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APPLY HERE The Lumen Christi Institute, the St. Anselm Institute and Our Lady of the Angels Monastery, a Trappistine monastery located near Crozet, Virginia are partnering for the first time to organize a retreat that explores the monastic wisdom tradition. The Trappistine Community at Crozet, Virginia lives according to a continual tradition of Christian monasticism with its roots in the Cistercian Tradition. This seminar will offer the possibility of not only learning the guiding principles that foster a good and balanced life according to the monastic tradition, but of putting them into practice, since it is experience alone that leads not only...

APPLY HERE COLLIS Institute for Catholic Thought and Culture at Cornell University, the In Lumine Network, and the Lumen Christi Institute partner to organize "Explorations in Integral Ecology: Science, Theology, and Creation," a weeklong intensive seminar at Cornell University integrating theological study with direct scientific observation of the natural world and experiences of creation. Led by Sr. Damien Marie Savino, F.S.E., PhD (Dean of Science and Sustainability, Aquinas College) and Fr. Terrence Ehrman, C.S.C, PhD (Department of Theology, University of Notre Dame), this program aims to inspire and educate undergraduates of all academic backgrounds to pursue a God-centered response to current environmental challenges in the holistic spirit of integral ecology. With its setting...

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...