The Lumen Christi Institute

Emily Austin on October 16, 2024 at Ruth Lake Country Club. The challenges of our times can make Christians feel embattled and besieged. But the Catholic intellectual tradition, at its best, equips us to look with openness for the Truth, incarnate in the world around us. In this lecture, Prof. Emily Austin shared her perspective as a classicist, reading within a literary tradition. To read within...

This lecture is entitled Michelangelo's Women: Feminine Genius in the Frescoes of the Sistine Chapel. It was presented by Elizabeth Lev of Duquesne University on November 17, 2021, at the University of Chicago's Social Sciences Building.

This lecture is entitled Singing the Sacred: Music and the Holy in Ancient Christianity. It was presented by Susan Ashbrook Harvey of Brown University on May 15, 2022, at the University of Chicago's Rockefeller Chapel.

This lecture is entitled Symposium on The Light that Binds: A Study in Thomas Aquinas's Metaphysics of Natural Law. It was presented by Fr. Stephen Brock of the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross, Russell Hittinger of the Lumen Christi Institute, Matthew Levering of the University of St. Mary of the Lake, and Candace Vogler of the University of Chicago on April 13, 2022, at the University of...

This lecture is entitled The Future of Natural Law. It was presented by Fr. Kevin Flannery, S.J. of the Pontifical Gregorian University, John Bowlin of the Princeton Theological Seminary, and Scott Roniger of Loyola Marymount University on October 27, 2022, at the University of Chicago's Swift Hall Common Room.

Professor Tyler VanderWeele on January 22, 2024 at the University of Chicago. What is human flourishing? What insights might we draw from the humanities? What insights might we draw from the empirical sciences? Many empirical studies throughout the social and biomedical sciences and many policy discussions focus only on very narrow outcomes such as income, or a single specific disease state, or me...

Professor Thomas Meyer on February 2, 2024 at the University of Chicago. German philosopher and former UChicago professor, Hannah Arendt stands as one of the most influential 20th century theorists of totalitarianism and political ideology. The sources for her unique insights remain obscure, as she rarely revealed her influences outside of Martin Heidegger and Karl Jaspers. Thomas Meyer has discov...

This lecture is entitled Is Free Will an Illusion? St. Thomas Aquinas and Human Action. It was presented by Fr. Stephen Brock of the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross on April 10, 2024, at the Ruth Lake Country Club.

Professor Mark Shiffman and Professor James Matthew Wilson on May 2, 2024 at the University Club of Chicago. In his new book, "What is Ideology?", political theorist Mark Shiffman has studied the history of the concept and identified it as a distinctly modern phenomenon. Shiffman argues that ideological thinking attempts to subject all reality to a narrow and reductive schema in order to produce a...

Matthew Crawford, Kirk Doran, and Elisa Rubbo on October 10, 2024 at the University Club of Chicago. Published in 2009, Matthew Crawford’s Shop Class as Soulcraft became an unexpected best-seller. Written by a University of Chicago PhD and motorcycle mechanic, the book explored the value of craftsmanship and manual work in a world increasingly dominated by technology and abstract thinking. Drawing...

Prior Peter Funk on October 4, 2023 at Ruth Lake Country Club. By integrating rigorous study and assiduous prayer within a life oriented towards the Truth, monasticism became a fertile ground for philosophical reflection, which starkly contrasts with modernity's tendency towards analysis and fragmentation. In this lecture, Prior Peter Funk, OSB explores the perennial contributions of monasticism t...

Jonathan Brant, Sarah Schnitker, and John W. Boyer on October 17, 2024 at the University of Chicago's Swift Hall. As scholars such as Julie Reuben have documented, there has been a decline in the mission of moral formation of students over the history of US higher education and this role of the university is no longer to be taken for granted. What role, if any, does the university play in the mora...

This lecture is entitled Conscience And Human Rights In Thomas Aquinas And Some Predecessors. It was presented by Fr. Kevin Flannery, SJ of the Pontifical Gregorian University on October 7, 2021 at the University of Chicago.

Teresa Sullivan, Clemens Sedmak, James Heckman, Michael Hüther, and Joseph Kaboski on March 27th, 2025 at the University of Chicago. With polarization on the rise around the globe, scholars have pointed to a broader fragmentation of social cohesion. Economics, sociology, theology and philosophy offer different entry points for exploring these problems. How might we better understand this global mo...

This lecture is entitled Saint Among the Skyscrapers: The American Afterlife of Mother Frances Xavier Cabrini. It was presented by Kathleen Sprows Cummings of the University of Notre Dame on June 10, 2021, at the University Club of Chicago.

This lecture is entitled A Life in Service of the Truth: The Legacy of Fr. Paul Mankowski, SJ. It was presented by Gary A. Anderson of the University of Notre Dame and Fr. Kevin Flannery, SJ of the Pontifical Gregorian University on October 8, 2021 at the University Club of Chicago.

This lecture is entitled Walker Percy and the Pursuit of Happiness in Apocalyptic Times. It was presented by Dr. Jennifer Frey of (then) the University of South Carolina on February 23, 2022, at the Ruth Lake Country Club.

A lecture by Professor Daniel J. Fairbanks (Utah Valley University), Mendel biographer and author of "Gregor Mendel: His Life and Legacy" (Prometheus Books 2022). --- As we celebrate the bicentennial of Gregor Mendel’s birth, a few highlights of his life and legacy illustrate the breadth of his contributions and his genius. Born into poverty, he excelled in education in his youth. He entered the S...

Professor Paul Blaschko on March 20, 2025 at Butterfield Country Club. 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...

Rachel Smith, Willemien Otten, Bernard McGinn, Barbara Newman, and Ryan Coyne on February 27, 2025 at the University of Chicago's Swift Hall. How does the gendering of images work to render Thomas of Cantimpré’s portraits of holy women vivid, compelling, desirable? How is gender undone in his hagiographies, its expectations countered? How does gendering the saint work together with other elements...

Rick Stevens, Matthew Elmore, Jeffrey P. Bishop, and Stephen C. Meredith on January 30, 2025 at the University of Chicago. Artificial intelligence is increasingly interfacing with all aspects of human life, raising particular ethical challenges in medicine and biotechnology. The ethical challenges of AI must be grounded in the limits of the discipline it is applied to. Medicine has seen amazing ad...

A webinar discussion with Russell Hittinger (Lumen Christi Institute), Tracey Rowland (University of Notre Dame, Australia), and Fr. Thomas Esposito, O.Cist. (University of Dallas), moderated by Fr. Andrew Summerson (University of Toronto; Lumen Christi Institute). Originally recorded May 7, 2023. Presented by the Lumen Christi Institute, The Collegium Institute for Catholic Thought and Culture, F...

A panel discussion with Herschella Conyers(University of Chicago Law School), Darren Davis (University of Notre Dame), andBrandon Viadyanathan (Catholic University of America), moderated by Judge Thomas More Donnelly (Cook County). This event is part of the Lumen Christi Institute's Catholic Criminal Justice Reform Network. --- National conversation about racial bias in law enforcement has become...

An online panel discussion with Professor Grant Kaplan (Saint Louis University), Carly Osborn (University of Divinity), and Fr. Steve Grunow (Word on Fire), moderated by Cynthia Haven (National Endowment for the Humanities). While social media has become a source of meaning and identity formation for many, its dangers have become clear in recent years, from promoting disinformation to algorithm-ai...

A webinar conversation with Bernard McGinn (University of Chicago), David Tracy (University of Chicago), and Sandra Schneiders, IHM (Jesuit School of Theology at Santa Clara University), moderated by Willemien Otten (University of Chicago). The Crisis of Mysticism (Herder & Herder, 2021), by Bernard McGinn is the first book in English in seventy years to give a full account of the struggle over my...