By Paula Day

Aquinas Center of Theology at Emory University announced March 13 receiving a $1 million grant from the Metropolitan Atlanta Community Foundation. The gift will be used to inaugurate the Center’s endowment for the 1990s.

Aquinas Center, founded in 1987 under the auspices of the southern province of the Dominican Order, is the only facility of higher education to offer Catholic theological studies in the state. The independent Center is affiliated with Emory and has offices provided by the university. Dr. James Laney, Emory’s president, is on the Center’s board of trustees.

The Metropolitan foundation grant will help initiate the Center’s endowment campaign under the chairmanship of Edwin Mellett, senior vice president of The Coca-Cola Company. In a two-phase program the campaign hopes to raise an additional $5 million to be used to establish an Hispanic Institute connected with the Center.

The proposed Hispanic Institute will provide a place for those interested in developing Hispanic theology to pursue that interest, according to Dr. Roberto S. Goizueta, executive vice president of the Center.

While Hispanics share a common language, those in the U.S. come from a variety of countries. The growing Hispanic population in Atlanta represents this variety, according to Goizueta. For this reason Atlanta is a good location for the Institute. Strong in scholarship, Emory University, with its liberal arts curriculum will be able to offer the interdisciplinary context necessary for theological reflection, he pointed out. Goizueta is president-elect of the Academy of Catholic Hispanic Theologians for the U.S.

In addition to the Hispanic Institute, the monies would go to setting up a lectureship in preaching ad liturgy, developing a professional ethics program and supporting a Dominican Fellow program at Emory which would bring internationally known Dominican scholars to the university.

In its second phase the Center’s endowment campaign will fund the expansion of the Hispanic Institute, establish a scholarship program, set up an endowed chair in Roman Catholic Studies at Emory and build a permanent facility to house the Aquinas Center.

“The thing that is most significant about this gift,” commented Dr. Anne Russell Mayeaux, president of Aquinas Center, “is it represents an investment of trust by the Atlanta community in the spirit that runs through the Aquinas Center.

“This trust, I would say, is very significant. It presents both a magnificent opportunity, and an enormous challenge as well, because we have to remember that philanthropy such as this is not simply a form of generosity but a form of truth.

“It asks us at this point in our history what truths we are bearing witness to and what we want to pursue in the years to come. What do we stand for? What do we hope for?”

Since the Center’s formal incorporation in May, 1987, activities and events initiated by its staff have impacted not only Emory University but also the archdiocese of Atlanta.

The Center was instrumental in bringing South Africa’s Nobel Peace Laureate, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, to the university campus in May, 1988. In October, 1988 it sponsored a conference addressing the legacies of Thomas Merton and Martin Luther King, Jr. The conference, “For The Trumpet Shall Sound,” drew 450 participants from throughout the U.S. In 1989 the Center co-sponsored with Emory the annual convention of the National Office of black Catholics.

Catholics now are the largest single Christian denomination at Emory College according to Dr. Mayeaux. To meet the growing demand for a Catholic intellectual presence at the university, staff from the Center teach six academic courses each year in the Department of Religion and at Candler School of Theology. Their continuing education program in theology, a preaching institute, an annual theological conference and specialized workshops reach a large number of people in the archdiocese including priests, deacons, Religious, lay ministers and religious educators.

Dr. Mayeaux and Dr. Goizueta are also involved in a variety of archdiocesan and parish-level activities. They have given adult enrichment lectures, led workshops and promoted grassroots activity to foster justice and civil rights throughout the Southeast.

Dr. Goizueta was instrumental in organizing with Father Richard Kieran and Atlanta businessmen a series of business ethics luncheons, the second of which will be held in April. Approximately 35 men attended the first luncheon.

The purpose of the luncheons, according to Goizueta, is to give professional and business leaders the opportunity to reflect on the relation between their careers and Catholic tradition by examining the ethical principles found in Scripture, the official teachings of the church and theological articles.

Archbishop Eugene A. Marino, SSJ, and Father Theodore Hesburgh, former president of Notre Dame University, serve on the Aquinas Center'’ advisory council. Dr. James Frick, who with Father Hesburgh directed Notre Dame’s fundraising effort for two decades, is coordinating the Center’s endowment campaign. Dr. Frick is also chairman of the Grace Foundation.

The $1 million grant from the metropolitan Atlanta Community Foundation is from an anonymous fund. The foundation is a non-profit philanthropic community foundation through which donors can make bequests or gifts to support organizations and institutions in metropolitan Atlanta. It provides grant support in four major program areas: arts and culture, civic affairs, education, health and human services.

Dr. Mayeaux graduated in 1965 from St. Xavier College in Chicago with a bachelor of arts degree in philosophy and theology. As a Fulbright scholar she studied from 1965 to 1967 at the University of Tubingen, Germany. She earned her doctorate from Emory University in 1975. She has served as vice president of the International foundation of Scholarly Exchange. She is presently on the executive committee of the Abrams Chair in Jewish Studies at Notre Dame University and president-elect of Las Casas, a national Dominican ministry with Native Americans.

Dr. Goizueta graduated from Yale University in 1976 with a bachelor’s degree in political science. He received a master’s degree in theology from Marquette University in 1982 and a doctorate in religious studies in 1984. He is an adjunct professor in Emory’s Latin American and Caribbean Studies program and in the university’s department of religion. He serves on the affiliated faculty of the Candler School of Theology. He is the son of Roberto C. Goizueta, chairman of the board of The Coca-Cola Company.