Lumen Christi Institute

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 (America/Chicago) | 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.

Gerard Manley Hopkins, S.J.: The Priest & The Poet
2017-05-16 18:00 - 20:00 | Gavin House, 1220 E 58th St., Chicago, IL, 60637
REGISTER HERE
6:00pm Buffet Dinner | 6:30pm Lecture
Open to current students.
G M Hopkins (1844-1889) converted to the Catholic Church while a university student and later became a Jesuit priest and lecturer in classical Greek. The poems by which he is known today were unpublished in his own lifetime, but in some measure formed — and were formed by — his friendships and his distinctively sacramental view of his own priesthood.
This course will consist of seven classes in which, after some brief biographical introduction, two or three poems of Hopkins will be read, together with pertinent material from his journal and letters, and discussed with a view to understanding the relation between Hopkins’s temperament, his faith, and his art — and, primarily, with the aim of deepening enjoyment of the poems themselves. No prior familiarity with Hopkins is presumed. No class presumes attendance at any other and students are welcome to attend any or all.
SCHEDULE
April 4th — Dawn
April 11th — Noon
April 18th — Night
April 25th — Summer
May 2nd — Autumn
May 9th — Winter
May 16th — Spring

Aquinas and the Life of the Mind
2017-05-12 16:00 | Harper Memorial Library 140, 1116 East 59th Street, Hyde Park, IL
Saint Thomas Aquinas regards mind, or intellect, as a form of life. It is even the most perfect form, he says, because it carries the power of free choice. Yet we may wonder how free he thinks we really are. For he insists that our mind’s life depends, intimately, on a cause outside itself. But on his view, freedom of choice would not even make sense without this cause; and our lives are fullest, and freest, when we focus more on it than on ourselves. This is to follow the mind’s deepest urge, which is toward that rather neglected virtue called wisdom.

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

Colloquium on "Givenness and Revelation"
2017-05-05 14:00 - 17:30 | Swift Hall, First Floor Common Room, 1025 E 58th St,Chicago, IL 60637, Hyde Park, IL
Part of the Lumen Christi Institute’s faculty colloquia in philosophy and theology, which bring together scholars from the region to discuss important questions in Catholic thought.
About Givenness and Revelation
Givenness and Revelation represents both the unity and the deep continuity of Jean-Luc Marion’s thinking over many decades. This investigation into the origins and evolution of the concept of revelation arises from an initial reappraisal of the tension between natural theology and the revealed knowledge of God or sacra doctrina. Marion draws on the re-definition of the notions of possibility and impossibility, the critique of the reification of the subject, and the unpredictability of the event in its relationship to the gift in order to assess the respective capacities of dogmatic theology, modern metaphysics, contemporary phenomenology, and the biblical texts, especially the New Testament, to conceive the paradoxical phenomenality of a revelation.
This work thus brings us to the very heart and soul of Marion’s theology, concluding with a phenomenological approach to the Trinity that uncovers the logic of gift performed in the scriptural manifestation of Jesus Christ as Son of the Father. Givenness and Revelation enhances not only our understanding of religious experience, but enlarges the horizon of possibility of phenomenology itself.

Lecture on the Easter Mysteries, Dinner, and Prayer at the Monastery of the Holy Cross
2017-04-29 16:30 - 20:00 | The Monastery of the Holy Cross, 3111 South Aberdeen St. Chicago, IL 60608, Chicago, IL
REGISTER HERE
Open to current university students and faculty. Transportation from Hyde Park will be provided.
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 with Fr. Peter Funk, O.S.B., 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
7:15pm Office of Compline
8:00pm Arrive back in Hyde Park

The Only Way To Truth Is By Love
2017-04-27 19:00 | Swift Hall, 3rd Floor Lecture, 1025 E 58th St. Chicago, IL 60637, Hyde Park, IL
A lecture on the occasion of the publication of Believing In Order To See (Fordham University Press, 2017). Copies of the book will be available for purchase.
Cosponsored by the Theology and Religious Ethics Workshop and the Seminary Coop Bookstore.

“Non intratur in veritatem nisi per caritatem” -St. Augustine
Believing does not always mean to make up for a deficit of knowledge, but rather attaining the right stance to see that which appears. This rule applies not only to common perception, but most of all to what Pascal, following St. Augustine, calls “divine things.” In faith, as in beholding a beloved or a work of art, what you see depends on how you stand in front of it.

Catholic and Protestant Reformations and the Genealogy of Modernity
2017-04-22 10:00 - 13:00
REGISTER HERE
Open to current graduate students and faculty
At this master class seminar, participants will read and discuss Professor Carlos Eire’s essay “Incombustible Weber: How the Protestant Reformation Really Disenchanted the World” from Faithful Narratives: Historians, Religion, and the Challenge of Objectivity, ed. Andrea Stark and Nina Caputo (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2014). A PDF copy of the reading will be provided.
This chapter discusses how challenges to traditional beliefs about death and purgatory in the Protestant Reformation caused significant material consequences, triggering a so-called “economic revolution.” Focusing on the issue of secularization in a present-day understanding of Protestant Reformation, the chapter examines the concept of “disenchantment” as manifested in three distinguishing characteristics of Protestantism. First is the redefinition of how “matter” and “spirit” relate to each other, which had led to iconoclasm and a new approach to rituals. Second is the redefinition of the boundaries between the “natural” and “supernatural” realms, which led to the denial of mystical ecstasies. Lastly, there is the separation of the living from the dead, which led to a reconfiguring of conceptual and socioeconomic structures.
SCHEDULE
9:30am Arrive, continental breakfast
10:00am Session I
11:25am Break
11:35am Session II
1:00pm Buffet Lunch
2:30pm Close

"Origins:" The Inaugural Conference of the Society of Catholic Scientists
2017-04-21 00:00 - 2017-04-23 00:00 | Millenium Knickerbocker Hotel, 163 East Walton Place, Downtown, IL
WATCH VIDEOS HERE
The first annual conference of the Society of Catholic Scientists cosponsored by the Lumen Christi Institute
The conference brought together researchers on all aspects of origins, from cosmos to consciousness. Specific topics included current cosmological ideas on the beginning and fate of the universe, fine-tuning and multiverse ideas, habitable planets and astrobiology, the origin of life, the evolution of species, and the origin of intelligence and consciousness.
CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS
“The Origin and Evolution of Universes” – Prof. John D. Barrow (Univ. of Cambridge)
“The Origin and Evolution of Habitable Worlds” – Prof. Karin I. Öberg (Harvard Univ.)
“Medieval Ideas of the Multiverse” – Prof. J. Christopher Clemens (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill)
“The Origin of Evolution: The Interplay of Order and Contingency” – Prof. Daniel Kuebler (Franciscan University of Steubenville)
“Process Information: A Novel Communication Theory with Applications to Evolutionary Biology” – Dr. Erick Chastain (Rutgers University)
“Why Only Us: the origin of human language” – Prof. Robert Berwick (MIT)
“Science in the Light of the Christian View of the Human Person” – Fr. Joachim Ostermann, O.F.M., Ph.D. (Franciscan Friars of Canada)
“The Catholic Scientist in the Secular World: What is the meaning of our vocation and how does it distinguish us?” – Dr. Marisa March (University of Pennsylvania)
St. Albert Award Lecture: “To Find God in All Things: Grandeur in an Evolutionary View of Life” – Prof. Kenneth R. Miller (Brown University)
Banquet Address – Br. Guy Consolmagno (Director of the Vatican Observatory)
“Georges Lemaitre’s Contributions to Cosmology” – Prof. Robert Scherrer (Vanderbilt University)
“Are Probabilities Essential to Inferring Design?” – Prof. Robert C. Koons (University of Texas at Austin)

CONFERENCE MEDIA COVERAGE
Faith And Science Come Together At Conference For Society Of Catholic Scientists, Forbes
Catholic Scientists Converge in Chicago to Ask Big Questions, Catholic News Agency
Catholic Scientists Discuss Faith’s Role in Work, Our Sunday Visitor

Master Class on The Wisdom of Bernard of Clairvaux
2017-04-08 14:00 - 17:30 | Gavin House, 1220 E 58th St., Chicago, IL, 60637
REGISTER HERE
This master class is open to current students and faculty. PDFs of the readings will be made available for participants.
This one-time Seminar will study selected writings of the great Cistercian theologian and mystic, Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1157). Bernard was one of the most remarkable figures of the twelfth century—monastic leader, ecclesiastical politician, and noted theologian. His most important legacy, however, was as a mystic and mystical writer. His mystical treatises, such as On Loving God (De diligendo Deo), and especially his eighty-six sermons on the biblical Song of Songs (Sermones super Cantica Canticorum), are among the most widely-read works in the history of Christian mysticism. The Seminar will focus on reading and analyzing On Loving God and selected sermons from the collection on the Song of Songs as found in Bernard of Clairvaux. Selected Works, translated by G. R. Evans (New York: Paulist Press, 1987), pp. 173-205, and 209-78. In addition, some other outlines and short extracts will be handed out during the Seminar.
REQUIRED READINGS

G.R. Evans, trans., Bernard of Clairvaux: Selected Works (New York: Paulist Press, 1988), pp.173-205, 209-278.

ANCILLARY READINGS

Bernard McGinn & Patricia Ferris McGinn, Early Christian Mystics (New Yorl: Crossroads Publishing, 2003), pp. 207-230
G.R. Evans, trans., Bernard of Clairvaux: Selected Works (New York: Paulist Press, 1988), pp.13-57.

SCHEDULE
1:30pm Coffee & Tea
2:00pm Session I
3:40pm Break
3:50pm Session II
5:30pm Close, Wine & Cheese Reception

Lunch Discussion on "The Cosmos and the Religious Quest"
2017-04-07 12:00 - 13:30 | Gavin House, 1220 E 58th St., Chicago, IL, 60637
Students will read and discuss Chapter 2 from Professor Peter Harrison’s book The Territories of Science and Religion (University of Chicago, 2015) entitled “The Cosmos and the Religious Quest.”
Prof. Harrison will also give a public lecture on “Religious Origins of Modern Science?” on Thursday, April 6.

ABOUT THE BOOK
The conflict between science and religion seems indelible, even eternal. Surely two such divergent views of the universe have always been in fierce opposition? Actually, that’s not the case, says Peter Harrison: our very concepts of science and religion are relatively recent, emerging only in the past three hundred years, and it is those very categories, rather than their underlying concepts, that constrain our understanding of how the formal study of nature relates to the religious life.

In The Territories of Science and Religion, Harrison dismantles what we think we know about the two categories, then puts it all back together again in a provocative, productive new way. By tracing the history of these concepts for the first time in parallel, he illuminates alternative boundaries and little-known relations between them—thereby making it possible for us to learn from their true history, and see other possible ways that scientific study and the religious life might relate to, influence, and mutually enrich each other.

A tour de force by a distinguished scholar working at the height of his powers, The Territories of Science and Religion promises to forever alter the way we think about these fundamental pillars of human life and experience.

Religious Origins of Modern Science?
2017-04-06 16:30 | Kersten 120, 5720 South Ellis Avenue, Hyde Park, IL
REGISTER HERE
Cosponsored by the Department of History and the Committee for the Conceptual and Historical Studies of Science
It is often thought that modern science developed largely independently of, or even in opposition to, religion. Some historians, however, have suggested that religious factors played a key role in the emergence of modern science in the seventeenth century, and were important in establishing a permanent and prominent place for scientific activity at the heart of modern Western culture. This lecture explores a number of ways in which religion may have had a positive impact on the emergence and consolidation of modern science, paying particular attention to the values needed to establish its social and intellectual legitimacy.
Copies of The Territories of Science and Religion will be available for purchase.
Prof. Harrison will also lead a discussion for students on “The Cosmos and the Religious Quest” on Friday, April 7.

The Greek East and the Spiritual Franciscan View of History
2017-03-31 16:00 | Swift Hall, First Floor Common Room, 1025 E 58th St,Chicago, IL 60637, Hyde Park, IL
REGISTER HERE
Cosponsored by the Theology & Religious Ethics Workshop
The Spiritual Franciscan Angelo Clareno (d.1337) fervently promoted the view that St. Francis’ life and Rule renewed the true evangelic life. When ecclesiastical persecution led him to flee to Greece, Angelo came into contact with both Greek monasticism and Greek theology based on the Church fathers. While in Greece, he translated Greek texts and he found in Greek monastic traditions possibilities for living according to Francis’ rule outside the Franciscan order. Angelo’s time in Greece also led him to reflect on Church history and the relationship between Greek and Latin Christianity. Thus the eastern monastic tradition helped Angelo to explore ways of living the apostolic life and to develop a view of Church history that differed from other Spiritual Franciscans.
IMAGE: Roma, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, cod. Vitt. Em. 1167: Celestino V benedice Angelo Clareno e gli altri frati (particolare)

Echoes from the Galleries
2017-03-26 15:00 | Art Institute of Chicago, 111 S Michigan Ave. Chicago, IL 60603, Downtown
a concert with Schola Antiqua of Chicago (Lumen Christi Artists-in-Residence)
BUY TICKETS
$10 non-members | $5 members & students*
* – Ticket allows for entry to the museum and event beginning at 2:30pm. To enter the museum prior to 2:30pm, please purchase a separate museum admission ticket.
Schola Antiqua presents a concert in connection with the opening of The Deering Family Galleries of Medieval and Renaissance Art, Arms, and Armor at the Art Institute of Chicago. The program includes music inspired by beautifully illustrated books of hours and early sixteenth-century German art, as well as pieces celebrating the theme of arms and armor, prominently displayed in the galleries. The women of Schola Antiqua will perform works from a rare thirteenth-century liturgical book on exhibit, which is known to have been associated with a Dominican convent.
Immediately following the concert, Jonathan Tavares–Associate Curator of Arms & Armor–will lead a short tour of the reinstallation.

The Soul of Early Irish Monasticism
2017-03-16 12:00 - 13:30 | Union League Club, 65 W Jackson Blvd. Chicago, IL 60604, Downtown, IL
Not many people are aware that when it comes to Irish religious history, St. Patrick only scratches the surface. The island in fact has a rich and fascinating Christian heritage, of which monks and sprawling monastic communities play a central role.

The Liberal Arts Then and Now
2017-03-03 13:00 - 14:30 | Gavin House, 1220 E 58th St., Chicago, IL, 60637
Open to current University of Chicago undergraduates. Lunch will be served.
Literary critic, noted essayist, and alumnus of the College Joseph Epstein will participate in a conversation with students about his life inside and outside the academy. Students are encouraged to read the short essay “Who Killed the Liberal Arts? And Why We Should Care” in preparation for the discussion.

Tracing our Shared Deep History: Evolutionary Anthropology and Theo-Drama
2017-02-23 17:30 - 19:00 | Social Sciences, Room 122, 1126 E 59th St. Chicago, IL 60637, Hyde Park, IL
Cosponsored by the Theology and Religious Ethics Workshop
While theology and biological science often seem to be at odds, there are productive ways of telling the Christian story of who we are as human beings which resonate with newer evolutionary theories. This lecture will argue that the most convincing theological approach is theo-drama, where insights from the dramatic stage inform our theological reflections in relation to the drama of evolution. Such exchanges can be highly creative for theology and anthropology; neither party in the dialogue is reduced to the other, and both are enriched in new and interesting ways.

The Book of Judges
2017-02-21 19:00 - 21:00 | Gavin House, 1220 E 58th St., Chicago, IL, 60637
6:00 Dinner | 6:30 Lecture
Open to current students and faculty. Others interested in attending please contact info@lumenchristi.org. Registrants are free to attend as many sessions as they choose.
The Book of Judges is a collection of loosely connected accounts of the loosely connected Israelite tribes in the period between the death of the general Joshua and the establishment of the first kingdom. This time of religious and military crisis brought to the fore a series of heroes called šōṕēṭîm (judges) who, as emergency agents of God’s deliverance and chastisement, reconnected the Israelites to the promises made in the covenants.
In times when Bible-reading was common, the vividness, economy, and narrative force of the episodes in Judges made the book a favorite (among the works of G.F. Händel, for example, are oratorios titled Deborah, Gideon, and Jephthah, in addition to the better-known Samson). Today appreciation for the book has declined, as it serves comfortably neither the purposes of liturgy nor of polite politics.
This course will examine the principal episodes of Judges, trying to develop some awareness and admiration of their distinctly Bronze Age flavor, and connecting them theologically to the operation of the covenant in the Old Testament. No prior familiarity with the book is presumed.
Jan 10 The First Judges — Chapters 1-3.
Jan 17 Deborah — Chapters 4-5.
Jan 24 Gideon — Chapters 6-8
Jan 31 Jephthah — Chapters 10-12
Feb 7 Samson 1 — Chapters 13-14
Feb 14 Samson 2 — Chapters 15-16
Feb 21 Epilogues — Chapter 17

Master Class: Augustine on Human Freedom and Divine Grace: What is Really Going on in the ‘Conversion Scene’ in Augustine’s Confessions?
2017-02-17 15:00 - 18:00 | Gavin House, 1220 E 58th St., Chicago, IL, 60637
REGISTER HERE
This master class is open to graduate and undergraduate students, including non-University of Chicago students. Space is limited and offered on a first-come, first-served basis. Copies of the readings will be made available online to all participants.
Although the part of Augustine’s Confessions that describes his conversion to Christianity is arguably the most famous passage in his influential corpus, scholars have long disagreed about how to understand this important section of Book 8.
I will argue that the hermeneutical key to the passage is knowledge of the philosophical psychology that Augustine assumes in the passage, which is a synthesis of Stoic and Platonic epistemological and motivational theory. Augustine is claiming that his conversion was given to him by God – that is, that is was a grace – but also that grace operates on humans by altering their natural cognitive and conative powers, and that these powers were correctly described by Hellenistic philosophers.
We will examine the passage from Confessions Book 8 in depth, bringing to bear the relevant philosophical context, and then draw further conclusions about his position on the relation of human freedom to divine grace. On the topic of grace and freedom we will make comparisons with Augustine’s later works, as well as with the Reformation-era debate about grace and freedom, alluding to authors such as Molina, Bañez, and Jansen.
Primary Readings:
Augustine, Confessions Books 6 and 8. Please bring this text with you to the seminar.
Additional handouts of shorter texts from Hellenistic philosophy and from Augustine’s later corpus may be provided to read through during the seminar.
Optional Secondary Readings:
Sarah Byers, Perception, Sensibility, and Moral Motivation in Augustine (Cambridge: 2013).
Prof. Byers will give a lecture on Augustine’s Debt to Aristotle on Thursday, February 16.

What Does it Mean to Say the Son of God is 'Consubstantial' with the Father? New Insights about Augustine's Debt to Aristotle
2017-02-16 17:30 - 19:00 | Harper Memorial Library 130, 1116 East 59th Street, Hyde Park, IL
REGISTER HERE
Cosponsored by the Department of Philosophy
It is commonly accepted that Aristotelian ideas did not inform Latin-language metaphysics until the translation of Aristotle in the 12th century. However, this opinion has arisen from a failure to understand how the metaphysics of Augustine fundamentally depends upon Victorinus’ assimilation of Aristotelian concepts and distinctions.
Victorinus, mentioned by Augustine in Confessions Book 7, was a Christian convert, an eminent rhetor, and one of the last philosophers in the western Roman Empire who was fully bilingual in Greek and Latin. In the 350’s he wrote metaphysical treatises defending the Council of Nicea’s doctrine that the Son of God is ‘consubstantial’ with the Father. These treatises comment upon and assimilate core concepts of Aristotle’s Metaphysics and On the Soul. Augustine appropriated these Aristotelian ideas from Victorinus.
Prof. Byers will also lead a master class on “Augustine on Human Freedom and Divine Grace” on Friday, February 17.

Dei Verbum: Persons and Propositions
2017-02-15 20:00 | St. Procopius Abbey Church, 5601 College Rd. Lisle, IL 60532, Lisle, IL
Presented by St. Procopius Abbey, Benedictine University, and the Lumen Christi Institute
Free and open to the public.
Contact Fr. Becket Franks, O.S.B. with any questions.

Master Class: David Hume, Julian of Norwich, and the Problem of Evil
2017-02-04 14:30 - 17:30 | Faculty House at Columbia University, 64 Morningside Drive, New York, NY
REGISTER HERE
This master class is open to current graduate students and faculty. Others interested in participating should contact us. Digital copies of the readings will be made available to participants.
More info TBA

Reductionism in Science: Order from Chaos or Order from Ideas?
2017-02-03 13:00 - 14:30 | Gavin House, 1220 E 58th St., Chicago, IL, 60637
REGISTER HERE
Open to current university students and faculty. Lunch will be served.
Join us for a discussion with physicist Stephen Barr on his article from First Things on the philosophical assumptions behind a tendency toward reductionism in the natural sciences.
“This tendency to downgrade and diminish reflects a metaphysical prejudice that equates explanatory reduction with a grim slide down the ladder of being. Powerful explanatory schemes reveal things to be simpler than they appear. What simpler means in science is much discussed among philosophers—it is not at all a simple question. But to many materialists it seems to mean lower, cruder, and more trivial. By this way of thinking, the further we push toward a more basic understanding of things, the more we are immersed in meaningless, brutish bits of matter.”

Evolution and the Catholic Faith
2017-02-02 20:00 - 21:00 | Kent Hall, Room 107, 1020 E 58th St. Chicago, IL 60637, Hyde Park, IL
REGISTER HERE
Many people imagine that the Catholic Church was historically opposed to the theory of evolution or that there is something dangerous or dubious about Darwinian evolution from the viewpoint of Catholic theology. These ideas are based on a variety of confusions and misconceptions. This talk will show how Catholic thinkers and Catholic Church authorities looked at evolution. It will also respond to the arguments some Christians make against it, and examine some of the more subtle issues, such as the relation of chance to divine providence, and the questions surrounding human origins and human distinctiveness.

Visit to the Benedictine Monastery of the Holy Cross
2017-01-28 17:30 - 21:00 | The Monastery of the Holy Cross, 3111 South Aberdeen St. Chicago, IL 60608, Chicago, IL
REGISTER HERE
Open to current university students. Others interested in attending should contact us.
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 with Gregorian Chant and Compline), and have dinner and discussion with Fr. Peter Funk, O.S.B., prior of the monastery and alumnus of the University of Chicago.
More information on the music for Solemn Vespers 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
7:15pm Office of Compline
8:00pm Arrive back in Hyde Park

Lunch Discussion with Lisa Ruddick: “When Nothing is Cool”
2017-01-27 13:00 - 14:30 | Gavin House, 1220 E 58th St., Chicago, IL, 60637
Open to current graduate students and faculty. Lunch will be provided.
“I believe that the progressive fervor of the humanities, while it reenergized inquiry in the 1980s and has since inspired countless valid lines of inquiry, masks a second-order complex that is all about the thrill of destruction. In the name of critique, anything except critique can be invaded or denatured. This is the game of academic cool.”
Join Professor Lisa Ruddick for a discussion of the nature of critique and the sense of the self among scholars in the humanities from her recent article “When Nothing is Cool.“

Augustine's Theology of Love
2017-01-12 20:00 | Swift Hall, 3rd Floor Lecture, 1025 E 58th St. Chicago, IL 60637, Hyde Park, IL
Cosponsored by the Theology and Religious Ethics Workshop

Reason, Wisdom, and Beauty in Medieval Christian Thought
2016-11-29 19:00 - 21:00 | Gavin House, 1220 E 58th St., Chicago, IL, 60637
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.
With the recovery of the works of Aristotle in the Latin West, the development of the scholastic method of reasoning, and the creation of the universities, a style of academic philosophy and theology developed in the late medieval period in which the practice of reasoning about Christian revelation was developed independent of spirituality and, often, the search for wisdom. Previously, in the works of the Church Fathers and the great monastic writers, theology was rooted in a spiritual life uniting prayer and the search for understanding.
This course will introduce students to major Christian figures and themes of the medieval period, with special attention to the relationship of faith and reason.
Eriugena
Willemien Otten (University of Chicago)
October 11
Bernard of Clairvaux
Bernard McGinn (University of Chicago)
October 18
Anselm of Canterbury
Aaron Canty (Saint Xavier University)
October 25
Hugh & Richard of St. Victor
Robert Porwoll (University of Chicago)
November 1
Bonaventure
Peter Casarella (Univeristy of Notre Dame)
November 8
*Beauty as Splendor
Fr. Paul Mankowski, SJ (Lumen Christi Institute)
November 15
Thomas a Kempis
Ralph Keen (University of Illinois at Chicago)
November 22
John Climacus
Perry Hamalis (North Central College)
November 29
*Note the speaker and topic for this session has been changed. We hope to reschedule a talk by Denis McNamara in the future.

With Nature Marveling: Advent Music from Long Ago
2016-11-27 18:00 | Rockefeller Memorial Chapel, 5850 S Woodlawn Ave. Chicago, IL 60637, Hyde Park, IL
Schola Antiqua begins Advent with a rich array of late-medieval musical styles interwoven to promote a timeless sense of anticipation that befits the season. The group sings contemplative plainchant and a delightful set of medieval English carols, while also offering a glimpse into a splendid Netherlandish service of Matins for Christmas Eve.

The Suspended Harp: Sounds of Faith in Medieval Jerusalem
2016-10-23 13:00 - 14:00 | The Met Cloisters – The Fuentidueña Chapel, 99 Margaret Corbin Drive, New York, IL
A concert by Schola Antiqua of Chicago (Lumen Christi Institute Artists-in-Residence)
BUY TICKETS HERE
The vocal ensemble Schola Antiqua of Chicago brings “musicality and sound beyond question” (Early Music America) to the sacred repertoire of Jerusalem: Georgian and Armenian hymns; cantorial psalms; Sufic devotional music; and Jewish, Christian, and Muslim calls to prayer. This program features special guests oudist Amro Helmy, and soprano Nell Snaidas.
Other performances:
Sun, Oct 23, 3 pm
Tickets to this event include Museum admission.
This program, made possible by the William S. Lieberman Fund, is presented in conjunction with the exhibition Jerusalem 1000–1400: Every People Under Heaven, on view September 26, 2016–January 8, 2017.

A Conversation with Phil Klay
2016-10-21 15:30 - 17:00 | Swift Hall, 3rd Floor Lecture, 1025 E 58th St. Chicago, IL 60637, Hyde Park, IL
REGISTER HERE
cosponsored by the Committee on Creative Writing and the Seminar Coop Bookstore
In this informal conversation, Phil Klay and Scott Moringiello (DePaul University) will discuss how literature helps us reflect on themes of brutality, faith, fear, and morality to deepen our understanding of faith and humanity. In 2014, Phil Klay was awarded the National Book Award Prize for Redeployment, a collection of short stories that takes readers to the frontlines of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, asking us to understand what happened there, and what happened to the soldiers who returned.

NYC Master Class on Michel Foucault and Humanism
2016-10-21 14:00 - 17:00 | Fordham President’s Dining Room, 113 West 60th Street, New York, NY
A half-day seminar discussion of the chapter “Contesting Humanism: Michel Foucault” from the new book by philosopher Rémi Brague. This master class is open to graduate students and faculty. Undergraduates or others interested in participating should contact us. PDFs of the book will be made available online for all participants.
ABOUT THE BOOK
The Legitimacy of the Human (St. Augustine’s Press, 2016) presents itself as a satellite work to a more voluminous effort by Rémi Brague, The Kingdom of Man. The larger book argues the thesis of the increasingly visible failure of the modern project, founded upon a view of man as thoroughly emancipated and autonomous, his own sovereign and the world’s. This is most visible in our technological powers and predicaments, with their ever-growing capacity to destroy or fundamentally transform our humanity, but understandings of freedom and equality unable to justify themselves before the bar of reason, but willfully asserting themselves, complement the picture. If modernity’s precious gains are to be preserved, and with them their beneficiaries, modern human beings, then the founding thoughts of the modern world need to be revisited and revised, often in terms of a creative reengagement with premodern ones. A new, truly humanistic, culture needs to be sought.
The Legitimacy of the Human drives home that basic argument, surveying contemporary challenges to the very existence of humanity, then interrogating modern thought and philosophy for reasons it might have for the continuation of the human adventure. Brague finds the self-proclaimed advocates of the modern strikingly silent or even negative about the proposition. To be sure, in many instances modern philosophy has helped humanity organize itself better in terms of justice, peaceful coexistence, and prosperity. But on the basic question whether it is good that humans exist, it is strangely tongue-tied. Other authorities must be consulted, other sources drawn from, to credibly answer that fundamental existential question. The last two chapters of the book hearken to the answer of the biblical God, as expressed in Genesis 1 and recapitulated by the Word Incarnate of the Gospels.

Religious Faith and Modern War
2016-10-21 07:30 - 08:30 | University Club of Chicago, 76 E Monroe St Chicago, IL 60603, Downtown, IL
REGISTER HERE
$25 Registration includes breakfast
You can read Phil Klay’s recent piece “The Citizen-Soldier: Moral Risk and the Modern Military” HERE.
Photo courtesy of Hannah Dunphy

The Near East in the First Millenium: A Bird's Eye View
2016-10-19 16:30 - 18:00 | Classics 110, 1010 E 59th St. Chicago, IL 60637, Hyde Park, IL
Cosponsored by the France Chicago Center and the Department of Near East Languages and Civilizations
The Near East of today is very much in the center of attention, for obvious political and military reasons. Yet, it is worth while to look at its past cultural history. It was for millennia the hub of the world’s higher culture. It was especially fruitful in the Roman Empire and in the first centuries of Islam. Its influence on European culture was real. It is a duty for us all to recall this heritage and to try and save what is left of it.

Master Class on the Epistle to Diognetus
2016-10-15 14:00 - 17:00 | Gavin House, 1220 E 58th St., Chicago, IL, 60637
REGISTER HERE
This master class is open to graduate and undergraduate students, including non-University of Chicago students. Space is limited and offered on a first-come, first-served basis.
A masterpiece of early Christian apologetic literature (about 200), this short anonymous writing gives a vivid description of the paradoxical way in which Christians live in the pagan world and gives us precious hints about God’s ways. The actuality of such an ancient work for our secularized world is amazing.
The text can be found HERE.

The Conciliar Heritage: The Politics of Oblivion
2016-10-07 15:30 | Swift Hall, First Floor Common Room, 1025 E 58th St,Chicago, IL 60637, Hyde Park, IL
REGISTER HERE
Cosponsored by the History Department and the Medieval Studies Workshop
In the early fifteenth century, the general council assembled at Constance and, representing the universal Church, put an end to the scandalous schism which for almost forty years had divided the Latin Church between rival lines of claimants to the papal office. It did so by claiming and exercising an authority superior to that of the pope, an authority by virtue of which it could impose constitutional limits on the exercise of his prerogatives, stand in judgment over him, and if need be, depose him for wrongdoing. This lecture will consider the nature and history of the conciliarist tradition of ecclesiastical constitutionalism across the half millennium down to 1870 when Vatican I, by confirming Cardinal Manning’s claim that “ultramontanism is Catholic Christianity”, consigned it to oblivion.
You can read more about Professor Oakley’s book The Conciliarist Tradition HERE.

Kingship: The Politics of Enchantment
2016-10-06 16:30 | Classics 110, 1010 E 59th St. Chicago, IL 60637, Hyde Park, IL
REGISTER HERE
Cosponsored by the History Department and the Medieval Studies Workshop
The lecture will focus on the extraordinary millennial career of the sacral kingship down through the ages and across the globe as the most common form of government known to humankind. It will trace its survival down into the early modern era and highlight the unexpected turn whereby it drew the papacy itself into its ideological orbit and helped transform the popes into the last of the great sacral monarchs.
You can read more about Prof. Oakley’s book on Kingship HERE.

Getting Religion: Faith, Culture, and Politics from the Age of Eisenhower to the Era of Obama
2016-09-27 17:30 - 19:30 | University Club of Chicago, 76 E Monroe St Chicago, IL 60603, Downtown, IL
ABOUT THE BOOK
Impeccably researched, thought-challenging and leavened by wit, Getting Religion, the highly-anticipated new book from Kenneth L. Woodward, is ideal perfect for readers looking to understand how religion came to be a contentious element in 21st century public life.
Here the award-winning author blends memoir (especially of the postwar era) with copious reporting and shrewd historical analysis to tell the story of how American religion, culture and politics influenced each other in the second half of the 20th century. There are few people writing today who could tell this important story with such authority and insight. A scholar as well as one of the nation’s most respected journalists, Woodward served as Newsweek’s religion editor for nearly forty years, reporting from five continents and contributing over 700 articles, including nearly 100 cover stories, on a wide range of social issues, ideas and movements.
Beginning with a bold reassessment of the Fifties, Woodward’s narrative weaves through Civil Rights era and the movements that followed in its wake: the anti-Vietnam movement; Liberation theology in Latin America; the rise of Evangelicalism and decline of mainline Protestantism; women’s liberation and Bible; the turn to Asian spirituality; the transformation of the family and emergence of religious cults; and the embrace of righteous politics by both the Republican and Democratic Parties.
Along the way, Woodward provides riveting portraits of many of the era’s major figures: preachers like Billy Graham and Jerry Falwell; politicians Mario Cuomo and Hillary Clinton; movement leaders Daniel Berrigan, Abraham Joshua Heschel, and Richard John Neuhaus; influential thinkers ranging from Erik Erikson to Elizabeth Kubler-Ross; feminist theologians Rosemary Reuther and Elizabeth Schussler-Fiorenza; and est impresario Werner Erhardt; plus the author’s long time friend, the Dalai Lama.
For readers interested in how religion, economics, family life and politics influence each other, Woodward introduces fresh a fresh vocabulary of terms such as “embedded religion,” “movement religion” and “entrepreneurial religion” to illuminate the interweaving of the secular and sacred in American public life.
This is one of those rare books that changes the way Americans think about belief, behavior and belonging.
PRAISE FOR THE BOOK
“In this thoughtful book, Ken Woodward offers us a memorable portrait of the past seven decades of American life and culture. From Reinhold Niebuhr to Billy Graham, from Abraham Heschel to the Dali Lama, from George W. Bush to Hillary Clinton, Woodward captures the personalities and charts the philosophical trends that have shaped the way we live now.” – Jon Meacham, Pulitzer Prize winner and New York Times bestselling author of Destiny and Power
“For decades, Kenneth Woodward covered religion like no one else in the field: with a keen intellect, an open mind, a big heart, and most of all, the inability to write a dull sentence. In his new memoir, which mixes his own religious upbringing with a typically clearheaded analysis of the times in which he lived (and on which he reported), he takes us on a fascinating journey of what he rightly calls the most volatile religious period in American history. You may open the book for the historical tour, but you’ll stay with it because of your brilliant guide.” – James Martin, SJ, New York Times bestselling author of Jesus: A Pilgrimage.
Woodward’s book is brilliant—lively, historically informed, and spiced throughout with his trademark wit. Having personally witnessed many of most important events in American religion over the past half century, Woodward provides close-up, moment-to-moment reality to stories others often missed. His judgments are consistently edgy but also appreciative of the achievements of the era’s key players he came to know so well. – Grant Wacker, Gilbert T. Rowe Professor Emeritus of Christian History, Duke Divinity School
“No American journalist has patrolled the borders of that often-troubled relationship between faith and culture longer or better than Kenneth Woodward. He’s a reporter of the old school, taking the time both to get the story right and to be artful about how he crafts his prose. As Woodward says himself, “being there matters,” and in this book, you’ll find the wisdom of someone who’s just flat-out been there. This is a superb book.” – John L. Allen Jr, editor of Crux and author of A People of Hope
“This survey and interpretation of the American socio-religious scene over the past half century is deeply resourced, comprehensive in coverage, fair-minded in its judgments, and eminently readable. It covers much more than politics, but Woodward has original things to tell us on that highly charged topic. His account of the religious right is a model of clarity, and he balances that by calling attention to often overlooked religious dimensions to Democratic party politics — especially the importance of Methodism in the political formation of George McGovern and Hillary Clinton. All in all, a terrific book.” – Philip Gleason, Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Notre Dame.
“If ever there were a journalist who could write of his journey through the multi-dimensional worlds of religion in America — and in the world, it is Kenneth Woodward. Religion Reported is a fascinating account of his almost 40 years as the religion editor of Newsweek. He takes us behind the scenes with illuminating portrayals of some of the major religious and political leaders of the latter twentieth century and does so with thorough research, balanced reporting, candid assessments, and more than a little humor. As Woodward notes, ‘being there’ mattered. It becomes clear that the author has been everywhere on the religion scene and his observations are incisive and insightful. Readers of this engaging book will feel, as I did, that they were there also.” – Michael Cromartie, Vice President, Ethics and Public Policy Center
Not since de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, has there been such a personal and insightful survey of religion in American life. Ken Woodward’s Getting Religion is in some ways even better because de Tocqueville was a just visitor to America while Woodward is a sympathetic insider who loves church and state as well as the separation between them that mutually enriches both. This is a masterful record of the dance of religion on American shores since the second world war. Ken Woodward may be the only one who could have written it. –Rabbi Marc Gellman, Ph.D., former religion columnist for Newsweek.com

NYC Master Class on "The Wisdom of Bernard of Clairvaux"
2016-09-17 09:30 - 14:30 | Faculty House at Columbia University, 64 Morningside Drive, New York, NY
This master class is open to graduate students and faculty. Undergraduates or others interested in participating should contact us. PDFs of the readings will be made available online for all participants. Complimentary copies of Early Christian Mystics (Crossroads, 2003) will be provided at the seminar.
This one-time Seminar will study selected writings of the great Cistercian theologian and mystic, Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1157). Bernard was one of the most remarkable figures of the twelfth century—monastic leader, ecclesiastical politician, and noted theologian. His most important legacy, however, was as a mystic and mystical writer. His mystical treatises, such as On Loving God (De diligendo Deo), and especially his eighty-six sermons on the biblical Song of Songs (Sermones super Cantica Canticorum), are among the most widely-read works in the history of Christian mysticism. The Seminar will focus on reading and analyzing On Loving God and selected sermons from the collection on the Song of Songs as found in Bernard of Clairvaux. Selected Works, translated by G. R. Evans (New York: Paulist Press, 1987), pp. 173-205, and 209-78. In addition, some other outlines and short extracts will be handed out during the Seminar.
REQUIRED READINGS

G.R. Evans, trans., Bernard of Clairvaux: Selected Works (New York: Paulist Press, 1988), pp.173-205, 209-278.

ANCILLARY READINGS

Bernard McGinn & Patricia Ferris McGinn, Early Christian Mystics (New Yorl: Crossroads Publishing, 2003), pp. 207-230
G.R. Evans, trans., Bernard of Clairvaux: Selected Works (New York: Paulist Press, 1988), pp.13-57.

SCHEDULE
9:30am Welcome Reception
10:00am Session I
11:15am Break
11:45am Session II
1:00pm Close, Buffet Lunch
2:30pm End

Catholic Social Thought: A Critical Investigation
2016-07-30 23:00 - 2016-08-06 23:00 | University of California, Berkeley, S Hall Rd. Berkeley, CA 94720, Berkeley, CA

The Thought of John Henry Newman
2016-07-10 23:00 - 2016-07-15 23:00 | Merton College, Oxford, Merton St, Oxford OX1 4JD, UK, Oxford, United Kingdom
Now in its fourth 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.

Aquinas’s Five Ways and Where they Lead
2016-06-23 23:00 - 2016-06-28 23:00 | Pontifical University of the Holy Cross, Rome, Piazza Santa Apollinare, 49, 00186 Roma, Italy, Rome, Italy
This intensive seminar will discuss St. Thomas Aquinas’s Five Ways of proving the existence of a God and the conception that he thinks they yield: that of a God who is at once utterly simple and utterly perfect, and therefore utterly beyond our comprehension. The sessions will center on Summa Theologiae, I, qq. 2-4—especially, of course, q. 2, a. 3, which contains the Five Ways themselves—and on selected texts from qq. 12 & 13. Participants will also discuss relevant passages from other works of St. Thomas, as well as his historical influences and some related contemporary issues.

Symposium on Heidegger's Confessions
2016-05-26 15:30 | Swift Hall, 3rd Floor Lecture, 1025 E 58th St. Chicago, IL 60637, Hyde Park, IL
Cosponsored by the Philosophy of Religions Workshop and the Theology & Religious Ethics Workshop
Although Martin Heidegger is nearly as notorious as Friedrich Nietzsche for embracing the death of God, the philosopher himself acknowledged that Christianity accompanied him at every stage of his career. In Heidegger’s Confessions, Ryan Coyne isolates a crucially important player in this story: Saint Augustine. Uncovering the significance of Saint Augustine in Heidegger’s philosophy, he details the complex and conflicted ways in which Heidegger paradoxically sought to define himself against the Christian tradition while at the same time making use of its resources.

Caring for our Common Home: Economics, Environment, & Catholic Social Thought
2016-05-19 15:00 - 2016-05-20 17:00 | International House at the University of Chicago, 1414 E 59th St. Chicago, IL 60637, Hyde Park, IL
THURSDAY, MAY 19
The International House at The University of Chicago
Public Symposium
Archbishop Thomas G. Wenski, Archbishop of Miami
Christopher Barrett, Cornell University
Mary Evelyn Tucker, Yale University
Michael Greenstone, The University of Chicago
V. Ramanathan, The University of California, San Diego
FRIDAY, MAY 20
The Hilton Chicago/Magnificent Mile Suites
SESSION I: The Current State of Environmental Degradation and its Impact on the Most Vulnerable
Richard Carson, The University of California, San Diego
Christopher Barrett, Cornell University
SESSION II: Catholic Social Teaching on the Environment
Jame Schaefer, Marquette University
David Cloutier, Mount St. Mary’s University
Session III: Practical Responses to the Problem
Geoffrey Heal, Columbia University
Mark Jacobsen, The University of California, San Diego
Bishop Richard Pates, Bishop of Des Moines

Schola Antiqua Concert: Caged Byrd
2016-05-14 18:30 | St. John Cantius Church, 825 N Carpenter St Chicago, IL 60642, Chicago, IL
General $25 / Students $10. Purchase tickets HERE.
A concert of sacred motets and keyboard music by William Byrd with Jason Moy, harpsichord.
For more information visit the Schola Antiqua website.

The Myth of Autonomy
2016-05-12 16:30 - 18:00 | Swift Hall, First Floor Common Room, 1025 E 58th St,Chicago, IL 60637, Hyde Park, IL
Modernity and post-modernity share an evolving notion of autonomy, conceived along nominalist lines,
that runs counter to earlier concepts of human freedom developed by the likes of Irenaeus and Anselm.
Persona creatus is today displacing homo gratus, both culturally and politically. What is at stake in
this evolution? Fundamental theology, obviously, and anthropology too. Perception of the body as well,
together with the legislation or policies by which we try to reinforce our sense of autonomy and our
claims to ‘dignity’ in the sphere of the body. So what if this sense is mistaken? What if we have autonomy
wrong? Professor Farrow’s public lecture will ask us to think again about autonomy.

Pope Francis, Marriage, and the Family
2016-05-07 17:00 | Swift Hall, First Floor Common Room, 1025 E 58th St,Chicago, IL 60637, Hyde Park, IL
In the wake of a synodal process that reflected on “the vocation and mission of the family today,” (RF 1) Pope Francis recently released a sweeping and rich post-synodal Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia on love in the family, in which he invites Christian families to “value the gifts of marriage and the family, and to persevere in a love strengthened by the virtues of generosity, commitment, fidelity and patience” and invites everyone to “be a sign of mercy and closeness wherever family life remains imperfect or lacks peace and joy” (AL 5). Spouses Anna and Michael Moreland will consider how the themes and goals of the document address the place of marriage and the family in the life of the church today.

Harsh Justice: The Widening Divide Between America and Europe
2016-05-03 16:00 - 18:00 | Jenner & Block, 45th Floor, 353 N Clark St. Chicago, IL 60654, Downtown, IL
REGISTER HERE
Free and open to the public
a panel discussion with
James Q. Whitman, Yale University Law School
Respondents
Hon. Tom Dart,Cook County Sheriff
Hon. Colleen Sheehan, Cook County Circuit Court Judge
Kim Foxx, Former Assistant State’s Attorney, Juvenile Justice Division, and Former Chief of Staff to President of Cook County Board, Toni Preckwinkle
Hon. Ann M. Burke (moderator), Illinois Supreme Court Justice
Cosponsored by The Catholic Lawyers Guild of Chicago and The John Howard Association
Criminal punishment in America has become harsh and degrading–more so than any other western democracy. Executions and long prison terms are commonplace in America. Countries like France and Germany, by contrast, are systematically mild. European offenders are rarely sent to prison, and when they are, they serve far shorter terms than their American counterparts. Why is America so comparatively harsh? The answer lies in America’s triumphant embrace of a non-hierarchical social system and distrust of state power which have contributed to a law of punishment that is more willing to degrade offenders.
The panelists will discuss how Professor Whitman’s comparison of the European and American systems might highlight and uncover aspects of the criminal justice system in Cook County and Illinois that could be improved.
Event Schedule
4:30-5:00 Registration
5:00-6:30 Event
6:30-7:30 Reception

The Work of Our Redemption: A Liturgical Theology of Sacrosanctum Concilium
2016-04-26 18:00 | St. Procopius Abbey Church, 5601 College Rd. Lisle, IL 60532, Lisle, IL
Free and open to the public

Part of an annual lecture series hosted by St. Procopius Abbey and Benedictine University on the Documents of Vatican II commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Second Vatican Council.
Contact Fr. Becket Franks, OSB with any questions at bfranks (at) procopius.org or 630-829-9253.

The Inquisition: What Really Happened?
2016-04-20 15:30 | Harper Memorial Library 120, 1116 East 59th Street, Hyde Park, IL
The Inquisition is a subject of much cultural fascination, invoking images of book burnings and gruesome executions. Yet these were only a small part of the activities of a vast and complex organization, involved in many subtler aspects of society, from the regulation of prostitution and homosexuality, to the development of copyright, to prescribing differences between elite and lower class education. This panel of experts on the history of the Inquisition will discuss the realities behind the myths about this vast effort at information control, torn between many different goals and powers, and staffed by members who were often scholars or scientists themselves.

Reception for A Godly Humanism: Clarifying the Hope That Lies Within
2016-04-19 16:15 - 18:15 | University Club of Chicago, 76 E Monroe St Chicago, IL 60603, Downtown, IL
Join us for a reception to celebrate the recently released book A Godly Humanism: Clarifying the Hope that Lies Within (CUA Press, 2015) by the late Francis Cardinal George, O.M.I. on the one-year anniversary of his passing.

Finished by Francis Cardinal George, O.M.I. nine days before his death, A Godly Humanismoffers an account of the Catholic intellectual life by one of the most gifted thinkers to serve as bishop in the American Church. It draws on figures such as St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. John Paul II, and Pope Benedict XVI to express a vision of the Church as a communion built around the relationship of God to human beings and of human beings to one another. The book provides a starting point for the interpretation of “Pope Francis’s Magisterium [as] evidence of another horizon having been opened more clearly for believers.”

Sin as Self-Sabotage: Saint Augustine on Ravishing One's Own Ruin
2016-04-14 18:00 | Swift Hall, First Floor Common Room, 1025 E 58th St,Chicago, IL 60637, Hyde Park, IL
When St. Augustine innocuously yet infamously stole some pears in his youth, he confessed that he did it simply because he was in love with his own ruin. Have you ever looked at your sins as the way you destroy that which you do not like about yourself? Fr. Meconi’s talk will draw from this Augustinian insight that sin is really a form of self-sabotage, a way of keeping ourselves away from an intimacy and a love we all know we in no way deserve.

Interpreting Pope Francis: Evangelization and the Family
2016-04-08 18:00 | Swift Hall, 3rd Floor Lecture, 1025 E 58th St. Chicago, IL 60637, Hyde Park, IL
cosponsored by the Theology and Religious Ethics Workshop
This lecture will address the potential changes in the Catholic Church’s approach to marriage and family life to result from the Extraordinary Synod on the Family convened by Pope Francis this month. It will examine what this synod reveals about the relationship between the doctrinal and the pastoral and the papacy and the episcopate.

master class on The Morality of Exchange: Bargaining and Gift-Giving in Thomas Aquinas and Pope Benedict XVI
2016-04-08 13:00 - 16:00 | Gavin House, 1220 E 58th St., Chicago, IL, 60637
REGISTER HERE
This master class is open to graduate and undergraduate students, including non-University of Chicago students. Space is limited and offered on a first-come, first-served basis. Copies of the readings will be provided.
Pope Benedict’s 2009 Encyclical-Letter, Caritas in veritate, breaks new ground in the tradition of Catholic social teaching by explicitly calling for a new theory of economic exchange. Whereas the traditional scholastic theory of the “just price” was focused on “the principle of the equivalence in value of exchanged goods” (par. 35), a new theory of exchange must focus instead on “a metaphysical understanding of the relations between persons” (par. 53). True, Thomas Aquinas pioneered this new approach to the morality of exchange when he argued that the Golden Rule must take precedence over the logic of the just price: the relation between persons must trump the relation between the goods exchanged. Caritas in veritate argues further for a new theory of exchange that combines elements of mutual gain with elements of gift-giving. Here again we see a revision of traditional scholastic theory in which every transaction was defined exclusively either as a unilateral gift (subject to norms of distributive justice and charity) or as a bilateral exchange (subject to norms of commutative justice). Benedict, by contrast, calls for a vision of economic life in which gift-giving and exchange are mixed, so that bargains are “redolent with the spirit of gift” (par. 37) in a new “economy of gratuitousness” (par. 38). According to Benedict, economic bargains are self-interested while gifts stem from altruistic love. I will call this sharp contrast into question by revising the traditional scholastic analysis of the just price, which was focused on the equality of the goods exchanged and instead focus on the moral equality of the parties to an exchange.
Discussion Questions

What is a just price? How is a just price related to a market price? Can the government impose a just price on goods?
Is economic exchange inherently self-interested? Is there a place for love in the marketplace?
What is a gift? Do all gifts involve exchange? Why do bribes often take the form of gifts? Why do people often resent receiving “charity”?
What does Benedict mean by “an economy of gratuitousness”?
What matters most for justice? Equality of the commodities exchanged or the equality of the parties to an exchange?

Readings:

Thomas Aquinas on Justice in Buying and Selling.
Encyclical Letter of Benedict XVI: Caritas in Veritate
James Bernard Murphy: The Morality of Bargaining (Journal of Business Ethics 2011 (100: 79-88).g

Sacred Violence: The Legacy of René Girard
2016-04-07 13:30 | Swift Hall, 3rd Floor Lecture, 1025 E 58th St. Chicago, IL 60637, Hyde Park, IL
A panel discussion with William Cavanaugh (DePaul University), Jean-Luc Marion (University of Chicago), and James B. Murphy (Dartmouth College) at the University of Chicago on April 7, 2016.
René Girard (1923-2015) has been described as the Darwin of the human sciences for his theories of the origin of violence and religion and the imitative character of human behavior (mimesis). His books, among them Violence and the Sacred and Things Hidden since the Foundation of the World, span the fields of Literary Criticism, Psychology, Anthropology, Sociology, History, Biblical Hermeneutics and Theology. While his theories have attracted many devoted disciples, Girard has also sparked controversy for his sweeping general claims, tendentious readings of canonical works, and his explicitly Christian perspective. This panel discussion will consider the significance of Girard’s thought for the human sciences.

cosponsored by the John U. Nef Committee on Social Thought and the Theology & Religious Ethics Workshop

Spring Non-Credit Course on the Sacraments
2016-04-05 18:00 - 2016-05-23 20:00 | Gavin House, 1220 E 58th St., Chicago, IL, 60637
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.
REGISTER HERE
Jesus’ words and actions during his hidden life and public ministry were already salvific, for they anticipated the power of his Paschal mystery. They announced and prepared what he was going to give the Church when all was accomplished. The mysteries of Christ’s life are the foundations of what he would henceforth dispense in the sacraments, through the ministers of his Church, for “what was visible in our Savior has passed over into his mysteries.”
— from the Catechism of the Catholic Church, #1115, quoting St. Leo the Great, Sermo 74, 2,
This course will examine the doctrine, history, and theology of the seven sacraments, along with a discussion of contemporary pastoral concerns. No previous knowledge of or instruction in Catholic sacramental theology is presumed.
April 5 The Sacrament of Penance
April 12 The Sacrament of Holy Orders
April 26 The Sacrament of Baptism
May 3 The Sacrament of the Eucharist
May 10 The Sacrament of Confirmation
May 17 The Sacrament of Extreme Unction
May 24 The Sacrament of Matrimony

CANCELLED: Luncheon discussion of Tolkien's "On Fairy-Stories" and Lewis's "Transposition"
2016-04-01 11:00 - 12:30 | Gavin House, 1220 E 58th St., Chicago, IL, 60637
Due to unforeseen personal reasons, Carol Zaleski’s visit has been postponed. We hope to reschedule this event for a future date.
At this luncheon event, students will read and discuss J.R.R. Tolkein’s essay “On Fairy-Stories” and C.S. Lewis’s essay “Transposition” with Carol & Philip Zaleski (co-authors ofThe Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings)
REGISTER HERE
This event is open to current University of Chicago students. Lunch will be served. Space is limited and offered on a first-come first-serve basis. PDFs of the readings will be provided.

CANCELLED: The Recovered Image: C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and the Inklings
2016-03-31 14:00 | University of Chicago–TBA, N/A, Hyde Park, IL
Due to unforeseen personal reasons, Carol & Philip Zaleski’s visit has been postponed. We hope to reschedule this event for a future date.
Thursday, March 31, 7:00pm
University of Chicago, Location TBA
Carol & Philip Zaleski (Smith College)
REGISTER HERE
cosponsored by the Seminary Co-op Bookstore
The literary historian, novelist and critic C. S. Lewis is the most widely read Christian writer of his century and ours; the philologist J.R.R. Tolkien our most beloved mythmaker. For three decades, they and their closest associates (including the philosopher of language Owen Barfield and the eccentric fantasist Charles Williams) formed a literary club known as the Inklings, which met every week in Lewis’s Magdalen College rooms and nearby Oxford pubs. They read aloud works in progress, drank, argued, and encouraged one another to write the kind of books they loved to read — even if it meant bucking modernist trends. Philip and Carol Zaleski, co-authors of The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings, will present the literary and spiritual project of the Inklings as one of recovery rather than reaction: recovery of the living tradition of Christian humanism in the face of war, environmental degradation, and secular indifference.

CANCELLED: The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings
2016-03-31 11:00 - 12:30 | University Club of Chicago, 76 E Monroe St Chicago, IL 60603, Downtown, IL
Due to unforeseen personal reasons, Carol Zaleski’s visit has been postponed. We hope to reschedule this event for a future date.
with co-authors Philip & Carol Zaleski
REGISTER HERE
$50 General/ $15 Student/ $500 Table Sponsorship
At this luncheon event, authors Philip and Carol Zaleski will discuss their book The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings: J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Owen Barfield, Charles Williams.
For three decades, C.S. Lewis (author of The Chronicles of Narnia), J.R.R. Tolkien (author of The Lord of the Rings), and their closest associates met weekly in Oxford pubs as a literary club known as the Inklings. This book examines their project of recovering a tradition of Christian Humanism in the face of war, environmental degradation, and secular indifference.
Romantics who scorned rebellion, fantasists who prized reality, wartime writers who believed in hope, Christians with cosmic reach, the Inklings sought to revitalize literature and faith in the twentieth century’s darkest years-and did so in dazzling style.

Praise for The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings
Named Book of the Year by the Conference on Christianity and Literature
“The husband-and-wife team of Philip and Carol Zaleski bring to bear both extensive scholarship and a neatly interwoven narrative; this is a story about storytellers, and it shows . . . In The Fellowship, the authors never cease to feel for the Inklings, particularly sympathizing with their yearnings for spiritual and professional fulfillment, with occasional wry asides on the nature of their marriages and their politics to take note of shortcomings both personal and institutional. Taken together, it makes the overarching life of the group something greater than the sum of its parts.” ―Genevieve Valentine, The New York Times Book Review
“This is a long overdue study of an abidingly fascinating and creative group of writers. There has not been a serious treatment of the whole group and their interactions for more than thirty years, and this excellent book brings together a great deal of new discussion and discovery in a lively, readable, sympathetic but not uncritical survey that allows these remarkable figures to emerge in all their human complexity and diverse gifts. The authors deserve warm congratulations.” ―Rowan Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury and author of The Lion’s World: A Journey into the Heart of Narnia
“The Zaleskis have produced a major work of biography and criticism, and if you are a devotee of any of the Inklings, you will want to read it.” ―Michael Dirda, The Washington Post
“The Zaleskis deftly interweave the four stories [of Lewis, Tolkien, Barfield, and Williams], showing how, when read together, these very different men can help us more clearly see the state of literary and religious culture in mid-century England and beyond.” ―Anthony Domestico, Christian Science Monitor
“A fascinating overview of this ‘intellectual orchestra’ . . . a captivating story of young writers finding their literary footing while trying to rectify competing desires for happiness, love, fame, and faith.” ―Ethan Gilsdorf, The Boston Globe
“The Fellowship makes a convincing case that [the Inklings’s] cultural legacy deserves comparison with that of the less Christian, more intellectually austere Bloomsbury group.” ―Lev Grossman, Time Magazine
“A gutsy, glorious adoration of the English fantasy and faerie traditions, which celebrates what sometimes seems like a fantastical time when religion didn’t destroy art but created it.” ―Joshua Cohen, Harper’s Magazine
“A highly readable group biography . . . The Zaleskis do an impressive job.” ―Elizabeth Hand, Los Angeles Times
“It’s difficult to overstate the influence of the two most famous Inklings, Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, on varied fields including Christian apologetics and fantasy writing. The Zaleskis trace the history of this informal club of Oxford-educated, Christian intellectuals, which first coalesced in the early 1930s, by focusing on four of the most prominent Inklings: Tolkien, Lewis, mystic Charles Williams, and philosopher Owen Barfield. As scholarship, the book is immensely successful, describing its protagonists’ strengths and shortcomings with insight and facility.” ―Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Like expert commentators at a fencing match, Philip Zaleski and Carol Zaleski give a sparkling account of how J.R.R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis, those friendly duelists, and their eager teammates, Owen Barfield and Charles Williams, sharpened one another’s wits and dazzled the world with words. The Inklings were that rare thing, an elite with an inclusive spirit, and the Zaleskis share the same ethos, brilliantly mastering the details of their brief but never forgetting to be readable. Thorough, lucid, balanced, and well judged, this is literary biography of the very best kind.” ―Michael Ward, University of Oxford, author of Planet Narnia: The Seven Heavens in the Imagination of C.S. Lewis
“[A] well-researched, consistently engaging group biography . . . richly detailed . . . A bountiful literary history.” ―Kirkus
“[A] prodigious work . . . [The Fellowship,] which is extensively researched, provides a fascinating look at British literary society during the first half of the 20th century. . . For all fans of Tolkien and Lewis, this excellent title will also appeal to readers interested in Christian scholarship and 20th-century British literature and history.” ―Erica Swenson Danowitz, Library Journal (starred review)
“The Fellowship . . . is a mental map, a religious journey, and the biography of a brotherhood. Plenty of distinguished Inklings came and went over the years . . . but the Zaleskis zoom in on (and out from) the primary axis of Tolkien, Lewis, Williams, and Barfield . . . . Christians all, these men formed what the Zaleskis call ‘a perfect compass rose of faith’: Barfield the proto-New Ager, Tolkien the rather prim orthodox Catholic, Lewis the noisy and dogmatically ordinary layman and popular theologian, Williams the ritualistic Anglican with a taste for sorcery . . . . Who can compare with these writers? . . . . The Inklings . . . are still gathering steam.” ―James Parker, The Atlantic

CANCELLED: In Praise of Purgatory
2016-03-30 15:30 | Swift Hall, First Floor Common Room, 1025 E 58th St,Chicago, IL 60637, Hyde Park, IL
Due to unforeseen personal reasons, Carol Zaleski’s visit has been postponed. We hope to reschedule this event for a future date.
Carol Zaleski (Smith College)
REGISTER HERE
cosponsored by the Medieval Studies Workshop and the Theology & Religious Ethics Workshop
The idea of Purgatory – “that second kingdom,” as Dante puts it, “where the human soul is cleansed and made fit to ascend to Heaven” — is present in germ throughout world religions, fully articulated (and discriminated from ‘hell lite’) by the Catholic tradition, rejected by the Reformers, yet never wholly suppressed. Carol Zaleski will speak about the idea of purgatory with a view to its analogues in secular and religious literature, its ecumenical possibilities, and its enduring moral and spiritual significance.

San Marco, the Dominican Monastery at the Heart of Renaissance Florence
2016-02-25 19:00 | Social Sciences, Room 122, 1126 E 59th St. Chicago, IL 60637, Hyde Park, IL
A lecture with Ada Palmer (University of Chicago)

Cosponsored by the Department of History
It is difficult today to imagine a world in which religious communities were deeply intertwined with the civic order and when a third of a town’s population might be priests, monks, and nuns. In Renaissance Florence the Dominican Monastery of San Marco was intimately tied to every aspect of city life, from commerce and patronage, to civil broils and foreign invasions, to education and medicine, to the great artists, architects and radical thinkers who earned the Florentine Renaissance its eternal fame. This lecture will explore the monastery’s role as a center of social and spiritual life.

Master Class on "Virtues of Thought in Aristotle"
2016-02-19 13:00 - 16:00 | Gavin House, 1220 E 58th St., Chicago, IL, 60637
Aryeh Kosman (Haverford College)
REGISTER HERE
This master class is open to graduate and undergraduate students, including non-University of Chicago students. Space is limited and offered on a first-come, first-served basis. Copies of the readings will be provided.
This seminar will discuss Aristotle’s account in Book 6 of the Nicomachean Ethics of what he there terms “virtues of thought” – ἀρετὰι τῆς διανοίας – distinguishing them from virtues τοῦ ἤθοuς – virtues of character. Virtues of thought seem to be those cognitive states that enable us to think well – to reason correctly and to judge truly, sometimes about what is the case, sometimes about how best to make something, sometimes about how best to act. Thus the states that Aristotle proceeds to specify early in Book 6: these he designates art, understanding, prudence, wisdom and intellect. These virtues are apparently states of character enabling the kinds of activities in which we engage when we deliberate or reason or plan or develop theories. They are, to put it simply, virtues that enable us to think well. But on another interpretation, virtues of thought are not states of character enabling good thinking, but those aspects of our character by virtue of which we are in general able to reason well concerning how best to bring about the objects of our desire. On this reading Aristotle’s distinction highlights the fact that all virtuous activities in general require good thinking, rather than the fact that some virtuous activities in particular are instances of good thinking. In addition to reading Book 6 of the Ethics and related texts of Aristotle, participants will read and discuss a short essay by Dr. Kosman on this subject, which suggests that it will be fruitful for understanding Aristotle that we keep both of these interpretations in view.
READINGS

Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics Book 6
Kosman, Aryeh, Virtues of Thought (Harvard University Press, 2014) Ch. 15 on “Aristotle on the Virtues of Thought”

Aristotle on the Contemplation of the Divine
2016-02-18 00:00 | Classics 110, 1010 E 59th St. Chicago, IL 60637, Hyde Park, IL
Aryeh Kosman (Haverford College)
Cosponsored by the Philosophy Department
Aristotle’s remarks in the last book of the Nicomachean Ethics that the highest form of happiness consists in θεωρία is often translated as revealing happiness to consist in contemplation, without noting that both terms designate a kind of seeing, a mode of vision. This oversight if more remarkable when we recall that the vision in question is that of the divine. What does Aristotle mean by “seeing the divine?” This lecture will suggest that one way to understand Aristotle is to hear him as urging that happiness is associated with seeing the world as divine. Such seeing looks beyond the structuring of the world as good and bad and sees the world simply as it is. The association of this seeing with νοῦς makes precisely this point: νοῦς sees things simply as they are. Seeing the world’s divinity is not to have failed in judgment; it is to have relinquishedjudgment as to good and bad and as to the success of things going well or not well. It is simply to accept the presence of the world as its mere being, a being that in its shining bestows its presence upon sentient subjects like ourselves.

Putting First Things First: The Story of Richard John Neuhaus' Vocation to Public Life
2016-02-11 00:00 | University Club of Chicago, 76 E Monroe St Chicago, IL 60603, Downtown, IL
Randy Boyagoda (author of Richard John Neuhaus: A Life in the Public Square)
Cosponsored by First Things, the Chicago Leadership Forum, and Relevant Radio
For all the political controversies that Fr. Richard John Neuhaus was involved in over his four decades in American public life, and these were many, he really understood his work in vocational terms. In other words, he understood his work foremost as the work of a man of God. It’s too simple to dismiss him (or admire him!) as a Republican in a Roman collar, as many of his later critics and fans did. Learn the full story of Fr. Neuhaus’ life, his moving from Lutheran to Catholic and from Left to Right, and discover that a religiously-informed vocation to public life is as straightforward, triumphant or disappointing as these markers might suggest (depending on your own religious and intellectual politics).

Reviews of Richard John Neuhaus: A Life in the Public Square (Image, 2015)
“Deeply researched, lucidly written.” – New York Times
“In Richard John Neuhaus: A Life in the Public Square, Randy Boyagoda captures his subject’s deep sense of vocation and the complexity of his personality, offering a comprehensive biography and, along the way, a thoughtful introduction to some of the ‘culture wars’ of the past several decades.” – Wall Street Journal
“[A] stellar biography.” – Publishers Weekly
“Boyagoda dispassionately describes this fascinating and active life, and he manages to blend skills as a folksy storyteller, researcher and unbiased historian, providing a biography that is balanced, interesting and relevant. A useful, provocative spotlight on one of the leading lights of the 20th century.” – Kirkus
“[A] page-turner.” – National Review
“Boyagoda’s biography is an invaluable account of the political and ecclesiastical controversies in which Neuhaus played a central, influential and controversial role.” – America Magazine
“A wonderful biography.” − Raymond Arroyo, New York Times bestselling author and host, EWTN’s The World Over
“Boyagoda persuasively argues that Neuhaus was a charismatic leader and original thinker whose contributions to American culture and politics make him someone worth knowing about.” − American Conservative
“Boyagoda’s luminously intelligent study of the man makes clear that Richard John Neuhaus — however one regards his politics — deserved his place in a long line of memorable American preacher politicians.” − National Post
“Neuhaus was a hugely influential figure, and Boyagoda tells his story with novelistic empathy and narrative panache.” − The Globe and Mail
“Boyagoda found the Neuhaus I knew, complete with all the man’s winsome qualities and not a few of his contradictions. Not surprisingly, he also revealed facets of the man I could never guess.” − Russell E. Saltzman, Aleteia
“And up until now, no one has offered a more credible, careful, and colorful biography of this convert to Catholicism. “ – Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan, Archbishop of New York, author ofTrue Freedom
“Thorough, vivid, and keenly understanding of the interplay of personality, faith, and cultural context, Boyagoda’s biography of Neuhaus does justice to this man of faith.” – Carl A. Anderson, Supreme Knight, Knights of Columbus
“Until his death in 2009, Father Richard John Neuhaus was a powerhouse in American public life and a monument in American Catholic history…Randy Boyagoda, an extraordinary author best known for his work in fiction, knew that someone had to tell Fr. Neuhaus’ story — and that it deserved to be told well.” − CatholicVote.org

Slavic Routes: Music from Renaissance Prague
2016-02-06 19:30 - 2016-02-07 14:00 | St. Vincent DePaul Parish, 1010 W Webster Ave. Chicago, Il 60614, Chicago, IL
Saturday, February 6, 7:30pm
St. Vincent DePaul Parish1010 West Webster Avenue
Sunday, February 7, 2:00pm
Rockefeller Memorial Chapel
5850 South Woodlawn Avenue
TICKETS AVAILABLE HERE
$25 General/$10 Students
In the sixteenth century, all roads led to Prague – or from it. The city had long been an incubator for rich musical activity and was an important stop for composers from neighboring Poland, Slovenia, and Germany, but also from farther afield. Schola Antiqua’s program brings a fascinating cross-section of sacred vocal polyphony from this musical crossroads together – and to life. In-concert commentary by Erika Supria Honisch, Assistant Professor of Music History and Theory at Stony Brook University.
For more information visit the Schola Antiqua website.

Master Class on The First Known in 13th Century Epistemology
2016-02-05 14:00 - 17:00 | Gavin House, 1220 E 58th St., Chicago, IL, 60637
Timothy B. Noone (Catholic University of America)
REGISTER HERE
This master class is open to graduate and undergraduate students, including non-University of Chicago students. Space is limited and offered on a first-come, first-served basis. Copies of the readings will be provided.
This seminar will begin with crucial texts from the middle of the thirteenth century that set up the problem of the first known as that problem came to be discussed in the writings of Aquinas, Henry of Ghent, and Duns Scotus. Thereafter, the seminar will examine the three authors mentioned on the issue of the first known and explore how their positions fit into other elements of their theories of cognition. The problem of whether or not to allow that God is in some vague sense the first thing known in an through the concept of being figures into, and is background to, parallel themes in the epistemology of thirteenth century philosophy, including the issue of divine illumination and the theory of abstraction.

St. Bonaventure on Education, Philosophy, and the Sciences
2016-02-04 16:30 | Classics 110, 1010 E 59th St. Chicago, IL 60637, Hyde Park, IL
Timothy B. Noone (Catholic University of America)
REGISTER HERE
Cosponsored by the Philosophy Department and the Medieval Studies Workshop
This lecture will situate Bonaventure’s thought on education, philosophy, and the sciences into the context of the thirteenth century’s controversies regarding the place of philosophy in the universities and human life generally. While Bonaventure accepts the essential and irreplaceable role of philosophy and science in the progress of human knowledge and endorses the claim that they both perfect the human intellect, he insists that science and philosophy are in a hierarchy of knowledge that transcends them, culminating in the study of Sacred Scripture, theology, and mystical vision.

Aquinas: Poet and Contemplative
2016-01-28 20:00 | University of Chicago, 5801 S Ellis Ave Chicago, IL 60637, Hyde Park, IL
Cosponsored by the Medieval Studies Workshop and the Theology and Religious Ethics Workshop

“The well-known is what we have yet to learn.” T.S. Eliot
What do we know of the prayer-life of St Thomas Aquinas? This lecture will be directly concerned with this question, and the answer may well come as a surprise to many people. Aquinas is still today almost exclusively regarded as an outstanding scholastic philosopher and theologian. But what is little known is that he was also a master of the spiritual life and a very considerable poet, perhaps even the greatest Latin poet of the Middle Ages.

Master Class on Pseudo Dionysius
2016-01-22 15:00 - 20:00 | Gavin House, 1220 E 58th St., Chicago, IL, 60637
Bernard McGinn (University of Chicago)
REGISTER HERE
REGISTRATION IS CURRENTLY FULL. If you are interested in attending, contact us and we will inform you if space becomes available.
Cosponsored by the Medieval Studies Workshop
Participants will be provided with a complimentary copy ofPseudo Dionysius: The Complete Works (Paulist Press).
This master class is open to graduate and undergraduate students, including non-University of Chicago students. Space is limited and offered on a first-come, first-served basis.
This one-time Seminar will discuss the writings of the mysterious Eastern monk (ca. 500 C.E.) who hid his identity under the name of the Athenian Dionysius of the Areopagus mentioned in Acts 17:32. These texts, thought to be quasi-apostolic for centuries, were among the most influential in the history of Christian theology and mysticism. The translation used will be that of Colm Luibheid, Pseudo-Dionysius. The Complete Works (New York: Paulist Press, 1987. The Classics of Western Spirituality). We will discuss specific sections of these writings, but participants are encouraged to read as much of the whole as they are able (240 pp. in this translation).

Love Your Enemies: Retribution and Forgiveness
2016-01-14 17:30 | University of Chicago, 5801 S Ellis Ave Chicago, IL 60637, Hyde Park, IL
Regina M. Schwartz (Northwestern University)
cosponsored by the Department of English
The law presumes not only the right but the duty to punish: it does not ask whether it should punish, but how much, who, when, and how. In contrast, Christianity offers a different response to wrongdoing: Jesus engaged in a polemical attack on “the reciprocity code,” the assumption that good should be reciprocated with good and evil with evil. “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you” (Luke 6:27-28). How are we to begin to comprehend this radical difference?

Winter Non-Credit Course on Romans
2016-01-12 18:00 - 2016-02-23 18:00 | Gavin House, 1220 E 58th St., Chicago, IL, 60637
Fr. Paul Mankowski, S.J. (LCI Scholar-in Residence)
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.
REGISTER HERE
The most consequential and controversial of his writings, St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans was written to instruct new Christians on the meaning of faith and discipleship. This course will present Paul’s teaching in Romans from the perspective of Roman Catholic doctrine, while engaging the more provocative arguments of the Church Fathers, the Schoolmen, the Reformers, and modern exegetes. Knowledge of Biblical Greek or familiarity with New Testament writing is not required.
January 12
Apostleship
January 19
Jew & Greek
January 26
Salvation
February 2
Judgment
February 9
Righteousness
February 16
Justification
February 23
Transformation

NY Reception for A Godly Humanism: Clarifying the Hope That Lies Within
2015-12-15 18:30 - 20:00 | The Westin New York at Times Square, 270 W. 43rd St. New York, NY 10036, New York, NY
CLICK HERE for a recent article and photos from this event.
Timothy Cardinal Dolan (Archbishop of New York)
Robert Louis Wilken (University of Virginia)
Join us for a reception in celebration of the newly released book A Godly Humanism: Clarifying the Hope that Lies Within (CUA Press, 2015) by the late Francis Cardinal George, O.M.I. This occasion will include a reception and remarks by His Eminence, Timothy Cardinal Dolan (Archbishop of New York) and Robert Louis Wilken (Professor Emeritus at the University of Virginia).
Finished by Francis Cardinal George, O.M.I. nine days before his death, A Godly Humanismoffers an account of the Catholic intellectual life by one of the most gifted thinkers to serve as bishop in the American Church. It draws on figures such as St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. John Paul II, and Pope Benedict XVI to express a vision of the Church as a communion built around the relationship of God to human beings and of human beings to one another. The book provides a starting point for the interpretation of “Pope Francis’s Magisterium [as] evidence of another horizon having been opened more clearly for believers.”
Presented by the Lumen Christi Institute, First Things, and America Magazine. Copies of the book will be available for purchase.

The Present and Future of Religious Freedom
2015-12-10 17:30 - 19:30 | Jones Day, 77 W Upper Wacker Dr. Chicago, IL 60601, Downtown, IL
Cosponsored by the Christian Legal Society
Recent controversy over the HHS contraceptive mandate and the participation of faith-based organizations in federal grant programs has raised questions about religious freedom in the American legal and political systems. This discussion will consider the perceived conflict between civil rights and religious freedom and the roles of Congress, the judiciary, and administrative agencies for how religious freedom will be understood, applied, and protected in the future.

Master Class on Faith and Reason in the Thought of John Henry Newman: The Oxford University Sermons
2015-11-20 14:00 - 17:00 | Gavin House, 1220 E 58th St., Chicago, IL, 60637
Reinhard Hütter (Duke University)
REGISTER HERE
This master class is open to all graduate and undergraduate students, including non-University of Chicago students. Space is limited and offered on a first-come, first-served basis. If you have any questions, please contact Mark Franzen.
This three-hour seminar will focus on the one of Newman’s works, which he himself called “the best, not the most perfect, book I have done.” The Oxford University Sermons are the Anglican precursor and still the best introduction to the Catholic Newman’s masterwork, The Grammar of Assent. Sermons 10-15 constitute a precis of Newman’s mature theory of religious belief. In these sermons he develops the epistemological basis for belief in objective dogma and dogmatic theology. The masterclass will focus its attention especially on sermons 10-13.
No background knowledge of the topic is required to participate. Copies of the book John Henry Newman, Fifteen Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford Between A.D. 1826 and 1843, introd. by Mary Katherine Tillman (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1997) will be provided free of charge for participants.
Readings:

Sermon 10 “Faith and Reason, Contrasted as Habits of Mind”
Sermon 11 “The Nature of Faith in Relation to Reason”
Sermon 12 “Love as Safeguard of Faith against Superstition”
Sermon 13 “Implicit and Explicit Reason”

Divine Faith and Private Judgment in Newman and Aquinas
2015-11-19 16:30 | Classics 110, 1010 E 59th St. Chicago, IL 60637, Hyde Park, IL
REGISTER HERE
cosponsored by the Theology and Religious Ethics Workshop

Dinner and Prayer at the Monastery of the Holy Cross
2015-11-14 16:30 - 20:00 | The Monastery of the Holy Cross, 3111 South Aberdeen St. Chicago, IL 60608, Chicago, IL
REGISTER HERE
Cosponsored by Calvert House. Open to current university students. Others interested in attending please contact info@lumenchristi.org.
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 (Vespers and Compline), and have dinner and discussion with Fr. Peter Funk, O.S.B., prior of the monastery and alumnus of the University of Chicago.
To find out more about liturgy at the monastery, go HERE.
SCHEDULE
4:00pm 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
5:45pm Dinner & Discussion
7:15pm Office of Compline
8:00pm Arrive back in Hyde Park

Pondus Dei: The Weight of God in Anselm's Poetics
2015-11-11 16:30 | Swift Hall, 3rd Floor Lecture, 1025 E 58th St. Chicago, IL 60637, Hyde Park, IL
cosponsored by the Medieval Studies Workshop
The meaning of Anselm’s famous ‘sola ratione’ or ‘by reason alone’ has been the subject of much debate. Is it a principle of reason or a principle of faith? This lecture will argue that the sola ratione instead operates as a poetical principle in Anselm’s work at large, steering his various writings –treatises, meditations, prayers, and letters – into a comprehensive oeuvre. As a result of this poetic use of sola ratione, his work is characterized by a certain playfulness. However lofty questions of divine absence and presence may be, the sola ratione guarantees that meditating about questions of faith and reason keeps within the boundaries of a ‘divina commedia’ of sorts.

Master Class on Anselm of Canterbury: Reason, Logic, and Meditation
2015-11-09 16:30 - 19:30 | Swift Hall, First Floor Common Room, 1025 E 58th St,Chicago, IL 60637, Hyde Park, IL
Burcht Pranger (University of Amsterdam)
REGISTER HERE
Open to current University of Chicago students. Dinner will be served. Readings will be provided for all participants. Others interested in attending, please contact us.
This master class seminar will cover three major works by Anselm of Canterbury: Proslogion, Cur deus homo and theFirst Meditation. The discussion will revolve around the question: how to read Anselm properly and comprehensively? Most often Anselm’s discourse in his various works is compartmentalized into either rational, theological or meditative text blocks. By focusing on texts that differ as to their outlook, we will try at once to honor the differences in discourse while at the same time tracing the various turns and moves Anselm makes both in argumentation and meditation. So doing, it will become clear that, where the various types may differ and are entitled to their independence, Anselm’s rhetorical moves and turns will prove to be similar to each other to the point of telling us something comprehensive about his way of writing and reading.
READINGS:
Anselm of Canterbury

Proslogion, chapters 1-15, 26.
Cur deus homo, Preface, book I, chapters 1,2, 7,21, 25; Book II, chapters 17, 18, 19.
First Meditation

M.B. Pranger

The Artificiality of Christianity: Essays on the Poetics of Monasticism (Stanford, Stanford University Press, 2003); Introduction to Part Two: ‘Density.’

Toward a Theology of Science
2015-10-29 11:00 - 12:30 | Gavin House, 1220 E 58th St., Chicago, IL, 60637
Tom McLeish (Durham University)
REGISTER HERE
This event is open to students, faculty, and scientists at the University of Chicago. Lunch will be served. Others interested in attending, please contactinfo@lumenchrisit.org.
At this luncheon events, student will discuss a chapter from Faith & Wisdom in Science (Oxford University Press, 2014) on “A Theology of Science?” with author Tom McLeish. A PDF of the chapter will be made available to read beforehand and attendees will be given complimentary copies of the book.
In the book, McLeish’s narrative approach develops a natural critique of the cultural separation of sciences and humanities, suggesting an approach to science, or in its more ancient form natural philosophy – the ‘love of wisdom of natural things’ – that can draw on theological and cultural roots. Following the theme of pain in human confrontation with nature, it develops a ‘Theology of Science’, recognising that both scientific and theological worldviews must be ‘of’ each other, not holding separate domains. Science finds its place within an old story of participative reconciliation with a nature, of which we start ignorant and fearful, but learn to perceive and work with in wisdom. Surprisingly, science becomes a deeply religious activity. There are urgent lessons for education, the political process of decision-making on science and technology, our relationship with the global environment, and the way that both religious and secular communities alike celebrate and govern science.

Schola Antiqua Concert "The Night Watch: Music for Vespers"
2015-10-24 20:00 - 2015-10-30 18:30 | St. James Chapel, Quigley Center, 835 North Rush Street Chicago, IL 60611, Chicago, IL
Saturday, October 24: 8:00PM
St. James Chapel, Quigley Center
103 E. Chestnut, Chicago, IL
$25 General/$10 Student
TICKETS
Friday, October 30, 7:30PM
St. Joseph Chapel, University of St. Francis
500 Wilcox St., Joliet, IL
$10 General/$7 Student
TICKETS
For more information visit the Schola Antiqua website.

Master Class on "Love Alone is Credible"
2015-10-16 13:00 - 16:00 | Gavin House, 1220 E 58th St., Chicago, IL, 60637
Rémi Brague (Sorbonne; University of Munich)
REGISTER HERE
This master class is open to all graduate and undergraduate students, including non-University of Chicago students. Copies of the readings will be provided. Space is limited and offered on a first-come, first-served basis. If you have any questions, please contact Mark Franzen.
The thin pamphlet (1963) summarizes Hans Urs von Bathasar’s (1905-1988) masterpiece The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics (1961-1969). The booklet is compact, but rich. As a consequence, the reading is arduous, but extremely rewarding. After a sketch of the evolution of Christian theology in its two main epochs, von Balthasar brings the content of Revelation back to the self-assertion of God’s love through Christ. Beyond any merely human work of love, always finite and imperfect, the Christian message allows us to access Love as the ground of Being. The class will focus on the two central chapters 3 and 6 and possibly end with a foray into chapter 10.
REQUIRED READING:
H. U. von Balthasar, Love Alone Is Credible, tr. D. C. Schindler, San Francisco, Ignatius Press, 2004. Chs. 3, 6, & 10.
SECONDARY READING:
Peter Henrici, SJ, “Hans Urs von Balthasar: a Sketch of His Life”, Communio: International Catholic Review 16/3 (fall, 1989): 306–50.
