Featured Faculty: Amy Barrett
Bishop Rino Fisichella, the Rector of Pontifical Lateran University, has said that the mission of Catholic universities is to help students “discover their lives as a vocation and [give them] the necessary tools to approach their professional careers in the most coherent way, to fulfill society’s needs wherever their professions lead them. Therefore, that which our universities are asked to fulfill is the intelligent synthesis between study and life, the search for the truth and its existential experience. No discipline that exists within our walls lies outside this responsibility.”
Certainly, the discipline of law does not lie outside this responsibility. I joined the faculty of Notre Dame Law School because it takes this responsibility seriously. We equip our students with the tools they need to practice law at the highest levels; at the same time, we emphasize that this profession is not an end in itself, but rather an instrument to be used for building the kingdom of God. We do this in quite practical ways. Our mission is evident in the curriculum, which offers courses such as Catholic Social Thought and Canon Law alongside courses such as Constitutional Law and Contracts. Our mission is evident in the classroom, where both students and faculty feel free to ask how religious beliefs might bear on matters of law. Our mission is also evident in the community of faith that the faculty works to establish. One of my colleagues leads daily morning prayer for interested students. Another, a priest, offers weekly mass and counsels countless students on all manner of subjects. Our faculty meetings, like many of our classes, begin with a prayer, making manifest our commitment to the integration of faith and reason.
In short, the Notre Dame faculty seeks to do more than train its students in a profession. It seeks, as Bishop Fisichella puts it, to help students “discover their lives as vocation.” And that is an effort in which I am proud to take part.
