“Heaven, Hell, . . .  and Purgatory?”
June 10, 2013, 7 p.m. - June 12, 2013, noon
Loyola University, Baltimore, Maryland

About the Center from the February “While We’re At It“:

. . . to be commended is the Center for Catholic and Evangelical Theology. “Central to the Center,” writes the director, Michael Root of the Catholic University of America (and First Things writer), “has always been a commitment to a ‘thick’ ecumenism, an ecumenical outlook based on the conviction that common reflection on the basis of the great christological and trinitarian tradition the churches share should be at the heart of ecumenism.”

The center—founded by the Lutheran patriarchs Robert Jenson and Carl Braaten in 1991—rejects both “a reduction to a lowest common denominator or a retreat into an ‘enclave theology,’ concerned only with its own confessional standards. Interesting theology, theology that serves both the Church and the Christian life, comes out of such an encounter with the density of the tradition. At a time when ecumenism is lagging, a commitment to the fundamental theological work is essential.”

The center publishes the very good journal Pro Ecclesia (for which the editor has written) and a new book series called Pro Ecclesia Books, the first volume of which is The Morally Divided Body: Ethical Disagreement and the Disunity of the Church.

Among the speakers will be Paul Griffiths, Ralph Wood, and David Yeago.

More information here.

The great Italian politician Giulio Andreotti, nicknamed the “Eternal One,” has passed away at the age of 94. The seven-times Prime Minister was an unassuming man:

Andreotti would go to a different church every morning, and always leave as soon as Mass was over. He would never leave the house without a dozen or more envelopes, in each of which was a 10,000 lira note. These would be dispensed to the beggars that stand at every church door in Rome, or to any who approached him in the street. He often wore a green Loden coat, the preferred dress of the European integrationist, along with deliberately unfashionable spectacles.

Andreotti was one of those men, who though married, was of deeply clerical appearance and demeanour. . . . “He’s very reserved. He will never tell you what he is thinking. . . .”

The death of Giulio Andreotti—a Christian Democrat in the mold of Konrad Adenauer—“marks a milestone in Italian, indeed European, history,” says the Catholic Herald.

An Evening with Professor Hadley Arkes:

Reflections on his book First Things

Wednesday, May 8, 2013
5:30-8:00 p.m.

Penn Club
30. 44th Street W
New York, NY

This event will mark the 25th anniversary of Arkes’ book First Things and the 40th anniversary of the course from which it had sprung. Frank Beckwith and Diana Schaub will speak about their experiences in teaching the book and the reactions of their students over the years, followed by comments from two generations of students, including combinations of parents and children, who have been through Professor Arkes’ course

RSVP here.

Unfortunately, says Peters, while Freitas, in her new book The End of Sex, hits the bullseye with her understanding and description of the dynamics of the college hookup culture, she offers no alternative. Rather, she dismisses the “vocal minority of sexually conservative college students” that offers the alternative because it is attached to “right-wing religious politics.” And when Freitas attempts to go beyond these politics and reclaim abstinence for the liberal side, her “abstinence within reason” turns out to have no good reason at all. As Peters says,

She claims that her ultimate goal is “to help make available a set of diverse structures through which students can make the best, most informed choices they can about their bodies and their lives.” But that “best” has no deeper foundation than how people feel. What about those who instrumentalize others in sex and feel good about it? . . . She founds her solutions on the same relativism, emotivism, and pragmatism behind the problem she seeks to combat.

More here.

“The God Particle . . . and Me:
A Quantum Leap from the Subatomic to the Human”

Saturday, April 13, 2013
6:30 p.m.
American Bible Society
1865 Broadway (corner of 61st Street)
New York, NY

The event is open to the public and free of charge.

More information here.

“It seems to me,” he says, “that the situation of deadlock is the result of the perception of the political adversary as an enemy whose influence must be neutralized or at least reduced to the minimum.” This does not sound unlike liberal-conservative culture wars in the United States today. “But,” he goes on, “the outcome of these efforts has led to a clear conclusion: it is impossible to reduce the other to zero.”

What is needed rather is an understanding of the other, with his differences, as primarily a good in himself and secondarily a resource for the common good. This “affirmation of the value of the other and the common good” should be held “above all other interests of party.” Society must hold its citizens as more valuable than politics itself:

If the substance of those who serve this great work that is politics lies only in politics, there is not much to hope for. Lacking any other sure foundation, they will necessarily grasp at politics and personal power and, in the case in question, will see conflict as the only chance for survival. But politics is not sufficient unto itself. This has never been as clear as it is today.

To quote Neuhaus:

First Things means, first, that the first thing to be said about public life is that public life is not the first thing. First Things means, second, that there are first things, in the sense of first principles, for the right ordering of public life. . . . Authentic religion keeps the political enterprise humble by reminding it that it is not the first thing.

Carrón, in answering the question of how the Church should confront the current situation in Italy says, “I do not believe it is by intervening in the political arena as one of the many competing parts and opinions. The contribution of the Church is much more radical.”

Alex Massie hails Margaret Thatcher as “an accidental libertarian heroine.” In Massie’s telling, Thatcher was an economic liberal and a social conservative (in fact she was one of the few Conservative MPs to vote for decriminalizing homosexuality and also voted in favor of liberalizing abortion—but let us allow Massie his characterization). Despite Thatcher’s social conservatism, Massie says, “her triumph on the economic front contributed to her defeat in the social arena.”

Massie sees this as a good thing. He goes on to say, “There has always been a tension between economic liberalism and social conservatism. At some point and as we have, I think, seen, the two become incompatible.” It is rather economic liberalism and social liberalism, he says, that “are dance partners, taking turns to lead.” That’s lovely. But wrong.

Massie holds that “if the individual should be freed in the economic realm then individuals should be granted greater liberties in their own lives as well. But the economics come first.” But his thinking is upside down.

As John Courtney Murray in We Hold These Truths states:

Part of the inner architecture of the American ideal of freedom has been the profound conviction that only a virtuous people can be free. It is not an American belief that free government is inevitable, only that it is possible, and that its possibility can be realized only when the people as a whole are inwardly governed by the recognized imperatives of the universal moral law.

Moreover, Murray writes, we would be wise to remember Lord Acton’s phrase that freedom is “not the power of doing what we like, but the right of being able to do what we ought.” One lesson taught by the legacy of Thatcher is that economic liberalism should let social conservatism take the lead if it doesn’t want to trip over its own feet.

The name, by the way, comes from Flannery O’Connor who used the term in a 1955 letter regarding an upcoming TV interview:

“Everybody who has read Wise Blood thinks I’m a hillbilly nihilist, whereas I would like to create the impression over the television that I’m a hillbilly Thomist, but I will probably not be able to think of anything to say to [the interviewer] but ‘Huh?’ and ‘Ah dunno.’ When I come back I’ll probably have to spend three months day and night in the chicken pen to counteract these evil influences.”

“The God Particle… and Me:
A Quantum Leap from the Subatomic to the Human”

Saturday, April 13, 2013
6:30 p.m.
American Bible Society
1865 Broadway (corner of 61st Street)
New York, NY

The event is open to the public and free of charge.

More information here.

According to Vatican Insider, new chemical and mechanical tests carried out at the University of Padua offer further evidence that the Shroud of Turin, the piece of cloth said to have covered the body of Jesus when he was laid in the tomb, does indeed date back to the first century. Professor Giulio Fanti and journalist Saverio Gaeta have published the news in a book  Il Mistero della Sindone (The Mystery of the Shroud), which comes out tomorrow. Fanti’s findings will also be published in a magazine and assessed by a scientific committee.