St. Anselm Institute - Past Public Lectures
"The Lost Edges of the Modern Research University: A Catholic Philosophical Critique"
Reinhard Hütter
Professor of Theology
Duke Divinity School
We attend, work at, participate in, and carry deep and enduring affinities for our universities. But why do universities exist? What purpose have they, do they, and ought they to serve? What types of good do they aim to effect? What are the best means to bring about these ends?
Clearly, each academic discipline that constitutes the modern research university is defined by and dedicated to the rigorous study of the nature of its particular objects of interest. But what is the nature of the University that houses each of these disciplines? and what is the nature of the relationship of the University to its external culture?
What could the Catholic intellectual tradition disclose about the past, present, and future of the university as a unique place and activity dedicated to the fulfillment of a more audacious universal purpose? Duke University Professor Reinhard Hütter advanced these largely unspoken but essential questions, challenging us to consider and to think through the possibility that the modern university's depth and trajectory is unwittingly and precariously insufficient to maintain itself as the foundation for or the most compelling edges of a flourishing human culture. If you missed this fascinating talk, please view it here.
"The Academic Saint and
the Science of the Cross:
The Life and Works of Edith Stein/
St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross"
Fr. John Sullivan, O.C.D.
Friar and Provincial for the Washington Province of the Discalced Carmelites
Beatified in 1987 for her 1942 martyrdom at Auschwitz, canonized as a saint in 1998, and named Co-Patroness of Europe by Pope John Paul II in 1999, the formal legacy of St. Edith Stein/Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (1891-1942) could not be more widely identified and secured within the Church. But despite the trumpet blasts heralding her import, her extensive writings and the story of her all too human and later truly exemplary saintly life are only now beginning to peak and command the interest and serious intellectual time of inquisitive academic audiences. And rightly so, for the intellectual weight and inspiring narrative of Edith Stein's journey does not disappoint. It includes not only the hardships of her father's death when she was a young child, the abandonment of her Jewish faith for a rebellious but self-proclaimed atheism in her teenage years, her educational pursuits of, first,
THOMAS F.X. NOBLE
University of Notre Dame, Department of History
"FAITH TAKING SHAPE: Early Christianity and the Arts"
April 7, 2011 / 5:15pm
The St. Anselm Institute concluded its 2010-2011 Public Lecture Series on a high note by welcoming back a dear and distinguished friend: Thomas F. X. Noble, Professor of History at the University of Notre Dame and our former UVA colleague in the Corcoran Department of History. Prof. Noble is a highly regarded historian of the papacy and of all things related to western civilization in the late antiquity and early medieval eras. He is the prodigious author and editor of numerous scholarly books and more than 40 articles, the well deserved recipient of excellence in teaching awards at both UVA and Notre Dame as well as the recipient of research grants from the NEH and American Philosophical Association. He presently is Chair of Notre Dame's History Department and he also has served as the Director of Notre Dame's widely acclaimed Medieval Institute.
Prof. Noble's lecture untangled the interesting history of the relationship between Christianity and the visual arts.
Richard Garnett
University of Notre Dame Law School
"Positive Secularism:
Understanding the Separation of Church and State"
February 4, 2011
Minor Hall Auditorium / UVA / 5:30 PM
George Weigel
"The Life and Legacy of Pope John Paul II"
Friday / November 19, 2010 / 5:30pm
Univ. of Virginia / Minor Hall Auditorium
George Weigel--NBC Vatican analyst, New York Times bestselling author, and John Paul II biographer-- delivered a public lecture at the University of Virginia on his long awaited sequel The End and the Beginning: Pope John Paul II, The Victory of Freedom, and the Last Years, the Legacy (Doubleday). More than ten years in the making, this book tells the dramatic story of Pope John Paul II's heroic battles with communism in light of recently disclosed classified documents and brings to a conclusion Weigel's landmark portrait of the man who led the Catholic Church and changed the course of world history.
Miklos Veto
Professor Emeritus Université de Poitiers
"Approaches to God in the Philosophy of Jean Luc Marion"
Tuesday, October 19, 2010, 7:30pm
Nau Hall 342 (New South Lawn)
Co-sponsored by: The Department of Religious Studies,
The St. Anselm Institute for Catholic Thought, and The Office of International Programs
TRENT POMPLUN
"Jesuit on the Roof of the World:
Ippolito Desideri's Mission to Tibet"
Thursday, Oct. 7, 2010
UVA, MINOR HALL / 7:00PM
Prof. Pomplun is author of the widely acclaimed Jesuit on the Roof of the World (Oxford). His public lecture recounted the trials, adventures, and fascinating cultural and philosophical encounters of Jesuit missionary priest Ippolito Desideri. Fr. Desideri left Rome in 1712, spent a year on a ship circumnavigating the globe, and eventually landed in Goa, a port city in western India. He traveled northward and then
Robert Louis Wilken
"Catholicism and Culture"
UVA / Minor Hall Auditorium / 5:00-7:00pm
A Winter's Evening Concert
by
THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY
OF AMERICA CHAMBER CHOIR
Leo Nestor, Conductor
William Atwood, Organ
February 18, 2011 / 7:30pm
St. Paul's Memorial Church, 1700 University Ave.
This is the heavenly table for us spread;
Here let us feast and, feasting, still prolong
The fellowship of living wine and bread.
Elizabeth Schiltz
University of St. Thomas Law School
"Taking Complementarity Seriously:
A Catholic Approach to Gender Differences,
Feminism, and Public Policy"
University of Virginia / Monroe Hall, Room 110
University of St. Thomas Law Professor Elizabeth Schiltz engaged and encouraged her standing room only crowd to consider how the Catholic tradition offers numerous resources for developing a new and bolder feminism that promotes an integral, rather than fractional, understanding of gender complementarity. Inspired by Pope John Paul II's 1988 apostolic letter "On the Dignity and Vocation of Women" and the works of others--from St. Edith Stein to the recent scholarly works of Sr. Prudence Allen--Schiltz confidently contended that feminists from a faith tradition like Catholicism, which takes embodiment seriously, must necessarily be more active participants in discussions of gender identity.