Fifty Attend Symposium on Catholic Social Thought and Business Education

On Nov. 3 at the Villanova Conference Center, the Rev. Edmund J. Dobbin, O.S.A., University president and Dr. Robert DeFina, holder of the John A. Murphy Chair in Commerce and Finance welcomed 50 guests from Villanova and other academic communities to the first symposium on Catholic Social Thought and Business Education.

Making presentations during the day long conference were the Dr. Todd Whitmore, associate professor of Theology and director of Catholic Social Tradition at the University of Notre Dame, the Rev. John Langan, S.J., the Joseph Cardinal Bernardin professor of Catholic Thought in the Kennedy Institute of Ethics at Georgetown University and Dr. Thomas Bausch, professor of Management and former dean of the College of Business Administration at Marquette University.

In welcoming the group, Father Dobbin noted how appropriate it was for this symposium to take place in a university with an Augustinian tradition. It was St. Augustine, he noted who created a paradigm for putting the Gospel into the marketplace. "What I like about situations like this is that they are cross-disciplinary, " he continued. "We are embedded in our own disciplines as well embedded in our own academic communities. The kinds of conversations that take place today will allow us to become conversant beyond our own paradigms of thought. I believe that this cross-disciplinary dialogue is every bit as important as that which takes place within our own disciplines.