How to Live, Move, and Be as a Catholic

2026-2027 Series

REGISTER BELOW

6:30 p.m. Doors Open | 7:00 p.m. Dinner | 7:30 p.m. Lecture and Q&A | 8:30 p.m. Close

Business casual attire encouraged. For more information, please contact Margaux Taffet at mtaffet@lumenchristi.org.

In the ancient world, religious adherents were set apart by special dress, diet, and customs. Yet in the 2nd century Letter to Diognetus, the anonymous writer observes that Christians didn’t distinguish themselves from other people by a special abode, a special language, special attire, or a special diet.

Christians are truly a people “set apart” and sanctified, but what distinguishes the Christian people if not the traditional makers of culture? Catholics cook with a wide variety of spices and ingredients; attend all kinds of schools; are drawn to different kinds of art and music; and wear all kinds of clothes. Catholic life and worship looks very different in France from what it looks like in Rwanda, which in turn differs from Catholicism in Japan, the United States, or Poland.

To be Catholic – which means “concerning the whole” – means that everything about our lives relates back to our Faith. Yet it also means that there is a dynamic interaction between our Faith and the circumstances of our lives. To “cook as a Catholic” means something important, something deeply connected to our innermost being, but it is not a rigid set of procedures or list of prohibited foods.

For the 2026-2027 West Suburban Catholic Culture Series, we would like to invite you to join us in considering how to view the “ordinary” elements of our lives through the wisdom and tradition of the Catholic Church – but without reducing the wisdom and tradition of the church to a single method or fashion. Lectures this year will consider how to live in that tension with imagination, discernment, and with that “peace which surpasseth all understanding.”

September 23: