Join us for a lecture by George Weigel on his book, To Sanctify the World: The Vital Legacy of Vatican II. Book sale and signing to follow. A livestream is available here.

Join William Saunders, J.D., Director of the M.A. in Human Rights, and Mark Rienzi, J.D., President of Becket Law, as they discuss this one-year program and answer your questions.

Part-time options and scholarships are available.

Register for the info session: https://cua.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_a7lbkvlYStyQu-IHjtcEaA

Learn more: MAhumanrights.com

The IHE is proud to host a book panel on Soldiers of God in a Secular World: Catholic Theology and Twentieth Century French Politics (Harvard Press, 2021) by Sarah Shortall (Notre Dame).

Secularism has been a cornerstone of French political culture since 1905, when the republic formalized the separation of church and state. At times the barrier of secularism has seemed impenetrable, stifling religious actors wishing to take part in political life. Yet in other instances, secularism has actually nurtured movements of the faithful. Soldiers of God in a Secular World explores one such case, that of the nouvelle théologie, or new theology. Developed in the interwar years by Jesuits and Dominicans, the nouvelle théologie reimagined the Church’s relationship to public life, encouraging political activism, engaging with secular philosophy, and inspiring doctrinal changes adopted by the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s.

Nouveaux théologiens charted a path between the old alliance of throne and altar and secularism’s demand for the privatization of religion. Envisioning a Church in but not of the public sphere, Catholic thinkers drew on theological principles to intervene in political questions while claiming to remain at arm’s length from politics proper. Sarah Shortall argues that this “counter-politics” was central to the mission of the nouveaux théologiens: by recoding political statements in the ostensibly apolitical language of doctrine, priests were able to enter into debates over fascism and communism, democracy and human rights, colonialism and nuclear war. This approach found its highest expression during the Second World War, when the nouveaux théologiens led the spiritual resistance against Nazism. Claiming a powerful public voice, they collectively forged a new role for the Church amid the momentous political shifts of the twentieth century.

The panel will take place on Wednesday, January 11 at 3:00 p.m. A livestream is available here.

Panelists:

Dr. Sarah Shortall is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Notre Dame. is an intellectual and cultural historian of modern Europe, with a particular interest in modern France, Catholic thought, and the relationship between religion and politics.  She teaches courses on modern French history, the history of Catholicism, and European intellectual history.  In addition to these themes, her research also explores the history of science, secularization theory, human rights, decolonization, and the global circulation of religious ideas.

Shortall’s first book, Soldiers of God in a Secular World: Catholic Theology and Twentieth-Century French Politics (Harvard University Press, 2021), has received several awards, including the Laurence Wylie Prize in French Cultural Studies and the Giuseppe Alberigo Award from the European Academy of Religion.  The book examines the impact of Catholic theology on French politics after the separation of Church and state in 1905, showing how the continuing role of theology in an ostensibly secular public sphere disrupts prevailing ideas about the nature and scope of the political in the modern world. Shortall is currently at work on a second book, tentatively called Planetary Catholicism.  It explores how Catholics have imagined the global as a theological, ecological, and political problem since the Second World War, and asks how these religious visions have interacted with other forms of global consciousness rooted in international law, science, politics, and the economy.

In addition to these projects, Shortall has co-edited a volume of essays titled Christianity and Human Rights Reconsidered (Cambridge University Press, 2020), and her work has appeared in Past & Present, Modern Intellectual History, Journal of the History of Ideas, Boston Review, Commonweal, and The Immanent Frame.  Prior to joining the faculty at Notre Dame, Shortall was a Junior Research Fellow at Oxford University.

Dr. Russell Hittinger is a leading scholar of Catholic political and social thought. From 1996-2019, Dr. Hittinger was the incumbent of the William K. Warren Chair of Catholic Studies at the University of Tulsa, where he was also a Research Professor in the School of Law. He has taught at the University of Chicago, Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology, Fordham University, Princeton University, New York University, Providence College, and Charles University in Prague. In January 2020, Dr. Hittinger gave the Aquinas Lecture at Blackfriars, Oxford.

Since 2001, he is a member of the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas, to which he was elected a full member (ordinarius) in 2004, and appointed to the consilium or governing board from 2006-2018. On 8 September 2009, Pope Benedict XVI appointed Dr. Hittinger as an ordinarius in the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, in which he finished his ten-year term in 2019.

He is currently a Fellow at the Institute for Human Ecology at The Catholic University of America, where he also serves as the inaugural co-Director of the Program in Catholic Political Thought.

Dr. Peter Casarella is Professor of Theolgy at Duke Divinity School. His primary field of study is systematic theology followed by world religions and world church. He was appointed to the faculty of Duke Divinity School as of July 1, 2020. Formerly, he was an associate professor of theology at the University of Notre Dame from 2013-2020 and served as director of the Latin American North American Church Concerns (LANACC) project in the Kellogg Institute for International Studies. He served as professor of Catholic Studies from 2007-2013 at DePaul University, where he was also the founding director of the Center for World Catholicism and Intercultural Theology. He has published ninety-one essays in scholarly journals or books on a variety of topics including medieval Christian Neoplatonism, contemporary theological aesthetics, intercultural thought, and the Hispanic/Latino presence in the U.S. Catholic Church. He served as president of The American Cusanus Society, The Academy of Catholic Hispanic Theologians in the U.S. (ACHTUS), and the Academy of Catholic Theologians (ACT).

He is currently serving a second five-year term on the International Roman Catholic-Baptist World Alliance Ecumenical Dialogue and served also on the Roman Catholic-World Communion of Reformed Churches Dialogue. He has published a monograph, Word as Bread: Language and Theology in Nicholas of Cusa (2017) and a collection of his own essays, Reverberations of the Word: Wounded Beauty in Global Catholicism (2020). He has also edited or co-edited: Cuerpo de Cristo: The Hispanic Presence in the U.S. Catholic Church (1998), Christian Spirituality and the Culture of Modernity: The Thought of Louis Dupré (1998), Cusanus: The Legacy of Learned Ignorance (2006), A World for All? Global Civil Society in Political Theory and Trinitarian Theology (2011), and, most recently, The Whole is Greater than its Parts: Ecumenism and Inter-religious Encounters in the Age of Pope Francis (2020). He is currently working on a book titled: The God of the People: A Latinx Theology.

The Institute for Human Ecology and the Catholic Information Center are hosting a panel discussion to celebrate the life and legacy of Pope Benedict XVI.

The discussion will focus on Pope Benedict’s intellectual legacy, his engagement with modernity, and his teaching on religious freedom as both a human right and avenue for evangelization. The panel will also consider the Pope’s pastoral care and development of Church reforms.

A livestream is available here.

Moderator:

Joseph Capizzi

Joseph Capizzi, Ph.D. in Theology, is the Executive Director of the Institute for Human Ecology and an Ordinary Professor of Moral Theology at The Catholic University of America. He has published widely on just war theory, bioethics, the history of moral theology, and political liberalism. Dr. Capizzi worked as a research fellow at the VADM James B. Stockdale Center for Ethical Leadership at the U.S. Naval Academy from 2013 to 2014.

Panelists:

Ed Condon

Ed Condon is the co-founder and editor of The Pillar, the online Catholic news site. Previously the DC editor of the Catholic News Agency and an associate editor of the Catholic Herald magazine, his writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, National Review, the Washington Examiner, the Spectator, the Bulwark, First Things, as well as several academic and legal journals. He is also a canon lawyer, having practiced in dioceses across three continents and the Holy See. Previously he spent nearly ten years working in professional politics in the United Kingdom.

Fr. Aquinas Guilbeau

A native of Louisiana, Fr. Aquinas Guilbeau became Catholic University of America’s Chaplain and Director of Campus Ministry in the summer of 2022. He entered the Dominican Province of St. Joseph in 2005. After several years of pastoral work in New York City, Fr. Guilbeau began doctoral studies in moral theology at the University of Fribourg, where he completed a dissertation on St. Thomas Aquinas’s doctrine of the common good. In addition to his teaching, Fr. Guilbeau serves as senior editor of Aleteia.org (English edition).

Andrea Picciotti-Bayer

Andrea PIcciotti-Bayer is Director of the Conscience Project. A Stanford-educated lawyer, she has dedicated her legal career to civil rights and appellate advocacy. She got her start in the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. Andrea is a legal analyst for EWTN News, a regular columnist for the National Catholic Register and frequent guest on EWTN’s News Nightly. In 2021, Andrea received First Place for Best Coverage — Religious Liberty Issues from the Catholic Media Association. Andrea’s writing has also appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, National Review, Newsweek, CNN en Espanol and other well-regarded publications. Andrea is a Media Fellow and Strategic Consultant at the Institute for Human Ecology at The Catholic University of America. Andrea lived in Colombia for over a decade. She has ten children and lives in the Washington, DC area.

Join the IHE for a panel discussion on “Catholicism and Nationalism: Are They Compatible?”

A recording is available here.

Panelists:

Ross Douthat is a columnist at The New York Times and IHE Media Fellow.

Michael Brendan Dougherty is a Senior Writer at National Review Online.

R. R. Reno is Editor at First Things.

Jennifer Frey is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of South Carolina and an IHE Scholar.

V. Bradley Lewis is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the Catholic University of America and IHE Scholar.

Join the IHE and the Busch School of Business for a screening of “The Hong Konger,” a film about Jimmy Lai’s freedom struggle.

A reception and discussion with Bill McGurn of the Wall Street Journal will follow.

Watch the trailer here.

Join the IHE and The Lamp for a discussion on “The Catholic Imagination: An Incoherent Idea?” with Matthew Walther, Jaspreet Singh Boparai, Jane Clark Scharl, and James Matthew Wilson.

A livestream is available here.

Matthew Walther is editor of The Lamp.

Jaspreet Singh Boparai is a former academic and a frequent contributor to The Lamp. He was trained initially as a classicist and was the final student of the late Professor Philip Ford; his was the last-ever PhD awarded in the Department of neo-Latin at Cambridge. He was educated at Corpus Christi College, Oxford; the Courtauld Institute of Art; the Warburg Institute; the École normale supérieure in Paris; and Clare College, Cambridge, where he completed a dissertation on the history of classical scholarship.

Jane Clark Scharl is a poet, essayist, and playwright. Her work has been featured on the BBC and in many journals and magazines, including The Hopkins Review, The New Ohio Review, The American Journal of Poetry, and, of course, The Lamp. Her first play, a verse drama in which St. Ignatius of Loyola, John Calvin, and Francois Rabelais must solve a Mardi Gras murder before Lent begins, will open as a staged reading in New York this year. She lives in Detroit with her husband and their two children.

James Matthew Wilson has published eleven books, including his most recent book of poems, The Strangeness of the Good (Angelico, 2022). He is Cullen Foundation Chair in English Literature at the University of Saint Thomas, in Houston, where he founded the MFA program in Creative Writing, the first such program to be rooted fully in the Catholic intellectual and literary tradition. He serves also as Poet-in-Residence for the Benedict XVI Institute, Editor of Colosseum Books, and Poetry Editor of Modern Age magazine.

Guests must register here for the event: https://berkleycenter.georgetown.edu/events/just-war-theory-roundtable-discussion

Join us for a virtual event on the topic, “Is the Intellectual Life too Intellectual?”

The link for the event is available here.

Jason Paone is an IHE Graduate Scholar and Editor at Word on Fire Academic

Kevin Kambo is an IHE Faculty Scholar and Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Dallas.

The Master of Arts in Human Rights will be offering a virtual information session on Wednesday, November 2.

Program Director William Saunders and MA in Human Rights Alum Elizabeth Kirk will give a presentation on the program and be available to answer questions.

Register at: MAhumanrights.com

William Saunders, Program Director, MA in Human Rights 

Elizabeth Kirk, Research Assistant with RFI’s Freedom of Religious Institutions in Society Project

Samuel Pomeroy will speak on the topic of “Early Christianity, National Pluralism, and International Law.”

Samuel Pomeroy (Ph.D, Leuven, 2019) is an Alexander von Humboldt Post-doctoral fellow at the University of Münster (Germany) working at the Origen Research Center (Forschungsstelle Origenes). His book Chrysostom as Exegete (Brill) won the Lautenschlaeger Award for Theological Promise in 2022. He previously studied in the School of Divinity at the University of St Andrews (2013). He is a graduate of the Honors Program at Baylor University (2012) where he studied Philosophy and Great Texts.

Jack Butler, IHE Media Fellow and Submissions Editor at National Review, will speak on the promises and perils of national conservatism.

A livestream is available here.

Father Kevin Flannery, S.J., will deliver the fifth annual Human Rights Lecture. He will examine the concept of conscience and its basis in synderesis, looking especially at the work of Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, and Thomas More.

A livestream is available here.

Communism is perhaps the greatest threat humanity has ever faced. It has murdered more innocent people than any political system in history and has imprisoned millions more. In the last century, it threatened to engulf the world, but even today it controls the world’s largest nation and threatens to spread. Join Dr. William Saunders of the IHE and Dr. Lee Edwards who founded the Victims of Communism Museum to discuss the lessons we can learn from resistance to communism in the past in order to confront and defeat it in the present.

This event is co-sponsored by Faith and Law.

Dr. Lee Edwards is adjunct professor of politics at the Catholic University of America and co-founder of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation in Washington, D.C.

His books include biographies of Ronald Reagan, Barry Goldwater, William F. Buckley, Jr. and Edwin Meese III as well as histories of The Heritage Foundation and the American conservative movement. His most recent works include “A Brief History of the Cold War” (2016), written with Elizabeth Edwards Spalding, and his autobiography, “Just Right: A Life in Pursuit of Liberty” (2017).

Edwards was the founding director of the Institute of Political Journalism at Georgetown University and a fellow at the Institute of Politics at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He is a past president of the Philadelphia Society and a media fellow at the Hoover Institution.

Edwards received a doctorate in world politics from Catholic University as well as a doctor of humane letters degree from Grove City College. He did graduate work at the Sorbonne in Paris. He holds a bachelor of arts degree in English from Duke University.

William Saunders is a graduate of the Harvard Law School, who has been involved in issues of public policy, law and ethics for thirty years. A regular columnist for the National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly, Mr. Saunders has written widely on these topics, as well as on Catholic social teaching. He has given lectures in law schools and colleges throughout the United States and the world. He is the Director of the Program in Human Rights for the Institute for Human Ecology.

The IHE’s First Annual Lecture on Catholic Political Thought will be delivered by Professor Russell Hittinger, who has recently joined the IHE and The Catholic University of America. The lecture is entitled “How to Inherit a Kingdom: Reflections on the Situation of Catholic Political Thought.”

This event will take place on Thursday, October 6 at 3:30 p.m. at Heritage Hall, Catholic University of America.

A reception with refreshments will follow.

A livestream is available here.

Dr. Russell Hittinger is a leading scholar of Catholic political and social thought. From 1996-2019, Dr. Hittinger was the incumbent of the William K. Warren Chair of Catholic Studies at the University of Tulsa, where he was also a Research Professor in the School of Law. He has taught at the University of Chicago, Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology, Fordham University, Princeton University, New York University, Providence College, and Charles University in Prague. In January 2020, Dr. Hittinger gave the Aquinas Lecture at Blackfriars, Oxford.

Since 2001, he is a member of the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas, to which he was elected a full member (ordinarius) in 2004, and appointed to the consilium or governing board from 2006-2018. On 8 September 2009, Pope Benedict XVI appointed Dr. Hittinger as an ordinarius in the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, in which he finished his ten-year term in 2019.

He is currently a Fellow at the Institute for Human Ecology at The Catholic University of America, where he also serves as the inaugural co-Director of the Program in Catholic Political Thought.

Join the IHE for a ceremony celebrating the conferral of the Society of Catholic Social Scientist’s Pope Pius XI Award, its highest honor, upon Brad Wilcox. Dr. Wilcox will deliver a speech on “The Paradox of Marriage.” A reception with light refreshments will follow the event.

Catholic University’s Department of Sociology and Society of Catholic Social Scientists will co-sponsor the event.

October 4 at 5:00 PM. Happel Room, Caldwell Hall, Catholic University of America.

Unguarded explores a revolutionary Brazilian prison system centered on the full recovery and rehabilitation of the person.

A panel will follow the screening. Panelists:

Hannah Chesterton (Department of Sociology)

Michael Massey (National School of Social Service)

Mary Graw Leary (Columbus School of Law)

Jim Blum (Founder and Director of “My Father’s House”)

Simoneta d’Italia Wiener (Director of Unguarded)

The Center for Law and the Human Person and the Office of the Provost are co-sponsoring this event.

Join the IHE for the Third Annual Constitution Day Lecture. The lecture will focus on the importance of the Constitution on college and university campuses and will consider the implications of constitutional law for educational institutions today.

Join the IHE for a round-table discussion of Just War Theory and its relevance for foreign policy.

Panelists include:

• Congressman Jerry McNerney
• Joe Capizzi, Catholic University
• Eric Patterson, Religious Freedom Institute
• Paul Miller, Georgetown
• Melissa Moschella, Catholic University
• Maryann Cusimano Love, Catholic University
• Marc Livecche, Providence Magazine

The IHE is proud to co-sponsor Baylor in Washington’s 2022 Summer Workshop.

Each summer, Baylor in Washington hosts an academic seminar in our nation’s capital examining key issues at the intersection of faith, ethics, and public policy. These discussion-based seminars are designed for young professionals and rising academics seeking to integrate their beliefs with questions they encounter in their intellectual and professional endeavors. This summer, our seminar is entitled “Political Theology: What Does Christianity Teach About Politics?”

Applications are due May 20 and are available here.

The Civitas Dei Summer Fellowship, sponsored by the Institute for Human Ecology at The Catholic University of America and the Thomistic Institute at the Dominican House of Studies, offers competitive fellowships for graduate students (and a few advanced undergraduates) in the sciences, humanities, and law. Accepted fellows attend a fully-funded, week-long seminar in Washington, DC where, under the leadership of distinguished scholars, they engage core questions of culture and public life in light of Catholic thought.

More information here.