LINCOLN (SNR/NI) – The five-year-old Newman Institute for Catholic Thought and Culture has hired a new director to take the place of inaugural director Dr. John Freeh, who will move to New Mexico with his family this summer.
Patrick Rory Callahan, former director of the Humanitas Program at the St. Lawrence Institute for Faith and Culture at the University of Kansas, will assume leadership in July.
Callahan, a native of New Jersey, was a member of the foundational board of the Newman Institute which was launched in 2016 to offer college-credit classes in the humanities for University of Nebraska and other area undergraduates. Since then, the Institute has added non-credit evening seminars in literature, philosophy, and theology for the wider Lincoln community. Of the 40 men and women currently in religious formation in and from the Diocese of Lincoln (excluding Carmelites), 15 have taken at least one Institute course or seminar.
“Patrick brings a youthful enthusiasm and deep love for the Great Books,” said Bishop James Conley, whose study of literature at the University of Kansas’s Integrated Humanities Program in the 1970s led to his conversion to the Church. “I first met Patrick and his wife, Eliese, when they were undergraduates at the Rome program of the University of Dallas, where I served as chaplain. He is an excellent teacher. I know students will appreciate his teaching style and will benefit from his profound understanding of the best that has been said and written in Western Civilization.”
Callahan, who did his doctoral work at Fordham University and has taught widely in classics, literature, and philosophy, served on the foundational board with Freeh, Father Robert Matya, Msgr. Timothy Thorburn, and the late Dr. Don Briel, among others. He was also program coordinator for the Koch Center for Leadership and Ethics at Emporia State University.
Callahan said he looks forward to serving the students, faculty, and staff of UNL and other colleges, and to developing additional courses and seminars, while continuing the “Reborn in Wonder” lecture series and last year’s “Called to Greatness” pilot course on the virtues for members of UNL’s FarmHouse fraternity. That course, which Freeh team-taught with Dr. Tom Field, head of the Engler Agribusiness Entrepreneurship Program, will also be offered to freshman pledges at Phi Kappa Theta, the Catholic fraternity.
“I am humbled and honored to continue the good work that Dr. Freeh has begun with the Newman Institute,” Callahan said. In addition to teaching college courses and evening seminars, he said he is eager to serve the Church in Lincoln in what he called a “crucial mission.”
Freeh decided to finish his time at the Institute and move to Gallup, N.M., to build a home and explore a long-standing idea to found a four-year Catholic college that combines the liberal and practical, or trade, arts.
“Professor Callahan has been very close to the Institute since its beginnings,” Freeh said. “The Humanitas Program he directed was the one most like ours. Patrick shares Bishop Conley’s vision for higher education and realizes the need to develop a strong learning community outside the classroom. He frequently led student trips, including a popular annual excursion to the Colorado Rockies. Like the Newman Institute, his program also emphasized the importance of great poetry and the wisdom to be found in God’s creation. Patrick is an excellent fit for the Institute. It is a blessing he was available and willing to undertake this apostolate.”
Bishop Conley said he was grateful for what he characterized as an easy transfer of leadership.
“Dr. Freeh was just the right person to get things up and running five years ago,” Conley said. “Although still in its infancy, the Newman Institute now rests on the strong foundation that John and his adjunct faculty and staff have built, a foundation on which Patrick will doubtless continue to build.
“With his years of experience in higher education at a number of universities, Catholic and secular, Dr. Freeh brought a depth of knowledge and experience to Lincoln,” Conley said. “He was able to teach students truth, goodness and beauty through great literature and poetry. I will miss John and Helen as friends, but I know the Lord will continue to guide them. And I will always be indebted to their helping give birth to our Newman Institute for Catholic Thought and Culture.”
For more information, see newmaninstitute.com.
