The Riddle of the Ring: Dark Magic & Spiritual Danger in Tolkien
Open to current students and faculty. Dinner at 6:00 p.m. | Lecture at 6:30 p.m. “One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them. In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.” Everyone knows that Sauron made the One Ring, but nobody—including Tolkien—seems to know how it worked, perhaps because nobody—including Tolkien—explained how Sauron made it. Where did Tolkien get the idea of magic rings? What would it mean to make a magic ring? And what might explain its effects? In this lecture, Professor Rachel Fulton…
Fall Non-Credit Course: “The Living Jesus at the Intersection of History and Faith”
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. Jesus of Nazareth, a Galilean Jew crucified in a remote corner of the Roman Empire nearly 2,000 years ago, is considered one of the world’s greatest teachers and the founder of its oldest institution. More books and films have been produced about Jesus than any other historical person. This non-credit class will consider both what historical methods can ascertain about Jesus…
Catholic Culture Series on “Catholic Literary Heritage”
The Lumen Christi Institute’s West Suburban Catholic Culture Series returns in 2021-22 with a monthly series on the theme of Catholic literary heritage. We will survey the history of literature written by Catholics from the early middle ages to the late twentieth century. What is Catholic literature? What is our Catholic literary heritage? St. John Henry Newman has informed us that Catholic literature is more than “religious literature” or “the literature of religious men.” Rather, Catholic literature is literature of “all subjects whatever, treated as a Catholic would treat them, and as he only can treat them.” Not only doctrine,…
Magis Series on Faith and Reason
Free and open to the public. Presented by the Lumen Christi Institute and Saint Ignatius College Prep. What does it mean to believe? Does one believe because of evidence? In spite of evidence? Is belief the beginning of wisdom or the opposite of science? For over two thousand years, the Catholic Church has defended the rich interrelation between faith and reason. As Pope John Paul II said in his encyclical, Fides et Ratio, “Faith and reason are like the two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth.” Faith without reason leads to superstition. Reason without…
Bernard of Clairvaux: Writing a Biography of the Difficult Saint
A lecture with Professor Brian Patrick McGuire, author of Bernard of Clairvaux: An Inner Life (Cornell University Press, 2020). Free and open to the public. Registration is required. Cosponsored by the Bollandist Society, Cornell University Press, the Medieval Studies Workshop at the University of Chicago, and the Martin Marty Center for the Public Understanding of Religion. Contact us with any questions. From the presenter: This lecture will be a combination of biography and autobiography: my various attempts at writing a biography of Bernard of Clairvaux and the history of my own life. I think it is important for historians to be aware of the…
Friendship and Community: The Monastic Experience, 350-1250
A master class with Brian Patrick McGuire (Roskilde University). Open to current graduate students, faculty, and advanced University of Chicago undergraduate students. Others interested in participating should contact us. Registrants will receive copies of the prepared reading. Friendship has been apparent in our culture as a concern ever since the time of the Greeks. Today it is often ignored or taken for granted. Some readings of the Gospels would indicate that friendship is secondary. We are saved not because of our friendships but because we find how to love our enemies. For Augustine, the architect of friendship, converting to the Christian…
Master Class: Clashing over Mysticism: Balthasar and Rahner on Bonaventure
Open to current students and faculty. Others interested in participating should contact info@lumenchristi.org. Registrants will receive copies of the prepared reading. In an era of outstanding theologians who made the teachings of Vatican II possible, Hans Urs von Balthasar (1905-88) and Karl Rahner (1904-84) emerge as titans. Both were German speaking: Rahner came from Baden and Balthasar from Switzerland. Rahner died as a Jesuit, having taught in Innsbruck, Munich, and Muenster. Balthasar left the order in mid-life to serve as chaplain to a secular institute in Basel. Both were prolific writers. Rahner’s chief works are Spirit in the World (1957),…
Synodality in Perspective: Traditions Past and Present
This online symposium series is being organized by the American Cusanus Society, Nova Forum and the Lumen Christi Institute. Additional Cosponsors include Commonweal, America Media, St. Anselm Institute for Catholic Thought and the Collegium Institute. Participation and Registration | All are invited to participate. To attend, please register online. Registration links are provided by each session and date below. Each session will be a dialogue with a moderator hosting a conversation between two scholars. About the Series | In light of Pope Francis’ call for global Catholic communities to enter into a two-year process on synodality, this six-part series will examine both the history…
Retribution and St. Thomas Aquinas’s Teaching on Justice
Open to current students and faculty. This event is co-sponsored by the St. Thomas More Society at the University of Chicago Law School. Others interested in participating should contact info@lumenchristi.org. This event is in-person only. All registrants will receive pdfs of the selected readings, which should be read in advance of the class. An optional wine and cheese reception will follow. Thomas Aquinas assigns two functions to punishment, retributive and medicinal. He sees the retributive function as the primary one, pertaining to the very idea of punishment, and it will be the focus of this master class. The aim will…
Poetry Being the Body: Theology in Dante
REGISTER HERE Open to current graduate students and faculty. Advanced undergraduates and others interested in participating should contact dstrobach@lumenchristi.org. This event is in-person only. All registrants will receive pdfs of the selected readings, which should be read in advance of the class. An optional wine and cheese reception will follow. The poet plays a crucial role in the development of a language of the “mystical” that paradoxically gives voice to the insufficiency of human speech in the face of the reality of the divine. The revelation of this insufficiency speaks effectively to theology’s positive, affirming, role. Poetry is a pre-theological anticipation…