|
The prospect of a large, secular biomedical research complex close to the campus of Ave Maria University will spark "heated controversy over the role of religion in science," AMU president Nick Healy said in a speech Thursday night.
To explore issues raised by the proposed Jackson Labs biomedical village, AMU faculty will organize "a series of panel discussions, lectures and seminars, open to the public, as to the interface between Ave Maria University's mission as a Catholic university and a secular scientific research institute," Mr. Healy said near the end of his annual welcoming address at the start of the academic year.
The main thrust of Mr. Healy's speech this year, as it has been in previous years, was to tell incoming students the importance their education and their Catholic faith in dealing with challenges to America and to traditional Christian values posed by internal and external forces.
"That this is a time of great peril, there can be no doubt," Mr. Healy said. In addition to external threats to America, "we can anticipate an acceleration of efforts to purge religion in the public square and to marginalize those who take their Christian faith seriously and proclaim it."
Catholic lay people have a special responsibility in these times, Mr. Healy said, because, "Just when we need the voice of the Church most urgently, we find that voice muted and undermined by the sex scandals."
"It seems clear that in the coming years the principal public witness for the Catholic moral vision will be borne by the Catholic laity," Mr. Healy said, adding that incoming students will be bearing a responsibility "older generations never imagined."
Yet, he told the students, "We have every reason to be confident."
"You will be the seeds of the new civilization of love that will surely emerge from this time of gathering darkness." |
