In its search for truth in its academic areas, a Catholic university should be rooted in the belief that Jesus Christ is the ultimate source of truth, the keynote speaker said at the April 15 annual dinner of the John Carroll Society.
Dr. Peter Kilpatrick, the president of The Catholic University of America, speaking on the nature of a Catholic university, said it should be “unified by a single principle which must be a belief in the Way, the Truth and the Life, namely Jesus Christ. This belief broadens, deepens and unifies all the disciplines and enables us to truly be a university.”
That understanding of a Catholic university, he said, “combats the enervating qualities of the false philosophies of nominalism, scientism and materialism. It facilitates the study of the ultimate forms of truth, beauty, goodness, wisdom, being and virtue…”
At the society’s 37th annual dinner at Washington’s Four Seasons Hotel, Dr. Kilpatrick was among four recipients of the John Carroll Society Medal. The John Carroll Society of The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Washington was founded in 1951 and is named for Archbishop John Carroll, who in 1790 was consecrated as the first Catholic bishop in the new United States, leading the Diocese of Baltimore which initially served Catholics in all 13 original states.
The John Carroll Society’s primary purpose is to promote the spiritual, intellectual and social fellowship of its members, and to be of service to the archbishop of Washington. The society’s 900 members include many health care and legal professionals who volunteer in Catholic Charities Health Care Network and its Legal Network, along with members from various professions who participate in community outreach including by serving food to the homeless through Catholic Charities St. Maria’s Meals Program and supporting the agency’s SHARE food distribution program.
The society presented its highest honor, the John Carroll Society Medal, to Dr. Kilpatrick and to retired Judge James Belson; entrepreneur and Catholic philanthropist John Shooshan; and Sister Romana Uzodimma, a member of the Handmaids of the Holy Child Jesus who serves as the senior program manager for Catholic Charities Health Care Network.
Dr. Kilpatrick, who became Catholic University’s president in July 2022, earlier served as provost and senior vice president for academic affairs at Illinois Institute of Technology and as a professor and the McCloskey Dean of Engineering at the University of Notre Dame. He earned a doctorate in chemical engineering from the University of Minnesota and served on the chemical engineering faculty of North Carolina State University for 24 years. He is the author of more than 100 journal articles and holds or shares 12 patents.
In his talk, he noted how science continues to uncover more mysteries of the universe, which shows that “we do not have all the answers, and that we should continue forward in humility.”
Catholic University’s president pointed out how Pope St. John Paul II in his encyclical Fides et Ratio wrote that “faith and reason are two wings upon which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth.”
Dr. Kilpatrick then said, “Reason makes our faith more luminous and intelligible, and faith makes our reason more open to the ultimate questions of reality. Truncating or diminishing one or the other impoverishes our ability to understand the truth about the universe and ourselves.”
Sharing two examples of how Catholic University integrates faith and reason, Dr. Kilpatrick noted that CUA’s Busch School of Business, in addition to teaching traditional business topics like finance, accounting, strategy, management and marketing, combines those topics with philosophy, theology, virtue ethics and entrepreneurial thinking in a unified curriculum.
Catholic University, he said, is creating a new interdisciplinary field to study ethics and artificial intelligence, to bring philosophy and moral theology “to bear on the challenges posed by computer science and AI.” He called the study of “ethical AI a critically important area that can only be done at a Catholic university.”
Earlier that evening, Andrew Cook, the John Carroll Society’s president, and Msgr. Peter Vaghi, the society’s longtime chaplain, presented the John Carroll Society Medals to the three other recipients.
Judge Belson, a graduate of Gonzaga College High School, Georgetown University and the Georgetown University Law Center, was appointed in 1968 by President Lyndon Johnson to serve as a judge on the D.C. Court of General Sessions, which became the D.C. Superior Court. In 1981, President Ronald Reagan appointed Judge Belson to the D.C. Court of Appeals, where he served as a judge and then as a senior appellate judge until retiring in 2017 after almost 50 years of judicial service.
Over the years, Judge Belson served as a board member and vice president for the John Carroll Society, and also as president of the Order of Malta, Federal Association. He played a key role in helping to found and launch the SHARE food distribution program and also worked as a volunteer with that outreach for more than 20 years.
In presenting the John Carroll Society Medal to Judge Belson, Cook praised him for his service to the society and the archdiocese, and “for the dignity, wisdom and justice you brought to the District of Columbia courts in your decades of service on the bench.”
Also receiving that medal was John Shooshan, the founder and chairman of the Shooshan Company, a major real estate development company in Northern Virginia. His company redeveloped Marymount University’s Ballston campus. In 2022 Shooshan, a member of Marymount University’s Board of Trustees, pledged $1.1 million to the university and Sibley Hospital to create the Dr. Mark Abbruzzese Bridge Scholars Program that links Marymount’s nursing program and students to Sibley Hospital’s nursing program. The program is named for an infectious disease specialist affiliated with Sibley who provided life-saving care to Shooshan about 20 years ago and became his friend. The two men stood on stage together when Shooshan received the John Carroll Society Medal.
Cook commended Shooshan for his “service to Catholic higher education and your generosity and leadership to Catholic Charities and the archdiocese.”
The third recipient of the John Carroll Society Medal was Sister Romana Uzodimma, who is from Nigeria and earned a bachelor’s in business administration and a master’s in healthcare management from the College of Saint Elizabeth in Morristown, New Jersey. In 2017, she moved to Washington to begin serving as senior program manager for Catholic Charities Health Care Network. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Sister Romana also assisted with the Spanish Catholic Center’s food pantry.
The Catholic Charities Health Care Network was founded almost 40 years ago to serve those in need in the Washington area. Today the network includes more than 300 volunteer healthcare providers working in private practice, hospitals and clinics who last year provided care in more than 2,700 patient visits worth an estimated $9.5 million in pro bono health care.
Cook noted that “All the medical professionals who volunteer with the network will tell you Sister Romana is its heart and soul.”
Before presenting her with the society’s medal, Cook said he heard how Sister Romana recently helped line up open heart surgery for a 7-year-old child through Catholic Charities Health Care Network. He commended her for reflecting the Church’s social teaching of caring for those on the margins of society who need help.
Also at the dinner, Monique Clarke, a member of the class of 2025 at Archbishop Carroll High School in Washington, was recognized as one of five of that school’s recipients of the Agnes E. Vaghi and Joseph P. Vaghi Scholarships, named for the late parents of the society’s chaplain, Msgr. Vaghi.
Esme Dorsey, a student from the Academy of the Holy Cross in Kensington, Maryland, was announced as the winner of the Margaret Mary Missar High School Scholarship Essay Competition, named for the society’s former longtime executive assistant. Dorsey’s first-place essay examined how young people today can say “yes” to a life of faith and service in imitation of Mary’s “yes” to the angel Gabriel.
Washington Auxiliary Bishop Roy Campbell Jr. offered the opening prayer at the dinner, and new Washington Auxiliary Bishop Juan Esposito-Garcia offered the closing prayer.
