Well, as you just heard, you know, I teach a course Catholic intellectual tradition.

And I'm an expert on late medieval and early modern history.

So what I'm about to say to you is largely a meditation on a large subject.

It's not really a scholarly paper, but it's meditation on the subject at hand.

And I have to begin with an anecdote, which is very germane to what we just heard,

the transformation of the university into something else.

When I became chair of the Religious Studies Department at Yale, what happens is the

President calls you into the office and offers you the position and so forth.

The first question he asked me, this is many years ago, this is 1999, President Levin

asked me, why do we teach theology in Yale College?

The question was asked in a way that, you know, you could tell, it wasn't a philosophical question.

It was basically a complaint, you know, like maybe when you're chair of the department, you can take care of this problem

and do away with that.

I gave him a historical answer.

I regretted doing that afterwards.

But anyway, as you just heard, I published a very big book, 900-page book, on religious changes in early modern Europe.

And it's a book is so large that readers complain about how much it weighs.

But nonetheless, I fear this task of providing a survey of the issue, the place of the Catholic intellectual tradition,

at a secular university. Writing history is one thing, dissecting the present is quite another.

And when it comes to this particular topic, I have to say I find kinship with J.R.R. Tolkien, who said in his

valedictory address at the end of his career at Oxford.

And I quote, the diagnosis of what is wrong and the confident prescription of the cure.

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