Welcome to The Open Door. Coming next, Wednesday (12/14), we discuss theology, history, and politics. Our welcome guest is Alan Fimister, Assistant Professor of Theology at Holy Apostles College and Seminary. He read Modern History at Oxford University and took his PhD at the University of Aberdeen, writing on the influence of Thomistic political theory on early European integration. Dr. Fimister has taught Theology, History, Catholic Social Teaching, Church History and Patrology in Austria, Britain and the United States. He is the author of Robert Schuman: Neo-Scholastic Humanism and the Reunification of Europe and co-author, with Thomas Crean, OP, of Integralism: A Manual of Political Philosophy. Among the questions we’ll be asking are the following. Please feel free to suggest others!

1. Dr. Fimister, Alan, if we may, could you begin by telling us a bit about yourself? As an Englishman how have you come to hold court, as it were, at a Connecticut College?
2. How is Holy Apostles distinctive? Is it living up to its mission?
3. You teach history. Henry Ford said that it was “bunk.” Others say that it’s written by the victors. Newman saw it as a field for the illative sense. How objective can you be?
4. You write and speak about politics. Has it become war by a different means?
5. You’ve written about integralism. Just what is it? Why is it receiving so much attention?
6. Can you describe, or even imagine, a world in which people were all Catholics?
7. Do you do theology on your knees?
8. Is contemporary theology open to the ministrations of Dame Philosophy?
9. Can the American Solidarity Party, given its commitment to solidarity, subsidiarity, and distributism, make its voice heard over the dismal din of American politics?
10. Where do you see yourself ten years from now?