In summer 2023, Assistant Headmaster for Academic Affairs Josh Hartle and two faculty members, Science Department Chair Brian Theroux and Theology teacher Tracy Kessler, applied for a summer program at the University of Notre Dame’s McGrath Institute for Church Life, which partners in education with Catholic dioceses, parishes, and schools. “By connecting the Catholic intellectual life to the life of the Church, we form faithful Catholic leaders for service to the Church and the world,” the Institute website states. Our three Delbarton educators found the McGrath program to be so beneficial that they wanted to share the experience with their Delbarton colleagues.

On November 25, a team from the McGrath Institute hosted an in-service Faith and Reason Day for Delbarton faculty, an opportunity for Delbarton teachers to experience programming on the synthesis of science and religion.  McGrath customized the on-site experience to address our educators' specific needs and questions, and the team did not travel light. With them, cushioned in an impressive custom-made case, was one of 299 copies of the illuminated St. John's Bible, a hand-written and hand-illustrated Bible commissioned in 1998 by the Benedictine Saint John's Abbey and University and produced by renowned calligrapher Donald Jackson. The original is on display at the Abbey in Minnesota, and the McGrath Institute is proud to own one of the Heritage Editions.

Back at Delbarton, after breakfast in the dining hall and Mass in the Abbey Church, Heather Foucault-Camm, Program Director of the Science & Religion Initiative, prefaced her introduction of McGrath colleagues by describing her own journey to the Institute. A decade ago, as a high school AP Chemistry teacher, she was asked by a student, “‘You seem Catholic but which do you believe more, science or religion?”

Foucault-Camm’s quest to answer her student's question ultimately led to her role at the McGrath Institute at Notre Dame in South Bend, IN. In the Delbarton FAC,  she introduced the day's keynote speaker, Christopher Baglow, Ph.D., the Director of the Science & Religion Initiative, and Professor of the Practice, Theology. He is also the author of Faith, Science and Reason, now in its second printing.  

Dr. Baglow offered an interesting, learned talk to Delbarton faculty and administrators on the intersection of faith and science. He asked, “What is a Catholic education?”, then spoke about Catholic academic integration and the synthesis of faith, culture and life. Catholic schools are “where all truths are welcome,” he told Delbarton teachers.

After Baglow’s talk, Delbarton teachers met in two breakout sessions in various spaces on campus, to hear talks on topics including the Catholic Church and Modern Science, Science and the Bible, Faith and Mental Health, Rights and Right: Two Rival Concepts, The Four Hearts of a Sportsman and a session about Henrietta Lacks  (“what one cell can teach us about racism, literature, theology and technology”) and one entitled Reading Widely and Wisely in Catholic Education. After lunch and Breakout Session #2, the entire group reconvened in the FAC for a closing panel discussion and, finally, a program evaluation.

Delbarton salutes Notre Dame’s McGrath Institute for Church Life for importing its important work to Delbarton. Faith and Reason Days are generously supported by the John Templeton Foundation and we thank the Foundation as well.