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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Symposium on "The Cross: History, Art, and Controversy"
2019-05-23 17:00 | Swift Hall, 3rd Floor Lecture, 1025 E 58th St. Chicago, IL 60637, Hyde Park, IL
Listen to the symposium as a podcast episode. You can subscribe to the Lumen Christi Institute Podcast via our Soundcloud page, iTunes channel, Stitcher, TuneIn, ListenNotes, Podbean, Pocket Casts, and Google Play Music.
To view photos of the symposium, visit Lumen Christi’s Facebook page.
Cosponsored by the Martin Marty Center for the Public Understanding of Religion, the Medieval Studies Workshop, the Early Christian Studies Workshop, and the Research in Art and Visual Evidence Workshop. Free and open to the public. Copies of the book will be available for sale at the event by the Seminary Coop Bookstore. Persons with disabilities who may need assistance should contact us at 773-955-5887 or by email.
Join us for a symposium discussion of the recent book by Robin Jensen, The Cross: History, Art, and Controversy (Harvard University Press, 2017).
In The Cross, Robin Jensen takes readers on an intellectual and spiritual journey through the two-thousand-year evolution of the cross as an idea and an artifact, illuminating the controversies—along with the forms of devotion—this central symbol of Christianity inspires. Her wide-ranging study focuses on the cross in painting and literature, the quest for the “true cross” in Jerusalem, and the symbol’s role in conflicts from the Crusades to wars of colonial conquest. The Cross also reveals how Jews and Muslims viewed the most sacred of all Christian emblems and explains its role in public life in the West today.

Humanistic Liberal Arts Education, the University, and the Catholic Tradition: ﻿from the Age of Van Doren and Hutchins to Today
2019-05-24 15:30 - 17:00 | Gavin House, 1220 E 58th St., Chicago, IL, 60637
Open to current students and faculty

a colloquium discussion with an introductory presentation by Professor F. Russell Hittinger, William K. Warren Professor Emeritus of Catholic Studies at the University of Tulsa, and a response by J. Columcille Dever, PhD Candidate in the History of Christianity at the University of Notre Dame
3:00PM Coffee & Tea
3:30PM Colloquium Discussion
5:00PM Close, Wine & Cheese Reception

Today with the emphasis on STEM and business education, the tradition of liberal arts education in America (and elsewhere in the world) faces a challenging environment. The recent abolition of several humanities departments at the University of Tulsa sparked protest from faculty and students who value the liberal arts tradition at that institution. Hittinger will report on the lessons to be drawn from the situation in Tulsa.

In facing this challenge, one can learn from the case made for a liberal arts education by figures such as Robert Maynard Hutchins and Mark Van Doren at The University of Chicago and Columbia University in the first half of the 20th century. At the same time, the current situation is radically different, given the loss of piety for the values of the “West” and its civilization in our multi-cultural, globalized society. In a similar way, the academic disciplines of the humanities are less able to make a case for themselves. And the Catholic intellectual tradition would be interpreted in a different manner from how it was seen in the first half of the 20th century.

One would expect leading Catholic universities to make the liberal arts tradition central to their mission and to be in a position to play a leading role in contemporary discussion of the relevance of a curriculum of humanistic education in a democratic society. Indeed this is done in a creative way on the margins of Catholic higher education, but not by the most prestigious or leading Catholic colleges.

Ironically, in an address to Catholic educators (cited by Msgr. John Tracy Ellis in his seminal article “American Catholics and the Intellectual Life”), Robert Maynard Hutchins urged Catholic colleges to emphasize the “the longest intellectual tradition of any institution in the contemporary world” and, in the words of Ellis, to “make it come alive in American intellectual circles.”

Catholic colleges seem to have missed the pearl of great price pointed to by Hutchins, while they took up his second order challenge of matching the best secular universities in terms of “high academic standards, development of habits of work, and research….”

The colloquium discussion will focus on the question of how scholars at Catholic and secular universities might make a case for a humanistic liberal arts education in today’s culture and how they see its relation to “the longest intellectual tradition of any institution in the contemporary world.”

The article of John Tracy Ellis can be found HERE.

Mary at the Art Institute
2019-05-30 16:00 | Art Institute of Chicago, 111 S Michigan Ave. Chicago, IL 60603, Downtown
REGISTER HERE

Open to all university students. Registration Required. Cosponsored with Calvert House.
Mary is the most-depicted woman in the history of Western art, which means that images of her are both ubiquitous and bewildering in their variety. Marian images are used in the Christian liturgy, for private devotion, for political statements, and for pushing boundaries—and for almost everything else as well.

Join University of Chicago graduate students Fr. Gabriel Torretta, OP, and Lauren Beversluis for a visit to the Chicago Art Institute as they explain the building blocks of Marian images by discussing works that span both Mary’s own life and its living history in painting.

SCHEDULE

3:30pm Meet at Gavin House, take rideshare to the museum
4:00pm Meet in the South Garden at the Chicago Art Institute to pray the rosary
4:30pm Museum visit (free admission with student ID)
6:00pm Dinner at Terzo Piano

Business and Catholic Social Thought: A Primer
2019-06-02 00:00 - 2019-06-05 00:00 | University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN 46556, Notre Dame, IN
APPLICATIONS FOR THIS SEMINAR ARE CLOSED
We are excited to announce our newly created seminar designed as an introduction and immersion into Catholic social thought for graduate students and faculty in business schools. Participants will cover foundational principles in Catholic social thought and apply them to their own field of research and teaching. This seminar aims at widening epistemological preconceptions and showing practical implications of Catholic social thought for business in a way that affirms the goodness of business directed toward the common good. Participants will delve into social encyclicals, secondary sources, and relevant business texts that show the path for principled entrepreneurship.
This seminar is cosponsored by the John A. Ryan Institute for Catholic Social Thought at the University of St. Thomas (MN); the Mendoza College of Business at the University of Notre Dame; the Ciocca Center for Principled Entrepreneurship at the Catholic University of America; the Lumen Christi Institute; and the Markets, Culture and Ethics Research Centre at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross, Rome.

Format: There will be four sessions each day, featuring a different instructor. Each instructor will open with a lecture, and then we will turn to a seminar-style discussion of the texts and issues at hand.
Location: The seminar will take place at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana. A limited number of travel stipends are available on a per need basis (see the application form). All participants will be provided with accommodations and meals.
Application Information: This seminar will be open to graduate students and faculty of any specialization in business schools.
Applicants will be required to submit a completed online application, including:

An updated CV/resume.
A brief statement of research interest related to Catholic social thought no longer than 750 words.
One academic writing sample.

All application materials can be submitted via the online application. Incomplete applications will not be considered. Fifteen students will be admitted to this seminar. Application materials are due March 1.
Please direct any further questions HERE

A New 'Scientia': Can Theology Unify the Sciences and Humanities?
2019-06-07 12:00 - 13:30 | Gavin House, 1220 E 58th St., Chicago, IL, 60637
REGISTER HERE
Open to current students and faculty. Lunch will be served. A PDF of the reading will be provided when you register. Cosponsored by the Morris Fishbein Center for the History of Science and Medicine.
a luncheon discussion with philosopher Conor Cunningham (University of Nottingham) on his current research project, which will be published as Soul and the Marriage of Discourse: Theology as Effective Theory.
The question of the relation between the sciences and that of the Humanities has been a source of tension ever since the advent of Modernity. Over the last hundred years this has only grown more pronounced, not only between the Humanities and the sciences (both social and natural), but within the natural sciences, as there has been an internecine jostling for priority, especially considering high-energy physics’ pursuit of a Theory of Everything, a ‘master science’.
Wittgenstein warned us of such temptation: ‘A main cause of philosophical disease—a one sided diet: one nourishes one’s thinking with only one kind of example’. More powerfully, Dostoevsky in his own inimitable manner warns: ‘Half-knowledge is a tyrant without precedent, one that has its own priests and slaves; a tyrant that is worshipped with unprecedented awe and adulation and before which science itself fawns and cringes’.
Against such apartheid, and its concomitant ‘theocracy’, this research project develops an original, expansive and mutually beneficial understanding of the relation between different modes of knowledge (scientia) that eliminates such conflicts, whilst concurrently encouraging synthetic engagements with existence that do not discourage specialisms; rather they provide space for them.
REQUIRED READING
“Theology as Effective Theory: A Metaphysics of Mixt”
SUGGESTED READING
“Soul and the Marriage of Discourse”
Prof. Cunningham will also give a talk on June 11 at Loyola University Chicago’s Water Tower Campus on “Saving Darwin’s Soul and Science’s Life.”

Economics & Catholic Social Thought: A Primer
2019-06-11 09:00 - 2019-06-14 17:00 | Notre Dame Global Gateway, Ha-Rosmarin St, Jerusalem, Israel
APPLICATIONS FOR THIS SEMINAR ARE CLOSED
Now in its fourth year, this seminar is designed as an introduction and immersion into Catholic social thought for graduate students and junior 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 sponsored by the Lumen Christi Institute; the Catholic Research Economists Discussion Organization; the De Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture; the Kellogg Institute for International Studies; and the he Institute for the Scholarship in the Liberal Arts, College of Arts and Letters, University of Notre Dame.
*Dates reflect the days of seminar sessions. Participants should expect to arrive on June 10 and depart on June 15.

Format: There will be ten sessions over the course of four days, featuring a different instructor. Each instructor will open with a lecture, and then we will turn to a seminar style discussion of the texts and issues at hand. In the final sessions, we will discuss how the material can be applied to each student’s particular area of interest. There will also be opportunities for mass and several outings to important religious sites.
Location: The seminar will take place at the Notre Dame Global Gateway outside of Jerusalem. Participants 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 applicants will be admitted to this seminar.
Application materials are due March 1.
Please direct any further questions to contact@credo-economists.org.

Saving Darwin's Soul and Science's Life
2019-06-11 17:30 - 19:30 | Kasbeer Hall, 15th Floor Philip H. Corboy Law Center 25 East Pearson Street, Downtown, IL
$25 General / Free for current students with ID
$500 Host Committee (includes 10 tickets) / $2,500 Event Vice-Chair (includes 10 tickets) / $5,000 Event Chair (includes 10 tickets). This program is made possible by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation and is cosponsred by the Society of Catholic Scientists.
5:30pm Hors d’oeuvres reception
6:30pm Talk and Q&A
7:30pm Close
The late 19th century witnessed the invention of what is now a well-worn trope: Science versus Religion. From this contrived construction modern fundamentalism was born: Scientific, Religious, and Philosophical. Such fundamentalisms spawned artificial ghettos of specialization that encouraged ambitions for totalizing disciplines. Darwinism was itself an example and victim of such blinkered vanity. Only by realizing the intrinsic marriage of all modes of knowledge can humanity’s most creative efforts flourish; otherwise, nihilism ensues.

Monastic Wisdom Seminar
2019-06-16 12:00 - 2019-06-21 12:00 | New Melleray Abbey, 6632 Melleray Cir Peosta, IA 52068, New Melleray Abbey, IA
APPLICATIONS ARE NOW CLOSED
“Understanding is wholly useless if it is not based upon wisdom, in that while it penetrates the higher mysteries without the counterpoise of wisdom, its own lightness is only lifting it up to meet with the heavier fall.”
– St. Gregory the Great, Moralia in Job, 1.32.45
“Idleness is an enemy of the soul. Therefore, the brothers should be occupied according to schedule in either manual labor or holy reading.”
– St. Benedict of Nursia, Rule, Chapter 48
“My words are meant for you, whoever you are, who laying aside your own will, take up the all-powerful and righteous arms of obedience to fight under the true King, the Lord Jesus Christ.”
– St. Benedict of Nursia, Rule, Prologue
The Lumen Christi Institute and New Melleray Abbey have partnered to organize a retreat aimed at exploring the monastic wisdom tradition. The Trappist community at New Melleray Abbey in Iowa represents an ancient and continual tradition of Christian monasticism with roots in the early Church. Students with an interest in theology or spirituality may be familiar with some of the major figures in this tradition—St. John Cassian, St. Benedict of Nursia, St. Bernard of Clairvaux. It is less likely they have spent time putting into practice the lessons of prayer, spiritual reading, and silence in an organized manner.
The contention of the Monastic Wisdom Seminar is that monastic disciplines must be practiced to be understood. Participants will spend a week praying, conferencing, reading, and working with the monks of New Melleray Abbey. The goals of the retreat are fourfold:

Introduce participants to monastic life, the Divine Office, and the history and theology of monasticism.

Introduce participants to monastic practices, including the discipline of silence, the principle of ora et labora and lectio divina.

Provide an opportunity for participants to reflect on Catholic practices of daily prayer and their relation to monastic life.

Study of texts of major figures of the monastic tradition.

PRINCIPAL TEXTS FOR DISCUSSION

Jean Leclercq, The Love of Learning and the Desire for God, trans. Catharine Misrahi (New York: Fordham University Press, 1982).

St. Athanasius, “The Life of Antony,” in Athanasius: The Life of Antony and the Letter to Marcellinus, trans. Robert C. Gregg (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1979).

John Cassian, Conferences, trans. Colm Luibheid, Classics of Western Spirituality (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1985).

St. Benedict of Nursia, The Rule of St. Benedict, trans. Carolinne White (London: Penguin Classics, 2008).

St. Bernard of Clairvaux, “On Loving God” in Bernard of Clairvaux: Selected Works, trans. G.R. Evans, Classics of Western Spirituality (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1987).

LOCATION AND FORMAT

The seminar will take place at New Melleray Abbey in Peosta, Iowa.

Travel stipends will be available for currently enrolled students.

Lodging, meals, and books will be provided.

Participants will arrive at New Melleray on Sunday, June 16 and depart on Friday, June 21.

Participants will be required read the assigned materials in preparation for the seminar.

APPLICATION INFORMATION

Open to men aged 18 through 35. Catholics and non-Catholics are invited to apply.

Applicants must submit an online application including a statement of interest, a CV or resume, and a letter of recommendation from a professor or pastor.

Applications will be evaluated on a rolling basis. Apply no later than May 17th to receive full consideration.

A maximum of 15 applicants will be admitted to the seminar.

Metaphysics and the Soul in Thomas Aquinas
2019-06-27 12:00 - 2019-07-03 00:00 | University of Chicago, 5801 S. Ellis Ave., University of Chicago, IL
APPLICATIONS FOR THIS SEMINAR ARE CLOSED
This seminar will be a five-day, intensive discussion of St. Thomas Aquinas’s account of the nature of the soul, with particular attention paid to the metaphysical principles on which it rests. The sessions will center on Summa Theologiae, I, qq. 75-77, concerning the soul in itself, its essential relation to the body, and its role as the primary principle of vital activity. Participants will also discuss relevant passages from other works of St. Thomas, as well as his historical influences (such as Plato, Aristotle, and Augustine) and some contemporary literature on the topic. Finally, the seminar will take up related issues, such as Aquinas’s understanding of the relation between metaphysics and theology, his handling of the Augustinian tradition, his reaction to the Averroists, and how his account of the soul relates to later philosophical developments such as Cartesianism and personalism.
Format: There will be two 2 ½ hour sessions each day. Each session will include an opening lecture and seminar-style discussion of the text and the issues at hand. Students will be expected to prepare the readings carefully and participate in the discussions of the material.
Location: The seminar will take place at the University of Chicago. Students will be provided with lodging and meals for the duration of the seminar, and a travel stipend of up to $350.
Application Information: This seminar will be open to doctoral students in the humanities and relevant fields.
Applicants will be required to submit:

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

All application materials can be submitted via the online application. Incomplete applications will not be considered. Fifteen students will be admitted to this seminar. Application materials are due March 15.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
Can I apply for more than one seminar? Yes. You may apply for multiple seminars. Please indicate your order of preference in your statement of purpose for each application. Each applicant may only be admitted to one seminar.
I am a PhD student graduating this academic year. Can I still apply? Yes!
I am currently an undergraduate or masters student, but have been admitted to a PhD program for the next academic year. Can I still apply?
Yes, please indicate this in the statement of purpose in your application.
I have attended a Lumen Christi Institute seminar in the past. May I still apply? Yes!
Do I have to be Catholic to apply? No. The Lumen Christi Institute exists to promotes the Catholic intellectual tradition and is committed to the integration of the intellectual and spiritual life. The Institute welcomes seminar participants of all or no religious affiliation, and wants to assure all applicants that the opportunities to participate in devotional activities are optional.
In addition to the travel stipend, are there other funding possibilities? Seminar participation includes an opportunity to give a formal presentation and inclusion in the official program and schedule. We encourage participants to seek funding from their home institutions or other sources to supplement the travel stipend offered by the Lumen Christi Institute.
When do I get my travel stipend? Stipends are distributed as a refund after successful completion of the seminar and seminar evaluations. Exceptions can be made on case by case basis.
Contact us with any further questions.

Modern Science and the Catholic Faith for Graduate Students
2019-06-30 12:00 - 2019-07-06 12:00 | Providence College, 1 Cunningham Square, Providence, RI
Applications are now closed.
The goal of this seminar is to provide students with the background knowledge and conceptual tools necessary to understand and think clearly about the relation of science and faith. This will help them to integrate scientific and theological ways of understanding in their own thinking, and make it possible for them to help others (including their future colleagues and students) to achieve such integration. The overarching goal is to help develop a cadre of people with a broad and informed understanding of these issues who can be the nucleus from which wider outreach efforts might grow.
Among the topics discussed will be the historical relationship of the Church and science; the relation of faith and reason; evidence for God in the existence and order of the cosmos; God and nature; primary and secondary causality; the supernatural and miracles; modern physics and natural theology; creation and providence; the beginning of the universe and modern cosmology; God and time; human origins and human distinctiveness; rationality, freedom, and the soul; physicalist reductionism and the human mind; Genesis and scriptural interpretation; biological evolution; biology and human nature; and the Fall, original sin and concupiscence.
Preparatory readings will include excerpts from:

Modern Physics and Ancient Faith (Stephen M. Barr)
The Believing Scientist (Stephen M. Barr)
Thomistic Evolution (Fr. Nicanor Austriaco et al.)
Science and Belief in a Nuclear Age (Peter E. Hodgson)
God’s Mechanics (Br. Guy Consolmagno)
God and Reason in the Middle Ages (Edward Grant)
Galileo Goes to Jail and Other Myths about Science and Religion (ed. Ronald L. Numbers)
Mind and Cosmos (Thomas Nagel)
The Faith of the Early Fathers (William A. Jurgens)
Confessions (St. Augustine)
City of God (St. Augustine)
On the Literal Meaning of Genesis (St. Augustine)
Summa Contra Gentiles (St. Thomas Aquinas)
In the Beginning (Joseph Ratzinger)
addresses and statements on science and religion by Pope St. John Paul II
Communion and Stewardship: Human Persons Created in the Image of God (International Theological Commission)
sections of the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

This seminar is made possible by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation.
LOCATION AND FORMAT

The seminar will take place at Providence College in Providence, RI. Admitted students will be required to arrange their own travel to and from the seminar.
Admitted students will be granted a stipend of $350 to offset travel costs in addition to having their lodging and meals covered for the duration of the seminar.
Participants will arrive at Providence College on Sunday, June 30 and depart on Saturday, July 6. The seminar will take place from Monday to Friday, with a lecture and discussion session each morning and afternoon.
Participants will be required read the assigned materials in preparation for the seminar.
In order to receive the $350 stipend, students must participate fully in all seminar activities and complete a survey at the end of the seminar.

APPLICATION INFORMATION

Open to graduate students and postdoctoral fellows in STEM fields, medicine, the history of science, philosophy, theology, and relevant fields.
Applicants must submit an online application, including details on their course of study, a statement of interest, and a letter of recommendation (optional).
For full consideration, apply by May 12. After May 12, applications will be evaluated on a rolling basis.
15 applicants will be admitted to the seminar.

This seminar is part of the Lumen Christi Institute’s “Science and Religion: A Dialogue of Cultures” project generously supported by the John Templeton Foundation and is cosponsored by the Society of Catholic Scientists.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
I am a PhD student graduating this academic year. Can I still apply? Yes!
I am currently an undergraduate or but have been admitted to a graduate program for the next academic year. Can I still apply? Yes, please indicate this in the statement of purpose in your application.
I have attended a Lumen Christi Institute seminar in the past. May I still apply? Yes!
Do I have to be Catholic to apply? No. The Lumen Christi Institute exists to promotes the Catholic intellectual tradition and is committed to the integration of the intellectual and spiritual life. The Institute welcomes seminar participants of all or no religious affiliation, and wants to assure all applicants that the opportunities to participate in devotional activities are optional.

The Thought of John Henry Newman
2019-07-06 00:00 - 2019-07-13 00:00 | Merton College, Oxford, Merton St, Oxford OX1 4JD, UK, Oxford, United Kingdom
APPLICATIONS ARE CLOSED FOR THIS SEMINAR
Now in its seventh consecutive year, this intensive seminar will examine the achievements of Blessed John Henry Newman as a theologian, philosopher, educator, preacher, and writer. Remarkably, in each of these areas Newman produced works that have come to be recognized as classics: An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, The Grammar of Assent, The Idea of a University, The Parochial and Plain Sermons, and the Apologia Pro Vita Sua. This seminar will approach Newman’s thought through a critical engagement with these texts.
Format: There will be two 2-hour sessions each day. The seminar will include presentations by Professor Ker and by participants on the readings assigned, followed by seminar-style discussion.
Location: The seminar will take place at Merton College at the University of Oxford. Participants will be provided with lodging and most meals for the duration of the seminar, and a travel stipend of up to $700.
Application Information: This seminar is open to PhD students, post docs, and junior faculty in the humanities and relevant fields.
Applicants will be required to submit:

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

All application materials can be submitted via the online application. Incomplete applications will not be considered. Fifteen applicants will be admitted to this seminar. Application materials are due March 15.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
Can I apply for more than one seminar? Yes. You may apply for multiple seminars. Please indicate your order of preference in your statement of purpose for each application. Each applicant may only be admitted to one seminar.
I am a PhD student graduating this academic year. Can I still apply? Yes!
I am currently an undergraduate or masters student, but have been admitted to a PhD program for the next academic year. Can I still apply?
Yes, please indicate this somehwere in your application.
I have attended a Lumen Christi Institute seminar in the past. May I still apply? Yes!
Do I have to be Catholic to apply? No. The Lumen Christi Institute exists to promotes the Catholic intellectual tradition and is committed to the integration of the intellectual and spiritual life. The Institute welcomes seminar participants of all or no religious affiliation, and wants to assure all applicants that the opportunities to participate in devotional activities are optional.
In addition to the travel stipend, are there other funding possibilities? Seminar participation includes an opportunity to give a formal presentation and inclusion in the official program and schedule. We encourage participants to seek funding from their home institutions or other sources to supplement the travel stipend offered by the Lumen Christi Institute.
When do I get my Travel Stipend? Stipends are distributed as a refund after successful completion of the seminar and seminar evaluations. Exceptions can be made on case by case basis.
Contact us with any further questions.

The Thought of Rene Girard
2019-07-15 09:00 - 2019-07-21 17:00 | Saint-Michel de Frigolet Abbey, La Montagnette, 13150 Tarascon, France, Saint-Michel de Frigolet Abbey, France
APPLICATIONS FOR THIS SEMINAR ARE CLOSED
One of the most influential 20th century Catholic thinkers, René Girard transformed our understanding of culture, religion, and human behavior. His “mimetic theory” builds on the demystifying power of the Old and New Testaments to illuminate the religious history of mankind. Through an intensive reading of his major works of literary analysis, religious anthropology, and Biblical exegesis, this five-day seminar will explore Girard’s key insights into imitation, conflict, and scapegoating, connecting them to central themes of Christian theology.
Format: There will be two 2.5-hour sessions each day. Each session will include an opening lecture and seminar-style discussion of the text and the issues at hand. Students will be expected to prepare the readings carefully and participate in the discussions of the material.
Location: The seminar will take place at Saint-Michel de Frigolet Abbey near Avignon, France. Participants will be provided with lodging and meals for the duration of the seminar, and a travel stipend of up to $700.
Application Requirements: This seminar is open to PhD students in the humanities and relevant fields.
Applicants will be required to submit:

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

All application materials can be submitted via the online application. Incomplete applications will not be considered. Fifteen applicants will be admitted to this seminar. Application materials are due March 15.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
Can I apply for more than one seminar? Yes. You may apply for multiple seminars. Please indicate your order of preference in your statement of purpose for each application. Each applicant may only be admitted to one seminar.
I am a PhD student graduating this academic year. Can I still apply? Yes!
I am currently an undergraduate or masters student, but have been admitted to a PhD program for the next academic year. Can I still apply?
Yes, please indicate this somehwere in your application.
I have attended a Lumen Christi Institute seminar in the past. May I still apply? Yes!
Do I have to be Catholic to apply? No. The Lumen Christi Institute exists to promotes the Catholic intellectual tradition and is committed to the integration of the intellectual and spiritual life. The Institute welcomes seminar participants of all or no religious affiliation, and wants to assure all applicants that the opportunities to participate in devotional activities are optional.
In addition to the travel stipend, are there other funding possibilities? Seminar participation includes an opportunity to give a formal presentation and inclusion in the official program and schedule. We encourage participants to seek funding from their home institutions or other sources to supplement the travel stipend offered by the Lumen Christi Institute.
When do I get my travel stipend? Stipends are distributed as a refund after successful completion of the seminar and seminar evaluations. Exceptions can be made on case by case basis.
Contact us with any further questions.

Catholic Social Thought: A Critical Investigation
2019-07-20 00:00 - 2019-07-27 00:00 | University of California, Berkeley, S Hall Rd. Berkeley, CA 94720, Berkeley, CA
APPLICATIONS FOR THIS SEMINAR ARE CLOSED
In this seminar, students will read, analyze, and discern continuities and discontinuities in Catholic social thought from the late 19th century to the present. Lectures, seminar reports, and discussion will focus on original sources (encyclicals and other magisterial documents), beginning with Rerum novarum (1892) and concluding with Caritas in veritate (2009) and Evangelii Gaudium (2013). This intensive course is multi-disciplinary, since this tradition of social thought overlaps several disciplines in the contemporary university including political science, political philosophy, law, economics, theology, and history.
Format: There will be two 2.5-hour sessions each day. Each session will include an opening lecture and seminar-style discussion of the text and the issues at hand. Students will be expected to prepare the readings carefully and participate in the discussions of the material.
Location: The seminar will take place at the University of California, Berkeley. Participants will be provided with lodging and most meals for the duration of the seminar, and a travel stipend of up to $350.
Application Information: This seminar will be open to PhD students, JD students, post docs, and junior faculty in the humanities, social sciences, and relevant fields.
Applicants will be required to submit:

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

All application materials can be submitted via the online application. Incomplete applications will not be considered. Fifteen students will be admitted to this seminar. Application materials are due March 15.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
Can I apply for more than one seminar? Yes. You may apply for multiple seminars. Please indicate your order of preference in your statement of purpose for each application. Each applicant may only be admitted to one seminar.
I am a PhD student graduating this academic year. Can I still apply? Yes!
I am currently an undergraduate or masters student, but have been admitted to a PhD program for the next academic year. Can I still apply?
Yes, please indicate this somehwere in your application.
I have attended a Lumen Christi Institute seminar in the past. May I still apply? Yes!
Do I have to be Catholic to apply? No. The Lumen Christi Institute exists to promotes the Catholic intellectual tradition and is committed to the integration of the intellectual and spiritual life. The Institute welcomes seminar participants of all or no religious affiliation, and wants to assure all applicants that the opportunities to participate in devotional activities are optional.
In addition to the travel stipend, are there other funding possibilities? Seminar participation includes an opportunity to give a formal presentation and inclusion in the official program and schedule. We encourage participants to seek funding from their home institutions or other sources to supplement the travel stipend offered by the Lumen Christi Institute.
When do I get my Travel Stipend? Stipends are distributed as a refund after successful completion of the seminar and seminar evaluations. Exceptions can be made on case by case basis.
Contact us with any further questions.

POSTPONED: Catholic Social Teaching and Society: An Introduction to the Tradition and Substance of Christian Social Doctrine
2019-07-21 00:00 - 2019-08-03 00:00 | Abtei Michaelsberg, TBD, Siegburg, Germany
THIS SEMINAR HAS BEEN POSTPONED TO SUMMER 2020
The manifold and deepening social, political, and economic crises that people and their governments face have called forth a strongly renewed interest in the Christian social teaching tradition, and the contributions that insights from the tradition might make to responding to these exigencies. This revival of interest brings several thorny problems in its wake: Why does the Church speak on these matters, and based on what authority? What role does the Church properly have in this context? What contributions can she make to such worldly concerns? What does the Church have to offer in responding to the complexities of the contemporary world situation? These represent particularly important questions given the Catholic Church’s revived role as a transnational, global organization whose views have assumed increasing significance in a post-Cold War world with increasingly diffuse sources of recognized authority.
The first week will provide a fundamental introduction to the history, philosophical currents, and theology that informs the Catholic social tradition. The second week features an interdisciplinary and international conversation between American and European participants concentrated on the meaning of social justice and its principles in light of the Christian tradition; a consideration of the Christian sources that inform the “social market economy” and the institutions of the “social-state”; and the challenges that AI and digitalization pose to human work and well-being.
The seminar will feature lectures, discussions, and working groups, but also opportunities to meet with political, social and Church leaders. The program has the special goal of bringing American and German students into conversation to share their perspectives, to build networks and to seek common approaches to addressing both to contemporary crises and unforeseen developments in a way that will keep the human at the center of all our considerations.
Format: coming soon!
Location: The seminar will take place at Abtei Michaelsberg, Siegburg, Germany.
Application Information: This seminar will be open to MA, MTS, MDiv, PhD, JD, Post Doc, and advanced undergraduates in all disciplines.
Applicants will be required to submit:

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

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
Can I apply for more than one seminar? Yes. You may apply for multiple seminars. Please indicate your order of preference in your statement of purpose for each application. Each applicant may only be admitted to one seminar.
I have attended a Lumen Christi Institute seminar in the past. May I still apply? Yes!
Do I have to be Catholic to apply? No. The Lumen Christi Institute exists to promotes the Catholic intellectual tradition and is committed to the integration of the intellectual and spiritual life. The Institute welcomes seminar participants of all or no religious affiliation, and wants to assure all applicants that the opportunities to participate in devotional activities are optional.
In addition to the travel stipend, are there other funding possibilities? Seminar participation includes an opportunity to give a formal presentation and inclusion in the official program and schedule. We encourage participants to seek funding from their home institutions or other sources to supplement the travel stipend offered by the Lumen Christi Institute.
When do I get my travel stipend? Stipends are distributed as a refund after successful completion of the seminar and seminar evaluations. Exceptions can be made on case by case basis.
Contact us with any further questions.

Undergraduate Seminar: Augustine on Self, God, and Society
2019-07-28 00:00 - 2019-08-03 00:00 | St. Albert’s Priory, 5890 Birch Ct, Oakland, CA
APPLICATION COMING SOON
Augustine is one of the great minds of the Church and of western history. In this week-long intensive seminar, undergraduates and recent graduates will learn how to read, analyze, and discern the theme of the self in relation to God and society across Augustine’s corpus. The seminar is anchored in an in-depth reading of Augustine’s Confessions, one of the great masterpieces of literature that continues to speak across the centuries even as it is rooted in antiquity. This will be supplemented by selections from The City of God and On the Trinity.
Application materials are due March 1.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
Can I apply for more than one seminar? Yes. You may apply for multiple seminars. Please indicate your order of preference in your statement of purpose for each application. Each applicant may only be admitted to one seminar.
Do I have to be Catholic to apply? No. The Lumen Christi Institute exists to promotes the Catholic intellectual tradition and is committed to the integration of the intellectual and spiritual life. The Institute welcomes seminar participants of all or no religious affiliation, and wants to assure all applicants that the opportunities to participate in devotional activities are optional.
In addition to the travel stipend, are there other funding possibilities? Seminar participation includes an opportunity to give a formal presentation and inclusion in the official program and schedule. We encourage participants to seek funding from their home institutions or other sources to supplement the travel stipend offered by the Lumen Christi Institute.
When do I get my travel stipend? Stipends are distributed as a refund after successful completion of the seminar and seminar evaluations. Exceptions can be made on case by case basis.

Modern Science and the Catholic Faith for Undergraduates
2019-07-28 12:00 - 2019-08-03 12:00 | Saint Joseph Abbey and Seminary College, 75376 River Road, St. Benedict, LA
Applications are now closed.
The goal of this seminar is to provide students with the background knowledge and conceptual tools necessary to understand and think clearly about the relation of science and faith. This will help them to integrate scientific and theological ways of understanding in their own thinking, and make it possible for them to help others (including their future colleagues and students) to achieve such integration. The overarching goal is to help develop a cadre of people with a broad and informed understanding of these issues who can be the nucleus from which wider outreach efforts might grow.
Among the topics discussed will be the historical relationship of the Church and science; the relation of faith and reason; evidence for God in the existence and order of the cosmos; God and nature; primary and secondary causality; the supernatural and miracles; modern physics and natural theology; creation and providence; the beginning of the universe and modern cosmology; God and time; human origins and human distinctiveness; rationality, freedom, and the soul; physicalist reductionism and the human mind; Genesis and scriptural interpretation; biological evolution; biology and human nature; and the Fall, original sin and concupiscence.
Preparatory readings will include excerpts from:

Modern Physics and Ancient Faith (Stephen M. Barr)
The Believing Scientist (Stephen M. Barr)
Thomistic Evolution (Fr. Nicanor Austriaco et al.)
Science and Belief in a Nuclear Age (Peter E. Hodgson)
God’s Mechanics (Br. Guy Consolmagno)
God and Reason in the Middle Ages (Edward Grant)
Galileo Goes to Jail and Other Myths about Science and Religion (ed. Ronald L. Numbers)
Mind and Cosmos (Thomas Nagel)
The Faith of the Early Fathers (William A. Jurgens)
Confessions (St. Augustine)
City of God (St. Augustine)
On the Literal Meaning of Genesis (St. Augustine)
Summa Contra Gentiles (St. Thomas Aquinas)
In the Beginning (Joseph Ratzinger)
addresses and statements on science and religion by Pope St. John Paul II
Communion and Stewardship: Human Persons Created in the Image of God (International Theological Commission)
sections of the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

LOCATION AND FORMAT

The seminar will take place at Saint Joseph Abbey and Seminary College in St. Benedict, LA. Admitted students will be required to arrange their own travel to and from the seminar.
Admitted students will be granted a stipend of $350 to offset travel costs in addition to having their lodging and meals covered for the duration of the seminar.
Participants will arrive at Saint Joseph on Sunday, July 28 and depart on Saturday, August 3. The seminar will take place from Monday to Friday, with a lecture and discussion session each morning and afternoon.
Participants will be required read the assigned materials in preparation for the seminar.
In order to receive the $350 stipend, students must participate fully in all seminar activities and complete a survey at the end of the seminar.

APPLICATION INFORMATION

Open to all undergraduate students, including those who graduate in 2019 and recent graduates.
Applicants must submit an online application, including details on their course of study, a statement of interest, and a letter of recommendation.
For full consideration, apply by May 12. After May 12, applications will be evaluated on a rolling basis.
15 applicants will be admitted to the seminar.

This seminar is part of the Lumen Christi Institute’s “Science and Religion: A Dialogue of Cultures” project generously supported by the John Templeton Foundation.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
I am a college student graduating this academic year. Can I still apply? Yes!
Do I have to be Catholic to apply? No. The Lumen Christi Institute exists to promotes the Catholic intellectual tradition and is committed to the integration of the intellectual and spiritual life. The Institute welcomes seminar participants of all or no religious affiliation, and wants to assure all applicants that the opportunities to participate in devotional activities are optional.

Reason, Revelation, Tradition: The Limits of Leo Strauss?
2019-08-06 13:00 - 2019-08-07 18:00 | Gavin House, 1220 E 58th St., Chicago, IL, 60637
You can view photos of the event HERE.
Leo Strauss is well known for both his critique of modernity and his insistence on the productive (but irreconcilable) tension between reason and revelation. Even if Strauss’ recovery of the pre-modern philosophical life also opened a vista for the life of the saint to re-emerge, Strauss always contended that any synthesis between the two was theoretically untenable. Catholic students of political philosophy have therefore found themselves in an uneasy alliance with Strauss: in accepting his critical project, must they also accept his account of the natures of philosophy and faith?
This two-day master class will investigate what might be called the limits of Strauss. It will begin with an appreciation of his work, especially his critique of historicism. After that it will investigate the problem of reason and revelation by comparing Strauss with fellow-travelers like MacIntyre and Pieper. Central questions will concern Strauss’ insistence that revelation must be conceived of as a totalizing “law,” as well as whether Strauss’ account of reason is purely discursive or open to noetic ascent.
READINGS

Mark Shiffman, “The Limits of Strauss’ Recovery of Pre-modern Political Philosophy”
Leo Strauss, selections from “Reason and Revelation” (sections 4-6, 8; pp. 145-55 and 161-164)
Leo Strauss, “Natural Right and the Historical Approach”
Leo Strauss, selections from “Progress or Return?” (section 2; pp. 267-298)
Alasdair MacIntyre, reflections on the rationality of traditions (Three Rival Versions of Moral Inquiry, pp. 127-157)
​​​​​​​Josef Pieper, “The Negative Element in the Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas” (The Silence of St. Thomas, pp. 45-74)

SCHEDULE
Tuesday, August 6
1:30pm – Arrival at Gavin House & reception
2pm – First Session: Strauss’ Writings, introduced by Mark Shiffman (Villanova University)
3:15pm – Break
3:30pm – Second Session: Strauss’ Writings, with 10-minute student presentation (Will Wood, University of Chicago)
4:45pm – Conclusion
5:30pm – Informal Dinner at Gavin House
Wednesday, August 7
9:30am – Arrival at Gavin and Coffee
10am – Third Session: MacIntyre on tradition, with 10-minute student presentation (Nathan Pinkoski, University of Toronto)
11:15am – Break
11:30am – Fourth Session: Pieper on Aquinas, with 10-minute presentation (Mark Hoipkemier, University of Virginia)
12:45pm – Conclusion
1pm – Informal Lunch at Gavin House
2:30pm – Final Session: Summation, a discussion of Strauss’ “Reason and Revelation,” with our appraisal of Strauss’ formulation of the problem
3:45pm – Conclusion
Students are responsible for arranging their own travel and lodging. With questions, please contact master class organizer Austin Walker at awalker@lumenchristi.org.

Master Class on "The Writings of Meister Eckhart"
2019-09-14 09:30 - 13:00 | Gavin House, 1220 E 58th St., Chicago, IL, 60637
You can view photos of the event HERE.
In this one-off seminar, participants will read and discuss the writings of late medieval German mystic and theologian Meister Eckhart (c. 1260-1327) with Bernard McGinn, Professor Emeritus at the University of Chicago Divinity School and leading expert on the history of Christian spirituality and mysticism.
Session 1. An Introduction to Eckhart

“Introductions” in The Essential Sermons, pp. 5-61
German Sermon 52 in The Essential Sermons, pp. 199-203
The Sequence “Granum sinapis” (Handout)

Session 2. Eckhart on Justice

German Sermon 6 in The Essential Sermons, pp. 185-189
Commentary on the Gospel of John, “Prologue” nn. 1-‐‑23 in The Essential Sermons, pp. 122-129

Session 3. Eckhart on Intellect

Latin Sermon XXIX, in Meister Eckhart, Teacher and Preacher, pp. 223-26
Question 1, in Meister Eckhart, Parisian Questions and Prologues, pp. 43-50

SCHEDULE
9:00am Coffee & Tea
9:30am Session 1
10:30am Break
10:45am Session 2
11:45pm Break
12:00pm Session 3
1:00pm End, optional lunch served

What St. Benedict Taught the Dark Ages: His and Ours
2019-10-09 17:00 | Classics 110, 1010 E 59th St. Chicago, IL 60637, Hyde Park, IL
REGISTER HERE
Free and open to the public. Cosponsored by the John U. Nef Commitee on Social Thought.
Cardinal Newman, who will be canonized on October 13, is well known for his philosophy of education, especially for his masterwork The Idea of University (1853). But his most profound reflections on education are in his minor work “The Mission of St. Benedict” (1858), in which Newman treats the question of how to teach a beginner, even a beginner under the most unfavorable circumstances. Not a novice in dialectic and rhetoric, or in the theoretical or practical sciences, but a beginner in the quotidian flow of life.

In the declining shadows of Roman order in the West, the fifth-century monk St. Benedict authored a “simple Rule for beginners.” How to divide a day, how to honor one’s fellows of different social classes, how to bury the dead, how to distinguish tools and persons, and many other things that bewilder us today. Newman claimed that St. Benedict was the genius of “poetical” education, which directs the first and maybe even final steps of living ordinary life as an integrated whole.

Professor Hittinger will also lead a master class for students and faculty on Yves Simon’s A General Theory of Authority on Friday, October 11.

Master Class on Yves Simon's "A General Theory of Authority"
2019-10-11 14:00 - 17:15 | Gavin House, 1220 E 58th St., Chicago, IL, 60637
REGISTER HERE
Open to current students and faculty. Copies of the book A General Theory of Authority (University of Notre Dame Press, 1980) will be provided for those who register. Professor Hittinger will also give a lecture on October 9 on “What St. Benedict Taught the Dark Ages: His and Ours.”
Yves Simon (1903-1961) was a neo-scholastic philosopher who distinguished himself chiefly for his work in moral and political philosophy. A student of Jacques Maritain in Paris, in 1938 he accepted a visiting position at the University of Notre Dame where he was stranded after the outbreak of WWII. In 1948 he became a member of the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago. Today he is perhaps best remembered and referenced for his work on the nature and functions of authority, a topic that he traversed three times: The Nature and Function of Authority (1940), Philosophy of Democratic Government (1951) based on his Walgreen Lectures at the University of Chicago (1948), and A General Theory of Authority (1962), published a year after his death. Why three times? The simple answer is that he was a meticulous philosopher and therefore he endeavored to get his account just right. Think for example of John Rawls’s multiple revisions of his theory of justice.
But it was also an imperative of his time and place. A neo-scholastic philosopher in the mid-20th century had to account for rapidly changing social and political conditions that made it awkward to defend such basic terms of art as authority and common good. The scholastic tradition had to reckon with the fact that the Catholic appropriation of the perennial philosophy seemed to side with the claims of authority against claims for liberty on a spectrum of social issues – from politics to family and religion. After the rise of totalitarianism and the disaster of two world wars, the claims for liberty were quite insistent and culturally ascendant. The year of Simon’s Walgreen Lectures witnessed the U.N. Declaration on Human Rights and the global process of decolonization, both of which underscored the principle of self-determination over and against more traditional kinds of authority. Standard liberal accounts of authority for the most part were content to ground authority in theories of consent, based on contractual understandings of consent to a utility – a resource-saving device for enhancement of individual choice. This was a one-dimensional account of the function of authority, but it had the advantage of comporting with the expectation that public powers serve and enhance individual liberty. This was the challenge Simon faced in putting forward a more robust account of authority.
SCHEDULE
1:30 welcome, coffee and tea
2:00 first session
3:30 break
3:45 second session
5:15 reception
SYLLABUS
FIRST SESSION (2:00-3:30)
Initial Presentation (30 minutes)

The issue of authority as Simon found it after WWII.
Neo-scholastic problems.
General Theory: Preview of the Main Question, the Main Definition.

Readings, GTA: Chs. 1 (and 5), 2; Thomas Aquinas, S.t. I, 96.4.
Discussion:
The “bad name of authority,” not altogether mistaken? Is the bad name due to philosophical misunderstandings, or to the frame and behavior of institutions, or to the lived experience of modern peoples?
Distinction between law and authority (20, 48 n.11). Does it work in favor of his general theory?
Look carefully at four points that appear constitute the main chassis for his position:

Essential and accidental functions of authority (20-22).
Partnership vs common action (29-33, and the coach-driver 135).
The essential function and the scenario of a multitude without deficiencies (37-47, handout S.t. I, 96.4).
The distinction between formal and material intention of a common good (57-65) – is he grappling with the issue of subsidiarity?

SECOND SESSION (3.45-5.15)
Initial Presentation (15 minutes).

Recapitulation and a few remarks on authority and theoretical knowledge.

Readings, GTA, Chs. 3 and 4.
Discussion:
An authoritative “witness” does not, all else being equal, require the power to give orders and demand obedience (84-87). The authority of a witness presupposes some kind of deficiency in the knower, for it is substitutional (remedial) (93). In the practical domain, both essential and accidental functions of authority have as their end a (social) common good. Does he now suggest a function of authority in theoretical matters that does not have a common good, or “essential” function as its end?
Perhaps the key to that question is his discussion of liberalism – freedom of thought as a “sociological agnosticism” that’s normative rather than merely prudential. (102-109, especially at 110-111). Perhaps his anticipation of Rawls’s Political Liberalism (1993)?
Simon regards philosophy as corrupted once it deliberately aims at winning social consensus (113-115). This is a point that deserves some reflection. Yet in “Truth and Community” (115-131) he wants to affirm that the search for truth is related to what is “fundamental in human sociability.” That would be communion. But social communion depends upon some kind of intellectual and spiritual consensus that serves common action (127).
Is Chapter 3 somehow the core of Simon’s effort in GTA? This is the material that he didn’t treat quite so explicitly in previous treatises on authority.
Chapter 4 reworks the preceding chapters. What difference does Chapter 3 make to this restatement of the functions of authority?

Genome Editing with CRISPR: Dignity and Other Faith-Based Considerations
2019-10-17 17:00 | BSLC 109, 924 E 57th St. Chicago, IL 60637, Hyde Park, IL
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Cosponsored by the Program on Religion and Medicine at the University of Chicago, McCormick Theological Seminary, and the Society of Catholic Scientists. This program is made possible by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation.
The discovery of CRISPR/Cas9 has revolutionized our ability to edit genomes, the human genome included. How do faith-based ethicists maneuver the landscape of human genetic engineering? What challenges do biotechnological advances pose to the dignity of the human person? Should genetic editing be celebrated? Cautiously advanced? Ruled out? In this lecture, biologist and Dominican Priest Nicanor Austriaco considered the prospects and challenges of CRISPR for the promotion of human dignity.

The Making of a Modern Saint: John Henry Newman on Faith and Education in a Secular Age
2019-10-19 09:00 - 16:30 | Swift Hall, 1025 E 58th St. Chicago, IL 60637, Hyde Park, IL
Cosponsored by Mundelein Seminary, the Archdiocese of Chicago Vocation Office, and the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame. This program is made possible in part by a gift from the Paluch Family Foundation and a grant from the John Templeton Foundation.
Follow us on Instagram for updates about the event.

Have you ever wondered why you go to school? Or what the point of it all is? What goes into making a big decision? And how do you fit together everything you know–or even the past with the future?
John Henry Newman will be canonized on October 13th. On October 19th, we’ll celebrate his life and thought.

In the morning, Dwight Lindley from Hillsdale College will talk about, “Conversion, the Key to Newman’s Life and Thought.” Newman understood his own conversion to be a gradual realization of what his most-deeply held principles required of him–it wasn’t some shallow “emotional” feeling. And Newman’s understanding of conversion helped him to give an account of the Church’s development over time (and how that development is both similar to and different from Darwinian evolution!).

In the afternoon, Dave Deavel from University of St. Thomas will tell us about Newman’s idea of education. He will help us ask what a true education is. What does it mean to seek “knowledge for its own sake”? What does it mean when Newman describes the whole of knowledge as a “circle”? How do all the “subjects”—biology, history, philosophy, theology, and the rest—in the circle fit together? What unites them? Does theology have to be part of true education? How does “being educated” relate to my career? We’ll talk about all this and more in this lecture.

There will also be food, games, outdoor competitions, and a prize for the winners.

SCHEDULE
9:00am Registration and Breakfast
10:00am Welcome & Introductions
10:15am Opening Prayer
10:30am Prof. Lindley lecture on Newman’s life and times
11:45am Lunchtime discussion group
1:00pm Outdoor activity
2:15pm Prof. Deavel lecture on Science, University, and Liberal Education
3:30pm Discussion Groups
4:30pm Mass (optional)
5:45pm Pizza Party (optional)

Waiting for Jesus in Havana
2019-10-23 18:30
The family is traditionally held to be the first church. Yet, the Latino Catholic home bears diverse local religious and cultural influences. How does one better understand the tapestry of one’s own religious experience and its relation to the Catholic tradition?
Join us in this workshop as Carlos Eire, historian and expert in popular piety, draws from his memoirs “Waiting for Snow in Havana” and “Learning to Die in Miami” to discuss the diversity of religious strands that made up his own Cuban household and analyze the challenges and opportunities it presents to the Hispanic Catholic experience. Participants will walk away with a deeper understanding of the local peculiarities of Catholic culture, as well as of the perilous task of wrestling with one’s own religious beliefs while writing for a broad reading public.
Cosponsored by Cristo Rey Jesuit High School. This event is made possible in part by a grant from the Our Sunday Visitor Institute.

The Life of Saint Teresa of Avila
2019-10-24 12:00 - 13:30 | University Club of Chicago, 76 E Monroe St Chicago, IL 60603, Downtown, IL
This program was made possible in part by a grant from the Our Sunday Visitor Institute.
A luncheon talk with Professor Carlos Eire (Yale) on the recent book on the life and many afterlives of one of the most enduring mystical testaments ever written: The Life of Saint Teresa of Avila.
Saint Teresa of Avila’s Life is among the most remarkable accounts ever written of the human encounter with the divine. The Life is not really an autobiography at all, but rather a confession written for inquisitors by a nun whose raptures and mystical claims had aroused suspicion. Despite its troubled origins, the book has had a profound impact on Christian spirituality for five centuries, attracting admiration from readers as diverse as mystics, philosophers, artists, psychoanalysts, and neurologists. How did a manuscript once kept under lock and key by the Spanish Inquisition become one of the most inspiring religious books of all time?
In The Life of Saint Teresa of Avila: A Biography (Princeton University Press, 2019) National Book Award winner Carlos Eire tells the story of this incomparable spiritual masterpiece, examining its composition and reception in the sixteenth century, the various ways its mystical teachings have been interpreted and reinterpreted across time, and its enduring influence in our own secular age.
Prof. Eire also participated in a panel discussion of his book later that afternoon at the University of Chicago.

Symposium on "The Life of Teresa of Avila: A Biography"
2019-10-24 17:15 | Social Sciences, Room 122, 1126 E 59th St. Chicago, IL 60637, Hyde Park, IL
Free and open to the public. Cosponsored by Martin Marty Center for the Public Understanding of Religion at the Divinity School, the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, and the Medieval Studies Workshop. This program was made possible in part by a grant from the Our Sunday Visitor Institute.
Copies of The Life of Saint Teresa of Avila: A Biography (Princeton University Press, 2019) are available for sale by the Seminary Coop Bookstore.
Saint Teresa of Avila’s Life is among the most remarkable accounts ever written of the human encounter with the divine. The Life is not really an autobiography at all, but rather a confession written for inquisitors by a nun whose raptures and mystical claims had aroused suspicion. Despite its troubled origins, the book has had a profound impact on Christian spirituality for five centuries, attracting admiration from readers as diverse as mystics, philosophers, artists, psychoanalysts, and neurologists. How did a manuscript once kept under lock and key by the Spanish Inquisition become one of the most inspiring religious books of all time?
In The Life of Saint Teresa of Avila: A Biography (Princeton University Press, 2019) National Book Award winner Carlos Eire tells the story of this incomparable spiritual masterpiece, examining its composition and reception in the sixteenth century, the various ways its mystical teachings have been interpreted and reinterpreted across time, and its enduring influence in our own secular age.
Professor Eire also gave a luncheon talk that day at noon at the University of Chicago of Chicago. He also taught a three-hour master class for students and faculty on The Life of Saint Teresa of Avila on Friday, October 25.

Master Class on "The Life of Teresa of Avila"
2019-10-25 14:00 - 17:00 | Gavin House, 1220 E 58th St., Chicago, IL, 60637
This program was made possible in part by a grant from the Our Sunday Visitor Institute.
The Life of Saint Teresa of Avila is one of the most remarkable accounts ever written of the human encounter with the divine. This text is not really an autobiography at all, despite the fact that it is widely regarded as such, but rather a confession written for inquisitors by a nun whose raptures and mystical claims had aroused suspicion. Despite its troubled origins, and despite the fact that some clergy continued to condemn it after it was published, the book has had a profound impact on Christian spirituality for five centuries, attracting admiration from readers as diverse as mystics, philosophers, artists, psychoanalysts, and neurologists. How and why did a manuscript once kept under lock and key by the Spanish Inquisition become an iconic text of the Counter-Reformation and an enduring influence on Western culture?
This master class will examine the historical and theological content of Saint Teresa’s audacious mystical theology.
REQUIRED READING

The Life of Teresa of Avila (Penguin Classics, 1988) Chs. 1-2, 7-14, 20-22, 28-40.

RECOMMENDED READING

Eire, Carlos, The Life of Saint Teresa of Avila: A Biography (Princeton University Press, 2019).

SCHEDULE
1:30pm Coffee, tea, and pastries
2:00pm Introduction, Session I
3:20pm Break
3:40pm Session II
5:00pm End, wine and cheese reception
Professor Eire will also participate in a symposium on his new book The Life of Saint Teresa of Avila: A Biography on October 24.

John Henry Newman's Path to Sainthood
2019-10-30 17:30 - 19:00 | Holy Name Cathedral Auditorium, 730 North Wabash Avenue Chicago, Illinois 60611, River North, IL
This event was cosponsored by Mundelein Seminary, the Sheil Catholic Center at Northwestern University, the Hank Center for the Catholic Intellectual Heritage at Loyola University Chicago, the Department of Catholic Studies at DePaul University, the Calvert House Catholic Center at the University of Chicago, and the John Paul II Newman Center at UIC.

What makes a modern saint? On October 13th, Cardinal John Henry Newman (1801-1890), English theologian, philosopher and cardinal, was officially canonized a saint of the Roman Catholic Church. This event at Holy Name Cathedral was a presentation on the life and sanctity of John Henry Newman by leading Newman scholar of our time Fr. Ian Ker (Oxford) and Melissa Villalobos, the woman whose miraculous cure led to Newman’s canonization. The event was moderated by Kenneth Woodward, former religion editor of Newsweek and author of Making Saints.

Newman’s Apologetics of the Imagination
2019-10-31 17:00 | Swift Hall, 3rd Floor Lecture, 1025 E 58th St. Chicago, IL 60637, Hyde Park, IL
This event was cosponsored by the Nicholson Center for British Studies.
John Henry Newman famously insisted that “the heart is commonly reached not through the reason, but through the imagination.” As a theologian, apologist, and the 19th century’s most famous convert, Newman was keenly attentive to the foundations of religious belief. His apologetic career is, in some sense, an appeal to the imagination in contradistinction to the prevailing empiricism of Locke and Hume. In his novels, sermons, lectures, and even his philosophical magnum opus, the Grammar of Assent, Newman defends an understanding of the imagination that harmonizes religious faith and rational inquiry.

Science and Faith: Non-Overlapping Magisteria?
2019-11-06 18:30 - 20:30 | Faculty House at Columbia University, 64 Morningside Drive, New York, NY
REGISTER HERE
5:30 Reception | 6:00pm Discussion
Co-sponsored by The Columbia University Seminar on Catholicism, Culture and Modernity, the Columbia Catholic Ministry, and the Society of Catholic Scientists. This programming is made possible by a grant from the Templeton Foundation.
A Discussion with Stephen Barr (University of Delaware), Jonathan Lunine (Cornell University), moderated by Carlo Lancellotti (CUNY Staten Island).
In reaction to Pope John Paul II’s 1996 address to the Pontifical Academy of the Sciences, “Truth Cannot Contradict Truth”, Stephen Jay Gould famously published his view on religion and science being non-overlapping magisteria (NOMA). He proposed that religion and science were distinct and separate domains of teaching authority, with no interference between–or influence upon–each other. Gould maintained that science documents the factual character of the natural world and seeks theoretical constructs to explain those facts, while religion operates on the “realm of human purposes, meanings, and values.”
This consensus position proved popular among scientists and people of faith for its diplomacy, but is such a model sufficient for understanding the relationship between faith and science? Can science inform faith? Does religious thinking shape our approach towards science and its application, and does that necessarily contradict NOMA? Come as two Catholic scientists weigh in on the chasms and connections of Science and Religion.

The Human Person in an Age of Biotechnology: A Symposium
2019-11-15 15:00 - 19:00 | BSLC 115, 924 E 57th St. Chicago, IL 60637, Hyde Park, IL
We are at the very outset of the Age of Biotechnology. This presses anew questions regarding the limits of the human person. What is the human species from the point of view of evolutionary biology? How malleable is this definition? Is there such a thing as a species? How does this compare to philosophical perspectives on the person? The questions above are not new, but they have acquired new urgency with recent advances in biotechnology. In ths symposium, six distinguished scholars discuss these and other pressing questions in two panels–the first addressing these issues in the practice of science and application of biotechnology in the world, and the second addressing these issues from the point of theory.
Cosponsored by the Program on Religion and Medicine at the University of Chicago,the Martin Marty Center for the Public Understanding of Religion, the Theology and Ethics Workshop, the Society of Catholic Scientists, and McCormick Theological Seminary. This program is made possible by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation and the Our Sunday Visitor Institute.
Schedule:
Panel 1 — Praxis
Gaymon Bennett (Arizona State University): “The Algorithm and the Spirit: Big Tech and the Enchantments of Biotechnology”
John Novembre (University of Chicago): “The expanding scope for genetic discrimination: New genetic predictors and their challenges”
Stephen Meredith (University of Chicago): “Brave New World: Revisited – Revisited.”
Moderator: Victoria Prince (University of Chicago)
Panel 2 — Theoria
Paul Scherz (Catholic University of America): “Being Human as Being at Risk: The Shift from Genetic Determinism to Precision Medicine”
Willemien Otten (University of Chicago): “The dynamics between nature and human nature on perpetration and victimhood”
Jeff Bishop (Saint Louis University): “On the Being of Humans and the Being of Technology”
Moderator: Hille Haker (Loyola University Chicago)

Master Class on "Heidegger & Aquinas on the Question Concerning Technology"
2019-11-16 11:00 - 14:00 | Gavin House, 1220 E 58th St., Chicago, IL, 60637
REGISTER HERE
Open to current students and faculty. Copies of the readings will be provided for those who register.
SCHEDULE
9:30am Coffee & Pastries
10:00am Session I
11:25am Break
11:35am Session II
1:00pm End, lunch
REQUIRED READINGS

Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I, Q.47, Art.1-2 (on creation); III, Q.60, Art.2-4 (on sacraments)
Martin Heidegger, The Question Concerning Technology

RECOMMENDED READINGS

Francisco Benzoni. “Thomas Aquinas and Environmental Ethics: A Reconsideration of Providence and Salvation.” The Journal of Religion, Vol. 85, No. 3 (July 2005), pp. 446-476.
Bernard Stiegler, Technics and Time, 1 (Stanford University Press, 1998) pp. 1-27.

Non-Credit Course on Modern Science and Christian Faith
2019-11-26 19:00 - 21:00 | Gavin House, 1220 E 58th St., Chicago, IL, 60637
6:00 Dinner | 6:30 Lecture
This weekly non-credit course is open to current students and faculty. Registrants are free to attend as many sessions as they choose. Sessions do not presuppose previous attendance or prior knowledge of the subject. This program is made possible by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation and The Our Sunday Visitor Institute.
People of faith have been deeply involved in the pursuit of science throughout the history of the discipline, from pioneering advances like the Big Bang and the building blocks of modern genetics, to the everyday, incremental toil of research. Yet, it is a commonly held belief that there has long been an irreconcilable conflict between science and faith. From where does this proposed conflict emerge? How can faith complement one’s approach towards, and interpretation of, science? How can science complement one’s understanding of the Christian faith? How does one respond to ever new challenges raised by modern science and technology? Through this Autumn non-credit course, visiting Scientists and Theologians will explore some of these questions from within their particular disciplines.
SCHEDULE
Oct. 8: “Science & Faith: Clash or Harmony?
Stephen Barr (University of Delaware)
Oct 15: “Science & Faith: Understanding and Correcting Models of Conflict”
Chris Baglow (McGrath Institute, University of Notre Dame)
Oct 22: “The Evolving Universe”
Dan Fabrycky (University of Chicago)
Oct 29: “How to Engage Mystery: Advice from a Scientist for Nones, Nuns, and All”
Fr. John Kartje (University of Saint Mary of the Lake)
Nov 5: “Materialistic Reductionism and Science”
Stephen Barr (University of Delaware)
Nov 12: “Disease and the Problem of Evil”
Stephen Meredith (University of Chicago)
Nov 19: “Biological Evolution and Christian Faith”
Peter Tierney (Lumen Christ Institute)
Nov 26: “Fate in Science and Religion”
James Donovan (North Central College)

The Open Question of Church Polity and Governance: Trent, Vatican I, Vatican II
2019-12-04 18:15 | Social Sciences, Room 122, 1126 E 59th St. Chicago, IL 60637, Hyde Park, IL
Free and open to the public. Cosponsored by the Theology and Ethics Workshop at the Divinity School and the Midwest Province of the Society of Jesus.
Sexual and financial scandals are prompting Catholics to ask hard and painful questions about church government. Who is in charge? How is responsibility and accountability for governance distributed in the Church? By no means is this the first time that the Catholic Church has reckoned with the letter and the spirit of its own governance. Drawing from his latest book, When Bishops Meet: An Essay Comparing Trent, Vatican I, and Vatican II (Harvard, 2019), Fr. John O’Malley, S.J. retraces how the three modern ecumenical councils grappled with church reform and highlight resources in that tradition that may help us today. A response from Russell Hittinger follows, leading to open discussion moderated by Jennifer Newsome Martin (University of Notre Dame).

Master Class on Yves Simon's "Philosophy of Democratic Government"
2019-12-07 11:00 - 14:00 | Gavin House, 1220 E 58th St., Chicago, IL, 60637
REGISTER HERE
Open to current students and faculty. Copies of Philosophy of Democratic Government (University of Notre Dame Press, 1993) will be provided for registrants.
The Charles R. Walgreen Foundation for the Study of American Institutions was established in June 1937 to foster greater appreciation of American life and values among University of Chicago students. An important work of the Foundation was the Walgreen Lectures. After the Second World War these lectures were published with a Foreward from the Foundation.
Twice during the first half of the twentieth-century, totalitarian systems have challenged the concept of democracy…. Democracy has been on the defensive; it has been defended more and more often with the pragmatic argument. But this argument has proved no match for the competing systems. Democracy, works, it is true – but so did fascism, until it was destroyed from the outside. The need for a philosophy that show democracy to be grounded firmly on rational principles – this need is apparent.
Especially noteworthy is the fact that the need for philosophical reflection was met by four émigré scholars whose Walgreen lectures are still in print and widely read some seventy later. In 1948 Yves Simon (Philosophy of Democratic Government); in 1949 Leo Strauss (Natural Right and History); in 1950 Jacques Maritain (Man and the State); in 1951 Eric Voegelin (New Science of Politics). In a similar vein, Hannah Arendt would give the 1956 lectures (On the Human Condition).
This masterclass is made possible by a grant from the Our Sunday Visitor Institute.
SCHEDULE
9:30am Coffee & Pastries
10:00am Session I
11:25am Break
11:35am Session II
1:00pm End, lunch
FIRST SESSION
Chap. 1. We can focus on pages 19-71, which cover the functions of authority in any society that has a political common good. For those who have read his two other books on authority, this material can be quickly read as a review of those themes, particularly his distinction between authority exercised to correct a deficiency in the governed and authority made necessary by a plenitude of the good.
Chap. 3. We will read the entire chapter. Here, Simon raises what he calls the “great difficulty”: “it seems to be impossible to account for social life without assuming that man can bind the conscience of his neighbor; on the other hand, it is not easy to see how a man can ever enjoy such power.” We need to discuss his understanding of three theories that account for the origin of legitimate command and obedience: Coach-Driver, Designation, and Transmission.
SECOND SESSION
Chap. 2. Democratic Freedom. We can pick up the conversation at pages 108-149. Is democratic freedom, more or less the same thing as Liberalism? Is democratic freedom, more or less, the same thing as a regime of human rights? (The 1948 U.N. Declaration of Human Rights was issued the year of his Walgreen lecture).
Chap. 4. Democratic Equality. I am eager to get our discussion into the final section, “Equality versus Exploitation” (pp. 230-259).

Becoming Human in Light of the Gospel of John
2020-01-16 18:15 | Breasted Hall, Oriental Institute, 1155 E 58th St. Chicago, IL 60637, Hyde Park, IL
This event was Cosponsored by the Theology and Ethics Workshop, the Orthodox Christian Fellowship, and St. Makarios the Great Orthodox Mission. Fr. Behr also led a master class for students and faculty on January 17 on Maximus the Confessor.
On his way to Rome, Ignatius of Antioch urges the Christians there not to interfere with his impending martyrdom: ‘hinder me not from living, do not wish me to die, allow me to receive the light, when I will have arrived here, I will be a human being’! In this lecture, Fr John Behr will explore how the Gospel of John alludes back to Genesis to show that Christ is the true human being, inviting us also to become human.

About Fr. Behr’s book John the Theologian and his Paschal Gospel: A Prologue to Theology (Oxford University Press, 2019)
This study brings three different kinds of readers of the Gospel of John together with the theological goal of understanding what is meant by Incarnation and how it relates to Pascha, the Passion of Christ, how this is conceived of as revelation, and how we speak of it. The first group of readers are the Christian writers from the early centuries, some of whom (such as Irenaeus of Lyons) stood in direct continuity, through Polycarp of Smyrna, with John himself. In exploring these writers, John Behr offers a glimpse of the figure of John and the celebration of Pascha, which held to have started with him.
The second group of readers are modern scriptural scholars, from whom we learn of the apocalyptic dimensions of John’s Gospel and the way in which it presents the life of Christ in terms of the Temple and its feasts. With Christ’s own body, finally erected on the Cross, being the true Temple in an offering of love rather than a sacrifice for sin. An offering in which Jesus becomes the flesh he offers for consumption, the bread which descends from heaven, so that ‘incarnation’ is not an event now in the past, but the embodiment of God in those who follow Christ in the present.
The third reader is Michel Henry, a French Phenomenologist, whose reading of John opens up further surprising dimensions of this Gospel, which yet align with those uncovered in the first parts of this work. This thought-provoking work brings these threads together to reflect on the nature and task of Christian theology.

Master Class on Maximus the Confessor
2020-01-17 15:00 - 18:00 | Gavin House, 1220 E 58th St., Chicago, IL, 60637
St. Maximus the Confessor is rapidly becoming one of the most studied of all early Christian theologians; the depths and richness of his writings and theology are being ever more appreciated. This masterclass focused on one specific—and short—text, Ambiguum 41, perhaps the richest of them all and certainly the one for which is best known. It speaks of five fundamental differences or divisions within being, with the vocation of the human being to unite them: Uncreated and created; intelligible and sensible; heaven and earth; paradise and the inhabited world; male and female. We will work through the Greek text (with a parallel edition), and compare his treatment of the male/female distinction to that which we find in Gregory of Nyssa’s De Hominis Opificio.
Reading

Maximus the Confessor, Ambiguum 41 (PDF supplied) from Maximos the Confessor: On Difficulties in the Church Fathers: The Ambigua, ed. and trans. Nicholas Constas, Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library, 2 volumes (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2014)
Gregory of Nyssa, On the Making of Man (PDF supplied)

Suggested Background Reading:

Paul Blowers, Maximus the Confessor: Jesus Christ and the Transfiguration of the World (Oxford: OUP, 2016).
L. Thunberg, Microcosm and Mediator: The Theological Anthropology of Maximus the Confessor, 2nd edn. (Open Court Publishing Co. 1995).
Torstein Theodor Tollefsen, The Christocentric Cosmology of St. Maximus the Confessor, OECS (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).
Melchisedec Törönen, Union and Distinction in the Thought of St. Maximus the Confessor, OECS (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).

Schedule:
1:30pm Coffee, Tea, & Pastries
2:00pm Session I
3:25pm Break
3:35pm Session II
5:00pm End, Wine & Cheese reception
Fr. Behr also gave a lecture on January 16 on Becoming Human in the Light of the Gospel of John.

Are the Great Books Good for us? Liberal Education and the Christian Tradition
2020-01-18 12:30 - 14:30 | Gavin House, 1220 E 58th St., Chicago, IL, 60637
What are the liberal arts? Is there more than one tradition of humanistic liberal learning, and what’s the connection between them the UChicago core curriculum? Professor Jared Ortiz (an undergrad alum of UChicago) hosted a lunchtime conversation about the tradition of liberal education, its reception in Catholic thought, and the question of what an education is for.
Part I of the Winter 2020 Great Books and the Christian Tradition seminar series.
—
Great Books and the Christian Tradition
From the School of Alexandria and the reading of Scripture in the Monasteries, through the re-formulation of the Liberal Arts in the medieval schools and universities, in the renewal of the tradition that included Petrarch, Erasmus, John Henry Newman, and Ressourcement, the development of the Liberal Arts Tradition has been intertwined with Christian thought. This series highlights the connection between the Liberal Arts and the Christian Intellectual Tradition and aims to recover the humanistic and contemplative spirit of a truly liberal education.
Other seminars in the series include:
II. Achievement and the Christian Life: What is Education For?
III. What is Wrong with Curiosity? Augustine on Curiosity and the Use and the Abuse of the Intellect in the Confessions
IV: Is it Rational to Believe in Miracles? A Discussion of David Hume’s Argument Against Believing in Miracles

How NOT To Get Away with Murder
2020-01-19 15:00 - 17:00 | St. John Cantius Church, 825 N Carpenter St Chicago, IL 60642, Chicago, IL
Presented by the Lumen Christi Institute’s Newman Forum. Open to current high school students.
The book of Genesis is one of the most interesting and difficult books of the Bible. And there is so much more to it than meets the eye. For example:
When the snake approaches Eve for the first time, he asks her: “Did God really say, ‘You shall not eat from any of the trees in the garden’?” But that isn’t what God said at all. He told Adam, “You are free to eat from any of the trees of the garden except the tree of knowledge of good and evil.” Already, the snake has changed God’s command in order to make God appear unjust. God says: all but one. The snake says: none at all, right? Eve is in trouble–she wasn’t there when God gave Adam the original command. She hadn’t been created yet. If she heard the command at all, she heard it second-hand from Adam. As you can see, the snake is very devious.

This 90-minute seminar will investigate this and other passages in the 3rd and 4th chapters of Genesis. By reading the text closely and paying attention to what is (and isn’t) there, we will discover a whole new complexity to the relationship between God, the first four humans, and the snake. Not only is God revealed as imminently just and merciful, but also as a very acute observer of human psychology!

Resources from the seminar are drawn from Joseph Ratzinger’s (Pope Bendict’s) In the Beginning…’: A Catholic Understanding of the Story of Creation and the Fall.

There is no charge for the seminar, but a good-will donation of $10 is encouraged.

On February 15, the Newman Forum will host a day-long conference for high school students on “Creation: Artistic & Divine.”
IMAGE: The First Mourning by William-Adolphe Bouguereau, 1888 courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Achievement and the Christian Life: What is Education For?
2020-01-21 14:00 - 15:30 | Gavin House, 1220 E 58th St., Chicago, IL, 60637
REGISTER HERE
What is achievement? What is success? Does the human desire for achievement or success have a natural end, or is it restless and never-satisfied? In other words, what do we understand human fulfillment to be, and how does our university education contribute to that fulfillment?
In this lunch time discussion, Elizabeth Corey, professor of political philosophy and director of the Honors Program at Baylor University, will suggest two ways of being human in the world: the culture of achievement and the culture of love. Guided by insights drawn from sources as wide as the Odyssey, the Nichomachean Ethics, Dorothy Sayers, and Albert Camus, Prof. Corey will discuss the purpose of a liberal education and the possible means of reconciling achievement with love.
Open to Students. Undergraduates are particularly encouraged to attend. A brief reading will be sent to registrants beforehand
Part II of the Winter 2020 Great Books and the Christian Tradition seminar series.
—
Great Books and the Christian Tradition
From the School of Alexandria and the reading of Scripture in the Monasteries, through the re-formulation of the Liberal Arts in the medieval schools and universities, in the renewal of the tradition that included Petrarch, Erasmus, John Henry Newman, and Ressourcement, the development of the Liberal Arts Tradition has been intertwined with Christian thought. This series highlights the connection between the Liberal Arts and the Christian Intellectual Tradition and aims to recover the humanistic and contemplative spirit of a truly liberal education.
Other seminars in the series include:
I. Are the Great Books Good for us? Liberal Education and the Christian Tradition
III. What is Wrong with Curiosity? Augustine on Curiosity and the Use and the Abuse of the Intellect in the Confessions
IV: Is it Rational to Believe in Miracles? A Discussion of David Hume’s Argument Against Believing in Miracles

What is Wrong with Curiosity? Augustine on Curiosity and the Use and the Abuse of the Intellect in the Confessions
2020-02-08 19:00 - 21:00 | Gavin House, 1220 E 58th St., Chicago, IL, 60637
What could be wrong with curiosity? “Long live curiosity,” proclaims the Museum of Science and Industry, and modernity unanimously praises it as the beginning of intellectual discovery. But, surprisingly, Augustine of Hippo criticizes “curiositas” in his Confessions. Is Augustine’s notion out-moded? Is the pursuit of knowledge adverse to Christian faith? Or could Augustine’s concern about the proper use and the abuse of intellectual pursuits inform ideas of liberal education?
Over dinner on Saturday evening, E. John Ellison (University of Chicago) will lead a discussion on the modern notion of curiosity and Augustine’s critique on curiositas especially in Confessions, Book 10.35.
Open to undergraduate students. No prior reading required. Dinner will be served
Part III of the Winter 2020 Great Books and the Christian Tradition seminar series.
—
Great Books and the Christian Tradition
From the School of Alexandria and the reading of Scripture in the Monasteries, through the re-formulation of the Liberal Arts in the medieval schools and universities, in the renewal of the tradition that included Petrarch, Erasmus, John Henry Newman, and Ressourcement, the development of the Liberal Arts Tradition has been intertwined with Christian thought. This series highlights the connection between the Liberal Arts and the Christian Intellectual Tradition and aims to recover the humanistic and contemplative spirit of a truly liberal education.
Other seminars in the series include:
I. Are the Great Books Good for us? Liberal Education and the Christian Tradition
II. Achievement and the Christian Life: What is Education For?
IV: Is it Rational to Believe in Miracles? A Discussion of David Hume’s Argument Against Believing in Miracles

What Good is Happiness? A Dialogue Between Economics & Philosophy
2020-02-12 20:00 - 22:00 | Ida Noyes, Third Floor Theatre, 1212 E 59th St. Chicago, IL 60637, Hyde Park, IL
Presented by the Veritas Forum at the University of Chicago, Cana, Cru, Graduate Christian Fellowship, Holy Trinity Church, InterVarsity, Living Hope Church, The Lumen Christi Institute, MakeNew, the Calvert House Catholic Center, the Catholic Students Association, and the Saint Thomas More Society.
From pop psychology to legal annals, the pursuit of happiness individually and collectively remains a persistent concern of our culture. Yet, the very concept is fractured. What is happiness? Is it a good among many? A feeling? A commodity? Is it simply a matter of preference fulfillment or is caught up in the more arduous task of self-perfection and virtue? Is it tied to the good, perhaps even THE good? How might interdisciplinary engagement be possible when distinct disciplines like Philosophy and Economics maintain such divergent views on happiness? In this evening discussion, philosophy professor Jennifer Frey (University of South Carolina) and legal scholar Jonathan Masur (University of Chicago) enter into dialogue on the meaning and merits of happiness for the self and for society.
Prof. Frey also gave a downtown luncheon talk on “Flannery O’Connor and the Vision of Grace” on February 13, 2020, and led a lunch discussion for students and faculty on novelist and philosopher Iris Murdoch, on February 14, 2020.

Flannery O'Connor and the Vision of Grace
2020-02-13 13:00 - 14:30 | University Club of Chicago, 76 E Monroe St Chicago, IL 60603, Downtown, IL
Flannery O’Connor is one of the most celebrated American fiction writers. Yet she has often been misunderstood by the very critics who praise her. O’Connor was sometimes called a hillbilly nihilist, but she responded that she was simply “a hillbilly Thomist.” In this talk, Dr. Frey explores the action of divine grace in the short stories of O’Connor, and how her vision of grace is inspired by the theology of St. Thomas Aquinas.
Prof. Frey also gave a talk on What Good is Happiness? at the University of Chicago on February 12, 2020, and led a lunch discussion for students and faculty on novelist and philosopher Iris Murdoch, on February 14, 2020.

Iris Murdoch on Philosophy and Literature
2020-02-14 13:00 - 14:30 | Gavin House, 1220 E 58th St., Chicago, IL, 60637
This luncheon seminar for students and faculty examined essays by Dame Iris Murdoch on literature, philosophy, morality, virtue, and the concept good. The focus of discussion centered on why Murdoch thinks truth, understood as a clear vision of reality, is the fundamental goal of literature, philosophy, and virtue.
Iris Murdoch studied at Oxford and Cambridge (where she studied with Wittgenstein) and was close friends with the philosophers Elizabeth Anscombe and Philippa Foot. Murdoch was for many years a fellow of St. Anne’s College, Oxford, where she taught philosophy. In addition to two substantial books of philosophical essays, she also wrote twenty-six novels. Her novel, The Sea, The Sea, won the Booker Prize in 1978. She died on February 8, 1999.
Readings
From Existentialists and Mystics: Writings on Philosophy and Literature, edited by Peter Conradi (Penguin, 1997):

“Literature and Philosophy” (required)
“The Sovereignty of Good Over Other Concepts” (secondary)
“Vision and Choice in Morality” (secondary)

Questions for Discussion

How does literature differ from philosophy according to Murdoch? How can they work together?
Why does she think that both literature and philosophy are truth seeking enterprises? What is the importance of reality and vision in both?
What is the contrast between differences of choice and differences of vision in morality?
What is Murdoch’s complaint against what she calls “the current view” of moral philosophy, whose remote ancestors are Hume, Kant, and Mill? Why does she want to resist the move to universalize in morality?
How should we think about the connection between art and morality?
What does Murdoch mean when she writes that “the enjoyment of art is a training in the love of virtue”?
Murdoch thinks that seeing the world as it is is a necessary task because the authority of morality is the authority of truth. Why does she afford reality such a central role in the moral life? And how does this relate to the concept ‘good’ as she understands it?
What role does mystery and mysteriousness play in Murdoch’s conception of art and morals?

Dr. Frey also presented talks on “Flannery O’Connor and the Vision of Grace“, at the University Club of Chicago on February 13, 2020, and “What Good is Happiness“, with Dr. Jonathan Masur, on February 12, 2020, at the University of Chicago.

Creation: Artistic & Divine
2020-02-15 10:00 - 15:00 | Swift Hall, 1025 E 58th St. Chicago, IL 60637, Hyde Park, IL
This event was open to high school students, parents, and teachers.
Co-sponsored by Mundelein Seminary, the Archdiocese of Chicago Vocation Office, Relevant Radio, and the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame. This program was made possible in part by a gift from the Paluch Family Foundation and a grant from the Our Sunday Visitor Institute.
Follow us on Instagram for updates about the event.

Physics tells us how the universe is ordered, but can it tell us why? How are the laws of physics like a baseball rulebook? And why should we expect the universe to operate according to regular laws anyway?
If God created all things at the beginning of time, what are artists doing when they “create” a beautiful work of art? Can one thing be more beautiful than another? How are beauty and art related to God?
Join us on February 15, 2020 at the University of Chicago as Professors Stephen Barr (Physics, U of Delaware, President of Society of Catholic Scientists) and Jennifer Newsome Martin (Theological Aesthetics, Notre Dame’s Department of Liberal Studies) help high school students from throughout the region investigate the physics of creation and the theology of creativity.
Contact Austin Walker for more information or with questions.

Day Schedule
8:30 Breakfast and Registrations (Swift Hall Common Room)
9:00 Introductions and Prayers (Swift Hall 3rd Floor Lecture Hall)
9:15 Icebreaker
9:30 Lecture: Steve Barr with Q&A (35 min lecture, 15 min Q&A)
10:20 Break
10:30 Lecture: Jenny Martin with Q&A (35 min lecture, 15 min Q&A)
11:30 Lunch and Discussion Groups (2nd and 3rd Floor Swift Classrooms)
1:00 Adoration
1:30 Discussion/Q&A among Barr, Martin, and Students

Does Prayer Bring Happiness?
2020-02-22 17:30 - 21:00 | The Monastery of the Holy Cross, 3111 South Aberdeen St. Chicago, IL 60608, Chicago, IL
This event was open to university students and faculty, and was co-sponsored by Calvert House.
On the evening of February 22nd, students and faculty joined together for an edifying evening of prayer, dinner, and conversation with the Benedictine monks at the Monastery of the Holy Cross on the south side of Chicago. Their evening program consisted of praying the Divine Office (Vespers and Compline), having dinner, and discussing practices of prayer and how these may grow into contemplation that crowns the happy life. Following monastic tradition of oral reading during meals, selections of a patristic text were read during dinner, before being opened with discussion.
More information about the monastery can be found here.
Schedule
4:15pm Meet at Gavin House (1220 E. 58th St.)
4:30pm Depart from Hyde Park
5:00pm Arrive at the Monastery, welcome by Prior Funk
5:15pm Office of Vespers
6:00pm Dinner & Discussion
7:15pm Office of Compline
8:00pm Arrive back in Hyde Park

Pope, Councils, Bishops, and Synods: Insights from St. Dominic and the Order of Preachers for Governance in the Church
2020-02-27 18:15 | Gavin House, 1220 E 58th St., Chicago, IL, 60637
The malfeasance of bishops and priests has led to a call for reform of the institution of the Church. There is a peril in this: the Church is animated and governed by the Holy Spirit and an overemphasis upon the institutional structure of the Church runs the risk of stifling the Spirit. As a path for reform, Pope Francis is building on Paul VI and John Paul II and has emphasized synodality—a mode of consultative governance which emphasizes the communion of all of the members of the Church. In their polities, religious orders have institutionalized and structured themselves around particular gifts of the Holy Spirit. The model of governance in the Dominican Order—with a balance of authority, faithfulness to a charism, and the particular life of local communities—offers insights into how synodality might answer the call for reform.
Fr. Sweeney also led a master class on Saturday, February 29th on Yves Congar’s True and False Reform in the Church.

Master Class on Yves Congar's "True and False Reform in the Church"
2020-02-29 11:00 - 14:00 | Gavin House, 1220 E 58th St., Chicago, IL, 60637
This program was open to students, faculty, and staff.
Is a reform of the church really possible? Yves Congar’s True and False Reform (1950), although initially restricted by the Holy See, became an instrumental text in setting the stage for the Second Vatican Council, and remained one of the most important theological works of the 20th century. Pope John XXIII initially described the goals of the council in terms that reflected Congar’s description of authentic reform: reform that penetrates to the heart of doctrine as a message of salvation for the whole of humanity, that retrieves the meaning of prophecy in a living church, and that is deeply rooted in history rather than superficially related to the apostolic tradition.
Yves Congar, OP (1904-1995) was a French Dominican friar and theologian, and one of the most important ecclesiologists of the 20th century. His work pioneered a new style of theological research that linked the tradition of Scripture and the Fathers to contemporary pastoral questions. His work helped to revive theological interest in the Holy Spirit for the life of individuals and for the Church. He was made a cardinal of the Catholic Church in 1994.
Schedule:
9:30am Coffee & Pastries
10:00am Session I
11:25am Break
11:35am Session II
1:00pm End, lunch

Fr. Sweeney also gave an evening lecture on Thursday, February 27, entitled Pope, Councils, Bishops, and Synods: Insights from St. Dominic and the Order of Preachers for Governance in the Church

Is it Rational to Believe in Miracles? A Discussion of David Hume's Argument Against Believing in Miracles
2020-02-29 19:00 - 21:00 | Gavin House, 1220 E 58th St., Chicago, IL, 60637
Can one be rational and also believe in miracles? The philosophers of the Enlightenment held that it was impossible for the laws of nature to allow such ruptures: to believe in miracles was to be de-facto irrational. Voltaire said that a miracle was a “contradiction in terms,” and Thomas Jefferson famously cut all the miracles out of his Gospels with a razor. David Hume presented a famous argument against the rationality of believing in miracles in his Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (Chapter 10).
Over dinner on Saturday evening, Dr. Jason Cather (University of Chicago) will lead a discussion on Hume’s argument. Does it conclusively prove that no rational person can believe in the existence of miracles? Or does Hume promise more than he delivers? Students are encouraged to review Hume’s Enquiry, Chapter 10 in advance, but no prior reading is required. Dinner is provided.
Open to undergraduate students. Students are encouraged to review Hume’s Enquiry, Chapter 10 in advance, but no prior reading required. Dinner will be served
Part IV of the Winter 2020 Great Books and the Christian Tradition seminar series.
—
Great Books and the Christian Tradition
From the School of Alexandria and the reading of Scripture in the Monasteries, through the re-formulation of the Liberal Arts in the medieval schools and universities, in the renewal of the tradition that included Petrarch, Erasmus, John Henry Newman, and Ressourcement, the development of the Liberal Arts Tradition has been intertwined with Christian thought. This series highlights the connection between the Liberal Arts and the Christian Intellectual Tradition and aims to recover the humanistic and contemplative spirit of a truly liberal education.
Other seminars in the series include:
I. Are the Great Books Good for us? Liberal Education and the Christian Tradition
II. Achievement and the Christian Life: What is Education For?
III. What is Wrong with Curiosity? Augustine on Curiosity and the Use and the Abuse of the Intellect in the Confessions

Winter Non-Credit Course, "Saint Paul: The Life and Letters of the Apostle to the Nations"
2020-03-03 19:00 - 21:00 | Gavin House, 1220 E 58th St., Chicago, IL, 60637
6:00 Dinner | 6:30 Lecture
This weekly non-credit course is open to current students and faculty. Registrants are free to attend as many sessions as they choose. Sessions do not presuppose previous attendance or prior knowledge of the subject.

Who was Paul and what was his ‘good news’? What does he mean by faith or by “principalities and powers”? After Jesus himself, perhaps no Christian personality has evoked such admiration, so much controversy, and so many questions. This course will examine the life and thought of the Apostle Paul through focused presentations on several of his letters. The first presentation will introduce the study of Paul, and following presentations will examine his letters, including 1-2 Thessalonians, Galatians, 1-2 Corinthians, and Romans, from a variety of perspectives. No prior reading or knowledge is expected and Bibles will be on hand to read and discuss passages of Paul’s letters.
Introduction to Paul and his Study
Jan. 14 | Fr. Paul Mankowski, SJ
First and Second Letters to the Thessalonians
Jan. 21 | Justin Howell, University of Chicago
Letter to the Galatians
Jan. 28 | Fr Donald Senior, CP, Catholic Theological Union
First Letter to the Corinthians
Feb. 4 | Cameron Ferguson, University of Chicago
Second Letter to the Corinthians
Feb. 11 | Cameron Ferguson, University of Chicago
Letter to the Romans (Chapters 1-8)
Feb. 18 | Fr. Paul Mankowski, SJ
Letter to the Romans (Chapters 8-16)
Feb. 25 | Fr. Andew Liaugminas, Calvert House
Paul’s Legacy
March 3 | Fr. Paul Mankowski, SJ
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Synodality in the Era of Pope Francis: Principles and Possibilities for Ministry in an Increasingly Hispanic Church
2020-03-04 19:30
Pope Francis’ pontificate continues to signal a particular way of being church for our day, building upon the vision of the Second Vatican Council as well as the energy of Latin American Catholicism. Hispanic ministry in the United States for decades, in close dialogue with the Council and the richness of Latin American theological reflection, has embodied major elements of what today we would call a synodal outlook. This workshop explores key dynamics that identify Catholic Hispanic ministry while proposing models of ministerial action for the rest of the church in the U.S. rooted in the particularity of the Hispanic Catholic experience.
Open by Invitation Only. Dinner and readings will be provided. This event is made possible by a grant from the Our Sunday Visitor Institute.

Sinodalidad en la era del Papa Francisco: Principios y posibilidades para el ministerio en una iglesia cada vez más hispana
El pontificado del Papa Francisco sigue apuntando a una manera particular de ser iglesia en nuestro día, la cual se fundamenta en la visión del Concilio Vaticano II y la energía del catolicismo latinoamericano. Por décadas, el ministerio hispano en los Estados Unidos, en diálogo cercano con el Concilio y la riqueza de la reflexión teológica latinoamericana, ha encarnado elementos esenciales de lo que pudiésemos llamar actualmente una perspectiva sinodal. Este taller explora algunas dinámicas claves que identifican el ministerio hispano católico y propone modelos de acción ministerial para el resto de la Iglesia en los Estados Unidos partiendo de la particularidad de la experiencia católica hispana. [Nota: el taller será en inglés, aunque se hará referencia a ciertas categorías y recursos en español].
Se requiere invitación. Cena y lecturas serán proporcionadas.

Questions concerning this event can be referred to Michael LeChevallier.

American Catholic Contours and Detours in a Fifty-Percent Hispanic/Latino Church
2020-03-05 20:00 | Social Sciences, Room 122, 1126 E 59th St. Chicago, IL 60637, Hyde Park, IL
Free and Open to the Public
The familiar expression “American Catholicism” often evokes mainly the presence and heritage of Euro-American Catholics and how this group defines religion, culture and politics in our nation. Though narrow and de facto blind to the contributions of many other groups that have been central to defining the American Catholic experience, this perception finds its ultimate challenge in the fact that nearly 50 percent of Catholics in the U.S. today are Hispanic/Latino. In this lecture Ospino explores key implications for church and society of being American Catholic in a largely Hispanic/Latino church. The lecture proposes a vision for ecclesial and intellectual engagement, a roadmap for American Catholicism in the rest of the century.
Cosponsored by the Center for Latin American Studies, the Religion in the Americas Workshop, and the Theology and Ethics Workshop at the University of Chicago. This event is made possible by a grant from the Our Sunday Visitor Institute.

Dr. Ospino also gave a workshop on Wednesday, March 4th, open by invitation-only, entitled Synodality in the Era of Pope Francis: Principles and Possibilities for Ministry in an Increasingly Hispanic Church.

The Nature of Evil: Satan, Hell, and the Rite of Exorcism in the Catholic Church.
2020-03-11 12:00 - 13:30
Link to the event: https://zoom.us/j/393866028
The conversation will start promptly at 12 pm today.
The Lumen Christi Institute is sponsoring a moderated dialogue, organized by our partners at Catholics at Booth, on “The Nature of Evil: Satan, Hell, and the Rite of Exorcism in the Catholic Church,” with Msgr. Jeffrey S, Grob, J.C.D/Ph.D, an expert in the Rite of Exorcism for the Archdiocese of Chicago.
University policies surrounding COVID-19 precautions have required the cancellation of the in-person event. However, it will be live-streamed. You can access the live video through the link above (livestream is free; you may however be prompted to install zoom. It is advisable to click the link in advance of the event. If it doesn’t join automatically, the group ID is 393866028.

Grad Movie Night @ Doc Films: A Hidden Life
2020-03-14 18:00 - 21:30 | Ida Noyes Hall, Max Palevsky Cinema, 1212 E 59th St. Chicago, IL 60637, Hyde Park, IL
REGISTER HERE, through CSA Grad
The Lumen Christi Institute and the Catholic Student Association for Graduate and Professional Students are hosting a trip to Doc Films to see Terrence Malick’s new film A Hidden Life. The film tells the story of Austrian farmer Franz Jägerstätter, a conscientious objector who refused to fight for the Nazis in World War II. Jägerstätter was beatified and declared a martyr in 2007.
Open to graduate students and young professionals (generally defined as 21-39 years of age)
A limited number of free tickets are available for early registrants, and all registrants can take advantage of the $5 group rate (normally $7). We will follow up the film with a short discussion, supplemented by cookies from nearby Insomnia Cookies. The film’s runtime is 2 hours, 53 minutes.

WEBINAR: Young Catholic Professionals Great Books Seminar on Shakespeare
2020-03-25 18:00 - 19:00
REGISTER HERE
YCP membership is not required to register for the seminar.
The Lumen Christi Institute is proud to partner with the Chicago chapter of Young Catholic Professionals (YCP) for the second year in a row. The 2020 Lumen Christi Institute – Young Catholic Professionals Great Books Seminar is an adult educational initiative aimed at equipping Catholic professionals 40 and under with a deeper understanding of the Catholic intellectual and literary traditions. Participants will gather monthly downtown for guided discussions on excerpts from celebrated texts.
The cost of seminar registration covers course materials for the nine seminar meetings from February to October. Registration will close when 35 participants have signed up and is is available on a first-come, first-served basis; 20 seats will be reserved for members of YCP Chicago. Registrants need not attend every session in order to register; they must still pay the full cost of registration. Registrants may choose to purchase books on their own rather than via Lumen Christi (see pricing below).
In this year’s seminar we will read nine plays of Shakespeare with a specifically Catholic focus, concerning ourselves with problems of jealousy & personal blindness, social conventions vs personal freedom, betrayal & martyrdom, nobility & the ambiguities of holy war, self-emptying vs self-exaltation, the strength and limits of family loyalty, and the necessity to love the unlovable — among much else.

DATES
Feb 25: Richard II
Mar 25: Macbeth
Apr 30: The Tempest
May 26: Measure for Measure
Jun 24: Hamlet
Jul 21: King Lear
Aug 25: Richard III
Sep 30: Othello
Oct 29: The Merchant of Venice
PRICE
$350 with books (we provide you with all of the books)
$250 without books (you provide your own books)
If you have other questions, please contact Austin Walker.

CANCELED: The Economy of Pope Francis
2020-03-26 12:00 - 13:30
Due to restrictions put in place in response to the spread of COVID-19, this event has been postponed. We look forward to scheduling similar programming in the future.
Does this “economy kill?” Pope Francis denounces “throw-away cultures” and “economies of exclusion and inequality.” Does Pope Francis’s thought on the economy reduce to a Jeremiad? How does his economic vision align with or diverge from the teachings of recent other popes on the economy? How might his critiques be compatible with or improve upon a free-market economy and work towards greater human flourishing? Join for a discussion between international economists and a moral theologian on Pope Francis’s economic vision and what a response to his critique of our “throwaway culture” looks like in practice on an individual, communal, and global scale?

CANCELED: A Master Class on the Social and Political Thought of Pope Benedict XVI
2020-03-28 10:00 - 13:00 | Gavin House, 1220 E 58th St., Chicago, IL, 60637
Due to travel restrictions in light of the spread of COVID-19, Msgr. Schallenberg will not be traveling to the US and thus will not be available to lead a master class. This event has been canceled, and we look forward to rescheduling this event for a later date.
—
Open to current students, faculty, and staff. Copies of the reading will be provided to registrants.
Schedule:
9:30am Coffee & Pastries
10:00am Session I
11:25am Break
11:35am Session II
1:00pm End, lunch

CANCELED: A Report from the German Synod
2020-04-01 17:15 - 18:45 | University of Chicago–TBA, N/A, Hyde Park, IL
Due to restrictions put in place in response to the spread of COVID-19, this event has been postponed. We look forward to scheduling similar programming in the future.

WEBINAR: How NOT to Get Away with Murder
2020-04-02 11:00
Presented by the Lumen Christi Institute’s Newman Forum. Open to current high school students. This event was made possible by a grant from the Our Sunday Visitor Institute.
We’ve run this event in-person, but now we’re bringing it to you online! When you register, you will be sent a Zoom link to follow at the appointed time. You have three sections to choose from:

11:00am-12:00pm

1:00pm-2:00pm

3:00pm-4:00pm
Are you already tired of being quarantined in your house? Feel a little bit like you might kill your siblings?
The book of Genesis is one of the most interesting and difficult books of the Bible. And there is so much more to it than meets the eye. For example:
How was a snake able to trick Eve? Why do Adam and Eve respond to God so suspiciously? And then there’s the Cain and Abel story…why on Earth does Cain jump to murdering his brother? What are we supposed to learn from this Scripture?
This hour-long seminar will investigate these passages in the 3rd and 4th chapters of Genesis. By reading the text closely and paying attention to what is (and isn’t) there, we will discover a whole new complexity to the relationship between God, the first four humans, and the snake. Not only is God revealed as imminently just and merciful, but also as a very acute observer of human psychology!

Come to whichever session fits your new online schedule the best! All you’ll need is access to a Bible (either a real-life book or just online!) We’ll read the text together, and discuss!

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER!
Resources from this seminar are drawn from Joseph Ratzinger’s (Pope Bendict’s) In the Beginning…’: A Catholic Understanding of the Story of Creation and the Fall.

There is no charge for the seminar, but a good-will donation of $10 is encouraged.

(Teachers and Youth Ministers may sit in, if interested. Please register as “Other,” and log in to the provided Zoom link 15 minutes prior to your session’s start time to ensure you are properly muted.)

WEBINAR: Gregory the Great on Reading Scripture for Wisdom
2020-04-07 19:00 | ONLINE, World Wide Web, INTERNET
This event is free and open to the public. Online registration is required. Registrants will receive an email witha link to join the webinar on Zoom.
How can scripture guide our search for wisdom? Bernard McGinn, professor emeritus in the Divinity School of the University of Chicago, begins our webinar series on Reason and Wisdom in Medieval Christian Thought by presenting on Gregory the Great and reading scripture for wisdom.
Pope Saint Gregory the Great lived in an age of tumult–war, waves of disease, economic depression, and civil deterioration. Alongside his administrative reforms and leadership, Gregory described a spirituality that centered around meditative and contemplative reading of sacred scripture. Gregory’s practice of reading scripture, particularly the Book of Job, and his description of the practice had great influence upon medieval meditative and contemplative practices of reading the Word of God.

This lecture is part of our Spring Webinar Series on “Reason and Wisdom in Medieval Christian Thought”
What can reason discover about God? Are there other possible ways to know God? Medieval Christians undertook great rational enterprises—including the sharp logic of Abelard and the grand system of Thomas Aquinas—as well as practiced experiential and contemplative modes of knowing, as did Bernard of Clairvaux. This course will examine how different preeminent medieval Christian thinkers saw the relationship between reason and wisdom, how to arrive at them, and so how to seek the face of God.
This series is cosponsored by the Collegium Institute, the Nova Forum, the Saint Benedict Institute, the Beatrice Institute, the Harvard Catholic Center, and Calvert House Catholic Center.
Upcoming Seminars
Thursday, April 16, 7PM
“Anselm of Canterbury on the Rationality of Faith” | Aaron Canty (Saint Xavier University)
Thursday, April 23, 7PM
“Thomas Aquinas on Ways to Know God” | Brian Carl (University of St. Thomas, Houston)
Thursday, April 30, 7PM
Hildegard of Bingen (Title TBD) | Barbara Newman (Northwestern University)
Thursday, May 7, 7PM
Abelard and Bernard of Clairvaux (Title TBD) | Willemien Otten (University of Chicago)
Thursday, May 14, 7PM
Julian of Norwich (Title TBD) | Katie Bugyis (University of Notre Dame)
Thursday, May 21, 7PM
Bonaventure (Title TBD) | Kevin Hughes (Villanova University)
Thursday, May 28, 7PM
Meister Eckhart | Bernard McGinn (University of Chicago)
Thursday, June 4, 7PM
Nicholas of Cusa | David Albertson (University of Southern California)

WEBINAR: Answering Your Atheist Philosophy Professor
2020-04-16 13:00
Presented by the Lumen Christi Institute’s Newman Forum. Open to current high school students. This event was made possible by a grant from the Our Sunday Visitor Institute.
You have two sections to choose from:

1:00pm-2:00pm
(The previously listed 11:00-12:00 session has been combined with this later session.)

3:30pm-4:30pm

Could God make something that He couldn’t move? If God is perfect, why are humanity and the world so imperfect?
In March of 2019, a San Diego State University professor of philosophy submitted an Opinion piece to the New York Times in which he claimed that God is an incoherent concept. The above are just some of the questions you will undoubtedly hear when you go off to college and encounter passionate, athiest philosophy professors like him for the first time. In fact, you might hear these questions already from peers or family members! What do we do about these arguments that seem so insurmountable?
The way to counter these arguments is much easier than you think. During this hour-long webinar, we will read together the NYT article and discover how, just using our own common sense and the powers of close reading, what seem to be complex, undeniable proofs for the absurdity of God’s existence are actually easily toppled through the logic they themselves utilize.
You won’t need a Bible, you won’t need a philosophy textbook, you won’t need a college degree: You’ll just need the mind you already have.
How does that sound? Want to be able to outsmart a college philosophy professor with your own high school brain?
CLICK HERE TO REGISTER
There is no charge for the seminar, but a good-will donation of $10 is encouraged.

You can read the NYT article ahead of time here: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/25/opinion/-philosophy-god-omniscience.html

(Teachers and Youth Ministers may sit in, if interested. Please register as “Other,” and log in to the provided Zoom link 15 minutes prior to your session’s start time to ensure you are properly muted.)
Photo by Alex Block on Unsplash

WEBINAR: Anselm of Canterbury on the Rationality of Faith
2020-04-16 19:00 - 20:00 | ONLINE, World Wide Web, INTERNET
REGISTER HERE
This event is free and open to the public. Online registration is required. Registrants will receive a link to the webinar via email.
You can also watch the live stream of the lecture on our YouTube Channel.
Join us for the second installment of our Spring Webinar Series. Professor Aaron Canty, who teaches theology and medieval thought at Saint Xavier University, will present on the thought of Saint Anselm of Canterbury (d. 1106).
Anselm was a startlingly original monastic writer and thinker who drank deeply of Augustinian and patristic theology but formulated his own theological and philosophical writings in spare and compelling chains of reasoning. His Why God Became Man, Monologion, and Proslogion each chart new ways to practice ‘believing in order to understand (credo ut intelligam).’

This lecture is part of our Spring Webinar Series on “Reason and Wisdom in Medieval Christian Thought”
What can reason discover about God? Are there other possible ways to know God? Medieval Christians undertook great rational enterprises—including the sharp logic of Abelard and the grand system of Thomas Aquinas—as well as practiced experiential and contemplative modes of knowing, as did Bernard of Clairvaux. This course will examine how different preeminent medieval Christian thinkers saw the relationship between reason and wisdom, how to arrive at them, and so how to seek the face of God.
This series is cosponsored by the Collegium Institute, the Nova Forum, the Saint Benedict Institute, the Beatrice Institute, the Harvard Catholic Center, and Calvert House Catholic Center.
Upcoming Seminars
Thursday, April 23, 7PM
“Thomas Aquinas on Ways to Know God” | Brian Carl (University of St. Thomas, Houston)
Thursday, April 30, 7PM
Hildegard of Bingen (Title TBD) | Barbara Newman (Northwestern University)
Thursday, May 7, 7PM
Abelard and Bernard of Clairvaux (Title TBD) | Willemien Otten (University of Chicago)
Thursday, May 14, 7PM
Julian of Norwich (Title TBD) | Katie Bugyis (University of Notre Dame)
Thursday, May 21, 7PM
Bonaventure (Title TBD) | Kevin Hughes (Villanova University)
Thursday, May 28, 7PM
Meister Eckhart | Bernard McGinn (University of Chicago)
Thursday, June 4, 7PM
Nicholas of Cusa | David Albertson (University of Southern California)

WEBINAR: Cardinal Francis George, the American Contribution to Catholic Social Thought, and Our Current Moment
2020-04-17 16:00
Cosponsored by America Media, the Saint Benedict Institute, the Nova Forum, the Collegium Institute, the Beatrice Institute, the Calvert House Catholic Center, and Mundelein Seminary
You can read Thomas Levergood’s essay on Cardinal George’s legacy at America Magazine.
A Memorial on the 5th Anniversary of the Death of Cardinal Francis George, O.M.I.
On April 17—the 5th anniversary of the death of Cardinal Francis George O.M.I.—the Lumen Christi Institute will host a major web event that takes stock of the American contribution to Catholic Social Thought and how it applies in our current situation.
After his appointment as archbishop of Chicago, Cardinal George emerged as an intellectual leader within the Church, nationally and world-wide, and served as president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. His thought on American culture and society—expressed in numerous lectures and in three major books—provides a challenging, critical view of the American experiment from the perspective of post-Vatican II Catholic thought. Revisiting his book on social questions and public life—God in Action: How Faith in God Can Address the Challenges of the World—allows us to reflect on the American contribution to Catholic Social Thought and to apply it to consider our situation today as we confront a great global crisis.
The panel will include Russell Hittinger, Senior Fellow of the Lumen Christi Institute and Visiting Professor at the University of Chicago Law School (Fall, 2020); Stephen Schneck, emeritus Professor at the Catholic University of America and Executive Director of the Franciscan Action Network; and Theresa Smart, assistant professor in the School of Civic and Economic Thought at Arizona State University. Each will draw from their own expertise and entertain the question of what distinctly American contributions have been made to Catholic Social Thought and how Cardinal George’s work fits within this tradition.

WEBINAR: Thomas Aquinas on Ways to Know God
2020-04-23 19:00 - 20:00 | ONLINE, World Wide Web, INTERNET
Join us for the third installment of our Spring Webinar Series. Professor Brian Carl, who teaches philosophy at the University of St Thomas in Houston, will present on the thought of Saint Thomas of Aquinas, O.P. (d. 1274) on the ways to know God. Thomas was a friar of the Order of Preachers whose capacious mind bequeathed many treasures for the Christian tradition, including scriptural commentaries, philosophical treatises and commentary, his Summa theologiae, and devotional and liturgical texts. Thomas’ approach to the knowledge of God is complex, acknowledging dialectical, rational, as well as revelatory, gracious, and mystical modes.

This lecture is part of our Spring Webinar Series on “Reason and Wisdom in Medieval Christian Thought”
What can reason discover about God? Are there other possible ways to know God? Medieval Christians undertook great rational enterprises—including the sharp logic of Abelard and the grand system of Thomas Aquinas—as well as practiced experiential and contemplative modes of knowing, as did Bernard of Clairvaux. This course will examine how different preeminent medieval Christian thinkers saw the relationship between reason and wisdom, how to arrive at them, and so how to seek the face of God.
This series is cosponsored by the Calvert House Catholic Center, the Collegium Institute, the Harvard Catholic Center, the Nova Forum, the Saint Benedict Institute, and the St. Paul’s University Catholic Center.
Upcoming Seminars:
Thursday, April 30, 7PM
Hildegard of Bingen (Title TBD) | Barbara Newman (Northwestern University)
Thursday, May 7, 7PM
Abelard and Bernard of Clairvaux (Title TBD) | Willemien Otten (University of Chicago)
Thursday, May 14, 7PM
Julian of Norwich (Title TBD) | Katie Bugyis (University of Notre Dame)
Thursday, May 21, 7PM
Bonaventure (Title TBD) | Kevin Hughes (Villanova University)
Thursday, May 28, 7PM
Meister Eckhart | Bernard McGinn (University of Chicago)
Thursday, June 4, 7PM
Nicholas of Cusa | David Albertson (University of Southern California)

Schola Antiqua - Music in Secret
2020-04-24 19:30 | St. Clement Parish, 642 W Deming Pl. Chicago, IL 60614, Downtown, IL
The sounds flowing from pre-modern convents constitute one of the better kept secrets of music history. This spring, the women of Schola Antiqua, long-time Artists-in-Residence at the Lumen Christi Institute, return to the convent repertoire with a revamped “Music in Secret” program in Chicago. Under the direction of British organist and harpsichordist Naomi Gregory, this special concert of nuns’ music has brought the group around the country in the last two years with appearances from New York to St. Louis. The lone performance of “Music in Secret” in the Chicago area will take place on Friday, April 24 at St. Clement Church. Plainchant of the convent mingles with sonorous sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century northern Italian music for nuns.
Tickets can be purchased here.

WEBINAR: Disease and the Problem of Evil
2020-04-28 17:00
Cosponsored by America Media, the Society of Catholic Scientists, the Saint Benedict Institute, the Beatrice Institute, the Collegium Institute, the Nova Forum, and the Program on Religion and Medicine at the University of Chicago. This program is made possible by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation.
Whether caused by pathogens, environmental exposure, or genetics, disease is typically understood to be an unwarranted and unwanted removal from one’s normal condition of good health. While a natural phenomenon, disease raises classic questions of theodicy. If illness is a privation of the good of health, should we also understand disease to be an evil? How can science, theology, philosophy, and literature help us to account for the occurrence of deadly diseases and the suffering that results from them?
In this moderated conversation, Stephen Meredith, professor of pathology and molecular biology at the University of Chicago, and Jeffrey Bishop, healthcare ethicist and professor in philosophy and theology at Saint Louis University, will engage these questions and others surrounding disease and the problem of evil.

WEBINAR: Another Unexpected Journey with JRR Tolkien
2020-04-30 13:00
Presented by the Lumen Christi Institute’s Newman Forum. Open to current high school students. This event was made possible by a grant from the Our Sunday Visitor Institute.
You have two sections to choose from:

1:00pm-2:00pm

3:30pm-4:30pm

Hobbits and elves, humans and dwarves, trees with personality and the most famous ring of all time…. through his stories, JRR Tolkien has taken generation after generation on countless fantastical journeys to far-off places, full of magic and mystery. What’s more, Tolkien has imbued his stories with the beauty of the Christian faith, through careful allegory and metaphor.
In this hour-long session together, we’ll read and discuss one of Tolkien’s lesser-known stories, “Leaf by Niggle.” You thought there was nothing more humble than Hobbiton, but through this brief tale of a regular man’s begrudging kindness and yes, another unexpected journey, we’ll see how even the most humble of human endeavors can leave an enormous, magical impact.
Like all of his works, Tolkien guides us into the mysteries of Christian faith through allegory and imagistic suggestion. These are the most enjoyable of stories, the ones that surprise us and leave us asking “what could that symbol mean?” During our time together, we’ll unpack the layers of symbols in this short little story and wade into the picture of Christian faith Tolkien paints for us: How are we to spend our lives? How are we to treat our neighbors? What does it mean to prepare for a journey?
CLICK HERE TO REGISTER

You will receive a copy of the story, “Leaf by Niggle” when you register! Please read through the story prior to the start time of the session!

There is no charge for the seminar, but a good-will donation of $10 is encouraged.

(Teachers and Youth Ministers may sit in, if interested. Please register as “Other,” and log in to the provided Zoom link 15 minutes prior to your session’s start time to ensure you are properly muted.)
Photo titled “Leaf by Niggle,” by Emily Austin Design, LLC

WEBINAR: Hildegard of Bingen
2020-04-30 19:00 - 20:00 | ONLINE, World Wide Web, INTERNET
Join us for our fourth Spring Webinar Series lecture with renowned medievalist Barbara Newman, who will introduce us to the life of Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1169). A German Benedictine Abbess, Hildegard produced works of visionary theology drawn from her mystical vision and one of the largest surviving collections of medieval musical compositions.
As a female religious in the 12th century, she held a remarkable influence in the Church through preaching tours across Germany and correspondence with popes, emperors, and other monastic reformers. In 2012, she was named a Doctor of the Church by Pope Benedict XVI.

This lecture is part of our Spring Webinar Series on “Reason and Wisdom in Medieval Christian Thought”
What can reason discover about God? Are there other possible ways to know God? Medieval Christians undertook great rational enterprises—including the sharp logic of Abelard and the grand system of Thomas Aquinas—as well as practiced experiential and contemplative modes of knowing, as did Bernard of Clairvaux. This course will examine how different preeminent medieval Christian thinkers saw the relationship between reason and wisdom, how to arrive at them, and so how to seek the face of God.
This series is cosponsored by the Calvert House Catholic Center, the Collegium Institute, the Harvard Catholic Center, the Nova Forum, the Beatrice Institute, and the Saint Benedict Institute,
Upcoming Seminars:
Thursday, May 7, 7PM
Abelard and Bernard of Clairvaux | Willemien Otten (University of Chicago)
Thursday, May 14, 7PM
Julian of Norwich | Katie Bugyis (University of Notre Dame)
Thursday, May 21, 7PM
Bonaventure | Kevin Hughes (Villanova University)
Thursday, May 28, 7PM
Meister Eckhart | Bernard McGinn (University of Chicago)
Thursday, June 4, 7PM
Nicholas of Cusa | David Albertson (University of Southern California)

WEBINAR: The Economic Costs of the Pandemic: Catholic Social Teaching and Economics in Dialogue
2020-05-05 17:00
Cosponsored by America Media, CREDO, the Beatrice Institute, the Saint Benedict Institute, the Collegium Institute, the Nova Forum, and the Saint Paul’s Catholic Center.

COVID-19 has put much of the world on standstill for the sake of reducing the risk to some of its citizens. What has been the cost of this in terms of economic recession, unemployment, human suffering, and even mortality? When the pandemic subsides, will government action be justified or will it have aggravated human suffering in an “economy that kills”? How do we measure or place values on the tradeoffs in terms of lives saved versus economic costs and human suffering? Join us for a dialogue between Economists Jesus Fernandez-Villaverde (Penn), Joseph Kaboski (Notre Dame) and Casey Mulligan (University of Chicago) on Economics, Catholic Social Thought, and the cost of the pandemic.

CANCELED: Panel on Joseph Singer’s "Persuasion"
2020-05-07 17:15 - 18:45 | University of Chicago–TBA, N/A, Hyde Park, IL
Due to restrictions put in place in response to the spread of COVID-19, this event has been postponed. We look forward to scheduling similar programming in the future.
Lawyers have techniques to persuade decision-makers about what the law should be, using arguments based on common values, storytelling, and framing to help us see our own values in a new light. These tools of reasoned argument enable us to engage in civil debate about divisive issues and to justify decisions in hard cases. Joseph Singer’s book, Persuasion: Getting to the Other Side, categorizes the arguments that lawyers use in debates about ambiguous or contested legal questions. It also explains how judges justify their decisions about what the law should be when the case involves competing values and there are plausible arguments on both sides. This panel will bring together judges, lawyers and legal scholars to engage in discussion over Singer’s Persuasion, and explore how the tools of persuasion can mitigate polarization in contemporary legal and political discourse.

WEBINAR: On Peter Abelard and Bernard of Clairvaux
2020-05-07 19:00 - 20:00 | ONLINE, World Wide Web, INTERNET
Peter Abelard (d. 1142) and Bernard of Clairvaux (d. 1153) were contemporaries who both emerged from the new twelfth-century schools. But their dispositions, personalities, and eventual conflict have come to represent a conflict between the rising scholastic and the traditional monastic cultures of learning. Professor Willemien Otten will introduce these iconic twelfth-century personalities, the direction of their work, and the theological controversy that put them on opposing sides.

This lecture is part of our Spring Webinar Series on “Reason and Wisdom in Medieval Christian Thought”
What can reason discover about God? Are there other possible ways to know God? Medieval Christians undertook great rational enterprises—including the sharp logic of Abelard and the grand system of Thomas Aquinas—as well as practiced experiential and contemplative modes of knowing, as did Bernard of Clairvaux. This course will examine how different preeminent medieval Christian thinkers saw the relationship between reason and wisdom, how to arrive at them, and so how to seek the face of God.
This series is cosponsored by the Collegium Institute, the Nova Forum, the Saint Benedict Institute, the Beatrice Institute, the Harvard Catholic Center, and the Calvert House Catholic Center.
Upcoming Seminars:
Thursday, May 14, 7PM
Julian of Norwich | Katie Bugyis (University of Notre Dame)
Thursday, May 21, 7PM
Bonaventure | Kevin Hughes (Villanova University)
Thursday, May 28, 7PM
Meister Eckhart | Bernard McGinn (University of Chicago)
Thursday, June 4, 7PM
Nicholas of Cusa | David Albertson (University of Southern California)

CANCELED: Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, & Aquinas on the Soul
2020-05-08 00:00 | University of Chicago–TBA, N/A, Hyde Park, IL
Due to restrictions put in place in response to the spread of COVID-19, this event has been postponed. We look forward to scheduling similar programming in the future.
Further details TBA

Issues and Challenges in Economics, Catholic Social Thought, and Public Policy: A conversation with Joseph Kaboski
2020-05-08 16:00 - 17:00 | ONLINE, World Wide Web, INTERNET
REGISTER HERE
Can Economics and Catholic Social Thought be set in dialogue? Is there a place for Catholic Social Teaching in Public Policy? How does the scholar bridge one’s academic discipline and one’s religious faith? Harris School students and faculty are invited to join us in conversation with economist and consultant to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), Joseph Kaboski, on Economics, Catholic Social Thought, and Public Policy.
This event is closed to the public and open to Harris School students, faculty, and staff only

CANCELED: Brian Patrick McGuire on St. Bernard of Clairvaux
2020-05-12 19:00 | University of Chicago–TBA, N/A, Hyde Park, IL
Due to restrictions put in place in response to the spread of COVID-19, this event has been postponed. We look forward to scheduling similar programming in the future.
Details for this event TBA

Faith and Science at Notre Dame: Fr. John Zahm, Evolution, and the Catholic Church
2020-05-14 12:00 - 13:30 | University Club of Chicago, 76 E Monroe St Chicago, IL 60603, Downtown, IL
The Reverend John Augustine Zahm, CSC, (1851–1921) was a Holy Cross priest, an author, a South American explorer, and a science professor and vice president at the University of Notre Dame, the latter at the age of twenty-five. Through his scientific writings, Zahm argued that Roman Catholicism was fully compatible with an evolutionary view of biological systems, an argument that would get him (but not his book) censured in 1897 by the Vatican. In his talk Faith and Science at Notre Dame: John Zahm, Evolution, and the Catholic Church, John Slattery will chart the rise and fall of Zahm, examining his ascension to international fame in bridging evolution and Catholicism and shedding new light on his ultimate downfall via censure by the Congregation of the Index of Prohibited Books. Slattery draws on previously unknown archival letters and reports that allow Zahm’s censure to be fully understood in the light of broader scientific, theological, and philosophical movements—including Neo-Scholasticism–within the Catholic Church and around the world.

WEBINAR: Is Hell Real? Is it Crowded? Accounts of the Afterlife in the Christian Tradition
2020-05-14 13:00
Presented by the Lumen Christi Institute’s Newman Forum. Open to current high school students. This event was made possible by a grant from the Our Sunday Visitor Institute.
You have two sections to choose from:

1:00pm-2:00pm

3:30pm-4:30pm

Is Hitler in Hell? Is Judas? Is everyone saved? Why would a merciful God allow humans to suffer eternal damnation?

In this Thursday session, we’re going to lean on the wisdom of one of our favorites: Bishop Robert Barron. Relying on his piece, “Is Hell Crowded or Empty?” we’ll come together for an hour to discuss the three accounts of Hell that he traces through history, as well as other common representations of Hell in literature. From Augustine and Aquinas, to Barth and Balthasar, the reality of Hell is rooted in Scripture and the words of Christ Himself, and yet is still hotly debated (pun intended). By the end of our time together, students will be able to respond to the most common dialogues around what Hell is like, and have a working familiarity with the most salient representations of Hell in the media we consume.

Students should come to the session having watched Bishop Barron’s 9 minute video on Hell, which you can find here: https://www.wordonfire.org/resources/video/is-hell-crowded-or-empty/183/

There is no charge for the seminar, but a good-will donation of $10 is encouraged.

(Teachers and Youth Ministers may sit in, if interested. Please register as “Other,” and log in to the provided Zoom link 15 minutes prior to your session’s start time to ensure you are properly muted.)

WEBINAR: The Wisdom of Enclosure in Julian of Norwich's Showings
2020-05-14 19:00 - 20:00 | ONLINE, World Wide Web, INTERNET
Julian of Norwich (d. ca. 1416) was a widely respected and sought-out English thinker and spiritual counsellor. She lived as an anchorite, enclosed in a cell attached to a church in Norwich, Julian’s Showings are a book of spiritual visions that emerged from her life of prayer and that wrestle with the profound theological mysteries of fitting evil and suffering with God’s mercy and love. Professor Katie Bugyis will examine Julian’s thought in the context of her vocation of enclosed prayer.

This lecture is part of our Spring Webinar Series on “Reason and Wisdom in Medieval Christian Thought”
What can reason discover about God? Are there other possible ways to know God? Medieval Christians undertook great rational enterprises—including the sharp logic of Abelard and the grand system of Thomas Aquinas—as well as practiced experiential and contemplative modes of knowing, as did Bernard of Clairvaux. This course will examine how different preeminent medieval Christian thinkers saw the relationship between reason and wisdom, how to arrive at them, and so how to seek the face of God.
This series is cosponsored by the Collegium Institute, the Nova Forum, the Saint Benedict Institute, the Beatrice Institute, the Harvard Catholic Center, and the Calvert House Catholic Center.
Upcoming Seminars:
Thursday, May 21, 7PM
Bonaventure (Title TBD) | Kevin Hughes (Villanova University)
Thursday, May 28, 7PM
Meister Eckhart | Bernard McGinn (University of Chicago)
Thursday, June 4, 7PM
Nicholas of Cusa | David Albertson (University of Southern California)

WEBINAR: Apocalypticism in Times of Crisis
2020-05-19 17:00
Cosponsored by America Media, the Saint Benedict Institute, the Nova Forum, the Collegium Institute, the Beatrice Institute, the Institute for Faith and Culture, the Harvard Catholic Center, Saint Paul’s University Catholic Center, and the Martin Marty Center for the Public Understanding of Religion at the University of Chicago Divinity School.
Plague, political turmoil, famine—throughout Christian history, local catastrophes spurred on a sense of cosmic crisis, judgement, and prophetic fulfillment. What role has this apocalyptic imagination played for Christian communities? How does it continue to shape Christian responses to today’s global pandemic? Join for a conversation with scholars of medieval Christianity Bernard McGinn and Willemien Otten on Apocalypticism in Times of Crisis.

WEBINAR: St. Bonaventure
2020-05-21 19:00 - 20:00 | ONLINE, World Wide Web, INTERNET
Bonaventure (d. 1274) was a pivotal figure whose complex responded effectively to the challenges of his day and inspired both theological and philosophical thought up to the present day. As a contemporary of fellow mendicant St Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventure also taught at the University of Paris and formulated an original approach to the new Aristotelian thought. Later known as the Seraphic Doctor, Bonaventure fused profound theological thought with heart-felt spirituality and set out a vision of the life and charism of the recent St Francis of Assisi to provide peace-making leadership for the new Franciscan order. Professor Kevin Hughes will introduce the complex and multifaceted thought of Bonaventure.
This lecture is part of our Spring Webinar Series on “Reason and Wisdom in Medieval Christian Thought”
What can reason discover about God? Are there other possible ways to know God? Medieval Christians undertook great rational enterprises—including the sharp logic of Abelard and the grand system of Thomas Aquinas—as well as practiced experiential and contemplative modes of knowing, as did Bernard of Clairvaux. This course will examine how different preeminent medieval Christian thinkers saw the relationship between reason and wisdom, how to arrive at them, and so how to seek the face of God.
This series is cosponsored by the Calvert House Catholic Center, the Collegium Institute, the Harvard Catholic Center, the Nova Forum, the Saint Benedict Institute, the Beatrice Institute, and the Institute for Faith and Culture.
Upcoming Seminars:
Thursday, May 28, 7PM
Meister Eckhart | Bernard McGinn (University of Chicago)
Thursday, June 4, 7PM
Nicholas of Cusa | David Albertson (University of Southern California)

WEBINAR: Q&A Session on An Inside Look in Times of Crisis: The 2008 Financial Collapse and the 2020 Pandemic
2020-05-26 12:00
You can view Scott’s presentation here. A link to the Zoom Q&A session will be sent via email to those who register.
Cosponsored by Catholics at Booth and Catholics at Kellogg. Open to students, faculty, and alumni of Booth School of Business and the Kellogg School of Management. Registration is required.
Scott Freidheim spoke in November 2018 for Catholics at Booth and the Lumen Christi Institute on “The Collapse of Lehman Brothers: An Inside Story” sharing his insights on what it was like to experience the 2008 crisis as Executive Vice President of Lehman Brothers. As we face the coronavirus pandemic and a recession as great or greater than that of 2008, he will draw on his earlier experience and reflect on facing this challenge at the corporate, governmental, personal, and spiritual levels.

Reason and Wisdom in Medieval Christian Thought
2020-05-26 18:00 - 20:00 | Gavin House, 1220 E 58th St., Chicago, IL, 60637
Due to restrictions put in place in response to the spread of COVID-19, our major spring events have been postponed. We are likely unable to host this non-credit course at this time. Stay tuned for updates as we explore our options concrning web-enabled communications.

REGISTER HERE

6:00 Dinner | 6:30 Lecture

Tuesdays, April 7 – May 26, 2020
This weekly non-credit course is open to current students and faculty. Registrants are free to attend as many sessions as they choose. Sessions do not presuppose previous attendance or prior knowledge of the subject. Dinner is provided.
What can reason discover about God? Are there other possible ways to know God? Medieval Christians both undertook great rational enterprises—including the sharp logic of Abelard and the grand system of Thomas Aquinas—as well as practiced experiential and contemplative modes of knowing—as did Bernard of Clairvaux. This course will examine how different preeminent medieval Christian thinkers saw the relationship between reason and wisdom, how to arrive at them, and so how to seek the face of God. Included are presentations from Professor Bernard McGinn on Gregory the Great on Reading Scripture for Wisdom, from Professor Aaron Canty on Anselm of Canterbury’s approach to knowing God, and from Professor Brian Patrick McGuire on Bernard of Clairvaux and the affective search for wisdom.

WEBINAR: On Meister Eckhart
2020-05-28 19:00 | ONLINE, World Wide Web, INTERNET
Meister Eckhart (d. ca. 1328) was a famous and popular German mystical writer and preacher. After formal theological training in the University of Paris, following the footsteps of Thomas Aquinas and Bonaventure, Eckhart charted a distinctive mystical dialectical theological in his writings and sermons and drew theological controversy. His thought became an inspiration for a tradition of mystical thought after him and remains a wellspring of religious and theological thought today. Professor Bernard McGinn will introduce the life and some of the principal themes of Eckhart’s enigmatic thought.

This lecture is part of our Spring Webinar Series on “Reason and Wisdom in Medieval Christian Thought”
What can reason discover about God? Are there other possible ways to know God? Medieval Christians undertook great rational enterprises—including the sharp logic of Abelard and the grand system of Thomas Aquinas—as well as practiced experiential and contemplative modes of knowing, as did Bernard of Clairvaux. This course will examine how different preeminent medieval Christian thinkers saw the relationship between reason and wisdom, how to arrive at them, and so how to seek the face of God.
This series is cosponsored by the Calvert House Catholic Center, the Collegium Institute, the Harvard Catholic Center, the Nova Forum, the Saint Benedict Institute, the Beatrice Institute, and the Institute for Faith and Culture.
Upcoming Seminars:
Thursday, June 4, 7PM
Nicholas of Cusa | David Albertson (University of Southern California)

WEBINAR: Lessons after the Lockdown: Public Health, Economics, and the Common Good
2020-06-02 17:00
Cosponsored by America Media, CREDO, the Beatrice Institute, the Collegium Institute‘s Program on the Philosophy of Finance, the Nova Forum, the Saint Benedict Institute, the Institute for Faith and Culture, and the Institute for Human Ecology at the Catholic University of America
After two months of lockdown, nations across Europe and parts of the US are relaxing restrictions and facing new challenges. Where do we stand economically and socially? How might we have better protected the medically and economically vulnerable? How should we view the lockdown with its costs and benefits ethically? Our earlier event on “The Economic Costs of the Pandemic: Catholic Social Teaching and Economics in Dialogue,” provoked lively reactions. This event will consider what the principles of the common good, human dignity, justice, and solidarity mean in our present circumstances and how they ought to inform our prudential judgement going forward. Join as a panel of economists, theologians, and ethicists discuss lessons learned in the pandemic.

WEBINAR: Nicholas of Cusa
2020-06-04 19:00 | ONLINE, World Wide Web, INTERNET
For the final installment of our Spring 2020 lecture series on “Reason and Wisdom in Medieval Christian Thought,” Professor David Albertson leads us in exploring the work of German philosopher, theologian, astronomer, and mystic, Nicholas of Cusa.
Nicholas of Cusa (d. 1464) was a great late medieval, early modern thinker and polymath who digested the medieval theological and contemplative traditions and pressed these in new directions. Living in tumultuous times, his career in the Church as a cardinal was occupied by his work as a reformer and his efforts to re-unify the Eastern and Western Churches. Professor David Albertson will offer an introduction to the lesser-known but rich life and thought of this great German personality.

This lecture is part of our Spring Webinar Series on “Reason and Wisdom in Medieval Christian Thought”
What can reason discover about God? Are there other possible ways to know God? Medieval Christians undertook great rational enterprises—including the sharp logic of Abelard and the grand system of Thomas Aquinas—as well as practiced experiential and contemplative modes of knowing, as did Bernard of Clairvaux. This course will examine how different preeminent medieval Christian thinkers saw the relationship between reason and wisdom, how to arrive at them, and so how to seek the face of God.
This series is cosponsored by the Calvert House Catholic Center, the Collegium Institute, the Harvard Catholic Center, the Nova Forum, the Saint Benedict Institute, the Beatrice Institute, and the Institute for Faith and Culture.

WEBINAR: Christians in Times of Catastrophe: Augustine's "City of God"
2020-06-09 13:00
Cosponsored by America Media, the Collegium Institute, the Saint Benedict Institute, the Beatrice Institute, the Nova Forum, the Harvard Catholic Center, the Institute for Faith and Culture, and the Sacred and Profane Love podcast.
Augustine of Hippo’s City of God is one of the great theological books of the Christian tradition, laying out a vision of the Church and the Earthly City in parallel and of Christ’s work of salvation in history in the context of the sack of Rome (410) and other calamities. Augustine’s reflections on how Christians can understand and respond to catastrophes has become a wellspring in the Christian intellectual tradition and for us responding to todays troubles for the Church and for the world. In this web event, Professor Jennifer Frey (Philosophy, University of South Carolina) will lead a moderated conversation between Professor emeritus Russell Hittinger (Senior Fellow LCI) and Fr Michael Sherwin, O.P. (Theology, University of Fribourg) on Augustine’s context and the continued relevance of his wisdom for Christians in the time of pandemic, economic turmoil, and political and social tumult.

WEBINAR: Becoming Human: Evolution, Science, and the Soul
2020-06-11 14:30 - 16:00
Presented by the Lumen Christi Institute’s Newman Forum, in cooperation with the University of St. Mary of the Lake, Mundelein, and the Archdiocese of Chicago Vocations Office. Open to current high school students.
High school teachers and youth ministers are welcome to attend, and are encouraged to bring groups. Group leaders are now able to register themselves and their students together! This is especially encouraged for groups coming from outside of Chicagoland, to ensure groups remain together during the breakout sessions (see below).
What can the science of evolution know? How is it related to religion, especially Catholic doctrine? Are they complementary or mutually exclusive?
Questions like these have guided much of the scientific and religious investigation of the 20th and 21st centuries. In recent decades, discoveries of humanoid fossils have revealed new links between human ancestors and animals. Archaeologists and evolutionary biologists have called these discoveries “humans,” but what does that mean for what it means to be human? How are you different or distinct from your pre-human ancestors?

The scientific evolutionary model is inherently limited in its understanding of the human person. It leaves us with as many questions as it answers: Where does the human soul come in? How are humans different from animals? What makes us human?

Answers to these questions can only be gained by recognizing the value –and the limits– of the evolutionary model. Philosophy and theology can provide us a guide when the science falls short.

Join us Thursday, June 11th at 2:30pm CDT for an online lecture with Chris Baglow, Director of the Science and Religion Initiative at Notre Dame’s McGrath Institute for Church Life. Dr. Baglow is also the author of the premier science and religion textbook used by numerous Catholic schools in its science and theology curricula, Faith, Science, and Reason: Theology on the Cutting Edge.

During our time together, we’ll listen to a short lecture, hold a brief Q&A, and then break into discussion groups to further dialogue about the questions that arise at the intersection of Christianity and evolution. The event should run until approx. 4pm.

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER

There is no charge for the seminar, but a good-will donation of $10 is encouraged.

We are expecting a high volume of attendees for this event! We encourage you to register by Tuesday, June 9th to ensure your spot, and to assist in our creation of discussion groups.

This event is made possible by a generous gift from the John Templeton Foundation, as well as by a grant from The Our Sunday Visitor Institute, as a part of their “Re-Captivating Millennials” initiative, and by our many institutional and high school cosponsors:

INSTITUTIONAL COSPONSORS:
University of St. Mary of the Lake, Mundelein, The Archdiocese of Chicago Vocations Office, The McGrath Institute for Church Life, The Society of Catholic Scientists

HIGH SCHOOL COSPONSORS:
Benet Academy, Fenwick High School, Northridge Preparatory School, St. Ignatius College Prep, Willows Academy

If you have questions regarding the Newman Forum, registration, or any of our programs, feel free to reach out to the Newman Forum team:

Austin Walker
Director of the Newman Forum
awalker@lumenchristi.org

Madison Chastain
Program Coordinator of the Newman Forum
mchastain@lumenchristi.org

WEBINAR: Dante as Poet and Philosopher
2020-06-16 19:00 | ONLINE, World Wide Web, INTERNET
A conversation with Professors Jason Aleksander (San Jose State University) and Arielle Saiber (Bowdoin College). Part of our Summer webinar series on “Reason and Beauty in Renaissance Christian Thought and Culture,” presented in collaboration with the American Cusanus Society
Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) was a Florentine writer and poet, whose long poetic work, The Divine Comedy, has received recognition as one of the greatest artistic achievements in the West. Dante’s poetic artistry stands alongside his intellectual and philosophical thought throughout his writings and in his Comedy. In this webinar, Professor Jason Aleksander (San José State U) and Professor Arielle Saiber (Bowdoin College) will discuss Dante’s interlocking poetic and philosophical production.

2020 Summer Webinar Series on “Reason and Beauty in Renaissance Christian Thought and Culture”
What do reason and beauty have to do with each other? Since the modern Enlightenment and Romantic movements, it has been tempting to see reason and beauty as separate or even opposed. In the Renaissance, however, rational and artistic pursuits bloomed together and even fed each other. Renaissance culture, including fine art, poetry, architecture, astronomy, and humanistic thought, both drew upon and extended ancient and medieval Christian intellectual traditions. This webinar course will examine different aspects of renaissance Christian thought and culture to explore how pursuits of reason interwove with the love of beauty.
This event is cosponsored by Calvert House, the Collegium Institute, the Genealogies of Modernity Project, the Harvard Catholic Center, the Nova Forum for Catholic Thought, and St. Paul’s Catholic Center.

WEBINAR: How NOT to Get Away with Murder (Again!)
2020-06-17 15:00 - 16:00
Presented by the Lumen Christi Institute’s Newman Forum. Open to current high school students.
We’ve run this event in-person, but now we’re bringing it to you online! When you register, you will be sent a Zoom link to follow. The event will run from 3:00pm-4:00pm
Are you already tired of being quarantined in your house? Feel a little bit like you might kill your siblings?
The book of Genesis is one of the most interesting and difficult books of the Bible. And there is so much more to it than meets the eye. For example:
How was a snake able to trick Eve? Why do Adam and Eve respond to God so suspiciously? And then there’s the Cain and Abel story…why on Earth does Cain jump to murdering his brother? What are we supposed to learn from this Scripture?
This hour-long seminar will investigate these passages in the 3rd and 4th chapters of Genesis. By reading the text closely and paying attention to what is (and isn’t) there, we will discover a whole new complexity to the relationship between God, the first four humans, and the snake. Not only is God revealed as imminently just and merciful, but also as a very acute observer of human psychology!

Come to whichever session fits your new online schedule the best! All you’ll need is access to a Bible (either a real-life book or just online!) We’ll read the text together, and discuss!

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER!
Resources from this seminar are drawn from Joseph Ratzinger’s (Pope Bendict’s) In the Beginning…’: A Catholic Understanding of the Story of Creation and the Fall.

There is no charge for the seminar, but a good-will donation of $10 is encouraged.

(Teachers and Youth Ministers may sit in, if interested. Please register as “Other,” and log in to the provided Zoom link 15 minutes prior to your session’s start time to ensure you are properly muted.)

Race, Justice, and Catholicism
2020-06-22 17:00
Cosponsored by America Media, Boston College Law School, the Hank Center for the Catholic Intellectual Heritage, and the Catholic Lawyers Guild of Chicago.
The cry in the streets of “no justice, no peace” echoes the teaching of Popes John XXIII and Paul VI. The recent crises have again brought to the fore the reality that interracial justice has eluded America, despite the promise of the civil rights movement. Slavery, its original sin, has dogged it from its founding. Segregation and mass incarceration continue this shameful legacy. Efforts to call Americans to take responsibility for this often find resistance in an individualistic ideology counter to the Catholic vision. Catholics find themselves on both sides of this history.
The Gospel and Catholic social teaching clearly reject racism. Yet up to this moment, Catholic clergy and laity have often not lived up to this teaching, helping to sustain racism, rather than dismantle or reject it. If, as Pope Francis reminds us, we are all connected, then injustice anywhere is not only a threat to justice everywhere—it is injustice everywhere.
Join us as a panel of distinguished legal scholars comes together to discuss our current moment and whether Catholicism can move from being part of the problem to becoming part of the solution.

Alberti and Renaissance Architecture
2020-06-23 19:00 | ONLINE, World Wide Web, INTERNET
An evening webinar with Professor of Architecture Il Kim (Auburn University). Part of our summer webinar series on “Reason and Beauty in Renaissance Christian Thought and Culture,” presented in collaboration with the American Cusanus Society
Leon Battista Alberti (1404-1472) was a humanist and polymath. His On Painting (1435/36) and On Architecture (1440s-1472) theorized the arts of painting and architecture, elevating them to the level of the Liberal Arts. The legacy of these works cast a long shadow in the Renaissance. In this webinar, Professor Kim will discuss Alberti’s architectural theory and practice as an all-encompassing pursuit of artistry in Italian Renaissance.

2020 Summer Webinar Series on “Reason and Beauty in Renaissance Christian Thought and Culture”
What do reason and beauty have to do with each other? Since the modern Enlightenment and Romantic movements, it has been tempting to see reason and beauty as separate or even opposed. In the Renaissance, however, rational and artistic pursuits bloomed together and even fed each other. Renaissance culture, including fine art, poetry, architecture, astronomy, and humanistic thought, both drew upon and extended ancient and medieval Christian intellectual traditions. This webinar course will examine different aspects of renaissance Christian thought and culture to explore how pursuits of reason interwove with the love of beauty.
This event is cosponsored by Calvert House, the Beatrice Institute, the Genealogies of Modernity Project, the Harvard Catholic Center, the Nova Forum for Catholic Thought, and St. Paul’s Catholic Center.
