Catholic intellectuals need to be more visible, Steinfels says

Published: 2003-12-24

CHICAGO (CNS) -- Prominent religion writer Peter Steinfels laid out a challenge for Catholic intellectuals Dec. 8 at Loyola University in Chicago: Become visible, make your voices heard and take up your role in evangelizing the culture. Steinfels, author of "A People Adrift: The Crisis of the Roman Catholic Church in America," offered his remarks on "Prophets and Scribes: Catholics, Intellectuals and the Pursuit of Wisdom" as part of a university lecture series in which well-known Catholics are invited to reflect on the future of the church within the context of a prayer service. Speaking after a reading from the Book of Sirach and surrounded by the mural and Stations of the Cross that his father, Melville Steinfels, painted in the university's Madonna della Strada Chapel, Steinfels suggested that modern "intellectuals" could be compared to the "scribes" of biblical times. The word "scribe" could mean anything from a copyist to a member of a ruler's inner circle of advisers, he said. Sirach describes himself, according to Steinfels, as studying the wisdom of the tradition and using it to offer advice to Jews living in a Hellenized culture; this has obvious parallels with those who would consider themselves intellectuals now. The challenge for American Catholic intellectuals, he said, is to emulate the scribe Sirach and bring the wisdom of the church to the world.

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