Our Events

Featured Events & News

Views Navigation

Event Views Navigation

Today

Filters

Changing any of the form inputs will cause the list of events to refresh with the filtered results.

Nicholas of Cusa & Qur’anic Exegesis 

Free and open to the public. This event was held online through Zoom and live-streamed to YouTube. This event is part of a webinar series, "Catholics & Muslims: History, Theology, Encounters," presented by the Lumen Christi Institute and the American Cusanus Society. This session will focus on "faithful interpretation" (pia interpretatio) as characteristic of Nicholas of Cusa's approach to the Qur'ān as a book that claims to be revealed by God. He argues that it is possible to take the Qur'ān seriously as a theological source for Christian faith. Following Nicholas of Cusa's example he will also talk about his own experiences as a...

Seminar

Truth and Authority in Augustine’s City of God

University of Saint Mary of the Lake 1000 East Maple Avenue Mundelein, IL 60060, Mundelein, IL

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...

Seminar

The Thought of René Girard: Understanding the Faith in a Secular Age

Mary & Joseph Retreat Center 5300 Crest Road, Los Angeles, CA

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...

A School for the Lord’s Service: A Meditation on the Rule of St. Benedict

Free and open to the public. This event was held online through Zoom and live-streamed to YouTube. This event is part of a summer webinar series on Monastic Wisdom.  Written for monks living in Italy almost 1600 years ago, The Rule of St. Benedict is remarkable for its wisdom, its discretion, and its clarity. St. Benedict draws on Scripture and the theological tradition that preceded him to craft a text that combines both detailed prescriptions for daily life in a monastery and the principles of a spiritual theology. All these prescriptions and theological principles he sees as foundation of a School for the...

Master Class on “Friendship with God: Apprenticeship of the Christian life”

Gavin House 1220 E 58th St., Chicago, IL

REGISTER HERE Open to current graduate students. Advanced University of Chicago undergraduate students are also welcome. Others who are interested in participating should contact us at info@lumenchristi.org. PDF copies of the readings will be provided for registrants. Far from offering a romantic or sentimental notion of divine friendship, the Scriptures develop a theology of divine intimacy that portrays friendship with God as an apprenticeship in Christ.  Through the filial friendship established by the grace of baptism, Christians are called to participate in Christ's salvific mission.  Friendship with God initiates Christians into the mystery of Christ's cross and resurrection and teaches them...

Mary & Muslims: Bridge or Barrier? 

Free and open to the public. This event is part of a webinar series, "Catholics & Muslims: History, Theology, Encounters," presented by the Lumen Christi Institute and the American Cusanus Society. This event is cosponsored by the Collegium Institute. In 1965, Nostra Aetate 3 acknowledged that Christian and Muslims share a devotion to Mary. But did Christians always view Mary as a bridge? A few medieval Latins stressed concord between the two Marys, but others raised the Virgin on military standards in battles against Muslims. This talk will consider the myriad ways in which Mary’s role in Christian-Muslim relations has shifted...

The Monastics Before the Scholastics: An Introduction to Medieval Monastic Theology

Free and open to the public. This event will be held online through Zoom (registration required) and live-streamed to YouTube. This event is part of a summer webinar series on Monastic Wisdom.  What is monastic theology? Is it just an alternative to Thomism or the more “philosophical” (or more serious?) tradition of theology? Should the works of monastic theologians be relegated, as Thomas Merton feared they were, to the shelves of “spiritual” or devotional literature, as pious options extrinsic to theological discipline? With St. Anselm as our guide, Fr. John will discuss how theological method must include a properly “monastic” element. Wisdom from...

Francis & Francis: Encountering Muslims, Past & Present

Carol Zaleski, Professor of World Religions | Bernard McGinn, University of Chicago

Free and open to the public. This event is part of a webinar series, "Catholics & Muslims: History, Theology, Encounters," presented by the Lumen Christi Institute and the American Cusanus Society. This session will consider two Christian-Muslim encounters: the first between St. Francis of Assisi and Sultan al-Malik in 1219 in Egypt during the Crusades, and the second between Pope Francis and Grand Imam Ahmed el-Tayeb in Abu Dhabi eight centuries later, on Feb. 4, 2019, when they co-signed the historic “Document on Human Fraternity.” How have personal relationships between Christians and Muslims affected both the practice of interreligious dialogue and...

Master Class on “The Integralism of Jacques Maritain” Part I

Gavin House 1220 E 58th St., Chicago, IL

REGISTER HERE THIS IS AN IN-PERSON EVENT. Open to current graduate students and University of Chicago Undergraduates. Others who are interested in participating should contact us. Copies of The Primacy of the Spiritual: On the Things that are not Caesar's (Cluny Media, 2020) will be provided for registrants. Jacques Maritain (1882-1973) was perhaps the most influential Catholic social and political philosopher of the 20th century.  He taught at Columbia and Princeton, and was a frequent guest lecturer at the University of Chicago, where he gave the Walgreen Lectures, later published as Man and the State (1951).  Appointed the French Ambassador to the Holy See...

The Christological Structure of Spiritual Growth In the Thought of St. Bernard

Free and open to the public. This event will be held online through Zoom (registration required) and live-streamed to YouTube. This event is part of a summer webinar series on Monastic Wisdom. The development of spiritual life is caused and modeled by the stages in the history of Jesus: the converting soul first develops an emotional love for Jesus in the flesh: This love is moody and lacks  judgment in discerning right and wrong (amor carnalis).  Next, Jesus the teacher instructs the soul in the moral virtues (amor rationalis) but the soul lacks the joy of love and virtue. In the final stage of...

The University and Your Soul: Integrating Faith, Prayer, and the Intellectual Life

Gavin House 1220 E 58th St., Chicago, IL

Open to current University of Chicago undergraduates ONLY. Registration required. FREE DINNER! Cosponsored by Calvert House Catholic Center. Join the Lumen Christi Institute and Calvert House for a panel discussion of practical ways to engage and integrate your Catholic faith and intellectual life at the university. For all events held at Gavin House, the Lumen Christi Institute follows Chicago Department of Public Health Guidance for in-person gatherings. Please see here for the city’s most up-to-date guidelines. These are guidelines subject to change. If you have any questions about accessibility, please contact us.

Cruel But Usual: Solitary Confinement’s Tortured History

Free and open to the public. This event will be held online through Zoom (registration required) and live-streamed to YouTube. Presented by the Catholic Criminal Justice Reform Network and cosponsored by the Catholic Mobilizing Network. Pope Francis has denounced the use of solitary confinement.  He describes it as “torture” employed under the “pretext of offering greater security to society or special treatment for certain categories of prisoners, its main characteristic is none other than external isolation.” The result is the degradation of the human person through the imposed “lack of sensory stimuli, the total impossibility of communication and the lack of contact...