Professor and author
Patrick Deneen, 58, is professor of political science at the University of Notre Dame, where he has taught since 2012. Previously he taught at Princeton University (1997-2005) and Georgetown University (2005-2012), where he held the Eleni and Markos Tsakopoulos Kounalakis Chair in Hellenic Studies. He is the author of numerous essays and several books including Why Liberalism Failed (Yale, 2018), which has been translated into 14 languages.
Essayist, novelist and public speaker
Mary Eberstadt, 61, holds the Panula Chair in Christian Culture at the Catholic Information Center in Washington DC and is senior research fellow at the Faith & Reason Institute. A writer whose contributions to the intellectual landscape traverse genres, she is author of several non-fiction books including How the West Really Lost God and Adam and Eve after the Pill. Central to her diverse interests are questions concerning the fate and aspirations of post-modern men and women.
Catholic scholar and author
Anthony M Esolen, 63, is a writer, social commentator and professor of humanities at Magdalen College of the Liberal Arts. He taught at Providence College and the Thomas More College of Liberal Arts before moving to Magdalen in 2019. He is the author and translator of over 25 books, including the three-volume translation of Dante’s Divine Comedy. He is the author of numerous articles in publications such as The Modern Age, Catholic World Report, Crisis Magazine and Touchstone, for which he serves as a senior editor. He is the 2020 recipient of the Circe Institute’s Russell Kirk Prize. He and his wife Debra publish a web magazine, Word and Song.
Legal scholar, political philosopher and intellectual
Robert George, 67, serves as the sixth McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University. A legal and political scholar, he is considered one of the country’s leading conservative intellectuals. He co-founded the American Principles Project, with funding from Sean Fieler, and is a past chairman of the National Organization for Marriage. In 2009, he was called the “most influential conservative Christian thinker” in the US by David Kirkpatrick of the New York Times. He has been awarded the Presidential Citizens Medal and, among other awards, the Canterbury Medal of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty. He has chaired the US Commission on International Religious Freedom. His admirers say he is renewing a philosophy of Catholic natural law thinking that goes back to St Thomas Aquinas.
Executive director, Neumann Forum
George Gunning runs the Neumann Forum, a non-profit deciated to promoting and protecting traditional faith in Philadelphia. He has worked as treasurer at the Catholic Bioethics Center, committed to applying the moral teachings of the Catholic Church to ethical issues arising in healthcare and the life sciences. He graduated from Temple University, Philadelphia and used to work at the Catholic Foundation of Greater Philadelphia and Archdiocese of Philadelphia. He is also a former treasurer of the Archdiocese of New York.
Theologian
Scott Hahn, 64, is a Catholic theologian and Christian apologist. A former Presbyterian who converted to Catholicism, Hahn is also the bestselling author of numerous books including The Lamb’s Supper, Reasons to Believe and Rome Sweet Home. A popular speaker and teacher, Hahn has delivered numerous talks nationally and internationally on a wide variety of topics related to Scripture and the Catholic faith. His talks have been effective in helping thousands of Protestants and fallen-away Catholics to )embrace the Catholic faith. Hahn is married to Kimberly Hahn, who co-runs their Catholic apostolate, the St Paul Center for Biblical Theology.
Science fiction author
Dean Koontz, 77, is an American bestselling novelist whose books have sold over 500 million copies. After being brought up in Pennsylvania by a “violent, alcoholic” father, he turned to reading as a way of escape and then writing books. They cross genres, combining horror, fantasy, science fiction, mystery, and satire. Seeing the Catholic faith as an antidote to the chaos in his family, Koontz converted in college because faith provided existential answers for life; he admired Catholicism’s “intellectual rigour”, saying it permitted a view of life that saw mystery and wonder in all things. “I want to extravagantly entertain readers,” he says, “while making them feel the wonder of life and consider its profound mysteries.” He shares the view of GK Chesterton that his writing is inspired by a “joy about the gift of life”. He lives in Shady Canyon, California with his wife Gerda.
Conservative TV host
Larry Kudlow was the 12th director of the National Economic Council in the Trump administration, serving from from 2018 to January 2021. A TV news host and commentator for the Fox network, he is a religious as well as a political convert. After being a left-wing activist, he became an economics adviser to the Reagan administration, serving two terms, and has been a leading Conservative economist ever since. He is the 2022 recipient of the William F Buckley Prize for leadership in political thought. While returning to Wall Street in the 1990s, he battled with addiction issues and converted to Catholicism with spiritual help from Father C John McCloskey III. He has served on the Catholic Advisory Board of the Ave Maria Mutual Funds and as a member of the Fordham University board of trustees.
Philosopher
Alasdair MacIntyre, 93, is a Scottish-American philosopher of moral and political philosophy as well as history of philosophy and theology. His After Virtue (1981) is one of the best-known works of 20th-century political philosophy. He is senior research fellow at the Centre for Contemporary Aristotelian Studies in Ethics and Politics at London Metropolitan University, emeritus professor of philosophy at the University of Notre Dame, and permanent senior distinguished research fellow at the Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture. MacIntyre converted to Catholicism in the early 1980s, and now does his work against the background of what he calls an “Augustinian Thomist approach to moral philosophy”.
Author and president, Renewal Ministries
Ralph Martin, 80, is a “renewal movement leader” and author who addressed the UK Confraternity of Catholic Priests in York in 2022 (sponsored by the Catholic Herald). He is president of Renewal Ministries, a body devoted to Catholic renewal and evangelisation. He hosts The Choices We Face, a weekly Catholic television and radio programme with a global audience. He is also a visiting professor of theology at the Franciscan University of Steubenville.
Professor of Theology, Catholic University of America
Chad Pecknold is a professor of theology at the Catholic University of America, in Washington DC. He is the author of Christianity and Politics: A Brief Guide to the History, and The T&T Clark Companion to Augustine and Modern Theology. A contributing editor to the Catholic Herald, he publishes regularly on the Church and modern politics in First Things, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. Pecknold is also the co-founder of The Postliberal Order and resident theologian at the Basilica of St Mary.
Conservative political pundit, journalist and thinker
Ramesh Ponnuru, 48 and living in Washington DC, is a conservative political pundit, journalist and thinker. He is the editor of the National Review, a columnist for Bloomberg View and a contributing editor to National Affairs. In 2015, Politico Magazine listed both him and his wife, April Ponnuru, as two of the top “Politico 50” influential leaders in American politics. Ramesh was raised by a Hindu father and a Lutheran mother. He was an agnostic for a time before converting to Catholicism. In 2006, he vigorously defended the Catholic basis for his pro-life stance saying: “If I didn’t believe Catholic teachings were true, I wouldn’t be a Catholic.”
Science fiction novelist
California resident Tim Powers, 71, is a science fiction writer. He has twice won the World Fantasy Award, for Last Call and Declare, and has also twice won the Philip K Dick Memorial Award. Reviewers have accused him of writing as a Catholic and Christian apologist. Powers has said that such criticism is as much against “organised religion” as Catholicism. He describes himself as a practising Catholic. The protagonist of his first novel, Epitaph in Rust (1976) escapes from a rural monastery into the “wilds of a future Los Angeles”.
Senior fellow, Religious Freedom Institute
Rasche is senior fellow at the Religious Freedom Institute for International Religious Freedom in Conflict Regions as well as an acclaimed documentary maker and author. His film, Francis in Iraq, about Pope Francis’s 2020 visit to the persecuted Christians of Iraq, premiered earlier this year at New York’s Sheen Center with an address by Cardinal Dolan. A graduate of Boston College, he has worked for 35 years in international business and humanitarian aid projects, including living in Iraq. He was a founding officer of the Catholic University in Erbil in 2014 and has served as a representative to the Vatican Dicastery on Refugees and Migrants.
Author
Roy H Schoeman, 71, is an author who converted from Judaism to the Catholic Church. He is famous for his writings on Catholic-Jewish relations. Schoeman’s most famous work is Salvation Comes from the Jews, in which he argues that Christianity is the completion of Judaism and invites Jews to convert to the Catholic faith. His other books include Honey From the Rock: Sixteen Jews Find the Sweetness of Christ and Judaism: From the Catholic Perspective. Schoeman taught theology at Ave Maria University and Holy Apostles College and Seminary, hosts a weekly Catholic radio show on Radio Maria and has a daily internet livestream.
Author and philanthropist
Nicholas Sparks, 56, is an author and philanthropist known for novels such as The Notebook, Dear John and most recently The Wish. His books have sold over 75 million copies in the United States alone. Sparks has donated to several local and national charities. He is a major contributor to the creative writing programme at his alma mater, the University of Notre Dame, and together with his wife, cofounded the Epiphany School in New Berne, North Carolina.
Legal scholar
Adrian Vermeule, 54, is a Catholic convert and legal scholar who is currently the Ralph S Taylor professor of constitutional law at Harvard Law School. Vermeule is the author of eight books, including Law and the Limits of Reason. In 2012 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Professor Vermeule is known for his advocacy of legal theories such as common-good constitutionalism and integralism, both of which seek to create a social order based on Catholic moral and social teaching.
Theologian and author
George Weigel, 71, is a world-leading Catholic theologian and author who is currently a distinguished senior fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center and holds the EPPC’s William E Simon Chair in Catholic Studies. He has considerable influence in the Church. From 1986 to 1989, he served as the founding president of the James Madison Foundation. Weigel’s articles have appeared in such publications as First Things, National Review and the Wall Street Journal, and he has made television appearances on NBC and ETWN. He is the author of 29 books including the bestselling biography of John Paul II, Witness to Hope. He is a member of the advisory council of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, and he writes and serves on the board for the Institute for Religion and Public Life, Weigel and his wife Joan live in north Bethesda, Maryland. They have three children.
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