Fall Toth-Lonergan Lecture 2024

The Center for Catholic Studies hosted its bi-annual Toth-Lonergan Lecture on Wednesday, November 13. A tradition stemming back to 2017, Seton Hall's visiting Toth-Lonergan professor offers two public lectures per year. Following her spring lecture, "Interiority as the Path to Democracy: Berdjaev and Lonergan in dialogue," Francesca Zaccaron, Ph.D., offered this semester's public lecture, "An Authentic Happiness: Educating Between Knowledge and Ethics."

Zaccaron, Seton Hall's 5th Toth-Lonergan scholar, began her lecture by asking, "Is the person the aim of education today?" To explore this question, she drew examples from the works of Aristotle, Jacques Maritain and Bernard J. Lonergan, SJ to highlight the relationship between freedom and power on the intellectual journey. She explained that "the concept of freedom highlights the power of the subject in her own learning path." Within this freedom comes intellectual crises, Zaccaron argued, which develop critical thinking, a key component of education. Drawing on personal experiences teaching in the University Core course, Journey of Transformation.

Zaccaron also explored Maritain's view on education by discussing "integral education," or education based on the whole person. On this topic and the challenges professors face to actualize it, she remarked, "I see my students three hours a week…what about all the time they spend outside [of the classroom]?" Transitioning into Lonergan's work, Zaccaron brought up the present educational conundrum of how to use Artificial Intelligence wisely, if at all. She asked, "Why do our students keep using AI for their assignments when they can develop their own ideas? We need to educate between knowledge and ethics… between the desire to know and authenticity." Through the lenses of Aristotle, Maritain and Lonergan, Zaccaron urged educators to encourage authenticity, intellectual freedom and happiness both inside and outside of the classroom by encouraging dialogue and fostering a creative learning environment open to authentic ideas rooted in our Catholic values and Truth.

The Toth-Lonergan Visiting Professorship officially launched in 2017 to honor the legacies of two great thinkers who embodied interdisciplinarity and the Catholic intellectual life. Deacon William Toth, professor of Moral Theology at Immaculate Conception Seminary School of Theology and Jesuit priest, philosopher and theologian Bernard J. Lonergan, SJ. Toth was a beloved professor in our seminary and instrumental in the founding of the Institute on Faith and Work. Lonergan's works aims to help people become aware of their inner drive toward meaning, truth, goodness and ultimately God. The Toth-Lonergan Endowment ensures the presence of a Catholic professor on campus dedicated to serving students and forming faculty in the areas of Catholic identity and mission.

Zaccaron will deliver another public lecture in the spring of 2025. To learn more about upcoming events with the Center for Catholic Studies, click here and follow the Center on Facebook and Instagram (@shucatholicstudies).

Categories: Faith and Service