This week, the Director of the Nanovic Institute for European Studies, A. James McAdams, will address the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences at the Casina Pio IV in Vatican City at a plenary session on “The Global Quest for Tranquillitas Ordinis: Pacem in terris, Fifty Years Later.” Pacem in terris, an encyclical written in 1963 by Pope John XXIII, presents three core features of an international moral order: a set of principles to guide the relations among states; a novel prescription to govern these relations; and an ongoing challenge. McAdams, in a paper entitled “Which Europe? What Union?” applies these principles to the European Union’s response to the sovereign debt crisis. He suggests that if Germany took a more self-consciously European leadership role, its leadership could help to realize a sense of European identity that serves Pacem in terris’s conception of an international moral order.
This gathering of the Pontifical Academy of the Social Sciences is expected to include Reinhard Cardinal Marx, who offered the Nanovic Institute’s Keeley Vatican Lecture at Notre Dame in 2010; Walter Cardinal Kasper, a 2002 Notre Dame honorary degree recipient; as well as Nobel Prize winners in economics Kenneth Arrow and Joseph Stiglitz. Pope John Paul II founded the Pontifical Academy of the Social Sciences in 1994 for the purpose of “promoting the study and progress of the social sciences, primarily economics, sociology, law and political science.” The Academy seeks to foster dialogue that can aid the Church in the development of social doctrine and its application in contemporary society.
McAdams, the William M. Scholl Professor of International Affairs at the University of Notre Dame, has directed the Nanovic Institute for European Studies at Notre Dame since 2002. The Nanovic Institute is committed to enriching the intellectual culture of Notre Dame by creating an integrated, interdisciplinary home for students and faculty to explore the evolving ideas, cultures, beliefs, and institutions that shape Europe today. The Nanovic Institute continues to explore opportunities to develop Notre Dame’s relationship with the Vatican, such as through the Keeley Vatican Lecture series.
Program for The Global Quest for Tranquillitas Ordinis: Pacem in Terris, Fifty Years Later
Download the Paper Which Europe, What Union?: Pacem in Terris, the Euro, and the Future of European Unification (PDF) by A. James McAdams