Scottish Catholic Observer

Professor Tracey Rowland a dean and permanent fellow of the John Paul II Institute for Marriage and the Family in Melbourne, Australia, will give her talk on February 6 at the Sir Charles Wilson Lecture Theatre at Glasgow University.

The lecture, named after the late Glasgow Cardinal, is held each year during Catholic Education Week, and was last year given by Archbishop Rino Fisichella, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting New Evangelisation. Previous lectures have been given by Alex Salmond and Archbishop Gerhard Muller.

Ahead of the lecture, Professor Rowland told the SCO that she agreed to give the talk as she can remember Cardinal Winning from her time as a student at Cambridge University. “He was often in the press defending the faith on one front or another,” she said. “I thought he was a real leader and especially good at promoting St John Paul II’s Gospel of life.”

The lecture—titled Catholic Education as a Theological Project—will draw on the work of scholar Alasdair MacIntyre, whose parents were graduates of Glasgow University. “I intend to weave some of MacIntyre’s ideas into the paper,” Professor Rowland said. “ he central argument of the paper is that all Catholic educational institutions, whether they are kindergartens or universities, need to be founded on a Christocentric Trinitarian anthropology.

Leonard Franchi is head of the St Andrew’s Foundation for Catholic Teacher Education which is hosting the talk. “We are delighted to have Professor Rowland as our guest,” he said. “She is one the ‘big names’ of contemporary Catholicism and we look forward very much to hearing her critique of contemporary education. It should be a great lecture. I hope many people take the opportunity to come along on February 6.”

— The 2016 Cardinal Winning Lecture will take place on February 6 at 9.45am in the Sir Charles Wilson Lecture Theatre (1, University Avenue, Glasgow). To register for the lecture email Arlene Burns: [email protected]

—Exclusively in this week’s SCO, Catholic Education Week section: Learning to be Merciful

—[email protected]