Inside the Classroom with Fr. Adam Hincks
In the winter quarter, the Lumen Christi Institute was honored to welcome Rev. Dr. Adam Hincks, S.J., as scholar-in-residence.
Pope Leo XIV and St. Leo the Great
Habemus papam! In his first speech as the successor of St. Peter, Pope Leo XIV exhorted his listeners “to be a missionary Church.” In doing so, he echoed the words of one of his predecessors, Pope St. Leo the Great.
A Catholic Vision of Culture in the 21st Century | West Suburban Catholic Culture Series
In his well-known and influential essay, Leisure: The Basis of Culture, Josef Pieper claims that we in modern western society have come to inhabit a “world of total work,” and that an essential precondition for escape is recapturing a more ancient notion of “leisure” (in Greek: scholê, in Latin: otium). While much has been said in support of this claim, especially in Catholic intellectual circles, the focus has typically centered on the nature of leisure, which much of this dialogue takes as the starting point. In this lecture, Prof. Blaschko, who studies the philosophy of work at Notre Dame, will proceed in a different direction, asking “What kind of culture, and what kind of work culture, would we create if we wanted to incorporate genuine leisure into our lives?”
Polarization, Social Cohesion, and the Economy: Celebrating 10 Conferences on Economics and Social Thought
On March 27, the Lumen Christi Institute hosted “Polarization, Social Cohesion, and the Economy,” its 10th Conference on Economics and Catholic Social Thought. This continues an initiative running since 2008 that interrogates economic thought and the contemporary market with the principles of Catholic teaching concerning justice on the human, political, and societal levels. Originally envisioned by Thomas Levergood, Cardinal Francis George, and Joseph Kaboski, for nearly two decades the project has carved out a distinctive space where economic inquiry meets moral and theological reflection. This year’s conference coincided with the fifth anniversary of Fratelli Tutti, Pope Francis’s encyclical on fraternity…
A Catholic Vision of Culture in the 21st Century | West Suburban Catholic Culture Series
In his well-known and influential essay, Leisure: The Basis of Culture, Josef Pieper claims that we in modern western society have come to inhabit a “world of total work,” and that an essential precondition for escape is recapturing a more ancient notion of “leisure” (in Greek: scholê, in Latin: otium). While much has been said in support of this claim, especially in Catholic intellectual circles, the focus has typically centered on the nature of leisure, which much of this dialogue takes as the starting point. In this lecture, Prof. Blaschko, who studies the philosophy of work at Notre Dame, will proceed in a different direction, asking “What kind of culture, and what kind of work culture, would we create if we wanted to incorporate genuine leisure into our lives?”
A Catholic Vision of Culture in the 21st Century | West Suburban Catholic Culture Series
In his well-known and influential essay, Leisure: The Basis of Culture, Josef Pieper claims that we in modern western society have come to inhabit a “world of total work,” and that an essential precondition for escape is recapturing a more ancient notion of “leisure” (in Greek: scholê, in Latin: otium). While much has been said in support of this claim, especially in Catholic intellectual circles, the focus has typically centered on the nature of leisure, which much of this dialogue takes as the starting point. In this lecture, Prof. Blaschko, who studies the philosophy of work at Notre Dame, will proceed in a different direction, asking “What kind of culture, and what kind of work culture, would we create if we wanted to incorporate genuine leisure into our lives?”
Applications Open for the 2025 Summer Seminars
In their seventeenth year, the Lumen Christi Institute Summer Seminars in the Catholic Intellectual Tradition introduce participants to central themes, figures, and texts from the Catholic tradition. Please see the Event Calendar for details and application requirements. Please direct any questions to seminars@lumenchristi.org The Thought of René Girard – University of Southern California, June 15 to June 21, (Cynthia Haven, Grant Kaplan, Trevor Merrill) Catholic Social Thought in Business Education – University of Notre Dame, June 16 to June 19, (Jim Otteson, Lloyd Sandelands, Martin Schlag, Andreas Widmer) Dionysius the Areopagite: The Corpus and Legacy – University of Toronto, June 22 to…
REVIEW: F. Russell Hittinger, On the Dignity of Society
K.T. Brizek, PhD student in intellectual and Church history at the University of Illinois at Chicago, reviews “On the Dignity of Society: Catholic Social Teaching and Natural Law,” a novel presented at the University of Chicago by author Russell Hittinger.
Reason & Regensburg: Pope Benedict and the Dialogue of Cultures
To bridge the cultural rift between Islam and the West, there is an urgent need to reestablish the mutually reinforcing dialogue between faith and reason in the West, and to support moderate Muslim scholars attempting to retrieve a non-voluntarist interpretation of Islam, often at risk to their own lives.
Faith, Reason and the Eucharist
Between doubts about “natural theology” and post-modern polemics against “modernity”, an older view that the existence of God can be known “by the natural light of reason” gets little hearing. Perhaps it is time to revisit these older views in light of Aquinas’ understanding of the rational powers as “bodily presence”, analogous to the power of signification found in music and, more profoundly, in the Eucharist; only within this broader conception of human reason can we speak of the existence of God as demonstrable by rational proof.