APPLY HERE Now in its sixth year, this seminar is designed as an introduction and immersion into Catholic social thought for graduate students and faculty in economics, finance, or related fields. Participants will cover foundational principles in Catholic social thought, starting with the human person, dignity, freedom, subsidiarity, solidarity, and the common good, and moving toward applications of these principles to conceptual understandings and ethical considerations involving economic topics such as utility theory, firm and business ethics, wages, markets, globalization, poverty, and development. Participants will delve into social encyclicals, secondary sources, and relevant economics texts. FORMAT There will be two...

APPLY HERE Professor Lewis Ayres and Fr. Andrew Summerson will lead a summer seminar of graduate students in a close reading of Gregory Nazianzen’s Theological Orations. A difficult character who for a time presided over the Council of Constantinople in 381, Gregory (c.330 – 390) was one of the most well-educated among fourth-century Christian thinkers. His five Theological Orations, delivered during his tenure in Constantinople between 379 and 381, are works of high art, as well as complex theology, and generated extensive commentary throughout later Byzantine history. The Orations are sometimes enigmatic, lacking the prolixity of Basil of Caesarea and Gregory of Nyssa’s...

APPLY HERE "Theology for Engineers and Scientists” aims to give graduate students with little or no background in Theology an introduction to the integration of Catholic theology with their respective fields of research or professional training. The goal is not comprehensive knowledge of an emerging field but the building of a bridge between disciplines that seem remote from one another and even in opposition. The theological part will be drawn principally from Romano Guardini’s The End of the Modern World and Pope Francis’s Laudato Si’ because these texts look at the technocratic paradigm generously and critically with the goal of gathering wisdom from many domains of experience and learning for...

APPLY HERE Now in its tenth year, this intensive seminar will examine the achievements of Saint John Henry Newman as a theologian, philosopher, educator, preacher, and writer. Remarkably, in each of these areas Newman produced works that have come to be recognized as classics: An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, The Grammar of Assent, The Idea of a University, The Parochial and Plain Sermons, and the Apologia Pro Vita Sua. This seminar will approach Newman’s thought through a critical engagement with these texts. LOCATION AND FORMAT The seminar will be held at Merton College, Oxford. Meals and lodging...

Photo Credit: Linda A. Cicero / Stanford News Service APPLY HERE One of the most influential 20th century Catholic thinkers, René Girard transformed our understanding of culture, religion, and human behavior. His “mimetic theory" builds on the demystifying power of the Old and New Testaments to illuminate the religious history of mankind. Through an intensive reading of his more accessible works, in conjunction with the fiction of the greatest writers, this five-day seminar will explore Girard’s key insights into imitation, conflict, and scapegoating, connecting them to central themes of Christian theology. Location and Format  This seminar will be held at Stanford...

APPLY HERE This seminar is an intensive week-long course in how to read, analyze, and discern the many themes in Augustine’s most ambitious and sprawling work. The City of God tells the history of two societies, and their respective origins, progress, and appointed ends. The story is engaged first from the evidence of profane history (I-XI) and then from the evidence of revelation (XII-XXII). In this seminar, participants will discuss how Augustine reckons with the crisis of the ancient and the human city, and whether it is possible to reconcile truth and authority across the competing domains of polity, religion,...

APPLY HERE Christianity, like other great spiritual traditions, is centrally concerned with the good life, with that “perfect peace” promised to those who trust in God (Isa. 26:3), or that “life abundant” which Christ came to offer (Jn. 10:10). Christian thinkers in every generation have reflected on the nature of human flourishing, the evils that threaten it, and the complex relationships among the temporal and eternal goods that comprise it. Until recently, by contrast, the younger social sciences tended to focus myopically on understanding and preventing human illness and suffering, seeking (in Freud’s words) to “turn hysterical misery into ordinary...

Now in its seventh year, this seminar is designed as an introduction and immersion into Catholic social thought for graduate students and junior faculty in economics, finance, or related fields. Participants will cover foundational principles in Catholic social thought, starting with the human person, dignity, freedom, subsidiarity, solidarity, and the common good, and moving toward applications of these principles to conceptual understandings and ethical considerations involving economic topics such as utility theory, firm and business ethics, wages, markets, globalization, poverty, and development. Participants will delve into social encyclicals, secondary sources, and relevant economics texts. This seminar is sponsored by the Lumen...

Are the social sciences properly scientific? Will we one day discover a social physics—perhaps a blend of psychology, economics, and algorithms—that allows us to predict and engineer our common life? No one has done more intellectual work to cast doubt on these techno-utopian claims than Catholic philosopher Charles Taylor. In this seminar we will explore Taylor’s argument that the study of human behavior should be closer to history and literature than biology and statistics. Is the human mind no more than a wet computer, or does selfhood possess moral and artistic dimensions? Can we understand politics by calculating large-scale voter...

Co-presented with the Sheptytsky Institute of Eastern Christian Studies at the University of St. Michael's College Scripture is the soul, shape, and content of early Christian theology. This week-long seminar will offer an intensive exploration of the foundational texts, concepts, and movements in Early Christian Old Testament exegesis from 100-700 AD. LOCATION AND FORMAT · The seminar will be held at Windle House, hosted by the Sheptytsky Institute of Eastern Christian Studies at the University of St. Michael’s College in the University of Toronto. · Most Meals (some on their own) and lodging will be provided to participants. · Participants will...

Apply here We are pleased to announce the fourth annual seminar on "Business and Catholic Social Thought: A Primer." During the seminar, graduate students and faculty members in business schools will cover foundational principles in Catholic social thought and apply them to their own field of research and teaching. This seminar aims at widening epistemological preconceptions and showing practical implications of Catholic social thought for business in a way that affirms the goodness of business directed toward the common good. Participants will delve into social encyclicals, secondary sources, and relevant business texts that show the path for principled entrepreneurship in order...

This seminar will be a five-day, intensive discussion aimed at understanding and evaluating St. Thomas Aquinas’ account of liberum arbitrium and of the psychological and metaphysical principles that underlie it. The sessions will center on passages from the Summa Theologiae, but we will also refer to other works of Aquinas, such as the De Malo and the Commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics, and to pertinent texts from other philosophers such as Plato, Aristotle, Kant, and Anscombe. We will want to address some of the more controversial questions about Thomas’ views, such as the following: Does he differ from Aristotle on the will, and if so, how? Did he change his...