Category: Conferences

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Freedom and Authority in the Christian Life

The Annual Conference of the Center for Catholic and Evangelical Theology June 10-12, 2007 St. Olaf College, Northfield, MN

Freedom and Authority in the Christian Life

The assumption of our culture is that authority and freedom are a zero-sum game: some decry the loss of authority in an age of freedom and others lament the persistent oppression of freedom by various authorities. For the Christian, however, this assumption cannot be so, for it is the truth, the authoritative truth of Christ’s gospel, that sets us free (John 8:32). Unfortunately, how authority and freedom are realized in Christian life has been a point at which Christians and churches have sharply disagreed.

The conference will focus on how authority and freedom come together in the life of the Church and the Christian: our freedom under the authority of Scripture; the authority of holiness in the saints, the liturgy, and sacraments; the authority of the pastoral (including magisterial) office. If true freedom requires true authority (and vice versa!), what is the nature of evangelical authority and evangelical freedom? How are they fostered in our churches?

Speakers will include:

Gilbert Meilaender
Margaret O’Gara
Ephraim Radner
Michael Root

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A Day for the Lord – conference

I have found another place I want to be next summer.

A Day for the Lord: A Sign of Contradiction?

June 11 – 13, 2007 at the University of Notre Dame

The thirty-fifth annual conference of the Notre Dame Center for Liturgy will address the relationship between cult and culture by considering what it means to keep a “day holy to the Lord.” What does it mean to take seriously the obligation to keep the Lord’s Day?

Toward that end, our plenary addresses will draw on the five dimensions of the Lord’s Day described in John Paul II’s 1998 apostolic letter, Dies Domini. Each of these headings can be treated as a starting point for considering how keeping the Lord’s Day implies a stance vis-a-vis elements of contemporary culture.

Session titles

1. Dies Domini – The Celebration of the Creator’s Work
Hindy Najmann, University of Toronto

2. Dies Christi – The Day of the Risen Lord and the Gift of the Holy Spirit
Rev. Hieromonk Dr. Calinic Berger, Holy Cross Church & St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Seminary

3. Dies Ecclesiae – The Eucharistic Assembly: Heart of Sunday
Owen Cummings, Mt. Angel Seminary

4. Dies Hominis – Sunday: Day of Joy, Rest and Solidarity
Frederick Bauerschmidt, Loyola College in Maryland

5. Dies Dierum – Sunday: The Primordial Feast, Revealing the Meaning of Time
Larry Cunningham, University of Notre Dame

And as if that wasn’t enough, Notre Dame Campus ministry says:

One thing is for sure at Notre Dame: we know how to pray, and we do it well!

Well! I have been looking for someone in London to teach me to pray. No more. I’m off to Indiana.

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London Theology of the Body

The Theology of the Body lectures continue on Friday evenings St. Patrickâ??s Soho Square, London. The lectures are going through the theological teaching on marriage given by Pope John Paul II in his general audiences (GA)

II. Blessed are the Pure of Heart
Jan 12 Rod Isaacs: â??The Heart â?? A Battlefield between Love & Lust.â?? (GA July 23rd 1980)
Jan 26 Matthew Nichols: â??Establishing the Ethical Sense.â?? (GA Oct 1st 1980)
Feb 2 Fr. Mark Withoos: â??The Human Body, Subject of Works of Artâ?? (General Audience April 15th 1981)

III. The Theology of Marriage & Celibacy
Feb 23 Robert Colquhoun â??To be Imitators of God & to Walk in Loveâ?? (GA Aug 4th 1982)
Mar 2 Fr. Mark Withoos: â??Virginity or Celibacy for the sake of the Kingdomâ?? (G A. March 10th 1982)
March 23 Jane Deegan: â??Love is Victorious in the Struggle between Good and Evilâ?? (GA June 27th 1984)

IV. Reflections on Humanae Vitae
April 27 Edmund Adamus: â?? The Churchâ??s Position on the Transmission of Lifeâ?? (GA August 22nd 1984)
May 11 Dan & Anne Hill: â??A Discipline that Ennobles Human Love.â?? (GA Aug 28th 1984)
May 25 Alison Gray â??The dignity and vocation of woman and her role in the Churchâ??
June 8 Love and Responsibility â?? Theology of the Body

Pope John Paul II Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body

Meanwhile, from the basement of that very same St Patrick’s in Soho, London, Nicole Syed provides advice on Natural Fertility Management. Nicole says this:

Through the content of the course and a lot of my own reading of John Paul IIâ??s Theology of the Body, I found the holistic way of life that I had been looking for, integrating every aspect of our lives, physical, emotional, sexual and spiritual. I realised that promoting this message was what I wanted to do to help transform the lives of those around me. It became increasingly clear to me from a health perspective, that the contraceptive industry had manipulated the way people think about fertility, treating it as an illness that needs to be suppressed and controlled at all costs. Because of my nursing background I could see how the pill and most other artificial contraceptives were physically destructive to the body, but as I studied more of the theology, I could also see how contraception was spiritually and relationally damaging to couples on a totally different level â?? one that was subtle and often undetected.

Many young couples who are interested in NFP, tell me itâ??s really difficult to find out about it now, because most priests are too embarrassed or afraid to mention it, and it seems it is rarely talked about on marriage preparation courses any more. Itâ??s just assumed that if people are interested they will find out about it themselves, but often they donâ??t know where to look, so they just end up using artificial means because thatâ??s all they know about and no one has explained to them what the Church teaches and why. The contraceptive industry is a massive money making industry and its propoganda has really formed the way our whole society thinks about this issue, so if we are going to challenge this, the Church really needs to get its act together.

And see the Couple to Couple League or Couple to Couple League (UK). Don’t say I don’t provide you with a service.

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The hunt for theology in the UK

Second Aquinas Colloquium – Blackfriars Oxford

We are pleased to reveal that the principal speaker at the 2nd annual colloquium on St Thomas will be Professor John O’Callaghan, Director of Maritain Centre at the University of Notre Dame. Prof. O’Callaghan, author of Thomist realism and the linguistic turn (2003) will be reflecting on the concept of the soul in Aquinas.

He will be joined by two further speakers, Fr Fergus Kerr OP, Director of the Aquinas Institute at Blackfriars, and Fr Vivian Boland OP, lecturer at Blackfriars and Strawberry Hill.

Fergus Kerr will be looking at what St Augustine, St Thomas, and Wittgenstein say about our knowledge of other people’s thoughts.

Vivian Boland will be reflecting on virtue ethics in St Thomas.

Here is the punch-line:

Attendance at the colloquium is by invitation only.

Enough said?

The hunt goes on. Exciting isn’t it?

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Orthodox Readings of Augustine

All the stars will be coming out at the

First International Conference on the

Orthodox Readings of Augustine

at Fordham, NY 14-16 June 2007

Andrew Louth
Lewis Ayres
John Behr
David Bradshaw
Brian Daley, S.J.
Elizabeth Fisher
Carol Harrison
David Hart
Joseph Lienhard, S.J.
Jean-Luc Marion
John McGuckin
John Milbank
David Tracy

I most admire the work of Brian Daley and Andrew Louth. I am chauvinistically proud of the English at the top of their game, Andrew Louth again, John Behr and John Milbank of course. But why isn’t conference organiser Aristotle Papanikolaou giving a paper?

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Theology of the Body in London

I am always ready to talk up any theological discussion going on in the UK, so I’m keeping an eye on Statford Caldecott’s Second Spring which is offering

Theology of the Body – London day conference

Give Me Sensible Reasons To Believe:
the true teaching of the Catholic Church about
SEX SEX and the reasons WHY

A one-day conference for young adults
Saturday 24th February 2007
at Westminster Cathedral Hall
Ambrosden Avenue
London SW1P 1QH

‘The speakers are all young committed Catholics who are living in the real world.
These issues are a part of their lives as they are of yours.’ – Just right for the youth group, then.

Plus –

Theology of the Body Explored – lecture course 2006-7 continues into the spring at St. Patrick’s, Soho Square, London

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SSCE conference

Society for the Study of Christian Ethics conference 2007

The Ideology of Managerialism in Church, Politics and Society

7th-9th September, Wycliffe Hall, Oxford, UK

Presenters include
Professor Michael L. Budde,
Chair of the Department of Political Science,
DePaul University

Professor John Milbank,
Professor in Religion, Politics & Ethics,
Nottingham University

Professor Allen Verhey,
Professor of Christian Ethics, Duke Divinity School

Dr. Bernd Wannenwetsch,
Lecturer in Ethics, Oxford University

Call for papers – The conference committee invite short papers related to the theme of the event and more general outlines of work in progress

* * *

Day Conference on Hans G. Ulrich

The day before the SSCE conference the Society will be holding a Symposium on Hans G. Ulrich‘s (Erlangen) major work on theological ethics, Wie Geschöpfe leben:Konturen evangelischer Ethik (LIT Verlag, 2005) at Harris Manchester College (6th-7th September 2007).

Those responding to Prof Ulrich’s work include: Dr. Markus Bockmuehl (St Andrews); Professor Oliver O’Donovan (New College, Edinburgh); Professor Wolfgang Palaver (Innsbrück); Dr Susan Parsons (Nottingham); Revd Dr Bernd Wannenwetsch (Harris Manchester, Oxford); and Professor John Webster (Aberdeen).

This is an open symposium to which all are invited to attend.

Hans Ulrich, one of Germany’s very finest, is scarcely known outside Germany, so this day conference will be quite an opportunity. Ulrich was Docktorvater to Reinhard Hütter whose Suffering Divine Things and (the rather more accessible) Bound to be Free: Evangelical Catholic Engagements in Ecclesiology, Ethics, and Ecumenism have impressed me almost more than any other books in the last three years, and of Oxford’s Bernd Wannenwetsch whose Political Worship: Ethics for Christian Citizens is the chunkiest and most exciting piece of theology I have seen recently.

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Cosmic Liturgy at Second Spring

How about a Cosmic Liturgy retreat-and-conference at Oxford next Easter?

Cosmic Liturgy

Over Easter 2007 we are offering an educational and spiritual retreat in the heart of Oxford to study the meaning of the Liturgy, drawing on Pope Benedict’s book The Spirit of the Liturgy. The intention is to promote a deeper personal engagement with the Easter Liturgy in dialogue with the Orthodox. The retreat will help us rediscover or better appreciate the following things:

·The vertical dimension of the Liturgy
(and the Church herself) as containing at its heart the sacrifice of the Cross, joining earth to heaven.

·The sacrificial dimension of the sacred Liturgy, tied to a greater sense of the meaning of Holy Eucharist, the Christian priesthood, etc.

·The eschatological dimension of the Liturgy, as a making present of eternity in time, an actual drawing up of the mundane into the realm of the divine.

·The relationship of the external forms of the Liturgy to catechesis, to interior formation and disposition. The place of beauty, structure, symbol, cosmic orientation, language and music in divine worship.

·The Liturgy as something received, something objective, and not something we are can engineer. The essential role of tradition as a vehicle for the Holy Spirit and the organic development of liturgy and community.

·The intrinsic relationship of contemplation to action, of love for God to love for neighbour, in the Liturgy itself. The nuptial anthropology that makes Mass the consummation of a wedding between divine and human nature.

Out of this course, with the experience of a beautiful Easter Liturgy, and some training in the use of the Divine Office and Gregorian Chant, will come refreshment of spirit and a renewed energy to serve God in the world.

See more at Second Spring. Try ‘Mystagogy’ and their Noticeboard-Chatroom. Second Spring, I am impressed.