Lumen Christi Institute

Weekly Non-Credit Course: "The Prophets and Christian Prayer"
2019-05-21 18:00 - 20:00 (America/Chicago) | Gavin House, 1220 E 58th St., Chicago, IL, 60637
REGISTER HERE
6:00 Dinner | 6:30 Lecture
This weekly non-credit course is open to current students and faculty. Registrants are free to attend as many sessions as they choose. Sessions do not presuppose previous attendance or prior knowledge of the subject.
In its broadest sense, biblical prophecy—in both the Old and New Testaments—includes the activities and utterances of seers, dreamers, ecstatics, diviners, mystics, and declaimers of unmediated divine discourse: oracles, instruction, admonition, consolation. This course will examine literary and non-literary prophecy as a supernaturally accomplished conduit of God’s will, along with the various instruments by which that will is communicated. In addition, we will look at the ways in which prophetic action and discourse shaped the contemplative and liturgical life of the early Church, as well as the prayer of the later centuries.
April 9 | Introduction to Biblical Prophecy
April 16 | Amos & Hosea & the nəbîʾîm
April 23 | Isaiah
April 30 | Jeremiah
May 7 | Elijah & Elisha
May 14 | Ezekiel & Daniel
May 21 | New Testament Prophets & Prophecy

Notre Dame de Paris : Devastation and Reconstruction
2019-05-20 18:30 | Alliance Française de Chicago, 54 West Chicago Avenue Chicago, IL 60610, Downtown
To watch the video of the discussion, visit the Alliance Française’s Facebook page here (first half) and here (second half).
To view photos of the discussion, visit Lumen Christi’s Facebook page.
Organized by the Lumen Christi Institute with co-sponsor and host the Alliance Française de Chicago.

Free for Alliance Française members/ $10 for non-members.
Notre Dame de Paris in flames. Smartphone and television screens across the world light up one after the other, sending shockwaves as the heart of Paris burns. What is it about the old stones, the stained glass rosette, and the 800 year old charpente (wood roof frame) called “the forest” that brought people together for a few hours?
Artifact of a medieval faith; icon immortalized by Victor Hugo and turned into a hit on Broadway; haut-lieu of the most touristic city in the world; pawn in renewed political and architectural high stakes. What does the cathedral in the heart of Paris mean for them, and for each of us?
To sort out the history, the meaning, and most of all, the future of Notre Dame de Paris, the Alliance Francaise de Chicago welcomes Jean-Luc Marion, theologian, member of the Académie Française and an active participant in the founding of the Lumen Christi Institute. Jean-Luc Marion will be in conversation with Thomas Pavel, professor at the Department of Romance Languages of the University of Chicago.

"The Spirit of the Liturgy" at the Monastery of the Holy Cross
2019-05-18 16:30 - 20:00 | The Monastery of the Holy Cross, 3111 South Aberdeen St. Chicago, IL 60608, Chicago, IL
Transportation will be provided from Hyde Park. Open to current university students and faculty. Cosponsored by Calvert House.
Join us for an edifying evening of prayer, dinner, and conversation with Benedictine monks at the Monastery of the Holy Cross on the south side of Chicago. Attendees will participate in prayer of the Divine Office (Vespers and Compline), have dinner, and discuss Romano Guardini’s classic work The Spirit of the Liturgy with Prior Peter Funk. Following the monastic tradition of the oral reading of a text during meals, the students will listen to selections from The Spirit of the Liturgy while they eat, then discuss what they’ve heard, relating it to their own experiences and to the liturgy at the monastery.
More information about the monastery can be found HERE.
SCHEDULE
4:15pm Meet at Gavin House (1220 E. 58th St.)
4:30pm Depart from Hyde Park
5:00pm Arrive at the Monastery, welcome by Prior Funk
5:15pm Office of Vespers
6:00pm Dinner & Discussion
7:15pm Office of Compline
8:00pm Arrive back in Hyde Park
Students are also invited to a discussion with Fr. Peter on May 15 on “What is Contemplation?”

What is Contemplation? Reflections of a Monk
2019-05-15 18:30 - 20:00 | Gavin House, 1220 E 58th St., Chicago, IL, 60637
6:30pm Dinner | 7:00pm Discussion
Open to current students and faculty. Dinner will be served. Cosponsored by Calvert House and the Catholic Students Association. Made possible by a grant from the Our Sunday Visitor Institute.
From mindfulness while brushing one’s teeth, to Yoga at Rockefeller, to new meditation apps, there is a renewed interest today in the contemplative life as a counterbalance to the active life. But what exactly is contemplation and how is it relevant to the life of a student? Come and join University of Chicago alumnus and Benedictine Monk Fr. Peter Funk, OSB, for a conversation about why he was drawn to a life as a contemplative monk and how the monastic vision of the interior life can enrich our busy lives.
We will also organize a trip to Fr. Peter’s Benedictine Monastery of the Holy Cross on Saturday, May 18.

Hans Urs von Balthasar on Mystical Theology and “The Metaphysics of the Saints”
2019-05-10 14:00 - 17:00 | Gavin House, 1220 E 58th St., Chicago, IL, 60637
To view photos of the master class, visit Lumen Christi’s Facebook page.
Open to current students and faculty. Copies of the readings will be provided for registrants.
Hans Urs von Balthasar (1905–1988) was one of the most prolific and controversial Catholic theologians of the twentieth century. Responses to his work have ranged from the effusive to the dismissive. Instead of favoring any such one-sided judgments, however, I invite participants in this seminar to focus on two tasks that require considerably more scholarly effort. First, there is the task simply of understanding Balthasar—that is, making sense of his claims, their historical and intellectual contexts, the arguments that he offers in support of them, the style in which he expresses them, and the current debates surrounding them. Second, there is the task of evaluating his work—that is, clarifying what critiques may be warranted within the space of a sufficiently charitable interpretation and what positions theologians attuned to contemporary needs and realities ought to take on various aspects of his thought.
In particular, this seminar considers Balthasar in connection with the Christian tradition of mystical theology. Like many great figures in this tradition, Balthasar believes that theology and sanctity, thought and prayer, contemplation and action, knowledge and love ought to go together. As a mystical theologian, he is not content merely to comment on Christian doctrine (though it remains absolutely essential). He seeks to clarify the conditions under which the creature can be drawn into union with God through Christ and the Holy Spirit. He is interested as much in the lived experience of grace as in its theorization. The first part of the seminar offers some important context for understanding Balthasar (with help from Peter Henrici, S.J.) and highlights Balthasar’s famous essay, “Theology and Sanctity,” which offers a more or less adequate snapshot of his mystical theology. The second part of the seminar delves a bit deeper to study his complex genealogical arguments in the section of The Glory of the Lord, volume 5, called “The Metaphysics of the Saints.” Here Balthasar both exposes the mystical theological roots of certain modern conceptual and practical maladies and attempts to identify their mystical theological antidotes.
The recommended readings may be helpful to seminar participants who are interested in the question of Balthasar’s gender essentialism (see Corinne Crammer’s “One Sex or Two?”) or in the ecumenical potential of Balthasar’s mystical theology in the midst of debates between Karl Barth and Erich Pryzwara, and their intellectual descendants, about the analogia entis (see my “Dialectic and Analogy”).
REQUIRED READINGS
For session 1:
Henrici, Peter, S.J. “Hans Urs von Balthasar: A Sketch of His Life.” In Hans Urs von Balthasar: His Life and Work. Edited by David L. Schindler. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1991. 7–43.
Balthasar, Hans Urs von. “Theology and Sanctity.” In Explorations in Theology, volume 1, The Word Made Flesh. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1989. 181–209.
For session 2:
Balthasar, Hans Urs von. “The Metaphysics of the Saints.” In The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics, volume 5, The Realm of Metaphysics in the Modern Age. Translated by Oliver Davies, et al. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1991. 48–140.
SUGGESTED READINGS
Crammer, Corinne. “One Sex or Two? Balthasar’s Theology of the Sexes.” In The Cambridge Companion to Hans Urs von Balthasar. Edited by Edward Oakes, S.J. and David Moss. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004. 93–112.
Prevot, Andrew. “Dialectic and Analogy in Balthasar’s ‘The Metaphysics of the Saints.’” Pro Ecclesia: A Journal of Catholic and Evangelical Theology 26, no. 3 (Summer 2017): 261–77.
Andrew Prevot also gave a lecture on The Hope of Exodus in Black Theology on May 9.

The Hope of Exodus in Black Theology
2019-05-09 17:00 | Swift Hall, First Floor Common Room, 1025 E 58th St,Chicago, IL 60637, Hyde Park, IL
Listen to the panel discussion as a podcast episode. You can subscribe to the Lumen Christi Institute Podcast via our Soundcloud page, iTunes channel, Stitcher, TuneIn, ListenNotes, Podbean, Pocket Casts, and Google Play Music.
To view photos of the lecture, visit Lumen Christi’s Facebook page.
To listen to Prevot’s podcast interview with the Archdiocese of Chicago’s Black Catholic Initiative podcast hosted by Deacon John Cook, click here.
Free and open to the public. Part of the Lumen Christi Institute’s Black Catholic Initiative. Cosponsored by the Martin Marty Center for the Public Understanding of Religion, the Center for the Study of Race, Politics & Culture, Alchemy in Color at the Divinity School, the Theology Club at the Divinity School, and the Ethics Club at the Divinity School. Persons with disabilities who may need assistance should contact us at 773-955-5887 or by email.
For generations, black Christians in the United States have found hope in the biblical story of Exodus. Refusing the white supremacist interpretation of Christianity as a religion requiring obedience to masters, black Christians have used the Exodus narrative to develop an interpretation of Christianity as a religion promising deliverance from slavery and oppression. This was a central motif in James Cone’s black theology, as it emerged from the late 1960s struggles for black liberation. In subsequent decades, black scholars of Christianity such as Delores Williams, Eddie Glaude, Kelly Brown Douglas, and Willie Jennings have approached the story of Exodus in critical new ways that both complicate and renew the hope that it offers. In his lecture, Prevot will sketch this recent history of black Christian interpretation of Exodus and considers its implications for Christian theology today.
Andrew Prevot also taught a master class on Hans Urs von Balthasar on Mystical Theology and “The Metaphysics of the Saints” on May 10.

The Legacy of Fr. Theodore Hesburgh, CSC
2019-05-02 17:30 - 19:30 | Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP, 28th Floor, 155 North Wacker Drive, Chicago, IL 60606, Downtown, IL
Listen to the panel discussion as a podcast episode. You can subscribe to the Lumen Christi Institute Podcast via our Soundcloud page, iTunes channel, Stitcher, TuneIn, ListenNotes, Podbean, Pocket Casts, and Google Play Music.
To view photos of the discussion, visit Lumen Christi’s Facebook page.
To read the National Catholic Reporter‘s coverage of the event, click here.
A reception and panel discussion on the occasion of the publication of American Priest: The Ambitious Life and Conflicted Legacy of Notre Dame’s Father Ted Hesburgh by Fr. Wilson D. Miscamble, C.S.C.
Copies of the book will be available for purchase by the Seminary Coop Bookstore.
According to the great University of Chicago President Robert Maynard Hutchins, Fr. Hesburgh’s record at Notre Dame in the 1950’s and 1960’s was “one of the most spectacular achievements in higher education in the last 25 years.”
Considered for many decades to be the most influential priest in America, Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh, CSC, played pivotal roles in higher education, the Catholic Church, and national and international affairs. In American Priest, historian and Notre Dame priest-professor Wilson D. Miscamble, CSC, tracks how Hesburgh transformed Catholic higher education in the postwar era and explores how he became a much-celebrated voice in America at large.
Understanding Hesburgh’s life and work illuminates the journey that the Catholic Church traversed over the second half of the twentieth century. Exploring and evaluating Hesburgh’s importance, then, contributes not only to the colorful history of Notre Dame but also to make sense of the American Catholic experience.
SCHEDULE
5:00pm Registration
5:30pm Welcome & Introduction
5:35pm The Legacy of Fr. Ted Hesburgh, CSC
6:45pm Open bar & Hors d’oeuvres Reception
7:30pm End

On Bones and Genomes: What Can Science Tell Us About Being Human?
2019-04-25 19:00 | Kent Hall, Room 107, 1020 E 58th St. Chicago, IL 60637, Hyde Park, IL
To view photos of the conversation, visit Lumen Christi’s Facebook page.
Free and open to the public. Part of the Lumen Christi Institute’s “Science and Religion: A Dialogue of Cultures” project generously supported by the John Templeton Foundation.
Presented by the Veritas Forum at the University of Chicago, the Martin Marty Center, Cana, Cru, the Graduate Christian Fellowship, Holy Trinity Church, InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, Living Hope Church, the Lumen Christi Institute, the Program on Medicine and Religion, and the Zygon Center for Religion and Science.
Recent advances in science and technology have made great strides in addressing some of our deepest questions about being human. These advances help us to have a better understanding of who we are, where we came from, and what humanity’s place in nature might be. But are there limits to what science can tell us about being human? And does religious belief have anything to contribute to answering such questions? Join us for a conversation between two world-class professors as they discuss what makes us human.

Symposium on "Revolutionary Saint: The Theological Legacy of Oscar Romero"
2019-04-11 17:00 | Swift Hall, 3rd Floor Lecture, 1025 E 58th St. Chicago, IL 60637, Hyde Park, IL
Cosponsored by the Theology Club at the University of Chicago Divinity School and Orbis Books. This program was made possible in part by a grant from the Our Sunday Visitor Institute.
Join us for a symposium of the recent book Revolutionary Saint: The Theological Legacy of Óscar Romero (Orbis Books, 2018) by Michael Lee. Copies of the book will be available for sale by the Seminary Coop Bookstore at the event.
About the book
Many years after his death in 1980, the world is still absorbing the witness of Óscar Romero, the archbishop of San Salvador, martyred for his commitment to the poor and social justice. In this work, Michael E. Lee offers a profound reflection on the theological implications of Romero’s life and ministry.
Drawing on Romero’s biography as well as his homilies and other writings, Lee considers specifically how Romero’s witness challenges Christians in the U.S. to reimagine a robust Christian spirituality that is at once a mystical encounter with God and a prophetic engagement in the struggle for justice. In light of Romero’s beatification and canonization, Lee reflects on the implications of the archbishop’s recognition as a martyr and on the model of holiness he offers for the wider Church today.
Prof. Lee also gave a luncheon talk in downtown Chicago earlier on the 11th on “The Life and Legacy of Saint Oscar Romero.”

The Life and Legacy of Saint Oscar Romero
2019-04-11 12:00 - 13:30 | University Club of Chicago, 76 E Monroe St Chicago, IL 60603, Downtown, IL
Listen to the address as a podcast episode. You can subscribe to the Lumen Christi Institute Podcast via our Soundcloud page, iTunes channel, Stitcher, TuneIn, ListenNotes, Podbean, Pocket Casts, and Google Play Music.
To view photos of the talk, visit Lumen Christi’s Facebook page.
This program was made possible in part by a grant from the Our Sunday Visitor Institute.
Join us for a luncheon talk on the recently canonized Óscar Romero. Since his death in 1980, the world is still absorbing the witness of Óscar Romero, the Archbishop of San Salvador, martyred for his commitment to the poor and social justice. Prof. Lee will consider how Romero’s witness challenges Christians in the U.S. to reimagine a robust Christian spirituality that is at once a mystical encounter with God and a prophetic engagement in the struggle for justice. He will also reflect on the implications of the archbishop’s recognition as a martyr and on the model of holiness he offers for the wider Church today.
Prof. Lee also participated in a panel discussion of his book later that afternoon at the University of Chicago.

The Preferential Option for the Poor Today
2019-04-10 18:00
One of the most important ideas in Catholic Social Teaching of the last half century is the “preferential option for the poor.” It is a phrase that describes the Church’s ethical positions in the world, but it also conveys important theological notions about God. Though utilized across a range of magisterial texts of recent memory, the idea finds its most substantial development from theologians on Latin American soil. It is no wonder then that the preferential option is a crucial idea that runs through the encyclicals of Pope Francis.
This seminar will elaborate an understanding of the phrase, “preferential option for the poor,” describe how it developed historically, and suggest ways that it remains central to Catholic faith today. In particular, it will focus on two Latin American figures who have powerfully given meaning to this phrase in their teaching and their lives: Fr. Gustavo Gutiérrez, OP (Peru) and St. Óscar Romero (El Salvador).
Through a study of their writing and lived example of these important Latin American witnesses, participants will be encouraged to reflect on how their legacies and the preferential option represent an important resource for U.S. Latinx Catholics.
READINGS
Gustavo Gutiérrez, “Liberation Theology for the Twenty First Century,” in Romero’s Legacy: The Call to Peace and Justice, Pilar Hogan Closkey and John P. Hogan, eds. (Lanham, Md: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007), p. 45-59.
Óscar A. Romero, “The Church’s Mission Today,” a selection from his 2nd pastoral letter, The Church, the Body of Christ in History, in Voice of the Voiceless: The Four Pastoral Letters and Other Statements (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1985), p. 65-75.
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This event is part of a series on the Hispanic Catholic experience, made possible by a generous grant from the Our Sunday Visitor Institute.

Master Class on Romano Guardini's "The End of the Modern World"
2019-04-06 10:00 - 13:00 | Gavin House, 1220 E 58th St., Chicago, IL, 60637
To view photos of the master class, visit Lumen Christi’s Facebook page.
Open to current students and faculty. Copies of the book will be provided for registrants.
Romano Guardini (1885-1968)—Italian-born German priest—was one of the greatest Catholic minds of the 20th century. He helped shape Catholic theology between the two world wars and after, as well as the thinking of many non-Catholics of the period. He contributed to the Liturgical Movement and influenced the reforms of the Second Vatican Council. His legacy continues to be felt through Pope Benedict, who studied with him, and Pope Francis, who researched Guardini’s work as part of his graduate study. In the classic work The End of the Modern World Guardini presents a historical, philosophical, and theological inquiry into the nature of the modern age.
Background on Fr. Romano Guardini’s importance can be found HERE.
SCHEDULE
9:30am Coffee & Pastries
10:00am Session I
11:25am Break
11:35am Session II
1:00pm End, Optional Lunch

Symposium on "Catholicism and Democracy"
2019-04-05 16:00 | Breasted Hall, Oriental Institute, 1155 E 58th St. Chicago, IL 60637, Hyde Park, IL
Listen to the symposium as a podcast episode. You can subscribe to the Lumen Christi Institute Podcast via our Soundcloud page, iTunes channel, Stitcher, TuneIn, ListenNotes, Podbean, Pocket Casts, and Google Play Music.
To view photos of the symposium, visit Lumen Christi’s Facebook page.
Free and open to the public. Persons with disabilities who may need assistance should contact us at 773-955-5887 or by email. Copies of the book will be available for sale by the Seminary Coop Bookstore at the event.
ABOUT THE BOOK
Looking at leading philosophers and political theologians—among them Joseph de Maistre, Alexis de Tocqueville, and Charles Péguy—Perreau-Saussine shows how the Church redefined its relationship to the state in the long wake of the French Revolution.
Disenfranchised by the fall of the monarchy, the church in France at first embraced that most conservative of ideologies, “ultramontanism” (an emphasis on the central role of the papacy). Catholics whose church had lost its national status henceforth looked to the papacy for spiritual authority. Perreau-Saussine argues that this move paradoxically combined a fundamental repudiation of the liberal political order with an implicit acknowledgment of one of its core principles, the autonomy of the church from the state. However, as Perreau-Saussine shows, in the context of twentieth-century totalitarianism, the Catholic Church retrieved elements of its Gallican heritage and came to embrace another liberal (and Gallican) principle, the autonomy of the state from the church, for the sake of its corollary, freedom of religion. Perreau-Saussine concludes that Catholics came to terms with liberal democracy, though not without abiding concerns about the potential of that system to compromise freedom of religion in the pursuit of other goals.

“Many people think that the reconciliation of the Catholic Church and liberal democracy consummated at Vatican II represents a sudden shift. Perreau-Saussine shows to the contrary that it has deep roots in the history of the church, and in particular in the Gallicanism of ancien regime France. Even Vatican I can be seen as a stage on this long march. This rich and fascinating book sheds much light on what this reconciliation means—and what it couldn’t mean.”—Charles Taylor, professor emeritus, McGill University

“The modest title of this erudite and thoughtful book belies its actual achievement. It makes an important contribution to understanding a topic that seems likely to occupy thinking people in the West for some time to come: the general relation between politics and religion in the modern world.”—Raymond Geuss, author of Philosophy and Real Politics

“Catholicism and Democracy is a wonderfully fresh interpretation of the fascinating and tortuous path of Catholic political theology over the last two hundred years. With its strong narrative, this original book required me to turn the historical frame upside down and look at issues in a new way.”—F. Russell Hittinger, University of Tulsa

“Catholicism and Democracy looks at some of the ironies and paradoxes inherent in the relationship of the Catholic Church to modern politics. Deftly weaving together political history and literary interpretations of that history, Perreau-Saussine tells an important story with persuasion and brilliant insight.”—James B. Murphy, Dartmouth College

Financial Markets and Moral Inquiry
2019-03-20 17:15 | Ida Noyes Hall, Max Palevsky Cinema, 1212 E 59th St. Chicago, IL 60637, Hyde Park, IL
Listen to these events as podcast episodes. You can subscribe to the Lumen Christi Institute Podcast via our Soundcloud page, iTunes channel, Stitcher, TuneIn, ListenNotes, Podbean, Pocket Casts, and Google Play Music.
To view photos of the symposium, visit Lumen Christi’s Facebook page.
To read the National Catholic Reporter‘s coverage of the public symposium, click here.
Free and open to the public. Cosponsored by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development and Committee on International Justice and Peace, Catholics at Booth, and the Catholic Students Association. This event is made possible in part by a grant from the Our Sunday Visitor Institute. Persons with disabilities who may need assistance should contact us at 773-955-5887 or by email.
Part of the Lumen Christi Institute’s Ninth Conference on Economics & Catholic Social Thought.

Symposium on "Science and Wonder"
2019-03-13 17:00 | BSLC 115, 924 E 57th St. Chicago, IL 60637, Hyde Park, IL
Listen to the symposium as a podcast episode. You can subscribe to the Lumen Christi Institute Podcast via our Soundcloud page, iTunes channel, Stitcher, TuneIn, ListenNotes, Podbean, Pocket Casts, and Google Play Music.
To view photos of the symposium, visit Lumen Christi’s Facebook page.
Free and open to the public. Cosponsored by the Zygon Center for Religion and Science, the Seminary Coop Bookstore, and the Society of Catholic Scientists. Persons with disabilities who may need assistance should contact us at 773-955-5887 or by email. This program is made possible by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation and a Lemaître grant from the Magi Project. Copies of Prof. Sideris’s recent book Consecrating Science: Wonder, Knowledge, and the Natural World (University of California Press, 2017) will be available for sale by the Seminary Coop Bookstore at the event.
How is science related to mystery? What role does wonder play in inquiry and discovery? What are the best means of sharing and communicating wonder? Has scientific inquiry become itself a kind of religious practice? If so, does the study of theology or religion shed light on it? Join us for a discussion with an astrophysicist, a poet, an evolutionary biologist, and a religious ethicist on the experience and nature of wonder in science.

Weekly Non-Credit Course: "Who Do You Say That I Am? Visions of Christ in the Christian Tradition"
2019-03-05 19:00 - 21:00 | Gavin House, 1220 E 58th St., Chicago, IL, 60637
REGISTER HERE
6:00 Dinner | 6:30 Lecture
This weekly non-credit course is open to current students and faculty. Registrants are free to attend as many sessions as they choose. Sessions do not presuppose previous attendance or prior knowledge of the subject.
“But what about you? Who you say that I am?” (Lk 9.20) The Christian tradition arose in response to the question of the person of Jesus Christ, and in every generation Christians have struggled, debated, and developed answers to that question. This course will feature a selection of biblical, ancient, and medieval Christian thinkers who gave distinctive and highly influential answers to this question. The texts of the New Testament itself present Jesus Christ in various modes and forms, and early Christians struggled to articulate Christ’s humanity, divinity, incarnation, and his response to the question of evil.
Language, Truth & Logos
January 15 | Fr. Paul Mankowski, SJ (Lumen Christi Institute)
The Gospel of Mark
January 22 | Fr. Don Senior, CP (Catholic Theological Union)
POSTPONED DUE TO WEATHER | The Gospel of John
January 29 | Fr. Andrew Liaugminas (Calvert House Catholic Center)
Letter to the Hebrews
February 5 | Cameron Ferguson (University of Chicago)
Irenaeus of Lyon
February 12 | Scott Moringiello (DePaul University)
Athanasius
February 19 | Scott Moringiello (DePaul University)
Mary, Mother of God
February 26 | Rachel Fulton Brown (University of Chicago)
Julian of Norwich
March 5 | Bernard McGinn (University of Chicago)

Master Class on "Bernard Lonergan’s Christian Realism and the Word of God as True"
2019-03-02 11:00 - 14:00 | Gavin House, 1220 E 58th St., Chicago, IL, 60637
Open to current university students and faculty. Others interested in participating should contact us. Copies of the readings will be provided to those who register.
Bernard Lonergan, SJ (1904-1984), is widely praised as a giant of twentieth century theology and perhaps the most brilliant philosophical thinker of his generation. Still, he is an outlier in a firmament that includes such figures as Hans Urs von Balthasar, Karl Rahner, Henri de Lubac, and others. His best known works are not in theology itself but in philosophy (Insight: A Study of Human Understanding, 1957) and method (Method in Theology, 1972). Though a professor in Rome, he was mostly on the sidelines at Vatican II. His contemporaries were largely jaded by neo-Thomist revival and zealous to return to the Fathers, but Lonergan’s return was to Aquinas himself. The ferment of his generation would burst the old wineskins of neo-Scholasticism, but Lonergan was obliged to pour his theological ideas into them: two giant textbooks for his students at the Gregorian University in Rome (De Deo Trino, De Verbo Incarnato). They appeared in their last editions in 1964, which may have been the least propitious year on record for the presentation of a Latin manual to the theological public.
Lonergan stood apart from the currents of the day partly because he aimed to play a longer game. The renovation of Christian thought, he felt, required an intervention at the fundamental level of theological and philosophical method. In Insight he studied how understanding develops in mathematics, the natural sciences, common sense, and philosophy. His ulterior aim was to bring to light the principles of scientific progress in theology and so promote more effective collaboration and coherence in theology.
This seminar focuses on the relationship of Lonergan’s philosophical work to his project in theology, not in its entirety but in one key dimension. Our topic will be realism and the Word of God as true. The first session will focus on Lonergan’s philosophical articulation of cognitional structure, his realism, and his conception of the contemporary role of philosophy in Christian thought. The second session will consider his approach to the development and meaningfulness of Christian doctrine as an engagement with the truth-intention of God’s word to us.
REQUIRED READINGS

Bernard J.F. Lonergan, “Cognitional Structure,” in Collection, Collected Works 4, pp. 205-221.
Bernard J.F. Lonergan, “Questionnaire on Philosophy,” in Philosophical and Theological Papers, 1965-1980, Collected Works 17, pp. 352-383.
Bernard J.F. Lonergan, “The De-hellenization of Dogma,” in A Second Collection, pp. 11-32.
Bernard J.F. Lonergan, “The Origins of Christian Realism,” in A Second Collection, 239-261.

SUGGESTED READINGS

Bernard J.F. Lonergan, “Christology Today: Methodological Reflections,” in A Third Collection, pp. 74-99.
Jeremy D. Wilkins, Before Truth: Lonergan, Aquinas, and the Problem of Wisdom (Washington, D.C.: The CUA Press, 2018). Chapter 3, “A ‘Wisdom of the Concrete’,” introduces Lonergan’s fundamental project.
Chapter 7, “Doctrine and Meaning,” explores his approach to the development and meaningfulness of Christian doctrine.

SCHEDULE
9:30am Coffee & Pastries
10:00am Session I, “Cognitional Structure” and “Questionnaire on Philosophy”
11:25am Break
11:35am Session II, “The De-hellenization of Dogma” and “Origins of Christian Realism”
1:00pm End, Optional Lunch

Being, Nature, Grace: Clashing Visions in Milbank and Aquinas
2019-02-28 17:00 | Swift Hall, 3rd Floor Lecture, 1025 E 58th St. Chicago, IL 60637, Hyde Park, IL
To view photos of the lecture, visit Lumen Christi’s Facebook page.
Free and open to the public. Cosponsored by the Martin Marty Center for the Public Understanding of Religion at the University of Chicago Divinity School and the Theology Club of the University of Chicago Divinity School. Persons with disabilities who may need assistance should contact us at 773-955-5887 or by email.
Drawing from a chapter taken from a book in draft, in this talk DeHart will critically evaluate John Milbank’s understanding of the relationship between creation and divine grace and offer an alternative, sourced in Aquinas, that he considers more adequate.

Science, Creation, & the Catholic Imagination
2019-02-23 10:00 - 19:30 | Swift Hall, 1025 E 58th St. Chicago, IL 60637, Hyde Park, IL
Listen to the lectures as podcast episodes. You can subscribe to the Lumen Christi Institute Podcast via our Soundcloud page, iTunes channel, Stitcher, TuneIn, ListenNotes, Podbean, Pocket Casts, and Google Play Music.
To view photos of the conference, visit Lumen Christi’s Facebook page.
Have you ever wondered if science and religion can co-exist? Or whether it is rational (or irrational) to believe in God? How can the story of Adam and Eve in the Book of Genesis be reconciled with the Big Bang? Or with evolution? What does The Lord of the Rings have to do with Jesus? And what exactly is hillbilly thomism?
The intellectual tradition of the Catholic Church has been asking (and answering!) questions of this kind for two thousand years. If you are interested in discussing these questions with college professors, graduate students, and other high schoolers from all over Chicagoland, register below.
Sponsored by the Lumen Christi Institute, the Archdiocese of Chicago Vocation Office, Relevant Radio, St. Ignatius College Prep, the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame, Fenwick High School, and the Theology Club. This program is made possible by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation.
Open to current high school students. Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner are included. For any parents and chaperones who will be present, an optional lunchtime event will be held nearby at Gavin House (1220 East 58th Street) at 12:00pm. Lunch will be provided. If you are interested in participating in this lunchtime event, please indicate it on the registration page. Need-based scholarships are available upon request. Please contact us with any questions about this program.
A day-long conference for high school students to provide an introduction to the Catholic vision of intellectual life and culture. Students will listen to lectures by expert scholars, participate in break-out group discussions, meet and socialize with other high school students, and attend mass. More info, including a detailed schedule will be available soon.
TENTATIVE SCHEDULE

9 – 9:45 | Registration and Breakfast in Swift Common Room
9:45 – 10 | Opening Prayer
10 – 11 | Session 1: Lecture on Faith and Reason with Prof. Meghan Sullivan
11 – 11:15 | Break
11:15 – 12:15 | Session 2: Lecture on Cosmology and Creation with Fr. John Kartje
12:30 – 1:15 | Lunchtime discussion session
1:30 – 2:30 | Session 3: Lecture on the Catholic Imagination with Prof. Michael Murphy
2:45 – 3:15 | Scavenger Hunt*
3:15 – 4:15 | Afternoon discussion session
4:30 – 5:30 | Mass in Bond Chapel (this anticipatory mass fulfills the Sunday obligation)
5:30 – 6:30 | OPTIONAL closing reception
Parents and chaperones are invited to a lunchtime discussion with Dr. Chris Baglow of Notre Dame’s Mcgrath Institute for Church Life, to be held at Gavin House (1220 E. 58th St).

Lumen Christi Institute - Young Catholic Professionals Great Books Seminar: The Novel and the Crisis of Faith
2019-02-20 01:00 | Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP, 28th Floor, 155 North Wacker Drive, Chicago, IL 60606, Downtown, IL
REGISTRATION IS FULL.
The Lumen Christi Institute is proud to announce a new program in partnership with the Chicago chapter of Young Catholic Professionals (YCP). The 2019 Lumen Christi Institute – Young Catholic Professionals Great Books Seminar is an adult educational initiative aimed at equipping Catholic professionals 40 and under with a deeper understanding of the Catholic intellectual and literary traditions. Participants will gather monthly downtown for guided discussions on excerpts from celebrated texts as they work through a syllabus crafted by seminar leader Fr. Paul Mankowski, SJ, Lumen Christi’s scholar-in-residence.
This year’s theme is “The Novel and the Crisis of Faith.” The late 19th and 20th century novel provided Christian authors with a genre through which to examine the conflict of faith in Christ with vastly strengthened anti-Christian forces in politics, culture, and society. The examination of the fictional depiction of the dynamics of salvation and damnation will aim at deepening our own understanding of the ways in which faith simultaneously engages the world while it disentangles itself from worldliness. The discussions are to focus on relatively short selections (40 – 90 pages) from the assigned novels, although participants are encouraged to read the works in their entirety.
To view the syllabus, which you will also receive upon registering, click here.
The cost of seminar registration covers refreshments, drinks, and course materials for the eight seminar meetings from February to September. Registration will close when 35 participants have signed up and is is available on a first-come, first-served basis; 20 seats will be reserved for members of YCP Chicago. Registrants need not attend every session in order to register; they must still pay the full cost of registration. Registrants may choose to purchase books on their own rather than via Lumen Christi (see pricing below).
Dates:
February 20
March 21
April 25
May 22
June 26
July 24
August 21
September 25
Schedule:
5:30pm – beer, wine, and heavy hors d’oeuvres social
6pm – seminar begins
7pm – seminar ends
Price:
With books, for YCP Chicago members or those who sign up for membership: $100
With books, for non-YCP Chicago members: $380
Without books, for YCP Chicago members or those who sign up for membership: $50
Without books, for non-YCP Chicago members: $280
With any additional inquiries please contact Michael Bradley at mbradley@lumenchristi.org.

CANCELLED: Master Class on "Thomas Merton at Columbia: On the Love of Learning and the Desire for God"
2019-02-16 11:00 - 14:00 | Gavin House, 1220 E 58th St., Chicago, IL, 60637
Due to unforseen circumstances, Professor Inchausti has to cancel his visit to Chicago and unfortnately this event has been cancelled.
Open to current university students and faculty. Others interested in participating should contact us. Copies of the readings will be provided to those who register.
Thomas Merton is one of the most influential spiritual writers of the 20th century. His autobiography, Seven Storey Mountain, tells the story of a restless and brilliant young man who goes from a literature student at Columbia University to taking vows as a Trappist monk. In this two-part, one day master class, we will look at Merton’s education at Columbia leading up to his conversion to Roman Catholicism and then pick up his intellectual journey twenty years later by examining the content and continuing relevance of his “Cold War Prophecies.”
Readings

Seven Storey Mountain, Part One: Chapter 4 “Children of the Marketplace pp. 145-182 and Part Two: Chapter 1 “With a Great Price” pp.185-246.
Conjectures of a Guilty By-Stander, Part Two: Truth and Violence: An Interesting Era pp. 65-128.

Schedule
9:30am Coffee & Pastries
10:00am Session I
11:25am Break
11:35am Session II
1:00pm End, Optional Lunch

Symposium on "Action versus Contemplation: Why an Ancient Debate Still Matters"
2019-02-15 16:00 - 18:00 | Swift Hall, 3rd Floor Lecture, 1025 E 58th St. Chicago, IL 60637, Hyde Park, IL
Listen to the symposium as a podcast episode. You can subscribe to the Lumen Christi Institute Podcast via our Soundcloud page, iTunes channel, Stitcher, TuneIn, ListenNotes, Podbean, Pocket Casts, and Google Play Music.
To view photos of the symposium, visit Lumen Christi’s Facebook page.
A symposium on the recent book Action versus Contemplation: Why an Ancient Debate Still Matters (University of Chicago Press, 2018) by Jennifer Summit and Blakey Vermeule. Free and open to the public. Persons with disabilities who may need assistance should contact us at 773-955-5887 or by email.
Cosponsored by the English Department, the Seminary Coop Bookstore, the University of Chicago Press, the Our Sunday Visitor Institute, and the Theology Club at the Divinity School. Copies of the book will be available for purchase at the event.
“All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone,” Blaise Pascal wrote in 1654. But then there’s Walt Whitman, in 1856: “Whoever you are, come forth! Or man or woman come forth! / You must not stay sleeping and dallying there in the house.”
It is truly an ancient debate: Is it better to be active or contemplative? To do or to think? To make an impact, or to understand the world more deeply? With Action versus Contemplation, Jennifer Summit and Blakey Vermeule address the question in a refreshingly unexpected way: by refusing to take sides. Rather, they argue for a rethinking of the very opposition. The active and the contemplative can—and should—be vibrantly alive in each of us, fused rather than sundered. Writing in a personable, accessible style, Summit and Vermeule guide readers through the long history of this debate from Plato to Pixar, drawing compelling connections to the questions and problems of today.

“Though the book will be valuable to a wide readership, the recurring theme of current trends in education makes it particularly important within the academy. This engaging and clever book will generate important conversations. Highly recommended.”
Choice

“A fascinating and inspiring tour of big ideas–worth both contemplating and acting on.“
Sarah Bakewell, author of At the Existentialist Cafe

“Action versus Contemplation brings a cooling sense of balance to a whole range of important and often highly polarized arguments about technology, work, education, and more. How liberating to discover that we don’t need to choose between nostalgia and philistinism, Captain Ludd and Dr. Pangloss. Even better, the authors give us not just historical elaborations of the theoretical complementarity of action and contemplation, but actual, already-existing examples of the middle position at work today. They show us that, no matter how ‘soulless’ society seems to become, meaning-seeking behavior does and always will continue.”
William Deresiewicz, author of Excellent Sheep

“This is a very subtle and surprising book that nevertheless goes down easy because you expect it to take a side in a binary (i.e., to take your side), but instead it seeks to transcend that binary. There’s great generosity of spirit in their writing and thinking, and that generosity will have a salutary effect on all those whose thinking this book will touch. Action versus Contemplation is itself a contemplative document meant to intervene in the world it addresses, to get us to rethink practical matters, and to act in ways that will promote thinking. It urges action as a way of thinking, and thinking as a way of acting, and is a model of what it advocates for.”

William Flesch, Brandeis University

Mass for Candlemas with Schola Antiqua and Symposium on Sacred Music in Context and Practice
2019-02-02 10:00 - 13:30 | Swift Hall, 3rd Floor Lecture, 1025 E 58th St. Chicago, IL 60637, Hyde Park, IL
Listen to the symposium as a podcast episode. You can subscribe to the Lumen Christi Institute Podcast via our Soundcloud page, iTunes channel, Stitcher, TuneIn, ListenNotes, Podbean, Pocket Casts, and Google Play Music.
To view photos of the Mass and symposium, visit Lumen Christi’s Facebook page.
Registration required. $15 for general audience/FREE for current students and faculty/FREE for those only attending the Mass.
In honor of Fr. Willard Jabusch (1930-2018), former Chaplain of Calvert House, Priest of the Archdiocese of Chicago, writer, and composer. Cosponsored by Calvert House Catholic Center. Persons with disabilities who need an accommodation in order to participate in this event should email us or call 773-955-5887.
This Mass for the Feast of the Presentation (Candlemas) will feature chant by Schola Antiqua of Chicago. Following the Mass—for those registered—there will be a breakfast reception and a symposium, which will consider historical perspectives on music for the feast from the medieval period and early modern Italy. In addition it will reflect on modern incorporations of the plainchant and polyphonic tradition in contexts such as a contemporary monastic community and a degree program in Sacred Music at the University of Notre Dame.

SCHEDULE
9:00-10:15am | Bond Chapel
Mass
Prior Peter Funk, OSB, Celebrant
Michael Alan Anderson, Director, Schola Antiqua of Chicago
10:15-11:00am | Swift Common Room (1st Floor)
Continental Breakfast and Registration
11:00am-12:30pm | Swift Lecture Hall (3rd Floor)
Symposium “Sacred Music in Context and Practice”
Michael Anderson, University of Rochester
Margot Fassler, University of Notre Dame
Prior Peter Funk, OSB, Monastery of the Holy Cross
Peter Jeffery, University of Notre Dame
Robert Kendrick, University of Chicago

Pluralism In A Polarized Age: Navigating Our Deepest Differences Together
2019-01-31 20:30 | International House at the University of Chicago, 1414 E 59th St. Chicago, IL 60637, Hyde Park, IL
Listen to the conversation as a podcast episode. You can subscribe to the Lumen Christi Institute Podcast via our Soundcloud page, iTunes channel, Stitcher, TuneIn, ListenNotes, Podbean, Pocket Casts, and Google Play Music.
To view photos of the discussion, visit Lumen Christi’s Facebook page.
Free and open to the public. Persons with disabilities who need assistance should contact the Office of Programs and External Relations in advance at 773-753-2274 or i-house-programs@uchicago.edu.
Presented by the Veritas Forum at the University of Chicago: Cana, Cru, the Christian Legal Society, Hyde Park Church (UBF), Intervarsity, Living Hope Church, the Lumen Christi Institute, Navigators Chicago, and the Vineyard Church.
Cosponsored by the Institute of Politics, the International House Global Voices Program, the Office of Spiritual Life, the Law School, the Martin Marty Center for the Public Understanding of Relgion, the Department of Political Science, the St Thomas More Society, the Seminary Coop Bookstore, and the University of Chicago Press.
In our increasingly polarized society, how do we speak to one another about our deepest beliefs? Can we even bring our personal religious and political convictions to bear in the university and other public spaces? And how does pluralism contribute to greater flourishing in our society? Join us as two of our nation’s leading voices on pluralism discuss their own beliefs and what it means to bring one’s whole person (including one’s religious, political, and ethical convictions) into the public square with confidence and humility.
For more information about the Veritas Forum at the University of Chicago, visit HERE.

CANCELLED Master Class on the Song of Songs
2019-01-25 11:00 - 13:15 | Gavin House, 1220 E 58th St., Chicago, IL, 60637
DUE TO WEATHER, DOM MARK SCOTT HAS HAD TO POSTPONE HIS VISIT TO CHICAGO. THIS EVENT HAS BEEN CANCELLED.
Registration required. Open to current students and faculty.
Dom Mark Scott, OCSO, will lead students through a Cistercian reading of the Song of Songs with reference to sermons of Bernard of Clairvaux.
SCHEDULE
9:30am Coffee, tea, and pastries
10:00am Session I
11:00am Break
11:15am Session II
12:15pm Close
OPTIONAL PREPARATORY READINGS

Song of Songs
Bernard of Clairvaux, Collected Works (Paulist Press, 1987). Sermons 1, 2, 3, 8, 50, 74, 80, 83, 84. (PDF link provided when you register.)

Dom Mark will also give a talk on the history of the Trappists on January 24. More info HERE.

CANCELLED Monks, Silence, God: The History of the Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance
2019-01-24 18:15 | Swift Hall, First Floor Common Room, 1025 E 58th St,Chicago, IL 60637, Hyde Park, IL
DUE TO WEATHER, DOM MARK SCOTT HAS HAD TO POSTPONE HIS VISIT TO CHICAGO. THIS EVENT HAS BEEN CANCELLED.
Free and open to the public. Cosponsored by the Theology Club and the Calvert House Catholic Center. Persons with disabilities who may need assistance should contact us at 773-955-5887 or by email.
At this talk Dom Mark Scott, OCSO, abbot of New Melleray Abbey, will give an overview of the history and spirituality of the contemplative monastic order known as the Trappists.
Dom Mark will also lead a master class for students on the Song of Songs on January 25. More info HERE.

CANCELLED New Melleray Abbey: A Chapter in the Story of Cistercian Trappist Monks in America
2019-01-23 18:30 - 20:30 | Loyola University of Chicago – Water Tower Campus, Schreiber Center 16 East Pearson Street Chicago, IL 60611, River North, IL
DUE TO WEATHER, DOM MARK SCOTT HAS HAD TO POSTPONE HIS VISIT TO CHICAGO. THIS EVENT HAS BEEN CANCELLED.
Cosponsored by the Hank Center for the Catholic Intellectual Heritage at Loyola University Chicago
$500 Host Committee (includes 8 tickets) / $40 General / $10 students
5:30pm Hors d’oeuvres reception
6:30pm Talk and Q&A
7:30pm Close
Christian monasticism began in the 3rd century when St. Anthony sought God (and battled demons) outside of Alexandria. In a sense, the story of New Melleray Abbey begins there with the “Desert Fathers” and continues through St. Benedict and his Rule (5th century), the Cistercian reform led by St. Bernard of Clairvaux (12th century), the austere reforms of La Trappe in Normandy (17th century), and, in the 19th century, the planting of Trappist Cistercian monasticism at Gethsemani Abbey in Kentucky by monks from France and at New Melleray in Iowa by Irish monks . In a rare public talk, the Abbot of New Melleray will tell the story of the abbey in light of this longer history.

What do We Mean When We Speak of Revelation?
2019-01-16 18:15 | Swift Hall, First Floor Common Room, 1025 E 58th St,Chicago, IL 60637, Hyde Park, IL
Listen to the lecture as a podcast episode. You can subscribe to the Lumen Christi Institute Podcast via our Soundcloud page, iTunes channel, Stitcher, TuneIn, ListenNotes, Podbean, Pocket Casts, and Google Play Music.
To view photos of the lecture, visit Lumen Christi’s Facebook page.
Free and open to the public. Cosponsored by the John U. Nef Committee on Social Thought and The Philosophy of Religions Workshop. Persons with disabilities who may need assistance should contact us at 773-955-5887 or by email.
In this lecture, philosopher Jean-Luc Marion will draw on reflections from his recent book Givenness and Revelation to develop a new concept of revelation. Traditionally, the idea of revelation seems to oppose knowledge acquired through the use of reason and knowledge given by revelation. If revealed knowledge comes from elsewhere, then it is of an entirely different order than the rational. Likewise, if revelation merely makes something known that would be accessible to reason in other circumstances, then revelation remains something superfluous to rationality. Is it possible to have a concept of revelation that overcomes this tension with reason and, ultimately, expands the limits of rationality?

"The Mystery of Hope: A Monk’s Reading of Spe Salvi" at the Benedictine Monastery of the Holy Cross
2018-12-01 17:30 - 21:00 | The Monastery of the Holy Cross, 3111 South Aberdeen St. Chicago, IL 60608, Chicago, IL
Transportation will be provided from Hyde Park. Open to current university students and faculty.
Join us for an evening of prayer and conversation with Benedictine monks at the Monastery of the Holy Cross on the south side of Chicago. Attendees will participate in prayer of the Divine Office (vespers and compline), and have dinner and discussion with Prior Peter Funk on Benedict XVI’s encyclical on the theological virtue of hope, Spe Salvi. Fr. Peter will emphasize the need for hope in the life of the Church today.
More information about the monastery can be found HERE.
SCHEDULE
4:15pm Meet at Gavin House (1220 E. 58th St.)
4:30pm Depart from Hyde Park
5:00pm Arrive at the Monastery, welcome by Prior Funk
5:15pm Office of Vespers
6:00pm Dinner & Discussion of Spe Salvi
7:15pm Office of Compline
8:00pm Arrive back in Hyde Park

Non-Credit Course on "Faith, Crisis, Christ"
2018-11-20 19:00 - 21:00 | Gavin House, 1220 E 58th St., Chicago, IL, 60637
6:00 Dinner | 6:30 Lecture
This weekly non-credit course is open to current students and faculty. Registrants are free to attend as many sessions as they choose. Sessions do not presuppose previous attendance or prior knowledge of the subject.
The project of fides quaerens intellectum (faith seeking understanding) is not reserved to professional theologians but is the prerogative of every thinking person, and can be especially pressing when the claims of religion—and rationality itself—are viewed with suspicion or contempt. The twentieth century and the first decades of our own have erected formidable systems of skepticism yet also brought into the field notable creativity in addressing the problems of belief. This course will make use of classic works of anglophone Christian writers concerned to demonstrate how it is that faith permits the human person to see farther and to understand the world more deeply.
SCHEDULE
OCT 9: G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man.
OCT 16: J.R.R. Tolkien, On Fairy-Stories.
OCT 23: C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity.
OCT 30: J. Budziszewski, The Line Through the Heart.
NOV 6: Ronald A. Knox, The Hidden Stream & In Soft Garments.
NOV 13: C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters.
NOV 20: J.R.R. Tolkien, Selected Letters.

The Catholic Church in Crisis: A Panel Discussion
2018-11-15 17:30 | Ida Noyes Hall, Library, 1212 E 59th St. Chicago, IL 60637, Hyde Park, IL
You can subscribe to the Lumen Christi Institute Podcast via our Soundcloud page, iTunes channel, Stitcher, TuneIn, ListenNotes, Podbean, Pocket Casts, and Google Play Music.
To read Daniels’ contribution to this panel discussion in the Notre Dame McGrath Institute for Church Life’s Church Life Journal, click here.
To view photos of the panel, visit Lumen Christi’s Facebook page.
You can view and download the poster for the event here.
Free and open to the public. Cosponsored by the Theology Club and the Catholic Students Association.
Since questions of sexual abuse emerged in the Church, and in other institutions, in the 1980s, some dioceses have (including Chicago) demonstrated leadership in dealing with the issue. After the “Spotlight” investigation by the Boston Globe, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops established a “zero tolerance” policy toward the commission and cover-up of abuse. This panel of Catholic scholars and professionals will review the Church’s attempt to face this issue and will consider why it has reemerged in 2018, relating that question to broader issues of clericalism and governance in the Catholic Church.
Fr. Sweeney also gave a downtown lunch address on November 15 on a related topic, the challenge to lay Catholics to realize the fullness of their lives as Christians.

How Catholics Can Realize the Royal Priesthood of the Laity and Rebuild a Church in Crisis
2018-11-15 13:00 - 14:30 | University Club of Chicago, 76 E Monroe St Chicago, IL 60603, Downtown, IL
You can subscribe to the Lumen Christi Institute Podcast via our Soundcloud page, iTunes channel, Stitcher, TuneIn, ListenNotes, Podbean, Pocket Casts, and Google Play Music.
To view photos of the address, visit Lumen Christi’s Facebook page.
To read the published version of the address in Commonweal, click here.
You can download the event poster here.
$30 Student (with ID) / $60 General / $600 Host Committee
Registration includes lunch.
The Church has long taught that all baptized Christians share in Christ’s royal priesthood, and that we are “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people,” who should “declare the wonderful deeds of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.”
The current crisis in which the American Church finds herself lies in a failure to realize this common priestly vocation, and has led to clericalism, the cover-up of sexual abuse, lack of lay discipleship, and a dearth of vocations. Fr. Michael Sweeney, OP, has developed a theology of the laity that addresses this theological misunderstanding. He has applied this theology of the laity both as co-founder of the St. Catherine of Siena Institute and as the co-founder of the Lay Mission Project of the Western Dominican Province.
Fr. Sweeney will speak to the suggestion of then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger that we ought to recognize a lay office in the Church in order to promote the full participation of the laity in the Church’s mission, with a view to enabling a real collaboration between the laity and the hierarchy.
Fr. Sweeney also participated on a panel discussion on similar topics on the afternoon of November 15.

Christian Citizenship: A Paradox?
2018-11-12 17:30 | Classics 110, 1010 E 59th St. Chicago, IL 60637, Hyde Park, IL
You can subscribe to the Lumen Christi Institute Podcast via our Soundcloud page, iTunes channel, Stitcher, TuneIn, ListenNotes, Podbean, Pocket Casts, and Google Play Music.
To view photos of the lecture, visit Lumen Christi’s Facebook page.
To read Tardivel’s lecture in essay form in the Notre Dame McGrath Institute for Church Life’s Church Life Journal, click here.
You can download the event poster here.
Free and open to the public. Cosponsored by the France Chicago Center.
Does Christian faith imply a political doctrine such as a Christian political regime? Drawing on Justin, Tertullian, and Augustine, Prof. Tardivel argues that even as Christian citizenship does not refer to a political doctrine, it nonetheless demands a certain manner of living in the city, presenting a paradox to classical political thinking. This lecture focuses on the paradox of Christian citizenship and its implications.

Master Class on "Jacques Maritain, Étienne Gilson, and the Thomist Renewal in the 20th Century: Academic and Spiritual Approaches"
2018-11-10 11:00 - 14:00 | Gavin House, 1220 E 58th St., Chicago, IL, 60637
Open to current university students and faculty. PDFs of the assigned readings will be provided for those who register.
For the Blessed Paul VI, Jacques Maritain (1882-1973) was a master “in the art of thinking and praying”. In 1975, Paul VI sent a letter to Etienne Gilson (1884-1978) to thank him for his whole life devoted to the search of truth and wisdom. In “Fides et Ratio” (1998, n.74), Saint John Paul II suggested Maritain and Gilson, among other names, as models of thinkers to reconcile philosophy and theology, reason and the word of God. What are the lessons taught by Maritain and Gilson that could be fruitful for the Catholics of the XXI century?
SCHEDULE
9:30am Coffee & tea
10:00am Session I
11:25am Break
11:35am Session II
1:00pm End, Lunch

The Collapse of Lehman Brothers: An Inside Story
2018-11-01 16:30 | Saieh Hall 021, 5757 S. University Ave. Chicago, IL 60637, Hyde Park, IL
You can subscribe to the Lumen Christi Institute Podcast via our Soundcloud page, iTunes channel, Stitcher, TuneIn, ListenNotes, Podbean, Pocket Casts, and Google Play Music.
To view photos of Freidheim’s talk, visit Lumen Christi’s Facebook page. This event was cosponsored by Catholics at Booth.
What it was like to be inside the executive suite of Lehman Brothers during the financial crisis of 2008? Scott Freidheim—former Lehman Brothers Chief Administrative Officer and Executive Vice President—will offer a first-hand account of what happened in 2008, why Lehman Brothers did not need to fail, and how the fall of Lehman Brothers and great personal financial loss affected his sense of meaning as a person of faith.
You may also be interested in our event from 2011 on “Decision-Making in the Pressure Cooker: Lessons Learned from the Collapse of Lehman Brothers.”

Georges Lemaître: His Science, Faith, and Why “Hubble’s Law” Ought to be Renamed
2018-10-31 19:00 - 20:00 | Kent Hall, Room 107, 1020 E 58th St. Chicago, IL 60637, Hyde Park, IL
You can subscribe to the Lumen Christi Institute Podcast via our Soundcloud page, iTunes channel, Stitcher, TuneIn, ListenNotes, Podbean, Pocket Casts, and Google Play Music.
To read an adapted version of Lunine’s lecture as an article published by the Notre Dame McGrath Institute for Church Life’s ​​​​​​​Church Life Journal, click here.
To view photos of the lecture, visit Lumen Christi’s Facebook page.
Free and open to the public. Cosponsored by the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics.
Georges Lemaître—a Belgian priest and cosmologist—proposed what came to be known as the “Big Bang” model of the origin of the cosmos. What is less well known is that Lemaître discovered and published Hubble’s law—the first observational basis for the expansion of the universe—in 1927—well before Edwin Hubble did. Lemaître also treated Einstein’s cosmological constant as a vacuum energy, in 1933, foreshadowing work done a half-century later. Lemaître is less well known as a pioneering cosmologist than as a chimeric figure with both a scientific and religious career. Thus he has been treated by historians differently from other scientists. In this talk Lunine will argue that renaming the “Hubble law” the “Hubble-Lemaître law” (resolution B4 2018 of the International Astronomical Union) is a reasonable solution to the dilemma posed by history’s treatment of the Belgian cosmologist.

Can Transcendence be Organized? The Catholic Church Between Universalism and Establishment
2018-10-24 16:30 | Swift Hall, First Floor Common Room, 1025 E 58th St,Chicago, IL 60637, Hyde Park, IL
Free and open to the public. Cosponsored by the Committee on Social Thought and the Theology Club.
If a religion differentiates itself from the culture of specific peoples, states, or empires and represents the ideal of moral universalism and an understanding of transcendence, it cannot evade the problem of self-organization. While this is true of all “post-axial” religions, this lecture restricts itself to the Christian Church and other forms of the social organization of Christians (sect, denomination etc.). A comparison between the Catholic Church and these other forms and an understanding of their interaction in the history of Christianity is instructive with regard to the current debates about reforms in the Catholic Church.

Faith and Politics: Reflections of a Catholic Legislator
2018-10-22 12:00 - 13:20 | Gavin House, 1220 E 58th St., Chicago, IL, 60637
Open to current university students and faculty. Lunch will be served.
Join the Lumen Christi Institute and the Center for Latin American Studies for a lunch discussion with Ignacio Walker, academic and former Chilean Secretary of State (2004-2006), on his current project entitled “Faith and Politics.” He will share reflections from his experience on negotiating faith commitments as a Catholic politician in a modern, secular, democratic, pluralistic society.

Schola Antiqua Concert "La Rue @ 500"
2018-10-21 16:00 - 17:30 | Emmanuel Episcopal Church, 203 S Kensington Ave, La Grange
$25 general/$10 student
Schola Antiqua commemorates the quincentennial of the death of Pierre de la Rue (d. 1518), one of the most talented and highly-prized composers of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. In the service of the wealthy and influential Habsburg-Burgundian court, La Rue actively wrote in all of the major musical genres of his time, and this is echoed in the program’s design. Highlights from his carefully constructed masses include music for very low voices at the composer’s disposal. Some of his beloved motets and songs complete the program. This program is sponsored in part by the Lumen Christi Institute and by a grant from the Illinois Arts Council.
Schola Antiqua performed the same concert on October 20 in Chicago.

Vatican I: Loss and Gain with Papal Governance of the Catholic Church
2018-10-13 13:30 - 15:30 | Swift Hall, 3rd Floor Lecture, 1025 E 58th St. Chicago, IL 60637, Hyde Park, IL
You can subscribe to the Lumen Christi Institute Podcast via our Soundcloud page, iTunes channel, Stitcher, TuneIn, ListenNotes, Podbean, Pocket Casts, and Google Play Music.
To read O’Malley’s contribution to this panel discussion in the Notre Dame McGrath Institute for Church Life’s Church Life Journal, click here.
To view photos of the symposium, visit Lumen Christi’s Facebook page.
Free and open to the public. Cosponsored by the Theology Club.
A symposium and reception on the occasion of the publication of Vatican I: The Council and the Making of the Ultramontane Church (Harvard University Press, 2018) by Fr. John O’Malley, SJ. Copies of the book will be available for sale by the Seminary Co-op.
Vatican Council I (1869-1870) lasted barely eight months and produced only two documents. The document Pastor Aeternus deeply reconfigured the government of the Church on the basis of the universal jurisdiction of the pope. As we are now approaching the 150th anniversary of that event we can ask: How has the papal-centered government fared over the centuries? Did Vatican II initiate significant changes in the ecclesiastical government? In light of these councils, how should we evaluate the scandals and the fragmentation of episcopal governance in the Church?
Fr. O’Malley also gave a lecture on October 11 and taught a master class on October 12.

Master Class on "Councils and Popes: Who's in Charge?"
2018-10-12 14:00 - 17:00 | Gavin House, 1220 E 58th St., Chicago, IL, 60637
Registration is required. Open to current university students and faculty. A PDF of the assigned readings will be provided.
The purpose of the seminar is to deepen understanding of the historical course of the relationship between councils and popes through an examination of four key texts published at four key moments in the ongoing dialectic between these two institutions. Our time together will be spent on a close reading and discussion of the texts, trying to understand them in their historical contexts. We will read them also with an eye to their possible relevance to the situation of the Catholic Church today. In recent years, for instance, the word synodality has entered our ecclesiastical vocabulary. Synod is the Greek form of the Latin word for council. The two words are, therefore, synonyms. What should this mean for us?
PRIMARY READINGS

The Council of Constance, 1415
The Four Gallican Articles, 1652
Pastor Aeternus, Vatican Council I, 1870
Lumen Gentium (Chapter three), Vatican Council II, 1964

BACKGROUND READINGS

Council of Constance: Francis Oakley, The Conciliarist Tradition (Oxford, 2003).
Gallican Articles: Richard F. Constigan, The Consensus of the Church and Papal Infallibility (Catholic UP, 2005).
Pastor Aeternus: Austin Gaugh, Paris and Rome: The Gallican Church and the Ultramontane Campaign (Oxford, 1986). John W. O’Malley: Vatican I: The Council and the Making of the Ultramontane Church (Harvard, 2018).
Lumen Gentium: John W. O’Malley, What Happened at Vatican II (Harvard, 2008).

SCHEDULE
1:30pm Coffee & Tea
2:00pm Session I
3:25pm Break
3:35pm Session II
5:00pm Wine & cheese reception
6:00pm End
John O’Malley also gave a lecture on October 11 and participated in a symposium on October 13.

Comparing Trent, Vactican I, and Vatican II
2018-10-11 16:30 | Classics 110, 1010 E 59th St. Chicago, IL 60637, Hyde Park, IL
To view photos of the lecture, visit Lumen Christi’s Facebook page.
Free and open to the public.
Based on a forthcoming book entitled When Bishops Meet: An Essay Comparing Trent, Vatican I, and Vatican II that bears the fruit of decades of scholarship, this lecture by one of the greatest living experts of modern Church history will compare the three modern ecumenical councils of the Catholic Church.
John O’Malley also taught a master class on October 12 and participated in a symposium on October 13.
To view photos of the lecture, visit Lumen Christi’s Facebook page.

Judging as Judgment
2018-10-04 17:30 - 19:00 | Jenner & Block, 45th Floor, 353 N Clark St. Chicago, IL 60654, Downtown, IL
You can subscribe to the Lumen Christi Institute Podcast via our Soundcloud page, iTunes channel, Stitcher, TuneIn, ListenNotes, Podbean, Pocket Casts, and Google Play Music.
To view photos of the event, visit Lumen Christi’s Facebook page.
Free and open to the public. Registration is required.
Cosponsored by the Catholic Lawyers Guild of Chicago, the Decalogue Society of Lawyers, the Christian Legal Society, the Jewish Judges Association, and Jenner & Block LLP.
When a case is easy, judges can act like umpires. But when a case is hard, judges cannot simply apply the rules – they have to exercise judgment. We pretend that judges don’t make law in order to ensure that they are sufficiently responsive to social and political norms and to elected representatives. But contrary to popular belief, the rule of law does not require judges to refrain from judgment. What the rule of law requires is that judges give impartial reasons for their decisions. And judges can only do that if they attend carefully to the normative arguments on both sides of hard cases and give reasons that could or should be accepted by the losing side.
SCHEDULE
5:00pm Registration & Refreshments
5:30pm Welcome & Introduction
5:35pm “Judging as Judgment”
6:20pm Audience Q&A
6:30pm Reception
7:30pm End

Master Class on "Dark Night and Flame of Love: The Mysticism of John of the Cross"
2018-09-22 14:00 - 17:00 | Gavin House, 1220 E 58th St., Chicago, IL, 60637
Registration is required. Open to current university students and faculty. A copy of John of the Cross: Selected Writings (Paulist Press, 1987) will be provided for registrants.
The Discalced Carmelite friar, Juan de la Cruz (1542-91), is one of the most famous of Catholic mystics. This one-time Master Class will present a synopsis of John’s mystical teaching as found in some of his noted poems, as well as the four prose works he composed as commentaries on these allusive and beautiful verses. John’s use of both poetry and prose raises issues about the relation of these two literary forms in mystical teaching (some of which will be addressed). The concentration, however, will be on the prose treatises as comprising one of the most influential summaries (summae) of mystical theology in the history of Christianity. In the popular mind, John is most famous for his treatment of the “dark night” (noche oscura) of the senses and spirit, the negative (apophatic) dimension of his doctrine; but for the Carmelite the suffering of the dark night was meant to lead to the positive (kataphatic) stage where the “living flame of love” (llama de amor viva) consumes and transforms the soul in God.
The Class will use the anthology of John’s writings found in Kieran Kavanaugh and Ernest Larkin, eds., John of the Cross. Selected Writings (New York: Paulist Press, 1987. It is advisable for the participants to try to read the whole of this, but pages for special attention will be singled out in the syllabus. In addition, some outlines and charts will be handed out at the beginning of the class.
SCHEDULE
1:30: Welcome with Coffee and Tea
2:00-3:30: First Session
3:00-3:15: Break
3:15-5:15: Second Session
5:15-5:30: End with Reception

Truth and Authority in Augustine's City of God
2018-07-21 00:00 - 2018-07-28 00:00 | University of California, Berkeley, S Hall Rd. Berkeley, CA 94720, Berkeley, CA
You can download the poster here.
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 discussion of the text and the issues at hand. Students will be expected to prepare the readings carefully and participate in the discussions of the material.
Location: The seminar will take place at the University of California, Berkeley. Students will be provided with lodging, meals, and a travel stipend of up to $350.
Application Information: This seminar will be open to PhD students in the humanities and relevant fields (such as philosophy, theology, english, classics, and history).
Applicants will be required to submit:

A completed online application form.
An updated CV.
At least one and as many as two letter(s) of recommendation from a member of the program in which the student is currently enrolled.
A statement of research interest no longer than 750 words, which includes an explanation of how this seminar might bear on the student’s current or future research plans.
One academic writing sample (30 pages maximum).

All application materials can be submitted via the online application. Incomplete applications will not be considered. Fifteen students will be admitted to this seminar.

Frequently Asked Questions:
Can I apply for more than one seminar?
Yes. You may apply for multiple seminars. Please indicate your order of preference in your statement of purpose for each application. Each applicant may only be admitted to one seminar.
I am a PhD student graduating this academic year. Can I still apply?
Yes!
I am currently an undergraduate or masters student, but have been admitted to a PhD program for the next academic year. Can I still apply?
Yes, please indicate this somewhere in your application.
I have attended a Lumen Christi Institute seminar in the past. May I still apply?
Yes!
Do I have to be Catholic to apply?
No. The Lumen Christi Institute exists to promote the Catholic Intellectual Tradition and is committed to the integration of the intellectual and spiritual life. The Institute welcomes seminar participants of all or no religious affiliation, and wants to assure all applicants that the opportunities to participate in devotional activities are optional.
Contact us with any further questions.

The Thought of John Henry Newman
2018-07-07 00:00 - 2018-07-14 00:00 | Merton College, Oxford, Merton St, Oxford OX1 4JD, UK, Oxford, United Kingdom
You can download the poster here.
Now in its sixth consecutive year, this intensive seminar will examine the achievements of Blessed 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 Professor Ker and by participants on the readings assigned, followed by seminar-style discussion.
Location: The seminar will take place at Merton College at the University of Oxford. Students will be provided with lodging and meals while at Oxford, and a travel stipend of up to $700.
Application Information: This seminar will be open to PhD students in the humanities and relevant fields (such as philosophy, theology, English, classics, & history).
Applicants will be required to submit:

A completed online application form.
An updated CV.
At least one and as many as two letter(s) of recommendation from a member of the program in which the student is currently enrolled.
A statement of research interest no longer than 750 words, which includes an explanation of how this seminar might bear on the student’s current or future research plans.
One academic writing sample (30 pages maximum).

All application materials can be submitted via the online application. Incomplete applications will not be considered. Fifteen students will be admitted to this seminar.

Frequently Asked Questions:
Can I apply for more than one seminar?
Yes. You may apply for multiple seminars. Please indicate your order of preference in your statement of purpose for each application. Each applicant may only be admitted to one seminar.
I am a PhD student graduating this academic year. Can I still apply?
Yes!
I am currently an undergraduate or masters student, but have been admitted to a PhD program for the next academic year. Can I still apply?
Yes, please indicate this somehwere in your application.
I have attended a Lumen Christi Institute seminar in the past. May I still apply?
Yes!
Do I have to be Catholic to apply?
No. The Lumen Christi Institute exists to promotes the Catholic intellectual tradition and is committed to the integration of the intellectual and spiritual life. The Institute welcomes seminar participants of all or no religious affiliation, and wants to assure all applicants that the opportunities to participate in devotional activities are optional.
Contact us with any further questions.

St. Thomas Aquinas on Free Choice
2018-06-27 00:00 - 2018-07-04 00:00 | University of Chicago, 5801 S. Ellis Ave., University of Chicago, IL
You can download the poster here.
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 own mind about the will? To what extent, in Aquinas’ account, does the freedom of the will depend upon the distinction between the will and the intellect? Does St. Thomas’ apparent intellectualism commit him to some kind of determinism with regard to choice? Does he offer an adequate account of the choice of evil? In comparison with modern thinkers, does he sufficiently appreciate the value of freedom?
Format: There will be two 2 ½ hour sessions each day. Each session will include an opening lecture and seminar-style discussion of the text and the issues at hand. Students will be expected to prepare the readings carefully and participate in the discussions of the material.
Location: The seminar will take place at the University of Chicago. Students will be provided with lodging, meals, and a travel stipend of up to $350.
Application Information: This seminar will be open to PhD students in the humanities and relevant fields (such as philosophy, theology, english, classics, & history).
Applicants will be required to submit:

A completed online application form.
An updated CV.
At least one and as many as two letter(s) of recommendation from a member of the program in which the student is currently enrolled.
A statement of research interest no longer than 750 words, which includes an explanation of how this seminar might bear on the student’s current or future research plans.
One academic writing sample (30 pages maximum).

All application materials can be submitted via the online application. Incomplete applications will not be considered. Fiften students will be admitted to this seminar.

Frequently Asked Questions:
Can I apply for more than one seminar?
Yes. You may apply for multiple seminars. Please indicate your order of preference in your statement of purpose for each application. Each applicant may only be admitted to one seminar.
I am a PhD student graduating this academic year. Can I still apply?
Yes!
I am currently an undergraduate or master’s student, but have been admitted to a PhD program for the next academic year. Can I still apply?
Yes, please indicate this somewhere in your application.
I have attended a Lumen Christi Institute seminar in the past. May I still apply?
Yes!
Do I have to be Catholic to apply?
No. The Lumen Christi Institute exists to promotes the Catholic intellectual tradition and is committed to the integration of the intellectual and spiritual life. The Institute welcomes seminar participants of all or no religious affiliation, and wants to assure all applicants that the opportunities to participate in devotional activities are optional.
Contact us with any further questions.

Undergraduate Seminar on Happiness and Freedom
2018-06-17 00:00 - 2018-06-30 00:00 | Kylemore Abbey, Kylemore Abbey, Galway, Ireland
APPLY HERE
THE APPLICATION DEADLINE FOR AMERICAN STUDENTS HAS PASSED. IRISH STUDENTS ARE STILL WELCOME TO APPLY UNTIL APRIL 16.
Undergraduate students from Ireland and the US are invited to apply for this two-week seminar on “Happiness & Freedom.” Explore themes of nationalism, modernity, community, and stability while being immersed in Irish culture and history.
Presented by the Lumen Christi Institute and the University of Notre Dame.
You can download the poster here.
ABOUT THE SEMINAR
Human beings want to be happy. And they often see freedom as a necessary component in their happiness. What, though, should human beings be free from in order to be happy? Should human beings instead be free for certain things? In this two-week seminar, we will explore philosophical, theological, and historical answers to the question of human freedom and happiness. Because of our location in Ireland, we will focus on how the Irish have answered these questions throughout their history. We will pay special attention to the role that Christianity has played in contributing to (or perhaps detracting from) one’s freedom and happiness.
FORMAT AND SCHEDULE
Week one will be held at the O’Connell House, the Notre Dame Global Gateway in Dublin, and week two will be held at Kylemore Abbey, a Benedictine community in Connemara, County Galway. The seminar readings and discussions will be supplemented by field trips around significant historical places in Dublin and County Galway.
Students will be provided with lodging, transportation, and most meals during the course of the seminar. Students will be responsible for arranging their own transportation to and from the seminar. Travel grants may be available on a need basis.
GUEST LECTURERS
Maria Cahill, Lecturer, University College Cork
Siobhán Garrigan, Loyola Chair of Theology, Trinity College Dublin
Cyril O’Regan, Huisking Professor of Theology, University of Notre Dame
Declan Kiberd, Donald and Marilyn Keough Professor of Irish Studies, University of Notre Dame
READINGS
Iris Murdoch, The Sovereignty of the Good
Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue
R.F. Foster, Modern Ireland 1600-1970
William Cavanaugh, Being Consumed
James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
T. M. Charles-Edwards, Early Christian Ireland
Rule of St Benedict
Herbert McCabe, “God” and “Prayer”
Servais Pinckaers, OP, The Pursuit of Happiness
Benedict XVI, Deus caritas est and Veritas in caritate
HOW TO APPLY
This seminar is open to current undergraduate students from the US and Ireland (including those graduating in spring 2018). All application materials can be submitted via the online application. Incomplete applications will not be considered. Twenty students will be admitted to this seminar.
Application materials must be received by 11:59pm on MARCH 15, 2018.
The Lumen Christi Institute exists to promote the Catholic intellectual tradition and is committed to the integration of the intellectual and spiritual life. The Institute welcomes seminar participants of all or no religious affiliation, and wants to assure all applicants that the opportunities to participate in devotional activities are optional.
Contact us if you have any further questions.

Economics and Catholic Social Thought: A Primer
2018-06-10 09:00 - 2018-06-13 17:00 | University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN 46556, Notre Dame, IN
You can download the poster here.
Now in its third 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.
This seminar is cosponsored by the Catholic Research Economists Discussion Organization, the Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture, the Kellogg Institute for International Studies, and the Notre Dame Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts.
Format: There will be two sessions each day, featuring a different instructor. Each instructor will open with a lecture, and then we will turn to a seminar-style discussion of the texts and issues at hand. In the final sessions, we will discuss how the material can be applied to each student’s particular area of interest.
Location: The seminar will take place at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana. A limited number of travel stipends are available on a need basis. All participants will be provided with accommodations and meals.
Application Information: This seminar will be open to PhD students and faculty in economics, finance and related fields.
Applicants will be required to submit a completed online application form, including:

An updated CV.
A brief statement of research interest no longer than 750 words.
One academic writing sample.

All application materials can be submitted via the online application. Incomplete applications will not be considered. Fifteen students will be admitted to this seminar.
Please direct any further questions to contact@credo-economists.org.

What is Freedom? Some Reflections on Augustine
2018-05-25 15:00 | Swift Hall, 3rd Floor Lecture, 1025 E 58th St. Chicago, IL 60637, Hyde Park, IL
You can subscribe to the Lumen Christi Institute Podcast via our Soundcloud page, iTunes channel, Stitcher, TuneIn, ListenNotes, Podbean, Pocket Casts, and Google Play Music.
To view photos of the symposium, visit Lumen Christi’s Facebook page.
A lecture by Olivier Boulnois with responses by Jean-Luc Marion and Willemien Otten, and moderated by Ryan Coyne.
Free and open to the public. Cosponsored by the Theology Club at the Divinity School.
This lecture will be audio and video recorded and accessible via this webpage shortly after the event. Persons with disabilities who need an accommodation in order to participate in this event should contact us by email or call 773-955-5887.

The Hillbilly Thomist: Flannery O'Connor's Catholic Imagination
2018-05-22 18:00 | Gavin House, 1220 E 58th St., Chicago, IL, 60637
REGISTER HERE
6:00 Dinner | 6:30 Lecture
This weekly non-credit course is open to current students and faculty. Registrants are free to attend as many sessions as they choose. Sessions do not presuppose previous attendance or prior knowledge of the subject.
The fiction writer and essayist Flannery O’Connor (1925-1964) once complained that she was pegged as “a hillbilly nihilist,” whereas she viewed herself as “a hillbilly Thomist.” Her profound Catholic faith served in many respects to detach her from the rural Georgia in which she lived and worked, and at the same time gave her a sympathy for and insight into the radical non-conformists of the Protestant South, such that her often grotesque characters are conveyed by convincing human portraits that at the same time rise above the particulars of time and place so as to speak to the Big Questions of faith and unbelief, salvation and damnation.
This course will examine in detail seven of O’Connor’s short stories, as well as the theology and artistic convictions from which they come to be, supplemented by letters selected from her published correspondence. Volunteers will be recruited to prepare and read aloud brief excerpts from the stories. No previous acquaintance with the works of O’Connor is required or presumed.
April 3rd
The Hillbilly Thomist: An introduction to O’Connor and her work.
April 10th
“The Enduring Chill”
April 17th
“A Temple of the Holy Ghost”
April 24th
“A Late Encounter with the Enemy”
May 1st
“The Life You Save May Be Your Own”
May 8th
“Parker’s Back”
May 15th
“A Good Man Is Hard to Find”
May 22nd
“Revelation”
You can watch a profile of Flannery O’Connor HERE.

Staged Reading of "Shakeshafte" by Rowan Williams
2018-05-19 15:00 | International House at the University of Chicago, 1414 E 59th St. Chicago, IL 60637, Hyde Park, IL
To view photos of the performance, visit Lumen Christi’s Facebook page.
You are invited to join the Shakespeare Project of Chicago for a special staged reading of a new play by Rowan Willams, a “fantasia” on the possible relationship between William Shakespeare and Edmund Campion.
Free and open to the public. Online registration is recommended but not required. Refreshments will be served. Sponsored by the Lumen Christi Institute and the International House Global Voices Program. Persons with disabilities who may need assistance should contact the Office of Programs & External Relations in advance at 773-753-2274 or email HERE.
You can read about the Shakespeare Project of Chicago’s previous performance of “Shakeshafte” at the Chicago Reader. More information about the play can be found HERE.
SCHEDULE
2:30pm Doors open, refreshments & reception
3:00pm Introduction, Professor Regina Schwartz (Northwestern University)
3:10pm Staged reading of “Shakeshafte” (with 15 minute intermission)
5:00pm Audience Q&A with cast and Professor Schwartz
5:15pm End
Rowan Williams was the 104th Archbishop of Canterbury, holding that office from 2002 to 2012. He is currently master of Magdalene College, Cambridge, where he teaches Theology. A noted poet and translator of poetry, Dr. Williams speaks or reads nine other languages, and has published books on a wide range of theological, historical, and political themes.

The Book of Job and the Transmission of Biblical Wisdom
2018-05-18 13:00 - 14:30 | Gavin House, 1220 E 58th St., Chicago, IL, 60637
Open to current students and faculty. Lunch will be served.
All too often, reading Scripture is merely an exercise in self-flattery and reinforcing our own preconceptions. But reading Scripture cross-culturally draws us more deeply into the text and undoes some of those preconceptions. Reading Job, one of Scripture’s most enigmatic books, in Lomwe with Lomwe-speakers can surprise a North American reader, illuminating what is present and what is absent. This presentation will center on a close-reading of passages from the text of Job.
Image: Job and His Friends, Ilya Repin via Wikimedia Commons.

Elizabeth Anscombe on Living the Truth
2018-05-10 19:00 | Classics 110, 1010 E 59th St. Chicago, IL 60637, Hyde Park, IL
Elizabeth Anscombe was one of the most important and influential analytic philosophers of the twentieth century. One of the last lectures she delivered was titled “Doing the Truth.” In it, she set out to identify and clarify a specifically practical mode of truth as the proper goal of a specifically practical mode of reasoning and knowledge. This talk will explore how Anscombe understands practical truth by relating it to her influential theory of the intentionality of action; its ultimate suggestion is that “doing the truth” just is living a good human life–i.e., knowingly performing actions in accordance with true judgments of right practical reasoning. The person who achieves this truth is virtuous, someone who can stand as an exemplar (or rule and measure) for those who seek the truth but have not yet realized it in their lives.
To view photos of the lecture, visit Lumen Christi’s Facebook page.
You can subscribe to the Lumen Christi Institute Podcast via our Soundcloud page, iTunes channel, Stitcher, TuneIn, ListenNotes, Podbean, Pocket Casts, and Google Play Music.

Prayer, Dinner, and Discussion at the Benedictine Monastery of the Holy Cross
2018-05-05 16:30 - 20:00 | The Monastery of the Holy Cross, 3111 South Aberdeen St. Chicago, IL 60608, Chicago, IL
REGISTER HERE
Transportation will be provided from Hyde Park. Open to current university students and faculty.
Cosponsored by the Hildegard of Bingen Society.
Join us for an evening of prayer with Benedictine Monks at the Monastery of the Holy Cross. Students will participate in the prayer of the Divine Office (including Solemn Vespers and Compline), and have dinner and discussion with Fr. Peter Funk, OSB, prior of the monastery and alumnus of the University of Chicago. This evening will feature a special Solemn Vespers, in which the monks will be accompanied by Schola Laudis.
More information about the monastery can be found HERE.
SCHEDULE
4:15pm Meet at Gavin House (1220 E. 58th St.)
4:30pm Depart from Hyde Park
5:00pm Arrive at the Monastery, welcome by Fr. Funk
5:15pm Office of Solemn Vespers
6:00pm Dinner & Discussion
7:15pm Office of Compline
8:00pm Arrive back in Hyde Park

Master Class on Paul Claudel's "The Muse Called Grace"
2018-05-04 15:00 - 17:00 | Gavin House, 1220 E 58th St., Chicago, IL, 60637
Open to current students and faculty. A copy of the poem with English translation will be circulated to those who RSVP.
Paul Claudel can be described as the greatest French Catholic poet of the 20th century. His ode The Muse Called Grace celebrates the deep links between human and divine love, between poetry and faith. Join Professors Rémi Brague and Thomas Pavel for a master class on the poem. Previous familiarity with Paul Claudel is not required.
SCHEDULE:
2:30pm Coffee & Tea
3:00pm Seminar
5:00pm Wine & Cheese
The Franke Institute for the Humanities will host a conference on Paul Claudel for the 150th anniversary of his birth on May 18 & 19, 2018.

Athens, Jerusalem—and Alexandria: Christian Wisdom between the Bible and Greek Philosophy
2018-05-03 17:00 | Breasted Hall, Oriental Institute, 1155 E 58th St. Chicago, IL 60637, Hyde Park, IL
A lecture by Rémi Brague with a response by Jean-Luc Marion. Free and open to the public. Cosponsored by the Ethics Club at the Divinity School. This lecture will be audio and video recorded and accessible via this webpage shortly after the event. Persons with disabilities who need an accommodation in order to participate in this event should contact us by email or call 773-955-5887.
Christian wisdom could work its way through the Hebrew Bible and Greek philosophy and produce some sort of “Alexandrian” synthesis by focusing on the Logos, a concept explicitly central to Greek philosophy and implicitly fundamental to Biblical revelation.
You can read about Professor Brague’s previous visit HERE.
To view photos of the event, visit Lumen Christi’s Facebook page.
You can subscribe to the Lumen Christi Institute Podcast via our Soundcloud page, iTunes channel, Stitcher, TuneIn, ListenNotes, Podbean, Pocket Casts, and Google Play Music.

Master Class on "Karl Rahner’s Distinctive Theology of the Symbol"
2018-04-21 10:00 - 13:00 | Gavin House, 1220 E 58th St., Chicago, IL, 60637
Open to current university students and faculty. A link to the readings will be provided for registrants.
In an era of outstanding theologians who made the teachings of the second Vatican Council possible, Karl Rahner (1904-84) stands out as a titan. A German Jesuit, he studied under Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) in Freiburg (among others). He taught on the faculties of Innsbruck, Munich, and Münster; served as a peritus at the Council and as a member of the International Theological Commission. His chief works include Spirit in the World (1957), a study of Thomas Aquinas’s theory of knowledge; Hearer of the Word (1941), which seeks to justify humanity’s natural ability to receive and assent to a divine revelation; Foundations of Christian Faith (1976), a systematic exposition of Catholic belief and practice; and the renowned Theological Investigations (1954-84), sixteen volumes on a wide range of topics written over the course of his career.
As a systematic theologian, Rahner understood his role as using some criterion according to which the revealed doctrines of Christianity could be shown to be coherent, even while they remain mysteries not fully comprehensible to reason. His distinctive criterion is called the Realsymbol. Our Master Class will study what it is, how Rahner develops it, and how he uses it better to understand the realities that we know both by reason and by faith.
READINGS
Karl Rahner, SJ, “The Theology of the Symbol,” in Theological Investigations (TI), vol. 4, 221-52; “Oneness and Threefoldness of God in Discussion with Islam,” TI 18, 105-21; “On the Theology of the Incarnation,” TI 4, 105-20. [23 vols, various places, publishers, and dates; originally Schriften zur Theologie (Einsiedeln: Benzinger, 1954-84)].
Stephen Fields, SJ, “Realsymbol as Sacramental,” in Being As Symbol: On the Origins and Development of Karl Rahner’s Metaphysics (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2001), 38-54.
SCHEDULE
9:30am Coffee & Pastries
10:00am Session I
11:25am Break
11:35am Session II
1:00pm Lunch
Professor Fields also gave a lecture on “The Future of Liberalism: Relativism Confronts St. Augustine” on Thursday, April 19.

The Future of Liberalism: Relativism Confronts St. Augustine
2018-04-19 17:00 | Harper Memorial Library 130, 1116 East 59th Street, Hyde Park, IL
Free and open to the public. Cosponsored by the Theology Club at the Divinity School.
The future of political liberalism is a topic much discussed in recent scholarly books and popular journals. This lecture will integrate the recent argument of Patrick Deneen in Why Liberalism Failed, beginning where the book leaves off by addressing the following question: If it is true, as many have argued, that liberalism has become morally corroded, then can reasonable people still make a case for our continued cooperation with it? Discussing thinkers like Richard Rorty and John Rawls, this lecture will critically examine efforts to ground contemporary liberalism in relativist views of goodness and truth. These views will be brought into dialogue with St Augustine’s reflections on Rome. It will thereby develop a perspective on how Catholics should coexist with liberalism, which retains value as a political framework.
Professor Fields also led a master class seminar on “Karl Rahner’s Distinctive Theology of the Symbol” on Saturday, April 21.
To view photos of the lecture, visit Lumen Christi’s Facebook page.
You can subscribe to the Lumen Christi Institute Podcast via our Soundcloud page, iTunes channel, Stitcher, TuneIn, ListenNotes, Podbean, Pocket Casts, and Google Play Music.

"Behold How Good and How Pleasant": A Memorial Concert for Theodore C. Karp
2018-04-15 16:00 | Millar Chapel, Northwestern University 1870 Sheridan Rd, Evanston
$25 General / $10 Students
Schola Antiqua celebrates the life and contributions of musicologist and Northwestern University professor emeritus Theodore “Ted” C. Karp (1926-2015) with a program of music that reflects the wide-ranging areas of early music study that he touched in his fruitful career. One of the titans of plainchant scholarship, Karp can be found in debates about the genre in its early and late stages. The ensemble explores not only plainsong but also other areas of Karp’s investigations from music of the troubadours to some of the earliest surviving polyphony in western music history. The program concludes with a full performance of Orlande de Lassus’s sonorous Prophetiae Sibyllarum.
Schola Antiqua of Chicago also performed the same concert on Saturday, April 14 at 8:00pm at Rockefeller Memorial Chapel at the University of Chicago.
To view photos of the April 14 performance, visit Lumen Christi’s Facebook page.

Perseverance in the Parish? Religious Attitudes from a Black Catholic Perspective
2018-04-12 17:00 | Swift Hall, 3rd Floor Lecture, 1025 E 58th St. Chicago, IL 60637, Hyde Park, IL
Free and open to the public. Cosponsored by Catholic Theological Union and the Ethics Club at the Divinity School.
Do African-American Catholics perceive or experience aspects of racial intolerance and marginalization in their parishes? Does racial marginalization in the Church compel African-American Catholics to disengage and leave their parish? Darren Davis’ provocative new book, Perseverance in the Parish? Religious Attitudes from a Black Catholic Perspective, examines data from the first national survey of African American Catholics. He finds that African-American respondents, though small in number, are among the strongest religious identifiers in the Church. In contrast to narratives that stress the “double consciousness” of African-American Catholic churchgoers, Davis suggests that the contemporary experiences and perspectives of black Catholics do not support this framework for understanding faith in the African-American Catholic community. His lecture will deal with the results of his survey and its implications for conversations about marginalization and racial bias in the Church.
To view photos of the lecture, visit Lumen Christi’s Facebook page.
You can subscribe to the Lumen Christi Institute Podcast via our Soundcloud page, iTunes channel, Stitcher, TuneIn, ListenNotes, Podbean, Pocket Casts, and Google Play Music.

Master Class on "Bishop Bartolomé de las Casas, OP: Christian Faith and Amerindian Rights"
2018-04-06 14:00 - 17:00 | Gavin House, 1220 E 58th St., Chicago, IL, 60637
Open to current university students and faculty. A link to the readings will be provided for registrants.
This class offers an in-depth overview of the life and writings of the irrepressible friar Bishop Bartolomé de las Casas, O.P. (1484-1566), identified by friend and foe as the “Protector of the Indians.” Since youth, Las Casas was intimately bound to the old and new worlds of Europe and the Indies, traversing the Atlantic at least a half dozen times during his life. He was a Renaissance churchman par excellence, inhabiting the various duties and roles of missionary preacher, theologian, bishop, historian, political philosopher, and canon lawyer. Incredibly, his legal advocacy and literary output was wholly dedicated to accounting for the injustices perpetrated by Spaniards against the native peoples of the Indies while defending their freedom and rights against European political domination and religious coercion to the faith.
In order to facilitate class discussion, each session will focus on a distinct yet interrelated theme that generally corresponds to two phases of the friar’s life: before his appointment to the episcopate of Chiapa in New Spain (1484-1543) and after (1544-1566). Session I chiefly considers the transformation of Las Casas from priest-encomendero to a Dominican theorist and practitioner of peaceful evangelization. Session II focuses on his advocacy on behalf of Amerindian rights as bishop of Chiapa in the New World and back in Spain.
REQUIRED READINGS
Bartolomé de las Casas, The Only Way, eds. Helen Rand Parish and Francis Patrick Sullivan (Paulist Press, 1992), pp. 63-84; 112-116; 120-125
—–. Indian Freedom, ed. Francis Patrick Sullivan, S.J. (Sheed and Ward, 1995), selections
SUGGESTED READINGS
Gustavo Gutiérrez, Las Casas: In Search of the Poor of Jesus Christ (Orbis Books, 1993), trans. Robert Barr, pp. 363-395
David Lantigua, “Faith, Liberty, and the Defense of the Poor: Bishop Las Casas in the History of Human Rights,” in Christianity and Freedom: Historical Perspectives, eds. Timothy Shah and Allen Hertzke (Cambridge Press, 2016), pp. 176-202
On April 5, David Lantigua gave a lecture on “Early Modern Catholic Social Thought and World Order.”

Early Modern Catholic Social Teaching and World Order
2018-04-05 17:00 | Swift Hall, First Floor Common Room, 1025 E 58th St,Chicago, IL 60637, Hyde Park, IL
Free and open to the public. Cosponsored by the Center for Latin American Studies, the Early Modern and Mediterranean Worlds Workshop, and the Ethics Club at the Divinity School.
Western distrust in liberal internationalism offers an opportunity for renewed theological reflection on the moral foundations of world order. After the Second World War, transitional popes and Thomistic philosophers articulated a Christian vision of supranational society to quicken the support of universal human rights. Their personalist global ethic outlines the contribution of sixteenth-century Spanish theologians who promoted a conception of world order that affirmed the basic rights of believers and nonbelievers against the violent excesses of colonial expansion in el Nuevo Mundo.
The turn to early modern Catholic social teaching among Spanish theologians associated with the School of Salamanca represents an effort to break out of the Westphalian world system that dominates modern thinking about international relations. This lecture retrieves early modern Spanish theological voices to expose the colonialist underbelly of Westphalian rights discourse, typified by Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, and its radical domestication of the Church and human nature. Going beyond Westphalia and its anarchical view of global society enables a reconsideration of the Church’s moral witness of world order anew and the ongoing struggle for justice among dispossessed peoples besieged by aggressive forms of neocolonialism.
On April 6, David Lantigua also led a Master Class on “Bishop Bartolomé de las Casas, OP: Christian Faith and Amerindian Rights.”
To view photos of the lecture, visit Lumen Christi’s Facebook page.
You can subscribe to the Lumen Christi Institute Podcast via our Soundcloud page, iTunes channel, Stitcher, TuneIn, ListenNotes, Podbean, Pocket Casts, and Google Play Music.

The Dignity of Politics: A Panel Discussion
2018-03-27 17:30 - 19:00 | Jenner & Block, 45th Floor, 353 N Clark St. Chicago, IL 60654, Downtown, IL
Cosponsored by the Catholic Lawyers Guild of Chicago and Jenner & Block, LLP
A panel discussion featuring James R. Stoner and respondents Justice Mary Jane Theis, Dan Cronin, and Larry Suffredin.
A dynamic society accords respect to political activities and the choice of a career in politics, and it needs to do so for society to thrive. Politics is held in low repute today, breeding contempt for the day-to-day activities of citizens and politicians involved in the making of law and public policy. Self-government is a great achievement; both rare and fragile, it is only achieved by the virtue of those who participate in it. Contempt for politics and politicians imperils our republic by dissuading virtuous men and women from assisting in the making of law and public policy.
To view photos of the event, visit Lumen Christi’s Facebook page.
You can subscribe to the Lumen Christi Institute Podcast via our Soundcloud page, iTunes channel, Stitcher, TuneIn, ListenNotes, Podbean, Pocket Casts, and Google Play Music.

The Witness of Contemplative Women in the Heart of the Church
2018-03-13 16:00 | Swift Hall, 3rd Floor Lecture, 1025 E 58th St. Chicago, IL 60637, Hyde Park, IL
Cosponsored by the Theology Club of the University of Chicago’s Divinity School.
Free and open to the public.
In this lecture, Cardinal Arborelius explores the role that contemplative women have occupied in the Church throughout the ages and reflects on the witness they can offer to today’s secular society. By discussing women ranging from Mary the Mother of God through to Teresa of Ávila and the Little Flower, Arborelius contends that the characteristically feminine charism for contemplative prayer can beautifully illuminate mystical union with God. Arborelius also contends that the feminine gift for loving presence to the marginalized, modeled by Mother Theresa or St. Bridget of Sweden, uniquely builds up a more just, peaceful, compassionate society.
To view photos of the lecture, visit Lumen Christi’s Facebook page.
You can subscribe to the Lumen Christi Institute Podcast via our Soundcloud page, iTunes channel, Stitcher, TuneIn, ListenNotes, Podbean, Pocket Casts, and Google Play Music.

Cardinal Arborelius also gave an evening address on March 12 titled “Silence, Prayer, and Contemplation in a Seculary Society.”
To learn more about Cardinal Arborelius, read this Lumen Christi news item about his visit.

Silence, Prayer, and Contemplation in a Secular Society
2018-03-12 17:30 - 19:30 | University Club of Chicago, 76 E Monroe St Chicago, IL 60603, Downtown, IL
Information on directions and parking can be found HERE. Information on the club’s dress code can be found HERE.
Our secular society does nothing to encourage us to discover God’s presence in our lives through silent, prayerful reflection. To the contrary, the overload of media and noise discourage cultivating a habit of silent, meditative prayer. Yet prayer of this kind is essential if we are to recognize and accept God’s mercy and love acting in our lives. The theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity grow in us when we cooperate with the grace that enables us to pray contemplatively and so enter into a deeper communion with the God who is Love. Cardinal Arborelius explores these themes and places them in conversation with the thought of Lawrence of the Resurrection, Elizabeth of the Trinity, Teresa of Ávila, and John of the Cross.

To view photos of the evening, visit Lumen Christi’s Facebook page.
To read the Chicago Catholic‘s coverage of the event, click here.
To read the Arlington Catholic Herald‘s coverage of the event, click here.
You can subscribe to the Lumen Christi Institute Podcast via our Soundcloud page, iTunes channel, Stitcher, TuneIn, ListenNotes, Podbean, Pocket Casts, and Google Play Music.

Cardinal Arborelius also gave a lecture at the University of Chicago on March 13 on “The Witness of Contemplative Women in the Heart of the Church.”
To learn more about Cardinal Arborelius, read this Lumen Christi news item about his visit.

Schola Antiqua Concert "Sounds of Faith of Medieval Jerusalem"
2018-03-11 15:00 | St. Josaphat Church, 2311 North Southport Avenue Chicago, IL 60614, Lincoln Park, IL
An acclaimed soundscape of sacred and devotional song developed for The Met Cloisters museum, this one-hour program brings medieval traditions to life with sounds of status quo and religious change in and around Jerusalem. The vocalists of local ensemble Schola Antiqua are joined by special guests Amro Helmy, oud, and soprano Nell Snaidas.
Schola Antiqua also performed the same program on Friday, March 9 at the Oriental Institute.
To learn more about “Sounds of Faith,” read this 2016 Commonweal review of the same performance.
To view photos of the March 9 performance, visit Lumen Christi’s Facebook page.

Figures of Renaissance, Reform, and Renewal
2018-03-06 19:00 - 21:00 | Gavin House, 1220 E 58th St., Chicago, IL, 60637
REGISTER HERE
6:00 Dinner | 6:30 Lecture
Intended for current students and faculty. Others interested in attending: please contact info@lumenchristi.org. Registrants are free to attend as many sessions as they choose. Sessions do not presuppose previous attendance or prior knowledge of the subject.
The Renaissance era is regarded as the period during which European civilization transitioned from the medieval to the modern. It was an era of reform and renewal in the Catholic Church as well, a time in which traditions and practices were revisited, rethought, and matured. This course will introduce students to the reforms and renewal of Catholic beliefs and culture from the 14th through the 16th century, with particular emphasis on select historical episodes, dynamics, and figures from the theological, philosophical, and spiritual traditions.
January 9
Julian of Norwhich
Willemien Otten (University of Chicago)
January 16
The Western Schism
David Lyons (University of Chicago)
January 23
Christian Humanism
Ada Palmer (University of Chicago)
January 30
Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross
Fr. Gaspar Martinez (University of Chicago)
February 6
Luther, Müntzer, and the German Peasants’ Revolt
Robert Porwoll (University of Chicago)
February 13
John Fisher
Fr. Paul Mankowski, SJ (Lumen Christi Institute)
February 20
Savonarola
Jo Walton
February 27
Edmund Campion
Fr. Paul Mankowski, SJ (Lumen Christi Institiute)
March 6
Francis de Sales
David Lyons (University of Chicago)

Thick and Dazzling Darkness: Religious Poetry in a Secular Age
2018-03-01 17:30 | Swift Hall, Room 106, 1025 E 58th St, Chicago, IL 60637, Hyde Park, IL
Free and open to the public. Cosponsored by the Program in Poetry and Poetics and the Seminary Coop Bookstore. Copies of the book will be available for purchase.
You can hear Peter O’Leary discuss the book in a recent OPEN STACKS Podcast interview.
ABOUT THE BOOK
How do poets use language to render the transcendent, often dizzyingly inexpressible nature of the divine? In an age of secularism, does spirituality have a place in modern American poetry? In Thick and Dazzling Darkness, Peter O’Leary reads a diverse set of writers to argue for the existence and importance of religious poetry in twentieth- and twenty-first-century American literature. He traces a poetic genealogy that begins with Whitman and Dickinson and continues in the work of contemporary writers to illuminate an often obscured but still central spiritual impulse that has shaped the production and imagination of American poetry.
O’Leary presents close and comprehensive readings of the modernist, late-modernist, and postmodern poets Robinson Jeffers, Frank Samperi, and Robert Duncan, as well as the contemporary poets Joseph Donahue, Geoffrey Hill, Fanny Howe, Nathaniel Mackey, Pam Rehm, and Lissa Wolsak. Examining how these poets drew on a variety of traditions, including Catholicism, Gnosticism, the Kabbalah, and mysticism, the book considers how modern and contemporary poets have articulated the spiritual in their work. O’Leary also argues that an anxiety of misunderstanding exists in the study and writing of poetry between secular and religious impulses and that the religious nature of poets’ works is too often marginalized or misunderstood. Examining the works of a specific poet in each chapter, O’Leary reveals their complexity and offers a defense of the value and meaning of religious poetry against the grain of a secular society.
To view photos of O’Leary’s lecture, visit Lumen Christi’s Facebook page.
You can subscribe to the Lumen Christi Institute Podcast via our Soundcloud page, iTunes channel, Stitcher, TuneIn, ListenNotes, Podbean, Pocket Casts, and Google Play Music.

Monastery Visit: St. Benedict's Teaching on Humility
2018-02-24 17:00 - 21:00 | The Monastery of the Holy Cross, 3111 South Aberdeen St. Chicago, IL 60608, Chicago, IL
REGISTER HERE
Transportation will be provided from Hyde Park. Open to current university students and faculty.
Cosponsored by the Hildegard of Bingen Society.
Join us for an evening of prayer with Benedictine Monks at the Monastery of the Holy Cross. Students will participate in the prayer of the Divine Office (including Vespers and Compline), and have dinner and discussion of St. Benedict’s Teaching on Humility by Michael Casey with Fr. Peter Funk, OSB, prior of the monastery and alumnus of the University of Chicago.
More information about the monastery can be found HERE.
SCHEDULE
4:15pm Meet at Gavin House (1220 E. 58th St.)
4:30pm Depart from Hyde Park
5:00pm Arrive at the Monastery, welcome by Fr. Funk
5:15pm Office of Vespers
6:00pm Dinner & Discussion, A Guide to Living in the Truth: St. Benedict’s Teaching on Humility by Michael Casey
7:15pm Office of Compline
8:00pm Arrive back in Hyde Park

Master Class on Grace, Free Choice, and the Infused Virtues
2018-02-09 15:00 - 18:00 | Gavin House, 1220 E 58th St., Chicago, IL, 60637
Open to current university students and faculty. A link to the readings will be provided for registrants.
SESSION I: “Grace and Free Choice”
Primary Reading:

Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Ia, q. 83, art. 1-4

Secondary Reading:

Servais Pinckaers OP, The Sources of Christian Ethics, (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1995), chapters XIV-XV on the liberty of indifference and liberty of quality.
Daniel Westberg, Right Practical Reason. Aristotle, Action, and Prudence in Aquinas, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), p. 119-135.
Wojciech Giertych OP, “Conscience and the Liberum Arbitrium”, in: Crisis of Conscience, ed. by John M. Haas, (New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 1996), p. 51-78.

SESSION II: “Virtues infused by grace. What are they?”
Primary Reading:

Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Ia-IIae, q. 63, art. 1-4

Secondary Reading:

Servais Pinckaers OP, “The Role of Virtue in Moral Theory”, the pinckaers reader Renewing Moral Theology, (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2005), p. 288-303.
Romanus Cessario, OP, “What Causes the Moral Virtues to Develop”, The Moral Virtues and Theological Ethics, (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1991), p. 94-125.
Wojciech Giertych OP, “Virtue and Addiction”, Nova et Vetera, English Edition, (Fall 2015), p. 969-1002.

Fr. Giertych also gave a lecture on “The Moral Theology of Aquinas: Is it for Individuals?” on Thursday, February 8.
On Saturday, February 10, he joined with Notre Dame’s John C. Cavadini to lead a discussion on “The Role and Future of Theology” in the academy and the Church. View photos of that discussion.

The Moral Theology of Aquinas: Is it for Individuals?
2018-02-08 17:30 | Swift Hall, 3rd Floor Lecture, 1025 E 58th St. Chicago, IL 60637, Hyde Park, IL
Free and open to the public. Cosponsored by the Theology Club at the Divinity School and the Hildegard of Bingen Society for Christian Thought and Culture.
Is the moral teaching of Aquinas a purely cerebral, speculative reflection that can hardly be correlated with practical Christian living, or does it have a message that can be correlated with the experience and difficulties of an average individual? This lecture views the theology of Aquinas in the light of the concrete down-to earth approach focused on individuals that seems to be the basic gift of Pope Francis. It attempts to propose a reading of Aquinas that is spiritually nourishing.
To view photos of the lecture, please visit Lumen Christi’s Facebook page.
You can subscribe to the Lumen Christi Institute Podcast via our Soundcloud page, iTunes channel, Stitcher, TuneIn, ListenNotes, Podbean, Pocket Casts, and Google Play Music.

Fr. Giertych also taught a master class on “Grace, Free Choice, and the Infused Virtues” on Friday, February 9.
On Saturday, February 10, he joined with Notre Dame’s John C. Cavadini to lead a discussion on “The Role and Future of Theology” in the academy and the Church. View photos of that discussion.

Master Class on Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America
2018-02-02 15:00 - 18:00 | Gavin House, 1220 E 58th St., Chicago, IL, 60637
Open to current university students and faculty. Copies of Democracy in America will be available for participants who do not already have it.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:

What does Tocqueville mean by democracy?
Is democracy inevitable (“providential”)? Is its corruption inevitable?
What, if anything, follows democracy? Democratic despotism?
Do Tocqueville’s recommendations for the role played by religion as a corrective to democracy apply any longer? Can they?

REQUIRED READINGS:
Democracy in America (U of C Press, Mansfield translation):

Author’s Introduction: pp. 3-15
I.i. 2: pp. 27-45
I.i.5: (partial): pp. 57-65
I.ii.9: (partial): pp. 274-302
II.i.1-3: pp. 403-415
II.i. 5-8: pp. 417-428
II.i.10-11: pp. 433-443
II.ii.1-2: pp. 479-484
II.ii.4-5: pp. 485-492
II.ii.7-10: pp. 496-508
II.ii.13: pp. 511-514
II.ii.15: pp. 517-521
II.ii.17: pp. 522-524
II.ii.20: pp. 530-532
II.iv.2-3: pp. 640-645
II.iv.6: pp. 661-665

Professor Deneen also gave a lecture on Why Liberalism Failed on Thursday, February 1.
To view photos of the master class, visit Lumen Christi’s Facebook page.

Why Liberalism Failed
2018-02-01 20:00 - 21:30 | Swift Hall, 3rd Floor Lecture, 1025 E 58th St. Chicago, IL 60637, Hyde Park, IL
Free and open to the public.
Cosponsored by the John U. Nef Committee on Social Thought, the Seminary Coop Bookstore, and the Divinity School Theology Club.
ABOUT THE BOOK
Has liberalism failed because it has succeeded? Of the three dominant ideologies of the twentieth century—fascism, communism, and liberalism—only the last remains. This has created a peculiar situation in which liberalism’s proponents tend to forget that it is an ideology and not the natural end-state of human political evolution. As Patrick Deneen argues in this provocative book, liberalism is built on a foundation of contradictions: it trumpets equal rights while fostering incomparable material inequality; its legitimacy rests on consent, yet it discourages civic commitments in favor of privatism; and in its pursuit of individual autonomy, it has given rise to the most far-reaching, comprehensive state system in human history. Here, Deneen offers an astringent warning that the centripetal forces now at work on our political culture are not superficial flaws but inherent features of a system whose success is generating its own failure.
You can read recent reviews of Why Liberalism Failed in the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times.
Professor Deneen also taught a master class on Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America on Friday, February 2.
To view photos of the lecture, visit Lumen Christi’s Facebook page.
You can subscribe to the Lumen Christi Institute Podcast via our Soundcloud page, iTunes channel, Stitcher, TuneIn, ListenNotes, Podbean, Pocket Casts, and Google Play Music.

Science and Theology of Habitable Worlds Around Other Stars
2018-01-20 16:00 | Swift Hall, 3rd Floor Lecture, 1025 E 58th St. Chicago, IL 60637, Hyde Park, IL
Free and open to the public. Cosponsored by the Hildegard of Bingen Society for Christian Thought and Culture.
You can view Professor Öberg’s recent presentation at the 2017 Society of Catholic Scientists Conference HERE.
To view photos of the event, visit Lumen Christi’s Facebook page.
You can subscribe to the Lumen Christi Institute Podcast via our Soundcloud page, iTunes channel, Stitcher, TuneIn, ListenNotes, Podbean, Pocket Casts, and Google Play Music.

The State of Religion in America
2018-01-18 13:00 - 14:30 | University Club of Chicago, 76 E Monroe St Chicago, IL 60603, Downtown, IL
$60 General / $600 Host Committee Member
Since publishing Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics in 2012, Ross Douthat’s commentary on American religious culture has established him as a prominent and thoughtful critic. This lecture will describe the three “world pictures” that dominate American religiosity: the biblical, spiritual, and secular. As these world pictures jockey for cultural dominance, interesting questions arise. Can the biblical world picture gain ground? Will the secular world picture carry the day? Will the spiritual world picture be forced to give way to one of its more inflexible alternatives? These and other questions will be considered in view of contemporary political and cultural events.
Douthat explored these themes in a popular 2013 column accessible here.
Ross Douthat also participated in a panel discussion on “Religion and Religious Expression in the Academy and Public Life” at the University of Chicago on January 17.
To view photos of the luncheon, visit Lumen Christi’s Facebook page.
You can subscribe to the Lumen Christi Institute Podcast via our Soundcloud page, iTunes channel, Stitcher, TuneIn, ListenNotes, Podbean, Pocket Casts, and Google Play Music.

Religion and Religious Expression in the Academy and Public Life
2018-01-17 17:30 - 19:30 | International House at the University of Chicago, 1414 E 59th St. Chicago, IL 60637, Hyde Park, IL
Join us for a discussion on religion and religious expression in the academy and public life featuring Ross Douthat, a panel of scholars, and moderated by Willemien Otten (Professor of Theology and of the History of Christianity and Director of the Martin Marty Center for the Public Understanding of Religion at the University of Chicago Divinity School).
Presented by the Lumen Christi Institute,The Martin Marty Center for the Public Understanding of Religion at the Divinity School,The Institute of Politics, and the International House Global Voices Program.
Free and open to the public. Persons with disabilities who may need assistance should contact the Office of Programs & External Relations in advance at 773-753-2274 or here.
Ross Douthat also delivered a luncheon address on “The State of Religion in America” at the University Club of Chicago on January 18.
You can subscribe to the Lumen Christi Institute Podcast via our Soundcloud page, iTunes channel, Stitcher, TuneIn, ListenNotes, Podbean, Pocket Casts, and Google Play Music.
Photo courtesy of the Chicago Institute of Politics.

Angels, Demons, Heaven, and Hell: On Christian "Mythology" and the Spiritual Life
2018-01-06 20:00 - 21:30 | Swift Hall, First Floor Common Room, 1025 E 58th St,Chicago, IL 60637, Hyde Park, IL
Join the Lumen Christi Institute for a special Epiphany symposium and reception with medieval historian Rachel Fulton Brown and Benedictine Monk Fr. Peter Funk, OSB. Free and open to the public.
Many traditional Christian beliefs and teachings about spiritual realities have become unpalatable to modern sensibilities. Accounts of angelic visitations, demonic possessions, the stain of original sin, and the threat of eternal torment are today considered untrue or irrelevant by non-believers and even many Christians. Why were such “myths” so central to Christian belief and practice for so many centuries? Is there any value in understanding why ancient, medieval, and contemporary Christians believe in such things? Or does Christianity need to be demythologized in order to survive in a post-enlightenment age? In this conversation, Rachel Fulton Brown and Fr. Peter Funk, OSB will consider the history of these “myths” and their relevance for contemporary spiritual practices.
To view photos of the symposium, visit Lumen Christi’s Facebook page.
Image: Michelangelo Buonarroti, The Torment of Saint Anthony

Body, Eros, and Eucharist
2017-11-29 17:30 | Swift Hall, 3rd Floor Lecture, 1025 E 58th St. Chicago, IL 60637, Hyde Park, IL
Free and open to the public.
Cosponsored by the Martin Marty Center for the Public Understanding of Religion.
About The Wedding Feast of the Lamb:
In The Wedding Feast of the Lamb, Emmanuel Falque links philosophy and theology in an original fashion that allows us to see the full effect of theology’s “backlash” against philosophy.

By attending closely to the incarnation and the eucharist, Falque develops a new concept of the body and of love: By avoiding the common mistake of “angelism”―consciousness without body―Falque considers the depths to which our humanity reflects animality, or body without consciousness. He shows the continued relevance of the question “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” (John 6:52), especially to philosophy.
We need to question the meaning of “this is my body” in “a way that responds to the needs of our time” (Vatican II). Because of the ways that “Hoc est corpus meum” has shaped our culture and our modernity, this is a problem both for religious belief and for culture.
To view photos of the event, visit Lumen Christi’s Facebook page.
You can subscribe to the Lumen Christi Institute Podcast via our Soundcloud page, iTunes channel, Stitcher, TuneIn, ListenNotes, Podbean, Pocket Casts, and Google Play Music.

Trinity Lutheran and the Future of Public Funding for Religious Entities: A Conversation with Richard Garnett and Andrew Koppelman
2017-11-20 18:30 - 20:30 | Jenner & Block, 45th Floor, 353 N Clark St. Chicago, IL 60654, Downtown, IL
Cosponsored by the Catholic Lawyers Guild, the Decalogue Society of Lawyers, the Christian Legal Society, the American Constitution Society, the Federalist Society, the Notre Dame Program on Church, State & Society, and Jenner & Block Chicago.
Should a religious institution be denied public funding solely because it is owned and operated by a religious entity? The recent U.S. Supreme Court decision Trinity Lutheran Church v. Comer decided that the state of Missouri violated the Free Exercise Clause by disqualifying a religious school from a state program. In this conversation, law scholars Richard Garnett and Andrew Koppelman will discuss the reasoning employed by the majority, the concurring justices, and the dissent; the place of Trinity Lutheran within broader public funding jurisprudence; and the implications of Trinity Lutheran for provisions under various state constitutions that bar all public funding for religious education and religious schools. Daniel B. Rodriguez, Dean and Harold Washington Professor at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law, will moderate the discussion.
Schedule
5:00pm Registration
5:30pm Introductions
5:40pm Conversation
6:30pm Audience Q&A
6:45pm Reception
7:30pm Close
To view photos of the event, visit Lumen Christi’s Facebook page.
You can subscribe to the Lumen Christi Institute Podcast via our Soundcloud page, iTunes channel, Stitcher, TuneIn, ListenNotes, Podbean, Pocket Casts, and Google Play Music.

Master Class on "Plato's Leaky Myths: How the Erotic Dialogues use Plato's Literary Predecessors"
2017-11-17 15:00 - 18:00 | Gavin House, 1220 E 58th St., Chicago, IL, 60637
Registration Required. Open to current students and faculty.
This seminar will look at striking examples of how in the Symposium and Phaedrus Plato read and re-wrote the myths available in the literary culture of his time. We will be especially interested in how the literary templates that seem to underlie the dialogues complicate their surface “doctrine.”
SCHEDULE
1:30pm Coffee & Pastries
2:00pm Session I
3:25pm Break
3:35pm Session II
5:00pm End, wine and cheese reception
To view photos of the master class, visit Lumen Christi’s Facebook page.

Plato's Bedroom: Desire, Union, and Procreation
2017-11-16 20:00 - 21:30 | Social Sciences, Room 122, 1126 E 59th St. Chicago, IL 60637, Hyde Park, IL
Free and open to the public. Cosponsored by the Department of Philosophy.
Plato found philosophy in some of the same erotic anxieties that permeate contemporary life, and even explored themes central to Catholic conceptions of sexuality. This lecture will be based on central themes from Plato’s Symposium, drawing on David O’Connor’s Plato’s Bedroom: Ancient Wisdom and Modern Love.
ABOUT Plato’s Bedroom
Plato’s Bedroom is a book for people who want to be better at falling in love and being in love, with all the ecstasies and dangers erotic life can bring. It is also an inviting book for readers who are intellectually playful and up for a challenge, written with verve, and full of stories thoughtful persons will find to be mirrors of their own erotic selves. Drawing on Greek myth, Plato, Shakespeare, and a wide range of modern literature and movies, the book gets Aphrodite talking with the young lovers in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and lets us listen in on Woody Allen arguing with Othello. The author’s account of how we seek, fear, avoid, and sometimes destroy love, is astonishingly fresh and engaging.
Throughout its pages, one hears the voice of an engaging teacher and the conversation of a wise friend. In short, this is a work of practical philosophy, not scholarship, though only a scholar could have written it. It invites readers into a deep appreciation of timeless ancient wisdom through reflecting on their own powers for love and their susceptibility to desire.
A distinctive feature of the book is the interweaving of two guiding threads in Plato’s conception of erotic experience: androgyny, that is, the integration of masculine and feminine; and creativity, in both a sexual and a spiritual sense. These two aspects of Plato’s erotic vision, androgyny and creativity, lead readers to a sense of grateful wonder and sacred awe at our own erotic powers. Our natural experience of romantic love, articulated so well by Plato, points toward a more explicitly religious interpretation of love’s commitments and pleasures. The author brings out some surprising and delightful connections between Plato’s pagan eroticism and the Adam and Eve story, Jesus’s teaching in the Gospels, and Catholic views about marriage.
Plato’s Bedroom will be the first book to tap into the perennial curiosity about love and sex through the enduring interest of the general reader in philosophical reflection on contemporary culture.
To view photos of O’Connor’s lecture, visit Lumen Christi’s Facebook page.
You can subscribe to the Lumen Christi Institute Podcast via our Soundcloud page, iTunes channel, Stitcher, TuneIn, ListenNotes, Podbean, Pocket Casts, and Google Play Music.

The Gospel According to Matthew
2017-11-14 19:00 - 20:30 | Gavin House, 1220 E 58th St., Chicago, IL, 60637
6:00pm Buffet Dinner | 6:30pm Lecture
Registration required. Open to current students and faculty.
St. Matthew’s Gospel brings us into powerful contact with Israel’s longed-for Messiah and permits us to hear the voice of Jesus of Nazareth with memorable vividness. Foregrounding the Israelite language of expectation, the narrative views Jesus as Son of Man, Son of David, and Son of God, reminding us of Israel’s messianic hopes and showing us how these hopes are, in Jesus, both brought to fulfillment and surpassed. The course will focus on what might be called the spirituality of the evangelist, by means of a close reading of selected passages along with brief exegetical commentary and a general discussion.
No prior familiarity with the texts is presumed. No class presumes attendance at any other and students are welcome to attend any or all.
SCHEDULE
October 3. A Face as a Man — Chapters 1-3
October 10. Salt & Light — Chapters 4-5
October 17. Old Love & New Law — Chapters 6-7
October 24. The Kingdom Here and to Come — Chapters 8-17
October 31. Means and Ends — Chapters 18-25
November 7. Betrayal — Chapters 26-27
November 14. Victory — Chapter 28

Master Class on Gerard Manley Hopkins
2017-11-03 14:00 - 17:00 | Gavin House, 1220 E 58th St., Chicago, IL, 60637
Registration Required. Open to current students and faculty. Copies of the readings will be provided for registrants ahead of time.
You can read about Professor Mariani’s biography of Gerard Manley Hopkins HERE.
To view photos of the master class, visit Lumen Christi’s Facebook page.
READINGS

Paul Mariani, “The Mystery and the Majesty of It,” Studies in the Spirituality of Jesuits 47/2 (2015)
Gerard Manley Hopkins, 6 sonnets (God’s Grandeur, The Windhover, Felix Randal, Spelt from Sybil’s Leaves, No worst there is none, That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire and in the comfort of the Ressurection, To R.B.)

SCHEDULE
1:30pm Coffee & Pastries
2:00pm Session I
3:25pm Break
3:35pm Session II
5:00pm End, wine and cheese reception

A Final Seriousness: Wallace Stevens' Late Poems Revisited
2017-11-02 16:30 | Swift Hall, Room 106, 1025 E 58th St, Chicago, IL 60637, Hyde Park, IL
Free and open to the public. Cosponsored by the Program in Poetry and Poetics and the Seminary Coop Bookstore. Copies of the book will be available for purchase.
About The Whole Harmonium: The Life of Wallace Stevens by Paul Mariani:
A perceptive, enlightening biography of one of the most important American poets of the twentieth century, as seen through his lifelong quest to find and describe the sublime in the human experience.
Wallace Stevens lived a richly imaginative life that found expression in his poetry. His philosophical questioning, spiritual depth, and brilliantly inventive use of language would be profound influences on poets as diverse as William Carlos Williams, Hart Crane, Elizabeth Bishop, and John Ashbery. The Whole Harmonium presents Stevens within the living context of his times, and as the creator of a poetry which has had a profound and lasting impact on the modern imagination itself.
Stevens established his career as an executive even as he wrote his poetry, becoming a vice president with an insurance company in Hartford, Connecticut. His first and most influential book, Harmonium, was not published until he was forty-four years old. In these poems, Stevens drew on his interest in and understanding of modernism. Over time he became acquainted with the most accomplished of his contemporaries, Robert Frost and William Carlos Williams among them, but his personal style remained unique. He endured an increasingly unhappy marriage, losing himself by writing poetry in his study. Yet he had a witty, comic, and Dionysian side to his personality, including long fishing (and drinking) trips to Florida with his pals and a fascination with the sun-drenched tropics.
People generally know two things about Wallace Stevens: that he is a “difficult” poet and that he was an insurance executive for most of his life. Stevens may be challenging to understand, but he is also greatly rewarding to read. Now, sixty years after Stevens’ death, biographer and poet Paul Mariani shows how over the course of his life, Stevens sought out the ineffable and spiritual in human existence in his search for the sublime.
To view photos of Mariani’s lecture, visit Lumen Christi’s Facebook page.
You can subscribe to the Lumen Christi Institute Podcast via our Soundcloud page, iTunes channel, Stitcher, TuneIn, ListenNotes, Podbean, Pocket Casts, and Google Play Music.

Master Class on "Saint Thomas Aquinas on the Metaphysics of Evil"
2017-10-28 14:00 - 17:00 | Gavin House, 1220 E 58th St., Chicago, IL, 60637
Registration Required. Open to current students and faculty. Copies of the readings will be provided.
To view photos of the master class, visit Lumen Christi’s Facebook page.
Saint Thomas Aquinas’s general conception of evil is very well known, and very simple. Evil, he holds, is nothing other than privation of due good. This conception has sometimes been criticized, as not adequate to our experience of evil or to certain types of evil. It is also connected with other controversial positions of his, such as that no one directly intends evil. And it is not easy to square with his own view that evil can specify moral acts and habits.
In order to evaluate Thomas’s conception of evil, and also in order to understand fully his treatment of specific forms of evil such as sin and vice, we need to study his fundamental, metaphysical account of the nature and causes of evil. His most complete presentation of the account is in two Quaestiones of the First Part of the Summa theologiae. The seminar will consist mainly in working through these passages and discussing the questions that arise.
Primary Readings

Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, I, qq. 48-49. Please bring this to the seminar. The Latin version is of course recommended, but not required. PDFs of an English translation, and of the optional readings, will be provided for the participants via a web link.

Optional Background and Secondary Readings

Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, I, q. 5.
Stephen L. Brock, “Dead Ends, Bad Form: the Positivity of Evil in the Summa theologiae,” in The Critical Guide to the Summa Theologiae, Cambridge University Press [forthcoming].
Lawrence Dewan, O.P., “St. Thomas and the First Cause of Moral Evil,” in Lawrence Dewan, O.P., Wisdom, Law, and Virtue: Essays in Thomistic Ethics, Fordham University Press, New York 2007, Chapter 11, pp. 186-96 (with notes on pp. 546-7).
John F. Crosby, “Is All Evil Really Only Privation?,” Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 2001, 75 (2002), pp. 197-209.

SCHEDULE
1:30pm Coffee & Pastries
2:00pm Session I
3:25pm Break
3:35pm Session II
5:00pm End, wine and cheese reception

The Power of the Sacred: An Alternative to the Narrative of Disenchantment
2017-10-26 16:30 | Swift Hall, 3rd Floor Lecture, 1025 E 58th St. Chicago, IL 60637, Hyde Park, IL
Free and open to the public
Cosponsored by the John U. Nef Committee on Social Thought

Disenchantment is one of the key concepts in the self-understanding of “modernity.” It was introduced by Max Weber, but its precise meaning in his writings and in the discourse of modernity is quite controversial. This lecture is based on a new book in which Hans Joas traces this concept through Weber’s writings, criticizes it in fundamental respects, and develops an alternative understanding of the connections between the history of power and the processes of sacralization.

Schola Antiqua Concert: Music in Secret
2017-10-21 20:00 | St. Clement Parish, 642 W Deming Pl. Chicago, IL 60614, Downtown, IL
British organist and Renaissance music historian Naomi Gregory leads the women of Schola Antiqua in a wide-ranging program of music from medieval and early modern convents. “Music in Secret” offers some of the earliest known polyphony associated with nuns from the anonymous 1543 collection of printed partbooks Musica quinque vocum. In addition to plainchant sung from a recently unveiled source at the Art Institute of Chicago, Schola Antiqua’s program will include the music of Sulpitia Cesis, a nun from the northern Italian city of Modena. Gregory will also perform keyboard works linked to Italian convents. Guest viola da gamba player Cora Swenson Lee will provide accompaniment with Gregory. The program is generously sponsored by the Lumen Christi Institute.
Schola Antiqua will perform the same concert on Friday, October 20 at Rockefeller Memorial Chapel.
To view photos of the concert, visit Lumen Christi’s Facebook page.

A Consistent Ethic of Solidarity: Transcending Self, Transforming the World
2017-10-14 18:00 | University of Chicago Law School Auditorium, 1111 East 60th Street, Hyde Park, IL
Visit the conference webpage for more information.
Free and open to the public. Registration Required.
Cardinal Blase J. Cupich will deliver the Keynote Address for the October 13-14 Capstone Conference for the project Virtue, Happiness, & the Meaning of Life, which will feature discussions with the philosophers, religious thinkers, and psychologists who have been working together to investigate whether self-transcendence helps to make ordinary cultivation and exercise of virtue a source of deep happiness and meaning in human life.
The President of the University of Chicago, Robert.J. Zimmer, will provide introductory remarks. A reception will follow Cardinal Cupich’s talk.

This event is presented by the Virtue, Happiness, and the Meaning of Life Project, made possible by a generous grant from the John Templeton Foundation, and is co-sponsored by The Chicago Center for Practical Wisdom, the Committee on Social Thought, the Lumen Christi Institute, the Martin Marty Center, the Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society, the University of Chicago Department of Philosophy, the University of Chicago Divinity School, and the University of Chicago Division of Humanities.
If you need assistance in order to fully participate in this event, contact Valerie Wallace.

Catholic Reform: The Council of Trent and the Catholic Enlightenment
2017-10-12 16:30 | Swift Hall, First Floor Common Room, 1025 E 58th St,Chicago, IL 60637, Hyde Park, IL
Cosponsored by the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures.
About Ulrich Lehner’s recent book The Catholic Enlightenment:
“Whoever needs an act of faith to elucidate an event that can be explained by reason is a fool, and unworthy of reasonable thought.” This line, spoken by the notorious 18th-century libertine Giacomo Casanova, illustrates a deeply entrenched perception of religion, as prevalent today as it was hundreds of years ago. It is the sentiment behind the narrative that Catholic beliefs were incompatible with the Enlightenment ideals. Catholics, many claim, are superstitious and traditional, opposed to democracy and gender equality, and hostile to science. It may come as a surprise, then, to learn that Casanova himself was a Catholic. In The Catholic Enlightenment, Ulrich L. Lehner points to such figures as representatives of a long-overlooked thread of a reform-minded Catholicism, which engaged Enlightenment ideals with as much fervor and intellectual gravity as anyone. Their story opens new pathways for understanding how faith and modernity can interact in our own time.
Lehner begins two hundred years before the Enlightenment, when the Protestant Reformation destroyed the hegemony Catholicism had enjoyed for centuries. During this time the Catholic Church instituted several reforms, such as better education for pastors, more liberal ideas about the roles of women, and an emphasis on human freedom as a critical feature of theology. These actions formed the foundation of the Enlightenment’s belief in individual freedom. While giants like Spinoza, Locke, and Voltaire became some of the most influential voices of the time, Catholic Enlighteners were right alongside them. They denounced fanaticism, superstition, and prejudice as irreconcilable with the Enlightenment agenda.
In 1789, the French Revolution dealt a devastating blow to their cause, disillusioning many Catholics against the idea of modernization. Popes accumulated ever more power and the Catholic Enlightenment was snuffed out. It was not until the Second Vatican Council in 1962 that questions of Catholicism’s compatibility with modernity would be broached again.
To view photos of Lehner’s lecture, visit Lumen Christi’s Facebook page.
You can subscribe to the Lumen Christi Institute Podcast via our Soundcloud page, iTunes channel, Stitcher, TuneIn, ListenNotes, Podbean, Pocket Casts, and Google Play Music.

Visit to the Art Institute of Chicago
2017-10-05 17:00 - 20:30 | Art Institute of Chicago, 111 S Michigan Ave. Chicago, IL 60603, Downtown
Cosponsored by the Hildegard of Bingen Society.
Open to University of Chicago students. Transportation and dinner will be provided.
A Visit to the Art Institute of Chicago to the special exhibition “Doctrine and Devotion: Art of the Religious Orders of the Spanish Andes.”
ABOUT THE EXHIBITION
Presenting 13 paintings by South American artists from the 17th through 19th century, this focused exhibition introduces visitors to images promoted by several Catholic orders at work in the Spanish Andes—the Dominicans, Franciscans, Mercedarians, and Jesuits—examining the politics of the distinct iconographies each group developed as they vied for devotees and dominion.
SCHEDULE
5:00PM: Meet at Gavin House (1220 E. 58th St.)
5:15PM: Depart for the Art Institute
6:00PM: View Exhibition
6:45PM: Dinner at Terzo Piano
8:30PM: Arrive back in Hyde Park

Master Class on Ressentiment and Democracy
2017-08-18 14:00 - 17:00 | Gavin House, 1220 E 58th St., Chicago, IL, 60637
REGISTER HERE
Open to currently enrolled undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty. Copies of the readings will be provided for participants via web link.
Ressentiment is a term of art in philosophy and social theory for the psychological pathology of self-loathing that the human person may experience vis-à-vis an other who is imagined to be stronger, more noble, or “higher.” Friedrich Nietzsche famously associated ressentiment with the overturn of the ancient moral order and its replacement with Christian morality – such that glory, honor, and magnificence were replaced with humility, turning the other cheek, and poverty of spirit. Nietzsche’s understanding of ressentiment is associated as well with his broader critique of modernity, modern institutions like democracy and the market, and modern sociality as reflected in notions such as mass society and Thus Spoke Zarathustra’s “last man.”
The phenomenologist and social theorist, Max Scheler, seized on the idea of ressentiment for his own critique of modernity, but rejected Nietzsche’s argument that its provenance lies in Christianity. Ressentiment, Scheler perceived, is indeed at the heart of the crisis of modernity, but its ubiquity in the contemporary world should be traced to modern institutions, like the market and modern democracy, and not to Christianity. Christianity, he thought, is fundamentally incompatible with the psychology of ressentiment and offers the clearest hope for reversing its danger. To what extent, though, does Scheler’s hope extend to the institution of democracy?
Among those directly influenced by Scheler’s thought were Edith Stein, Waldemar Gurian, Romano Guardini, Roman Ingarden, Dietrich von Hildebrand, and Karol Wojtyla.
REQUIRED READINGS

Max Scheler, Ressentiment, tr. Lewis A. Coser, Milwaukee, Marquette University Press, 1994. Chs. 3 & 4.

SECONDARY READINGS

Friedrich Nietzsche, The Genealogy of Morals, tr. Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale, New York, Random House, 1967. First Essay, especially sections 8-14. Cf.
Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra ,tr. Adrian Del Caro, Cambridge University Press, 2006. “Zarathustra’s Prologue,” “Of the Flies of the Marketplace,” and “Of the Tarantulas.”

SCHEDULE
1:30pm Coffee & Tea
2:00pm Welcome
2:15pm Session I
3:30pm Break
3:45pm Session II
5:00pm End, Wine & Cheese Reception

Catholic Social Thought: A Critical Investigation
2017-07-30 00:00 - 2017-08-06 23:00 | University of California, Santa Barbara, University of California, Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, CA
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.

Master class on "On Hope" by Josef Pieper
2017-07-21 14:00 - 17:00 | Gavin House, 1220 E 58th St., Chicago, IL, 60637
REGISTER HERE
Open to currently enrolled undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty. Copies of the readings will be provided for participants via web link.
The first of Josef Pieper’s three books on each of the theological virtues, On Hope was written in 1934 in response to the general feeling of despair in Europe leading up to World War II. Pieper seeks to reinvigorate the meaning of hope as a properly theological virtue that identifies our happiness in the anticipation of our reunion with our creator.
Josef Pieper (1904-1997) was one of the most well known Thomist philosophers of the twentieth century. Schooled in the thought of Plato and St. Thomas Aquinas, he also studied philosophy, law, and sociology, and he was a professor at the University of Munster, West Germany. His numerous books include Leisure, the Basis of Culture; The Silence of St. Thomas; Happiness and Contemplation; and The End of Time: A Meditation on the Philosophy of History.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

How are hope and optimism different?
How does theological hope differ from non-theological hope?
What is the relationship of hope to love? To trust? To fear? To gratitude?
How are the grounds of hope and our understanding of them affected by cultural trends such as liberalism, secularism, progressivism and nihilism?
Do you recognize manifestations in yourself and/or your acquaintances of acedia (sloth)? If so, what do you think are the causes?

SCHEDULE
1:30pm Coffee & Tea
2:00pm Welcome
2:15pm Session I
3:30pm Break
3:45pm Session II
5:00pm End, Wine & Cheese Reception

The Thought of John Henry Newman
2017-07-09 00:00 - 2017-07-15 23:00 | Merton College, Oxford, Merton St, Oxford OX1 4JD, UK, Oxford, United Kingdom
Now in its fifth consecutive year, this intensive seminar will examine Newman’s achievements as 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.

Is God Knowable by Natural Reason? Philosophy, Theology, and Trinitarian Thought in the Middle Ages
2017-06-22 00:00 - 2017-06-28 23:00 | Pontifical University of the Holy Cross, Rome, Piazza Santa Apollinare, 49, 00186 Roma, Italy, Rome, Italy
In this seminar, historian of medieval theology Mark Clark and scholar of medieval philosophy Timothy Noone will offer an intensive survey of theological and philosophical debates about the natural knowledge of God in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Participants will read and discuss the writings of Peter Abelard, Peter Lombard, Bonaventure, Albert the Great, and Thomas Aquinas as well as modern philosophical engagement with these questions.

What Should We Fear? Courage and Cowardice in Public Life
2017-06-05 19:00 | Swift Hall, 3rd Floor Lecture, 1025 E 58th St. Chicago, IL 60637, Hyde Park, IL
REGISTER HERE
This talk is free and open to the public. The talk and Q&A will be livestreamed HERE at 7pm central time.
Moral theologian Jean Porter will give the talk “What should we fear? Courage and cowardice in public life” on Monday, June 5, 2017 at 7pm in the Swift Hall 3rd Floor Lecture Hall at the University of Chicago. An audience Q & A will be followed by a reception in the Swift Hall Common Room.

This event is presented by the Virtue, Happiness, and the Meaning of Life Project, made possible by a generous grant from the John Templeton Foundation, and is co-sponsored by the University of Chicago Divinity School, Martin Marty Center, and Lumen Chrisit Institute.
If you need assistance in order to fully participate in this event, contact Valerie Wallace.

Economics and Catholic Social Thought: A Primer
2017-05-22 09:00 - 2017-05-26 17:00 | Pontifical University of the Holy Cross, Rome, Piazza Santa Apollinare, 49, 00186 Roma, Italy, Rome, Italy
Applications are now closed for this seminar.
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.
This seminar is cosponsored by the Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture, the Kellogg Institute for International Studies at the University of Notre Dame, the Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts at the University of Notre Dame, the Catholic Research Economists Discussion Organization, and the Markets, Culture, and Ethics Research Center at the Pontifical University of Santa Croce.
Format: There will be twenty hours of class in addition to a full Roman experience. Each class will open with a brief lecture, and then we will turn to a seminar style discussion of the texts and issues at hand. Classroom activities will be supplemented with opportunities for daily Mass, meetings with Church leadership, and visits to famous sights in Rome.
Location: The seminar will take place in Rome, split between the University of Notre Dame’s Rome Global Gateway and the Pontificia Università della Santa Croce. Students will be provided with accommodations and meals, and a limited number of travel stipends are available on a need basis.
Application Information: This seminar will be open to Ph.D. students and faculty in Economics, Finance and related fields.
Applicants will be required to submit a completed online application form, including:

An updated CV.
A brief statement of research interest no longer than 750 words.
One academic writing sample.

All application materials can be submitted via the online application. Incomplete applications will not be considered. 15 students will be admitted to this seminar.
Application materials must be received by 11:59pm on MARCH 4, 2017.
Please direct any further questions to contact@credo-economists.org.

Panel Discussion on "Natural Law in Court"
2017-05-18 17:15 - 19:30 | Loyola University Chicago School of Law, Power Rogers & Smith Ceremonial Courtroom (10th Floor), 25 E Pearson St. Chicago, IL 60611, River North, IL
REGISTER HERE
$25 Registration / Free for Current Students and Faculty / 1 CLE CREDIT for an additional fee of $10
This program has been approved by the Illinois MCLE Board for 1 hour of General CLE credit. Cosponsored by the Catholic Lawyers Guild of Chicago and the Loyola University Chicago School of Law.
Join us for a reception and panel discussion of the recent book by R. H. Helmholz, Natural Law in Court: A History of Legal Theory in Practice (Harvard University Press, 2015). Copies of the book will be available for purchase.
Until very recently, lawyers in the Western tradition studied natural law as a part of their training, and the task of the judicial system was to put its tenets into concrete form, building an edifice of positive law on natural law’s foundations. Although much has been written about natural law in theory, surprisingly little has been said about how it has shaped legal practice. Natural Law in Court asks how lawyers and judges made and interpreted natural law arguments in England, Europe, and the United States, from the beginning of the sixteenth century to the American Civil War.
SCHEDULE:
5:15PM Registration and Reception
6:15PM Program
7:30PM Close

All Things Hold Together: A Great Books Education and the Catholic Tradition
2017-05-17 16:30 | Classics 110, 1010 E 59th St. Chicago, IL 60637, Hyde Park, IL
The Great Books can lead us to God and a liberal arts education finds its fulfillment in the liturgy. Yet, the curriculum and culture of many universities today are, by their very structure, inimical to such ends. Reflecting on his own education as a Fundamentals major at the University of Chicago and on the Catholic tradition he now teaches, Professor Ortiz will consider the blessings and limits of a Great Books education and how the Catholic tradition might restore the promise of the liberal arts by providing a vision of the whole and cultivating a habit of praise and thanksgiving.
