Collegium Institute invites you to join us for our spring reception at the Penn Club of New York on Monday, May 16, featuring Professor Michael Breidenbach of Ave Maria University, Elizabeth Bruenig of The Atlantic, and Francis Maier of the University of Notre Dame. This event is cosponsored by America Magazine, First Things, and the Portsmouth Institute.

Prof. Breidenbach's new book, Our Dear-Bought Liberty: Catholics and Religious Toleration in Early America (Harvard University Press, 2021), revises our understanding of who the American founders were as well as our understanding of the sources of secularism.  Church–state separation in America, generally understood as the product of a Protestant-driven Enlightenment, was in key respects derived from Catholic thinking. Our Dear-Bought Liberty therefore offers a dramatic departure from received wisdom, suggesting that religious liberty in America was not bestowed by liberal consensus but partly defined through the ingenuity of a persecuted minority.

Collegium Institute's Annual Penn Club Reception will convene a conversation on these timely questions of American Catholicism, religious liberty, and our secular political order together with friends and refreshments. 

Dr. Michael Breidenbach is Associate Professor and Chair of History at Ave Maria University. In addition to Our Dear-Bought Liberty, Prof. Breidenbach is also co-editor of The Cambridge Companion to the First Amendment and Religious Liberty (Cambridge University Press, 2020). He has published articles in academic journals and edited volumes as well as publications such as The Atlantic, Washington Post, and First Things. He is currently writing a book on the history of naming in early America.

Francis X. Maier is Research Scholar at the University of Notre Dame’s Center for Citizenship & Constitutional Government as well as Senior Fellow in the Catholic Studies Program at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. Mr. Maier’s work focuses on the intersection of Christian faith, culture, and public life, with special attention to lay formation and action. Maier served as senior advisor and special assistant to Archbishop Charles J. Chaput for 23 years in Denver and Philadelphia and was awarded the title of “Knight Commander” in the Order of St. Gregory the Great by Pope Francis in 2019 for his extraordinary devotion to the Church. He is a cofounding board member of the Collegium Institute for Catholic Thought and Culture which serves the University of Pennsylvania community. Maier has been a writer, editor, and cultural critic for many years, serving as former editor-in-chief of the National Catholic Register, while his writing has also appeared in publications such as First Things, Commonweal, America, National Review, the New York Times Sunday magazine, among other national and foreign outlets.

Elizabeth Bruenig was born in Fort Worth, Texas. In 2013, Liz graduated from Brandeis with honors and a Marshall Scholarship, which she used to earn her Master’s of Philosophy in Christian theology at Cambridge University. Liz returned to the United States and entered a doctoral program in religion at Brown University with a Presidential Fellowship, but left without submitting a dissertation in order to write full time for The New Republic. In 2016, Liz joined The Washington Post as an assistant editor, and in 2018, Liz joined the Post’s Opinion section as a columnist. In 2020, Liz joined The New York Times as an opinion writer, a role that gave her the flexibility to write reported feature articles as well as essays and columns. In 2021, after an exciting year with the Times, Liz accepted a staff writer position with The Atlantic, where she publishes columns, essays, reported features, and undertakes a number of multimedia projects. Liz lives in Connecticut with her husband and two daughters, Jane and Clare. In her spare time, she bakes cakes, cookies, and macarons.

Date: Monday, May 16, 2022

Time: 6:00 PM EST

Location: The Penn Club of New York
30 W 44th St.
New York, NY 10036

Registration Fees & Deadlines: Please click the button below to register through Eventbrite.

• Early Bird Registration (ends Thursday, April 21 at 11:59pm): $55

• Regular Registration (ends Friday, May 13 at 11:59pm): $70

Please contact Emmie Brown, Program & Operations Coordinator, at ebrown@collegiuminstitute.org if you have any questions.