The Lumen Christi Institute

Dr. Michael Naughton on November 20, 2024 at Ruth Lake Country Club. If we do not know where we come from, it is hard to know what role we play. In this lecture, Dr. Michael Naughton provided a compelling narrative of Catholic education that drew upon our personal, institutional, and cosmic stories. This narrative gave us a vision both to see our current educational challenges more clearly, and to...

This lecture is entitled Ecumenical Panel on For the Life of the World: Toward a Social Ethos of the Orthodox Church. It was presented by Aristotle Papanikolaou of Fordham University, William Schweiker of the University of Chicago, Stephen Meawad of Caldwell University, and Msgr. Peter Schallenberg of the Katholische Sozialwissenschaftliche Zentralstelle. It was moderated by Perry Hamalis of North...

This lecture is entitled A Marion Moment in Catholic Thought: A Conversation with Jean-Luc Marion and Ken Woodward. It was presented by Jean-Luc Marion of the University of Chicago and Kenneth Woodward of the Lumen Christi Institute on May 31, 2022, at the Gavin House.

This lecture is entitled Pro and Con: Does Faith Ignore Reason? It was presented by Fr. Stephen Fields, SJ of Georgetown University on October 19, 2022, at Saint Ignatius Prep.

Mary Hirschfeld and Amir Sufi on March 30, 2023 at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. Secular discourse about the problem of economic inequality rests on two foundational premises that are problematic from a theological point of view. First, individuals enter into society with the aim of bettering their own condition. Second, bettering one’s own condition entails accruing more wea...

This lecture is entitled Do We Know More than the Apostles? Or, Do Doctrines Develop?. It was presented by Lewis Ayres on April 4, 2024, at the Magis Lecture Series.

Dr. Matthew Gaetano on May 15, 2024 at Ruth Lake Country Club. The Italian Renaissance rarely plays a central role in our understanding of the story of Catholic theology, even though many of us love Renaissance art and literature. In this talk, Dr. Gaetano showed how philosophers, poets, and painters of this era saw faith and reason as “two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplatio...

Jennifer Newsome Martin on September 25, 2024 at Ruth Lake Country Club. Western culture owes a great deal to Christianity, but Christianity does not require any culture, as a culture, to be built with Christian materials. This does not reflect a weakness or defect in Christianity. It is a consequence of its genius. Christianity can and should inform every human undertaking. In our West Suburban C...

Russell Hittinger, Scott Roniger, Mary Hirschfeld, and R. H. Helmholz on November 7, 2024 at the University of Chicago's Swift Hall. Prof. Hittinger has long been one of the world’s leading scholars of Catholic social teaching and natural law theory. His most recent book, "On the Dignity of Society," presents the fruit of his mature thinking on fundamental issues in Catholic political thought. Roo...

Stephen M. Barr on February 7, 2022 at the University of Chicago. The late Stephen Hawking wrote, “Our universe and its laws appear to have a design that is both tailor-made to support us and, if we are to exist, leaves little room for alteration.” What lies behind such a claim? And what might explain such a remarkable fact (if it is a fact)? Join us as Dr. Stephen Barr speaks on both the science...

Professor Peter Casarella on October 19, 2023 at the University of Chicago's Swift Hall. Romano Guardini penned his Letters from Lake Como between 1923-1925 in order to think about the new technocratic relationship between nature and culture that was emerging in post-war and post-Enlightenment Europe. Guardini’s reflections on the technocratic paradigm are critical for understanding the relationsh...

This lecture is entitled Catholic Women in the Arts and Sciences. It was presented by Bronwen McShea of the Augustine Institute on March 20, 2024, at the Ruth Lake Country Club.

Presented March 22, 2024 at the University of Chicago. "Medicine Within the Technological Enframing" – Kyle Karches (Saint Louis University) "The Grand Inquisitor, Mustapha Mond, and the Attack on the Transcendentals" – Stephen Meredith (University of Chicago) Q&A, Moderated by Jeffrey Bishop (Saint Louis University) -- How are new developments between biotechnology and big data including gene edi...

Presented March 22, 2024 at the University of Chicago. "Our Biotechnologies, Ourselves: Reflections on Innovation, Identity, and Culture" – Lesley Rice (Pontifical John Paul II Institute) "Beyond Ethics: A Humanities Perspective on (Bio)technology" – Silvianne Aspray (Cambridge University) Q&A, Moderated by Jeffrey Bishop (Saint Louis University) -- How are new developments between biotechnology a...

Presented March 22, 2024 at the University of Chicago. Keynote Lecture with Paul Scherz. "Populations, Persons, and Precision Medicine: The Ethics of Emerging Information Technologies in Genetics and Medicine" The Quandaries of Biotechnology: Theory and Practice Symposium -- How are new developments between biotechnology and big data including gene editing, brain-computer interfacing, and artifici...

Angela Knobel, Candace Vogler, Daniel Lapsley, and Emily Austin on April 26, 2024 at the University of Chicago's Swift Hall. What would pagan philosophers and modern psychologists (or ‘scientists-of-mind’) make of what Thomas Aquinas says about the work of grace in the moral life? Thomas Aquinas holds that moral virtues can be cultivated in humans by habits, but he also holds that God can infuse t...

Professor Thomas Pfau, Professor Michael J. Pencina, Dr. Matthew Elmore, and Professor Norman Wirzba on June 26, 2024 at the Washington Duke Inn in Durham, NC. How are our imaginations deepened when the humanities and the sciences enter into a conversation? Join us for a lecture and panel discussion among scholars, including theologians, ethicists, and data scientists. --- This event was presented...

Matt Crawford, Mark Shiffman, and Melanie Barrett on October 11, 2024 at the Social Sciences Tea Room at the University of Chicago. In his "Introduction to Christianity," Joseph Ratzinger saw that at the root of the “technological mindset” was an anxiety about how humans come to know the world. Ratzinger contrasted the technological orientation to the world with an orientation of belief. Belief wa...

Dr. Jeffrey P. Bishop on November 14, 2024 at Loyola Academy McGrath Family Performing Arts Center. Technology always pushes the limits of our thinking and challenges us morally. In this presentation, we will see that our difficulty with evaluating the morality of technology is because technology sits very close to human identity. Human culture just is technology. Technology/culture is produced by...

This lecture is entitled A Conversation on Lost in Thought: The Hidden Pleasures of the Intellectual Life. It was presented by Zena Hitz of St John's College and Erin Walsh of the Universty of Chicago on February 2, 2022, at the University of Chicago's Swift Hall.

This lecture is entitled Discursive, Performative, and Interpretive Strategies in Late Ancient Christian Literature. It was presented by Paul Blowers of Milligan University on March 30, 2022, at the University of Chicago's Classics 110.

This lecture is entitled The Catholic Imagination in Modern American Poetry. It was presented by James Matthew Wilson of the University of St Thomas, Houston on May 11, 2022, at the Ruth Lake Country Club.

This lecture is entitled Aristotle's Great-Souled Man in Jane Austen, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and Saint Augustine. It was presented by J. Warren Smith of Duke Divinity School on January 26, 2023, at the University of Chicago's Swift Hall.

Kenneth Woodward and Professor Denys Turner on April 10, 2024 at the University Club of Chicago. Dante Alighieri was a great poet. But Denys Turner insists that he was also a great theologian—and that what makes his theology great is his poetry. Turner argues, Dante was able to write his masterpiece only after he had personally journeyed through Hell and Purgatory like Dante, the pilgrim character...

Professor Denys Turner on April 11, 2204 at the University of Chicago. Praised for its evocative treatment of heaven and hell, Dante’s "Commedia" is a significant work of theology. Denys Turner explains how Dante accomplishes by means of poetry what the formal theological treatises of the Middle Ages demonstrate through prosaic inference and proof. Poetry, Turner argues, is the most natural langua...