Remarks of Aaron Dominguez, dean of the School of Arts and Sciences
Freshman Convocation
Upper Church, Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception
Sept. 14, 2016

Welcome to The Catholic University of America.  Welcome Class of 2020. My name is Aaron Dominguez; I am the new Dean of the School of Arts & Sciences. I want to talk to you about freedom, education, this university, and tell you a little personal story.

The first thing I’ve found that I love about this University is that I seem to be free to wear these robes at any and all times! I think we should all just do the whole 4 years in these things.

I want to thank you for being here and for having me here as your Dean. You students are the reason we are here. I will always remember your class since I am now part of it as we embark on this, our freshman year together. Lord willing, we will be working and learning together over the next four years and we will be here once again to share congratulations, handshakes, hugs and diplomas. Yay!

Let me tell you a little about myself and how I came to be here.

I am an experimental particle physicist. I am extremely fortunate to work with my colleagues on the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, Switzerland. Our group builds these particle detectors that are like super-fast digital cameras which take pictures of the radiation coming from the explosions when the proton beams collide 40 million times a second. We use this accelerator, the largest machine ever built by man, to study the basic building blocks of nature and the rules for putting them together.  In many ways, it is one of our greatest technological achievements.  In almost all ways, I am not one of these greatest men, but am thankful for our work together.

I have spent my entire career in science, in academia, in universities, in laboratories asking fundamental questions and working hard to answer them. It has been a dream job.  Something I have been working towards and have wanted to do since I was a child.

My whole life I have also been on my faith journey as a Catholic boy. These two things have always part of me, two halves of a whole.

I had a great job, at a great university, in a great town, and my family and I were very happy. My faith was something I took with me into my job and these two things worked together as I tried to understand the physics and teach at university. But there was always something missing.

As I learned more about The Catholic University of America, I became drawn to it. Amazingly, I was even somehow given an opportunity to come here, despite my many failings!

And yet, I was afraid.

I was not sure if this was the right thing to do. To uproot my family; to leave our home; to leave our friends; to change my job and take such a risk, even with such a great opportunity.

So I talked with my family and I prayed. And I lost some sleep. And I prayed. And I prayed.

And sitting there, in that pew over there, in May, trying to discern what to do, I finally had the courage to say: Lord, my life is entirely in your hands. And when I looked up from my praying and saw that powerful mosaic of the Risen Christ in Majesty, I felt this warm sense of peace wash over me. Nothing like this has happened before to me.

It was clear what I was supposed to do. So here I am.

And I’m sure it was the right thing, because I wake up everyday filled with hope and a sense of freedom I have never had in my career.

I found a place where I can be truly free. I can unite faith and reason, science and the church, academia and the search for truth in one place.

In that mosaic in the east transept, there is the story of creation. The hand of God is reaching down and creating the cosmos and man. There’s the image of atoms, DNA, animals, the earth and all the things we study in science. The things we study with our accelerator and particle detectors. The things we study in the life sciences. The things we study in the social sciences. The things we write about in the humanities. The things we search for in the arts.

This is not what’s new for me, trying to understand my place in the world through reason and faith…

What’s new is that I found a place where we can be free to do this together, you and me, without fear; to have these discussions in class, in our studies, in the cafeteria, in symposia, in cafes.

That is what we all can do here, together, humbly, with respect and through dialog.

I don’t know how this free search for truth looks in every discipline, I’m only a physicist. I only know that we should be trying, and this is the university where we should be trying it.

In particle physics and cosmology, we study that creation of the cosmos up there. We have learned that the entire universe came into existence out of nothing about 13.8B years ago. It wasn’t empty space with a big pile of stuff that blew up. There wasn’t even space. There wasn’t even any time.  And this is apparently a scientific fact. And so, if we are brave enough to ask the question, we have understood something about the nature of God. He didn’t create himself. He’s the creator of the universe and has existed even before time itself. This is the place where we can do the science directly, but be free to talk about this.

In mathematics, we study pure and complex abstract notions. And yet, field theories, which a priori have nothing to do with any reality outside their own self-consistent and beautiful nature, describe the fabric of the universe. There’s no reason of our own, that I know of, why this should be so. And so, if we are brave enough to ask the question, it seems that God must also be a mathematician! This is the place where we can be free to talk about this.

(There is no conflict between our searches while acknowledging the ultimate source of that truth.)

I think we can do this in every discipline, in every profession.

Here we are free not only to study, to learn our disciplines, but to ask: What is the meaning of this? How do we do this the right way? What is the truth?  To look for transcendence. To understand our relationship to each other, to nature and to God.  To pray in public. I think you are not only free to do so here, but that this is can make you free.

And lest you think this is “too Catholic,” (there’s no such thing) or that this is a place only for Catholics, or Christians, or what have you, I’m here to tell you that this is wrong.  And if anybody tells you this, they are wrong.  And if still it seems that this is the case, we should do better.

I think it is correct that we put the final steps of the Catholic mission on the backs of the Catholics themselves, and we need to be able to carry this out completely.

But a university thrives on an exchange of different ideas, with different people, through honest and free dialog with respect. And a catholic university does so with a greater purpose, acknowledging why we do so.

For example, if you are not a Christian, you are respectfully welcomed here. And you are part of this search and this discussion.

Or if you want to cover your head out of modesty or tradition, amen I say to you: this is your home and you are free to do so.

This place should be a refuge.

In our best and authentic intellectual tradition, this place should make you free.

This is why I am here.

Welcome to The Catholic University of America. Welcome Class of 2020. And may God bless you and keep you close to His heart. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.