“Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth; and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth—in a word, to know himself—so that, by knowing and loving God, men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves.”
–Fides et Ratio by Pope John Paul II
The School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Franciscan University stands within the Catholic Church’s long tradition of integrating faith and reason in the pursuit of human knowledge. The disciplines within our School emphasize human social and cultural life – the historical, linguistic, psychological, literary, and aesthetic expressions which serve as the context in which we seek to know the truth about God and answer to the perennial question “how am I to live a noble life?”
Through disciplines grounded in the liberal arts and the social sciences, the community of learning in our School explores what is permanent and true about the human person as created in the image of God. Through diverse disciplinary lenses, we seek to perceive, in the words of the great poet Fr. Gerard Manley Hopkins S.J., how “Christ plays in ten thousand places, / Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his / To the Father through the features of men’s faces.”
I invite you to learn more about the programs of study in Franciscan University’s School of Humanities and Social Sciences.
Pax et bonum,
Aaron Urbanczyk, Ph.D.
Dean of the School of Humanities & Social Sciences
Professor of English
