News & Media

From 2012 to 2020, Fr. Paul Mankowski, SJ delivered hundreds of lectures and master classes at the Lumen Christi Institute. Seeking to share the depth of his scholarship, this podcast offers many of his lectures (edited for coherence and quality) to the public in digital format for the first time. 

The first season features a course that Fr. Mankowski gave on Joseph Ratzinger’s Jesus of Nazareth, and dozens of lectures centered around the books of the Bible (including Genesis, many of the prophets, the Gospel of Matthew, and St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans). Two interviews with people who knew Fr. Mankowski well and can offer an entry point to his person and scholarship conclude the season.

To honor the legacy of our longtime scholar-in-residence, we have created the Fr. Paul V. Mankowski, SJ Memorial Fund for Jesuit Scholarship.
Learn more here.

Media
October 7, 2026

Can We Simulate the Dead? A Symposium on Technology, Grief, and the Afterlife

This symposium will bring together top scholars to discuss new advances in “grief-tech,” and will ask what disrupting conceptions of death through technology might mean for vital aspects of human self-understanding, mourning, care relationships, and the social order in which
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September 23, 2026

How to Pray as a Catholic | West Suburban Catholic Culture Series

Have you ever wondered how to pray? Join us for a lecture by Dr. Daniel Wasserman-Soler, as he explores the spiritual writers on prayer from the Middle Ages – and how they can relate to our life of prayer today.
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May 13, 2026

AI, The Future of Work, And Pope Leo’s First Encyclical: What Magnifica Humanitas Might Say – Ever Ancient, Ever New: The Sources of Pope Leo XIV | West Suburban Catholic Culture Series

Pope Leo XIV has already spoken movingly about the isolation and stress, especially for the young, of modern life. In a different format from our normal lecture, philosophers Joe Vukov and Mike Murphy will dialogue as they consider the prospects
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April 23, 2026

What Does Virtue Have to Do with the Law?

REGISTER BELOW *Note: The time has moved from 5:30 to starting at 6:00 p.m. and is in Room I of the University of Chicago Law School 6:00 – Symposium | 7:30 – 7:45 Q & A | 7:45 Wine &

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April 22, 2026

The Turn to Tradition in American Law and Culture

Many are familiar with an "Originalist" interpretation of American law, one which is seen to shield us from the capricious wills of those in power. But can Originalism inadvertently give us a hollow understanding of law? In this panel, Marc
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April 8, 2026

Developing a Catholic Social Vision for the Modern World: A Century of Church Teaching – Ever Ancient, Ever New: The Sources of Pope Leo XIV | West Suburban Catholic Culture Series

Join us as David Cloutier traces the development of Catholic social teaching from Rerum Novarum through Quadragesimo Anno to Centesimus Annus.
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March 18, 2026

Wisdom and the Tranquility of Order: Reflections on Popes Leo XIII and XIV – Ever Ancient, Ever New: The Sources of Pope Leo XIV | West Suburban Catholic Culture Series

Rerum Novarum served as the foundation for a series of monumental encyclicals on Catholic social thought. Although written in 1891, its counsels are prophetic and as pertinent to contemporary man as they were at their writing.
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February 5, 2026

Mythmaking and the True Myth – A Conversation with Martin Shaw

How do stories assist us in the making of a real human being? In troubled times how could we forge a deeper life? Join the Lumen Christi Institute as it welcomes Dr. Martin Shaw for an event celebrating the release
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February 4, 2026

Mythopoetics and Faerie Stories: Theory and Practice of Mythmaking

In this event for UChicago students, acclaimed mythographer and storyteller Dr. Martin Shaw will explore both the theory and practice of mythmaking. First, Shaw will guide us through the “ancient technologies” of myth, and its relationship to initiation rites and
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November 12, 2025

Augustine the Teacher – Ever Ancient, Ever New: The Sources of Pope Leo XIV | West Suburban Catholic Culture Series

Doctor of the Church, Saint Augustine of Hippo, has a lot to say about teaching. He writes memorably about the way his early teachers failed him, teaching him to love praise and worldly success. He writes too about the vocation
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October 30, 2025

Magis Lecture | Why Do We Need Saints and Miracles?

Please join the Lumen Christi Institute, the Bollandist Society, and St. Ignatius College Preparatory School as we welcome the acclaimed Yale scholar, Carlos Eire. Eire's 2023 book, They Flew: A History of the Impossible, explores how historians have grappled with
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October 29, 2025

A History of the Impossible: Carlos Eire on They Flew

In his history of the impossible, They Flew, award-winning historian Carlos Eire mines the firsthand accounts and archival evidence of the miraculous and demonic in early modern Europe. How did an increasingly skeptical and scientific culture account for events deemed