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How does today’s economy impact the modern family? Several trends link mounting burdens on family life to economics: children are raised amid familial and fiscal instability, young people are delaying or forgoing marriage, the elderly are made increasingly vulnerable with a growing distance between generations and rising health care costs, and the families of economic refugees are often divided across national borders or go legally unrecognized. Yet families form us as persons and are integral both to society and the economy. Situated between the 2014 and 2015 Synod Of Bishops On The Family, this symposium will feature dialogue among Bishop...

Jean-Luc Marion (University of Chicago) cosponsored by the Philosophy Department How is it possible to admit a rational truth that at the same moment could not be achieved by mere rationality? This implies a revision of the definition of knowing, and of the relation between will and understanding. Saint Augustine and Pascal – with some others – may give a clue.

Gary A. Anderson (University of Notre Dame; author of Charity: The Place of the Poor in the Biblical Tradition) It has long been acknowledged that Jews and Christians distinguished themselves through charity to the poor. Though ancient Greeks and Romans were also generous, they funded theaters and baths rather than poorhouses and orphanages. How might we explain this difference? In this significant reappraisal of charity in the biblical tradition, Gary Anderson argues that the poor constituted the privileged place where Jews and Christians met God. Though concerns for social justice were not unknown to early Jews and Christians, the poor achieved...

Jean-Luc Marion (University of Chicago) REGISTER HERE Nicholas of Cusa, in a famous essay on The Vision of God, explained how and why experiencing God does not mean first seeing an image of the divine, but to be under the gaze of Christ. This difference leads one to distinguish very clearly the icon from the idol. Participants will read The Vision of God in preparation for this discussion. Copies of the book Nicholas of Cusa: Selected Spiritual Writings (Paulist Press, 1997) will be provided free of charge for participants. This master class is open to all graduate and undergraduate students, including non-University of Chicago students. Space...

REGISTER HERE Intended for Booth School of Business and other University of Chicago students. Sponsored by the Lumen Christi Institute, Booth Catholic Students, the Christians in Business Group, and the Private Equity Group. Lunch will be served.

TUESDAYS 6:00pm Buffet Dinner 6:30pm Lecture Intended for current students and recent graduates of the University of Chicago. Others interested in attending please contactinfo@lumenchristi.org. REGISTER HERE “Greatness, depth, boldness, flexibility, certainty and flaming love—these virtues of youth are marks of patristic theology. Perhaps the Church will never again see the likes of such an array of larger-than-life figures such as mark the period from Irenaeus to Athanasius, Basil, Cyril, Chrysostom, Ambrose, and Augustine” – Hans Urs von Balthasar, “The Fathers, the Scholastics, and Ourselves” From the close of the apostolic age until the 8th century, the Church Fathers developed a vision of...

cosponsored by the Theology and Religious Ethics Workshop and the Early Christian Studies Workshop When modern persons think about assistance for the poor the two major categories that tend to dominate are the motivations of the donor (altruism) and the effects of the donation (social justice).  Though both of these attributes were part of classical Christian thinking, they stood on a deeper foundation: a description of the type of world God had made. And so, charity was as much about metaphysics as it was morality.

Rémi Brague (Sorbonne, University of Munich) Cosponsored by the France Chicago Center If the contrary of civilization is barbarism, we have to take seriously the etymology of the latter word, i.e. the inability to engage in a conversation. Conversation presupposes some continuity. First, with the past that may have something to teach us (which is the meaning of “conservatism”), then with nature that is not a mere quarry or pantry, but has something to tell us as well, and finally with God as creator in the Logos.