Hans Urs von Balthasar on Mystical Theology and “The Metaphysics of the Saints”
To view photos of the master class, visit Lumen Christi’s Facebook page. Open to current students and faculty. Copies of the readings will be provided for registrants. Hans Urs von Balthasar (1905–1988) was one of the most prolific and controversial Catholic theologians of the twentieth century. Responses to his work have ranged from the effusive to the dismissive. Instead of favoring any such one-sided judgments, however, I invite participants in this seminar to focus on two tasks that require considerably more scholarly effort. First, there is the task simply of understanding Balthasar—that is, making sense of his claims, their historical…
Saving Darwin’s Soul and Science’s Life
$25 General / Free for current students with ID $500 Host Committee (includes 10 tickets) / $2,500 Event Vice-Chair (includes 10 tickets) / $5,000 Event Chair (includes 10 tickets). This program is made possible by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation and is cosponsred by the Society of Catholic Scientists. 5:30pm Hors d’oeuvres reception 6:30pm Talk and Q&A 7:30pm Close The late 19th century witnessed the invention of what is now a well-worn trope: Science versus Religion. From this contrived construction modern fundamentalism was born: Scientific, Religious, and Philosophical. Such fundamentalisms spawned artificial ghettos of specialization that encouraged ambitions for totalizing disciplines. Darwinism was…
What St. Benedict Taught the Dark Ages: His and Ours
REGISTER HERE Free and open to the public. Cosponsored by the John U. Nef Commitee on Social Thought. Cardinal Newman, who will be canonized on October 13, is well known for his philosophy of education, especially for his masterwork The Idea of University (1853). But his most profound reflections on education are in his minor work “The Mission of St. Benedict” (1858), in which Newman treats the question of how to teach a beginner, even a beginner under the most unfavorable circumstances. Not a novice in dialectic and rhetoric, or in the theoretical or practical sciences, but a beginner in the quotidian…
Master Class on Yves Simon’s “A General Theory of Authority”
REGISTER HERE Open to current students and faculty. Copies of the book A General Theory of Authority (University of Notre Dame Press, 1980) will be provided for those who register. Professor Hittinger will also give a lecture on October 9 on “What St. Benedict Taught the Dark Ages: His and Ours.” Yves Simon (1903-1961) was a neo-scholastic philosopher who distinguished himself chiefly for his work in moral and political philosophy. A student of Jacques Maritain in Paris, in 1938 he accepted a visiting position at the University of Notre Dame where he was stranded after the outbreak of WWII. In…
Waiting for Jesus in Havana
The family is traditionally held to be the first church. Yet, the Latino Catholic home bears diverse local religious and cultural influences. How does one better understand the tapestry of one’s own religious experience and its relation to the Catholic tradition? Join us in this workshop as Carlos Eire, historian and expert in popular piety, draws from his memoirs “Waiting for Snow in Havana” and “Learning to Die in Miami” to discuss the diversity of religious strands that made up his own Cuban household and analyze the challenges and opportunities it presents to the Hispanic Catholic experience. Participants will walk…
John Henry Newman’s Path to Sainthood
This event was cosponsored by Mundelein Seminary, the Sheil Catholic Center at Northwestern University, the Hank Center for the Catholic Intellectual Heritage at Loyola University Chicago, the Department of Catholic Studies at DePaul University, the Calvert House Catholic Center at the University of Chicago, and the John Paul II Newman Center at UIC. What makes a modern saint? On October 13th, Cardinal John Henry Newman (1801-1890), English theologian, philosopher and cardinal, was officially canonized a saint of the Roman Catholic Church. This event at Holy Name Cathedral was a presentation on the life and sanctity of John Henry Newman by…
Master Class on “The Life of Teresa of Avila”
This program was made possible in part by a grant from the Our Sunday Visitor Institute. The Life of Saint Teresa of Avila is one of the most remarkable accounts ever written of the human encounter with the divine. This text is not really an autobiography at all, despite the fact that it is widely regarded as such, but rather a confession written for inquisitors by a nun whose raptures and mystical claims had aroused suspicion. Despite its troubled origins, and despite the fact that some clergy continued to condemn it after it was published, the book has had a…
Newman’s Apologetics of the Imagination
This event was cosponsored by the Nicholson Center for British Studies. John Henry Newman famously insisted that “the heart is commonly reached not through the reason, but through the imagination.” As a theologian, apologist, and the 19th century’s most famous convert, Newman was keenly attentive to the foundations of religious belief. His apologetic career is, in some sense, an appeal to the imagination in contradistinction to the prevailing empiricism of Locke and Hume. In his novels, sermons, lectures, and even his philosophical magnum opus, the Grammar of Assent, Newman defends an understanding of the imagination that harmonizes religious faith and rational inquiry.
Master Class on “Heidegger & Aquinas on the Question Concerning Technology”
REGISTER HERE Open to current students and faculty. Copies of the readings will be provided for those who register. SCHEDULE 9:30am Coffee & Pastries 10:00am Session I 11:25am Break 11:35am Session II 1:00pm End, lunch REQUIRED READINGS Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I, Q.47, Art.1-2 (on creation); III, Q.60, Art.2-4 (on sacraments) Martin Heidegger, The Question Concerning Technology RECOMMENDED READINGS Francisco Benzoni. “Thomas Aquinas and Environmental Ethics: A Reconsideration of Providence and Salvation.” The Journal of Religion, Vol. 85, No. 3 (July 2005), pp. 446-476. Bernard Stiegler, Technics and Time, 1 (Stanford University Press, 1998) pp. 1-27.
The Open Question of Church Polity and Governance: Trent, Vatican I, Vatican II
Free and open to the public. Cosponsored by the Theology and Ethics Workshop at the Divinity School and the Midwest Province of the Society of Jesus. Sexual and financial scandals are prompting Catholics to ask hard and painful questions about church government. Who is in charge? How is responsibility and accountability for governance distributed in the Church? By no means is this the first time that the Catholic Church has reckoned with the letter and the spirit of its own governance. Drawing from his latest book, When Bishops Meet: An Essay Comparing Trent, Vatican I, and Vatican II (Harvard, 2019), Fr. John…