APPLICATIONS FOR THIS SEMINAR ARE CLOSED 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 major works of literary analysis, religious anthropology, and Biblical exegesis, this five-day seminar will explore Girard’s key insights into imitation, conflict, and scapegoating, connecting them to central themes of Christian theology. Format: There will be two 2.5-hour sessions each day. Each session will include an opening lecture and...

APPLICATIONS FOR THIS SEMINAR ARE CLOSED In this seminar, students will read, analyze, and discern continuities and discontinuities in Catholic social thought from the late 19th century to the present. Lectures, seminar reports, and discussion will focus on original sources (encyclicals and other magisterial documents), beginning with Rerum novarum (1892) and concluding with Caritas in veritate (2009) and Evangelii Gaudium (2013). This intensive course is multi-disciplinary, since this tradition of social thought overlaps several disciplines in the contemporary university including political science, political philosophy, law, economics, theology, and history. Format: There will be two 2.5-hour sessions each day. Each session will include an opening lecture and seminar-style...

THIS SEMINAR HAS BEEN POSTPONED TO SUMMER 2020 The manifold and deepening social, political, and economic crises that people and their governments face have called forth a strongly renewed interest in the Christian social teaching tradition, and the contributions that insights from the tradition might make to responding to these exigencies. This revival of interest brings several thorny problems in its wake: Why does the Church speak on these matters, and based on what authority? What role does the Church properly have in this context? What contributions can she make to such worldly concerns? What does the Church have to offer...

APPLICATION COMING SOON Augustine is one of the great minds of the Church and of western history. In this week-long intensive seminar, undergraduates and recent graduates will learn how to read, analyze, and discern the theme of the self in relation to God and society across Augustine’s corpus. The seminar is anchored in an in-depth reading of Augustine’s Confessions, one of the great masterpieces of literature that continues to speak across the centuries even as it is rooted in antiquity. This will be supplemented by selections from The City of God and On the Trinity.  Application materials are due March 1. FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS...

Applications are now closed. The goal of this seminar is to provide students with the background knowledge and conceptual tools necessary to understand and think clearly about the relation of science and faith. This will help them to integrate scientific and theological ways of understanding in their own thinking, and make it possible for them to help others (including their future colleagues and students) to achieve such integration. The overarching goal is to help develop a cadre of people with a broad and informed understanding of these issues who can be the nucleus from which wider outreach efforts might grow....

The Newman Forum aims to run a week-long Summer Institute for high school students at Mundelein Seminary every year. Due to COVID-19 concerns, this year's Institute will run ONLINE, Mondays and Thursdays, from July 13th-30th. This year's Summer Institute will be centered on the three transcendentals: Truth, Goodness, and Beauty! Feelings of wonder point us to transcendental truths and drive some of the most important philosophical and theological pursuits: How do we describe the feeling of seeing a radiant sunset to someone who didn’t see it? How do we explain that feeling of resonance when we learn a lesson in school that really...

APPLICATIONS ARE NOW CLOSED FOR THIS SEMINAR On consecutive Mondays and Tuesdays in August (August 3, 4, 10, 11) Bernard McGinn and Fr. Bernhard Blankenhorn will lead a set of young scholars through questions relating to the theological anthropologies of Albertus Magnus and Meister Eckhart. Topics of special interest will include contemplation, Albert on the imago dei, and Eckhart on the ground of the soul. Applicants should have some background in medieval philosophy and theology. More specifically, they should have a basic familiarity with Aristotelian anthropology, as well as general grasp of the Augustinian theology of the image of God...

Now in its eighth 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. Format: There will be two 2-hour sessions each day. The seminar will include presentations by Fr. Fields and by participants...

In-person summer experience for high school students exploring truth, goodness, and beauty at Mundelein Seminary Presented by the Lumen Christi Institute’s Newman Forum. Open to current high school students and incoming college freshman only. This seminar is cosponsored by the University of Saint Mary of the Lake at Mundelein Seminary, and the Archdiocese of Chicago Vocation Office.  DRIVING QUESTIONS “It is through wonder that men now begin and originally began to philosophize; wondering in the first place at obvious perplexities, and then by gradual progression raising questions about the greater matters too...”   -Aristotle, Metaphysics 982b “The Christian remains the guardian of that metaphysical wonderment which is the point...

July 11—16, 2021, Fr. John Behr and Professor Lewis Ayres will lead a summer seminar of graduate students in a close reading of Irenaeus’ Adversus Haereses. One of the first systematic presentations of the Christian theology, Irenaeus’ refutation of Gnosticism, as well as his bold defense of the canon of Scripture and its connection with the preaching of the apostles, set the trajectory for future theological reflection. Through the engagement of this principal text, students will be able to grasp the contours of the early Church’s discernment of the Christian faith. The seminar will be held in the monastic setting of St....

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, and philosophical...

Photo Credit: Linda A. Cicero / Stanford News Service APPLY HERE THE APPLICATION DEADLINE HAS BEEN EXTENDED TO MAY 1. 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. Format: There will be...