On 1 October 2026, Rev. Joseph R. Laracy, S.T.D., a member of the Jáki Society, presented the newly published proceedings of the Stanley Jaki Foundation International Congress 2024 at Seton Hall University. The volume, co-edited by Father Laracy and Father Paul Haffner and published by Gracewing, grew out of the international congress held at Seton Hall on 24 April 2024 to commemorate the centenary of the birth of Father Stanley L. Jaki, O.S.B.
In his address, Father Laracy emphasized that the best way to honor Jaki is not simply to commemorate him, but to continue the demanding scholarly work to which he devoted his life.
Fr Laracy summarized several convictions running throughout Jaki’s work: the reality and intelligibility of the natural world; the extraordinary power but also the proper limits of exact science; the indispensable mediating role of philosophy and history; and the Christian understanding of creation as rationally ordered because it proceeds from the divine Logos. Christian faith, he stressed, gives science no shortcut around empirical investigation, but it does provide a profound reason for regarding nature as real, ordered and worthy of rational study.
The concluding part of Father Laracy’s address looked toward the future. Recalling Jaki’s more than four decades at Seton Hall, he argued that the University has both a special responsibility and a special opportunity to preserve and develop his intellectual legacy. The Stanley Jaki Academy for Theology and Science, which Fr Laracy directs, already brings together research, teaching, public engagement and interdisciplinary collaboration. His hope is that it will eventually grow into a permanent, internationally recognized institute capable of supporting research and publications, organizing conferences and lectures, mentoring students and building international partnerships.
The publication of the Congress proceedings, Father Laracy concluded, should therefore be understood not as the completion of a project but as a new stage in it. His final formulation captured the central message of the event: “Father Jaki’s legacy is both an inheritance and a task.” The new volume gathers an important part of that inheritance; the challenge now is to continue the rigorous search for truth in which Christian faith, philosophy and the sciences can genuinely meet.