Lumen Christi Institute

Economics and Catholic Social Thought: A Primer
2018-06-10 09:00 - 2018-06-13 17:00 (America/Chicago) | University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN 46556, Notre Dame, IN
You can download the poster here.
Now in its third year, this seminar is designed as an introduction and immersion into Catholic social thought for graduate students and faculty in economics, finance, or related fields. Participants will cover foundational principles in Catholic social thought, starting with the human person, dignity, freedom, subsidiarity, solidarity, and the common good, and moving toward applications of these principles to conceptual understandings and ethical considerations involving economic topics such as utility theory, firm and business ethics, wages, markets, globalization, poverty, and development. Participants will delve into social encyclicals, secondary sources, and relevant economics texts.
This seminar is cosponsored by the Catholic Research Economists Discussion Organization, the Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture, the Kellogg Institute for International Studies, and the Notre Dame Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts.
Format: There will be two sessions each day, featuring a different instructor. Each instructor will open with a lecture, and then we will turn to a seminar-style discussion of the texts and issues at hand. In the final sessions, we will discuss how the material can be applied to each student’s particular area of interest.
Location: The seminar will take place at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana. A limited number of travel stipends are available on a need basis. All participants will be provided with accommodations and meals.
Application Information: This seminar will be open to PhD students and faculty in economics, finance and related fields.
Applicants will be required to submit a completed online application form, including:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Secondary Reading:

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

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

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

Secondary Reading:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Patrick Deneen - Interview
2018-02-02 09:30 - 10:00 | Gavin House, 1220 E 58th St., Chicago, IL, 60637
Patrick Deneen, David A. Potenziani Memorial College Chair at the University of Notre Dame, sits down with Lumen Christi to discuss his bestselling book Why Liberalism Failed (Yale University Press, 2018).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Optional Background and Secondary Readings

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SECONDARY READINGS

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

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

Catholic Social Thought: A Critical Investigation
2017-07-30 00:00 - 2017-08-06 23:00 | University of California, Santa Barbara, University of California, Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, CA
In this seminar, students will read, analyze, and discern continuities and discontinuities in Catholic Social Thought from the late 19th century to the present. Lectures, seminar reports, and discussion will focus on original sources (encyclicals and other magisterial documents), beginning with Rerum novarum (1892) and concluding with Caritas in veritate (2009) and Evangelii Gaudium (2013). This intensive course is multi-disciplinary, since this tradition of social thought overlaps several disciplines in the contemporary university including political science, political philosophy, law, economics, theology, and history.

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

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

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

The Thought of John Henry Newman
2017-07-09 00:00 - 2017-07-15 23:00 | Merton College, Oxford, Merton St, Oxford OX1 4JD, UK, Oxford, United Kingdom
Now in its fifth consecutive year, this intensive seminar will examine Newman’s achievements as theologian, philosopher, educator, preacher, and writer. Remarkably, in each of these areas Newman produced works that have come to be recognized as classics: An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, The Grammar of Assent, The Idea of a University, The Parochial and Plain Sermons, and the Apologia Pro Vita Sua. This seminar will approach Newman’s thought through a critical engagement with these texts.

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

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

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

Economics and Catholic Social Thought: A Primer
2017-05-22 09:00 - 2017-05-26 17:00 | Pontifical University of the Holy Cross, Rome, Piazza Santa Apollinare, 49, 00186 Roma, Italy, Rome, Italy
Applications are now closed for this seminar.
This seminar is designed as an introduction and immersion into Catholic social thought for graduate students and faculty in economics, finance, or related fields. Participants will cover foundational principles in Catholic social thought starting with the human person, dignity, freedom, subsidiarity, solidarity, and the common good, and moving toward applications of these principles to conceptual understandings and ethical considerations involving economic topics such as utility theory, firm and business ethics, wages, markets, globalization, poverty, and development. Participants will delve into social encyclicals, secondary sources, and relevant economics texts.
This seminar is cosponsored by the Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture, the Kellogg Institute for International Studies at the University of Notre Dame, the Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts at the University of Notre Dame, the Catholic Research Economists Discussion Organization, and the Markets, Culture, and Ethics Research Center at the Pontifical University of Santa Croce.
Format: There will be twenty hours of class in addition to a full Roman experience. Each class will open with a brief lecture, and then we will turn to a seminar style discussion of the texts and issues at hand. Classroom activities will be supplemented with opportunities for daily Mass, meetings with Church leadership, and visits to famous sights in Rome.
Location: The seminar will take place in Rome, split between the University of Notre Dame’s Rome Global Gateway and the Pontificia Università della Santa Croce. Students will be provided with accommodations and meals, and a limited number of travel stipends are available on a need basis.
Application Information: This seminar will be open to Ph.D. students and faculty in Economics, Finance and related fields.
Applicants will be required to submit a completed online application form, including:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lecture on the Easter Mysteries, Dinner, and Prayer at the Monastery of the Holy Cross
2017-04-29 16:30 - 20:00 | The Monastery of the Holy Cross, 3111 South Aberdeen St. Chicago, IL 60608, Chicago, IL
REGISTER HERE
Open to current university students and faculty. Transportation from Hyde Park will be provided.
Cosponsored by the Hildegard of Bingen Society.
Join us for an evening of prayer with Benedictine Monks at the Monastery of the Holy Cross. Students will participate in the prayer of the Divine Office (including Vespers and Compline), and have dinner and discussion with Fr. Peter Funk, O.S.B., prior of the monastery and alumnus of the University of Chicago.
More information about the monastery can be found HERE.
SCHEDULE
4:15pm Meet at Gavin House (1220 E. 58th St.)
4:30pm Depart from Hyde Park
5:00pm Arrive at the Monastery, welcome by Fr. Funk
5:15pm Office of Vespers
6:00pm Dinner & Discussion
7:15pm Office of Compline
8:00pm Arrive back in Hyde Park

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ANCILLARY READINGS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Visit to the Benedictine Monastery of the Holy Cross
2017-01-28 17:30 - 21:00 | The Monastery of the Holy Cross, 3111 South Aberdeen St. Chicago, IL 60608, Chicago, IL
REGISTER HERE
Open to current university students. Others interested in attending should contact us.
Join us for an evening of prayer with Benedictine Monks at the Monastery of the Holy Cross. Students will participate in the prayer of the Divine Office (including Solemn Vespers with Gregorian Chant and Compline), and have dinner and discussion with Fr. Peter Funk, O.S.B., prior of the monastery and alumnus of the University of Chicago.
More information on the music for Solemn Vespers can be found HERE.
SCHEDULE
4:15pm Meet at Gavin House (1220 E. 58th St.)
4:30pm Depart from Hyde Park
5:00pm Arrive at the Monastery, welcome by Fr. Funk
5:15pm Office of Vespers
6:00pm Dinner & Discussion
7:15pm Office of Compline
8:00pm Arrive back in Hyde Park

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

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

Reason, Wisdom, and Beauty in Medieval Christian Thought
2016-11-29 19:00 - 21:00 | Gavin House, 1220 E 58th St., Chicago, IL, 60637
6:00 Dinner | 6:30 Lecture
Intended for current students and faculty. Others interested in attending: please contact info@lumenchristi.org. Registrants are free to attend as many sessions as they choose.
With the recovery of the works of Aristotle in the Latin West, the development of the scholastic method of reasoning, and the creation of the universities, a style of academic philosophy and theology developed in the late medieval period in which the practice of reasoning about Christian revelation was developed independent of spirituality and, often, the search for wisdom. Previously, in the works of the Church Fathers and the great monastic writers, theology was rooted in a spiritual life uniting prayer and the search for understanding.
This course will introduce students to major Christian figures and themes of the medieval period, with special attention to the relationship of faith and reason.
Eriugena
Willemien Otten (University of Chicago)
October 11
Bernard of Clairvaux
Bernard McGinn (University of Chicago)
October 18
Anselm of Canterbury
Aaron Canty (Saint Xavier University)
October 25
Hugh & Richard of St. Victor
Robert Porwoll (University of Chicago)
November 1
Bonaventure
Peter Casarella (Univeristy of Notre Dame)
November 8
*Beauty as Splendor
Fr. Paul Mankowski, SJ (Lumen Christi Institute)
November 15
Thomas a Kempis
Ralph Keen (University of Illinois at Chicago)
November 22
John Climacus
Perry Hamalis (North Central College)
November 29
*Note the speaker and topic for this session has been changed. We hope to reschedule a talk by Denis McNamara in the future.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ANCILLARY READINGS

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

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

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

The Thought of John Henry Newman
2016-07-10 23:00 - 2016-07-15 23:00 | Merton College, Oxford, Merton St, Oxford OX1 4JD, UK, Oxford, United Kingdom
Now in its fourth consecutive year, this intensive seminar will examine Newman’s achievements as theologian, philosopher, educator, preacher, and writer. Remarkably, in each of these areas Newman produced works that have come to be recognized as classics: An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, The Grammar of Assent, The Idea of a University, The Parochial and Plain Sermons, and the Apologia Pro Vita Sua. This seminar will approach Newman’s thought through a critical engagement with these texts.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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