Passage to Modernity: Renaissance Christianity Today
An evening webinar lecture with Peter Casarella (Duke University). Part of our summer webinar series on “Reason and Beauty in Renaissance Christian Thought and Culture,” presented in collaboration with the American Cusanus Society Historian Jacob Burckhardt (d. 1897) famously argued that Italian humanism of the fourteenth and fifteenth century paved the way inevitably to modern individualism and secularism, but more recently Burckhardt’s view has been largely discredited. Contemporary thinkers, Louis Dupré and Karsten Harries, each with very distinctive accents, made decisive contributions to overcoming of Burkhardtian forerunner mentality. In this concluding webinar, Professor Casarella will explore Dupré’s and Harries’ contributions to a post-Burckhardtian…
Introduction to Liturgical Mystagogy
Free and open to the public. This event will be presented on Zoom (registration required), as well as through live-stream on YouTube. This event is presented in collaboration with the Godbearer Institute as part of a Fall webinar lecture series on “Eastern Catholic Theology in Action.” From the fourth to eighth centuries, liturgical commentaries flourished to explain the meaning of the sacramental life of the Church. Notably after the fourth century, the tradition of Jerusalem developed another genre for mystagogy, namely hymnography. As part of the structure of the liturgical services, they explain to the faithful what is happening during the services,…
A Theology of Wonder: An Introduction to the Poetry of Ephrem the Syrian
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Free and open to the public. This event will be presented on Zoom (registration required), as well as through live-stream on YouTube. This event is presented in collaboration with the Godbearer Institute as part of a Fall webinar lecture series on “Eastern Catholic Theology in Action.” St. Ephrem is the common teacher of the Syriac theological tradition whose preferred medium is poetry. Named a doctor of the Church by Benedict XV, Ephrem emphasizes that the ascetical and mystical experience of wonder is the criterion for authentic theologizing. Dr. Hayes will discuss how Ephrem’s notion of wonder purifies our freedom and rendering the…
Christ the Lover of Mankind: Philanthropia, Mystery, and Martyria in Eastern Christianity
Free and open to the public. This event will be presented on Zoom (registration required), as well as through live-stream on YouTube. This event is presented in collaboration with the Godbearer Institute as part of a Fall webinar lecture series on “Eastern Catholic Theology in Action.” Three features are common to all Eastern Christian traditions—philanthropia, mystery, and martyria. They appear repeatedly in Eastern Christian writing, ritual, and personal practice from the preaching of Jesus to the present. Philanthropia, God’s love for humanity, prompts the mission of the Logos to provide for humanity’s return to the divine. Mystery, which paradoxically reveals and conceals,…
Eastern Churches, Latin Territories: Ecclesial Catholicity and the Notion of Diaspora
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Free and open to the public. This event will be presented on Zoom (registration required), as well as through live-stream on YouTube. This event is presented in collaboration with the Godbearer Institute as part of a Fall webinar lecture series on “Eastern Catholic Theology in Action.” According to the teaching of the Second Vatican Council, all Eastern Catholic Churches have same rights and obligations as the Latin Church and are equal in dignity. They also share the obligation to preach the Gospel to the whole world. At the same time, the jurisdiction of the Eastern Churches is circumscribed to the notion of…
Fratelli Tutti: Engaging Pope Francis’s New Encyclical on Social Friendship
Free and open to the public. Cosponsored by the Institute for Human Ecology at Catholic University of America and America Media. The event will take place online over Zoom and YouTube livestream. Who is my neighbor? Who is my brother and sister? Drawing on central gospel themes found in the Good Samaritan narrative, Pope Francis applies them to the whole “human family,” proposing that the logic of social friendship and neighborly love move beyond the personal to touch on every major social sphere. Join as this panel of experts in Catholic Social Thought discuss Pope Francis’s latest social encyclical, Fratelli Tutti.
Venerating the Saints: An Ancient Tradition Actual Today
Free and open to the public. This event is co-presented with the Bollandist Society and America Media, and is co-sponsored by the Jesuit School of Theology of Santa Clara University, the Nova Forum, the Harvard Catholic Forum, the Institute for Advanced Catholic Studies at USC, the Hank Center for the Catholic Intellectual Heritage, the Georgetown Office of Mission and Ministry, and the Collegium Institute. This event will be held on Zoom (registration required) and live-streamed to YouTube. Few Christian practices are as ancient and widely popular as veneration of the saints. It is appropriate on this Feast of All Saints to review that history, consider the challenges it has faced, and…
What Do Genesis 1-3 Tell Us About Creation in a Scientific Age?
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Free and open to the public. This event is organized by the Harvard Catholic Forum, co-presented by the Lumen Christi Institute, and co-sponsored by the Society of Catholic Scientists and the Science & Religion Initiative at the McGrath Institute for Church Life. This event will be held on Zoom (registration required) and live-streamed to the Harvard Catholic Forum’s YouTube page. — Modern readers fall naturally into a series of typical mistakes when interpreting the creation accounts in Genesis. Urging us to consider these texts with fresh eyes, Fr. Clifford asks: Why does Genesis 1 describe creation as a 6-day work week? Why is…
Quo Vadis: The Direction of Eastern Catholic Theology, a Pastoral Perspective for the 21st Century
Free and open to the public. This event will be presented on Zoom (registration required), as well as through live-stream on YouTube. This event is co-presented with the Godbearer Institute and the Collegium Institute. Metropolitan Borys Gudziak has spent his life committed to Catholic education. He helped to found Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv, the only Catholic University between Poland and Japan. The University’s mission was simple: to bring the Christian humanist vision of the Catholic University to Ukraine to heal the wounds inflicted by Soviet oppression. Gudziak was rector of Ukrainian Catholic University until 2012 and became president upon his episcopal ordination….
A Catholic Life in the Secular University: A Conversation with George Dennis O’Brien
Cosponsored by Commonweal Magazine, and the Sheil Catholic Center at Northwestern University. This event is presented by the Lumen Christi Institute Forum on the Church in Higher Education as part of its Liberal Arts Colloquium. John F. Kennedy once quipped that a Catholic would be president of the United States before a Catholic would be president of Harvard. As the Catholic president of two secular universities, Dennis O’Brien was a trailblazer. In this interview, O’Brien discusses his long career in higher education as a Catholic, a philosopher, and an administrator, with reflections on the past, present, and future of American higher education….