Fr Thomas Berg
Director, Westchester Institute

"History itself is speeding up on so rapid a course that individuals can scarcely keep pace with it. And so the human race is passing from a relatively static conception of the scheme of things to a more dynamic and evolutionary conception-whence there arises a new set of problems, calling for new analyses and new syntheses."

These words, penned just over forty years ago in the Second Vatican Council document Gaudium et Spes (n. 5), were most prescient.

Nowhere today are we more acutely faced with a "new set of problems calling for new analyses and new syntheses" than in the moral arena.

Brave New World is now upon us.

And on a larger scale, as the philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre has pointed out, the loss of the sense of a common human narrative-that is, the loss of that worldview which had shaped western self-understanding until the modern age-has deprived Western culture of the context that made its moral precepts meaningful, and indeed reasonable.

The skepticism regnant in so many sectors of academia has burdened the life of the mind for far too long. The result has been a fragmentation and unnecessary antagonism between the branches of learning. The consequent breakdown in dialogue has only contributed to the broader erosion of the concept of truth.

The Westchester Institute, through its multiple venues and scholarly endeavors, hopes to contribute-in collegial collaboration with so many other like-minded institutions-to a new moral synthesis that our times require, a synthesis anchored in the classic "perennial" and Catholic view of the human person.

We are convinced that democratic society-particularly as understood in the American experience-can only flourish on the basis of a thriving moral culture. A primary ingredient of such a moral culture is moral reflection: a habit of fostering ethical analysis, both personally and on a societal level, of living an examined life, of assuring that sustained and rational discussion of fundamental moral problems is welcomed in the public square.

It is central to the mission of The Westchester Institute to uphold and foster such a moral culture. We welcome you to our new website and we look forward to serving you in the pursuit of moral truth!