Later, St. Augustine (354-430) writes in his “Confessions” (397-400) that his first conversion was not a religious conversion but an intellectual conversion: he wanted to know what was true and real. His Christian conversion occurred while he was in a courtyard in Milan where he worked for the Roman administration of the Empire and had listened to the homilies of St. Ambrose (? – 397.) 

Beginning in the late ninth century, monks and lay scholars began the creation of the 80 great European universities before 1500. It was the recovery of the philosophical and scientific works of the Greek philosopher Aristotle in the 12th century that the explosion of studies in the natural sciences began, often at first, being engaged by the university faculties in philosophy. As the empirical method was employed more and more, special chairs were created for different disciplines such as astronomy, physics, etc. Programs related to engineering were occurring within those so-called chairs; the engineering activities themselves go back to human origins.

The term that was most commonly employed for naming the activities of engineering came from the Greek classical tradition, i.e., “techne.” It wasn’t until the ninth century that a Latin verb was identified: “ingeniare,” (to discover) and the noun is “ingenium”—meaning “ingenuity” or “ingenius.” In effect engineering requires mathematical, scientific, and theoretical knowledge to identify and create particular designs for individual tasks or improvements of both ordinary and specialized creations.

The students of CatholicTech will be guided by a STEM faculty of highly learned scientists and engineers with experience in both research and acknowledged accomplishments in many dimensions of engineering. A number of them have been engaged in study, analyses and applications of AI and are continually sought out by fellow experts for international conferences and research. Together the faculty from both the humanities and science are collaborating in courses or seminars on the relationships and differences in methodologies that will guide students in their plans of original research.  There are also courses to study ethics in AI, and tasks and procedures on engineering in biology. At the foundation of all our work will be the consistent Catholic understanding of the human person and the mystery of Creation and Redemption.

With the creation of CatholicTech, there will begin another step in the scientific sphere of human understanding and knowledge. To be able to do this in Italy allows us to have the opportunities to share in the faith and culture not only of Italy but of the broader and universal world. It will also allow students, faculty, and administrators to meet people who share their interests, concerns, and quests. Our goal is to form students, scholars, and scientists. 

We intend to encourage students to become part of not only a program that will lead to advanced research in engineering but to do so as those who were Catholics in the whole history of the Church in contributing enormous insights into the areas of the natural sciences and ingenuity of engineers. (See the websites noted below) It is also important to honor those leaders who have been so engaged in this work of interrelationship of faith and reason in connection with the natural sciences: Fr. Robert Spitzer, SJ, President Emeritus of Gonzaga University, Spokane, Washington, and President/Founder of Magis Center of Reason and Faith as well as author of numerous books and articles on so many aspects of this intersection of knowledge and life: Professor Emeritus of theoretical particle physics at the  University of Delawares, Stephen Barr, Physicist, Director of the Bartol Research Institute and President of the Society of Catholic Scientists. To them and all their learned colleagues we can rightly offer them our gratitude for their scholarship and leadership.

I greatly look forward to meeting all of you at Villa Santa Catarina in Castel Gandolfo.  Let us pray together that our patron saints, St. Albert the Great, St. Patrick, St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (St. Edith Stein), will protect our community, and that Our Lady, Seat of Wisdom will accompany us as we grow in faith and knowledge as well as in hope and charity, patience and friendship.

Sincerely yours in Christ,

Most Reverend Arthur L. Kennedy, S.T.L., Ph.D.

Auxiliary Bishop Emeritus

Archdiocese of Boston

Professor Emeritus, The University of St. Thomas, St. Paul, Mn

President, Catholic Institute of Technology

List of Lay Catholic Scientists

List of Catholic Clergy scientists