The Making of a Modern Saint: John Henry Newman on Faith and Education in a Secular Age

Oct 19, 2019

Swift Hall

1025 E 58th St.
Chicago, IL 60637

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David DeavelUniversity of St. Thomas

Dwight LindleyHillsdale College

Cosponsored by Mundelein Seminary, the Archdiocese of Chicago Vocation Office, and the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame. This program is made possible in part by a gift from the Paluch Family Foundation and a grant from the John Templeton Foundation.

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Have you ever wondered why you go to school? Or what the point of it all is? What goes into making a big decision? And how do you fit together everything you know--or even the past with the future?

John Henry Newman will be canonized on October 13th. On October 19th, we'll celebrate his life and thought.

In the morning, Dwight Lindley from Hillsdale College will talk about, "Conversion, the Key to Newman's Life and Thought." Newman understood his own conversion to be a gradual realization of what his most-deeply held principles required of him--it wasn't some shallow "emotional" feeling. And Newman's understanding of conversion helped him to give an account of the Church's development over time (and how that development is both similar to and different from Darwinian evolution!).

In the afternoon, Dave Deavel from University of St. Thomas will tell us about Newman's idea of education. He will help us ask what a true education is. What does it mean to seek “knowledge for its own sake”? What does it mean when Newman describes the whole of knowledge as a “circle”? How do all the “subjects”—biology, history, philosophy, theology, and the rest—in the circle fit together? What unites them? Does theology have to be part of true education? How does “being educated” relate to my career? We’ll talk about all this and more in this lecture.

There will also be food, games, outdoor competitions, and a prize for the winners.

SCHEDULE

9:00am Registration and Breakfast
10:00am Welcome & Introductions
10:15am Opening Prayer
10:30am Prof. Lindley lecture on Newman's life and times
11:45am Lunchtime discussion group
1:00pm Outdoor activity
2:15pm Prof. Deavel lecture on Science, University, and Liberal Education
3:30pm Discussion Groups
4:30pm Mass (optional)
5:45pm Pizza Party (optional)

David P. Deavel is Assistant Professor of Catholic Studies at the University of St. Thomas, where he is also Co-Director of the Terrence J. Murphy Institute for Catholic Thought, Law, and Public Policy. He holds an MA, MPhil, and PhD from Fordham University. He is Senior Contributor at The Imaginative Conservative, editor of Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture. With Jessica Hooten Wilson, he edited Solzhenitsyn and American Culture: The Russian Soul in the West (Notre Dame, 2020). With Liz Kelly, he co-hosts the Deep Down Things podcast and his writing has appeared in many publications, including Catholic World Report, First Things, National Review, and the Wall Street Journal.

Dwight A. Lindley III is Associate Professor of English at Hillsdale College, where he has taught since 2011. He holds an MA and PhD from the University of Dallas and a BA from Hillsdale College. He has written numerous articles on nineteenth-century literature and poetry. Prof. Lindley is currently working on several book projects, including Probability and Practical Reasoning in Nineteenth-Century Literature: Austen, Newman, and Eliot.