St. Anselm Institute - Past Public Lectures
4th Annual Robert Louis Wilken Lecture
Fr. Sidney Griffith
Catholic University of America
"Christianity in the World of Islam: In the Shadow of the Mosque"
Contemporary discourses, most especially in the West, often presume a stark Christian-Muslim divide.
The St. Anselm Institute is both honored and pleased to welcome the widely esteemed Fr. Sidney Griffith, Catholic University of America Professor of Semitic Languages, for the Fourth Annual Robert Louis Wilken Lecture at the University of Virginia.
All are welcomed and encouraged to attend this final lecture in our 2012-2013 Public Lecture Series.
Robert Louis Wilken
THE FIRST THOUSAND YEARS:
A Global History of Christianity
Friday, March 22 (6:00pm)
UVA Harrison Institute Auditorium
If you missed this lecture, watch it here.
Cosponsored by Virginia Festival of the Book, St. Anselm Institute for Catholic Thought, St. Nicholas Orthodox Church, and the Center for Christian Study
"Contemplation, Prayer, Vocation"
Br. Timothy Ferrell, O.S.B.
Monastery of the Holy Cross
If you missed this lecture, here's the video.
Aren't we all called by name to a larger purpose? Come hear how a UVA alum came to understand that his path of contemplation also included a very unexpected place: an urban Benedictine monastery in Chicago!
All are invited and welcomed to attend this public lecture, which will take place at 7:00pm in St. Thomas Aquinas Parish Hall, 401 Alderman Rd. (1 block from O-Hill Dining Hall). Free evening parking available.
The St. Anselm Institute and the UVA Catholic Student Ministry are pleased to cosponsor this event.
Fr. Peter Funk, O.S.B.
Monastery of the Holy Cross
"What Makes Sacred Music Sacred?"
All are invited and welcomed to attend this public lecture, which will begin at 6:30pm in Minor Hall Auditorium at the University of Virginia.
"The Problem of Suffering:
A Thomistic Defense"
Eleonore Stump
Professor of Philosophy,
St. Louis University
January 17 / 5:30pm / Minor Hall Auditorium
If you missed this lecture, here's the video.
Why do bad things--evil, heartbreaking, devastating things--happen to good (and even not so good) persons? Is it possible to defend belief in an omniscient, omnipotent, perfectly good God in spite of the terrible human suffering in the world? For many, these questions have been great stumbling blocks, but philosopher Eleonore Stump draws upon contemporary psychological findings and the philosophical insights of Thomas Aquinas to argue that an extended Thomistic theodicy constitutes a cogent response to the problem of suffering.
"VATICAN II: 50 Years Later"
Fr. Joseph Komonchak
Professor Emeritus of the School of Theology,
The Catholic University of America
If you missed the lecture, watch it here.
Fifty years ago, on October 11, 1962, Pope John XXIII opened the twenty-first Ecumenical (or universal) Council in the Church's history. Ever wonder what Vatican II was all about? Why it was called? Who attended? What was accomplished? And how its various documents not only revived and redirected the Church's thinking about both the Liturgy and its dogmatic constitution, but also how the Church views and engages the modern world? In this golden anniversary year of Vatican II, make plans now to attend this very special public lecture by one of the most highly regarded historians of Vatican II.
Angela Alaimo O'Donnell
Department of English
Center for American Catholic Studies
Fordham University
and the Catholic Poetic Imagination"
If you missed this lecture, watch it here.
So what's up with that Catholic lens and vocabulary that gives poets like Dante, Hopkins, Levertov, and Milosz a particularly wide angle focus on those nearly hidden but then self-evident intersections between words and the depths of life's experiences? How is it that the world could have missed the (only now self-evident) "saintliness" of that "Hoboken hero of Eros" Frank Sinatra?
Brad Gregory
Associate Professor of Early
Modern European History
University of Notre Dame
"The Unintended Reformation: How a Religious Revolution Secularized Society"
On Thursday, April 19, the St. Anselm Institute for Catholic Thought hosted University of Notre Dame History Professor Brad Gregory for its third Annual Robert Louis Wilken Lecture. Before a lively and inquisitive audience, Prof. Gregory discussed his newest book The Unintended Reformation: How a Religious Revolution Secularized Society (Harvard). This vibrant and important work of intellectual history offers a grand synthesis of the West over the past five centuries, challenging its readers and the St. Anselm Institute audience to inquire why so many elements of modern intellectual and moral life deviate so widely from the sincere commitments of Catholics, Protestants and others in the West.
Prof. Robert Louis Wilken
"The Catholic Roots of Religious Freedom"
St. Thomas Aquinas University Parish
Wednesday, Jan. 25, 2012, 7:30pm
In his public lecture, Prof. Wilken clarified that the roots of modern ideas of religious freedom are as much religious as they are political and philosophical. In fact, the American political leaders who first championed these ideas were well aware of the religious--indeed deeply Catholic--sources supporting their views. The greatest of these champions James Madison--who ended state support for Virginia's churches and drafted the Bill of Rights--not only recommended that a long list of these intellectual sources be included in the University of Virginia Library, but he openly spoke about “the duty which we owe to our Creator” and that religion can only be governed “by reason and conviction, not by force or violence.” Prof. Wilken's lecture explored how early Christian thinkers developed a theological understanding of religious freedom. See the full video of this lecture: here.
Prof. Hans Joas
University of Chicago/Committee on Social Thought
Waves of Secularization:
An Alternative Explanation of "Religious Decline"
Over the last two decades, a virtual mountain of empirical evidence has convinced social scientists that the longstanding secularization thesis is untenable--i.e., the presumption that economic modernization and scientific progress leads automatically to religious decline. Abandonment of this conventional theoretical frame should make questions concerning the causes and consequences of secularization even more acute. Studies of the rise of a secular option remain important for understanding the preconditions for secularization, but they cannot explain the observable variations of this option for social organization. University of Chicago Professor Hans Joas offered a reevaluation that demonstrates that secularization is not a unitary, linear, continuous process at all. Rather, three