2016-2017 Lectures in Catholic Experience
Information for
2016-2017 LCE Past Lectures
Events
Families, Love, and Justice: The Vision of Pope Francis
Pope Francis is beloved by many because he locates the heart of Christian faith in justice and care for the most vulnerable, including the very poor and the earth itself. Both in his actions and his public statements, his focus on social justice has been extraordinarily consistent and powerful. Yet he chose to utilize a synod of bishops to bring attention not to poverty or environmental destruction but to the family. The he followed up with an authoritative document of his own, Amoris Laetitia (The Joy of Love). Why is the social justice pope so concerned with families? How does he connect love and justice? Can this pope's vision of marriage and family connect with new generations of Christians?
Julie Hanlon Rubio is Professor of Christian Ethics in the Department of Theological Studies at St. Louis University. Her research brings the resrouces of Catholic social thought, moral theology, and social science to contemporary discussions of marriage, family, sex, and gender. She is the author of three books: A Christian Theology of Marriage and Family (Paulist 2003), Family Ethics: Practices for Christians (Georgetown 2010) and, most recently, Hope for Common Ground: Mediating the Personal and the Political in a Divided Church (Georgetown 2016). She is a board member of National Catholic Reporter and the National Seminar on Jesuit Higher Education. Her current project is on feminist theology and the family.
Living with the Dragon
We like to say that the world needs more Canada. But it is actually going to get more China. A lot more.
Drawing on three decades of diplomatic experience in Asia, David Mulroney explains how China's rise is reverberating across Canada. He encourages us to respond with skill and confidence, making smart policy choices to promote our prosperity, our security, and, equally important, our values. He brings to this last topic, engaging China at the level of values, the perspective of a Catholic public servant who struggled to live his faith in an often unfriendly environment.
David Mulroney is President and Vice-Chancellor of the University of St. Michael's College, the Catholic federated university within the University of Toronto. He has more than 30 years in Canada's Public Service, including as ambassador to the People's Republic of China from 2009 to 2012.
Mr. Mulroney is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the University of Toronto's Munk School of Global Affairs, a Distinguished Fellow of the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada, and an Honorary Fellow of the University of St. Michael's College. He is a recipient of the Queen's Diamond Jubilee Medal, the University of Toronto's Arbor Award and in June 2015 received an honorary Doctor of Laws front Western University. His book Middle Power, Middle Kingdom was awarded the J. W. Dafoe Prize for 2016.
The Scandal of Grace
Amid the ruins of an abandoned cathedral where homeless families were living, Shane and his community caught a fresh vision of what it means to be the Church. With ancient stories of the early Christians, contemporary stories of ordinary radicals, stories from the streets of Philly and the war zone of Iraq, Shane will invite us to re-imagine what it means to be the Body of Christ alive in the world. He will reflect on the scandal of God's inclusive love in a world that is starved for grace.
Shane Claiborne is a best-selling author, renowned activist, sought-after speaker, and self-proclaimed "recovering sinner". Shane writes and speaks around the world about peacemaking, social justice, and Jesus, and is the author of numerous books including The Irresistible Revolution, Jesus for President, and his newest book, Executing Grace (June 2016).
He is a visionary founder of The Simple Way in Philadelphia, and Executive Director of Red Letter Christians. His work has been featured in Fox News, Esquire, SPIN, the Wall Street Journal, NPR, and CNN.
Integration, Transformation and Reconciliation: TRC Calls to Action and Laudato Si'
Using personal stories and experiences, allegory and imagery, Sr. Solomon will reflect on the calls to transformation and reconciliation among our peoples and with our natural world. She will reflect on how her personal integration of Anishinabek and Roman Catholic Spirituality enlightens her path to reconciliation. Sr. Solomon will invite listeners to use the transformative power of story and imagery to engage with others in creating a new reality in our country.
Priscilla Solomon, CSJ, is a Sister of St. Joseph of Sault Ste. Marie. Her work in the Faith and Justice Office of her Congregation has most recently focused on Indigenous rights, right relations, healing and reconciliation between Indigenous Peoples and Settler Peoples in Canada as well as on ecological justice issues.
Sr. Solomon is an Ojibway of the Anishinabek Nation. She has been involved in the Catholic responses to the TRC’s Calls to Action regarding Terra Nullius and the Doctrine of Discovery, the Canadian Religious Conference ON-JPIC, and in Kairos responses to the TRC. She also works with Sister Eva Solomon in the Western Assembly of Catholic Bishops’ Building Bridges program which is focused on Indigenous inculturation and interculturation of faith.
52 Minutes of Silence: Finding Words for the Inexpressible
In most pockets of journalism, the assignment is pretty clear: tell the story with clarity, accuracy, and speed, elbowing out the competition wherever possible.
When your beat is religion/spirituality/what‐it‐means‐to‐be‐human, things get a little murky. This is the most rewarding ‐ and the most frustrating ‐ subject matter in journalism. The conversations can be profound, provocative, hilarious, heart‐breaking. But trying to write headlines for the ineffable? Attempting to find language for the inexpressible? Simply trying to signal what any given episode is about can be akin to banging your head against the wall. For a living.
Mary Hynes is the host of Tapestry, CBC Radio’s award-winning weekly programme about spirituality and the search for meaning. Before finding religion (the beat), Hynes worked on radio and television shows about news, books and sports. She has covered three Olympic Games (Seoul, Calgary, Barcelona), reported from 23 countries, and is a former sports reporter for The Globe and Mail..
In television, Hynes helped launch TVO’s daily programme, Studio 2, working as co-host during the first two seasons. She later hosted Imprint, the network’s show about the world of books. At CBC Radio One, Hynes has written and hosted award-winning programmes on sports and the human body.
Bugs in the Bible: An Intertextual Approach
From traditional Christian crosses to Jewish menorahs, from rainbow patterns to butterfly wings, The Saint John’s Bible stands as a fine example of intertextuality with visual leitmotifs running through its pages, connecting one book and story to another. While the images are certainly beautiful to look at, they also serve a deeper purpose in the Bible’s sacred story. Using depictions from The Saint John’s Bible as the basis for the discussion, Fr. Michael Patella, the chair of the Committee on Illumination and Text for the Bible, will explore the meaning of these leitmotifs and the role they play in the composition of The Saint John’s Bible itself.
A Benedictine monk of Saint John’s Abbey in Collegeville, Minnesota, Fr. Michael Patella is a professor of New Testament and teaches in both the undergraduate theology department and the graduate School of Theology at Saint John’s University, where he serves as seminary rector and the director of the graduate school’s Holy Land Studies Program. He has published on Luke, Mark, Paul, angels, demons, art and theology, and has written for The Bible Today and Give Us This Day. His most recent book, Word and Image: the Hermeneutics of The Saint John’s Bible, the fruit of his work as a chair of the Committee on Illumination and Texts for The Saint John’s Bible, won a Catholic Press Association Award.
Uncomfortable Pews: Canada's Christians and the Making of Confederation, 1867
Very little has been written on how the Christian churches of Britain’s North American Colonies engaged with the movement to federate the colonies. The rather meagre nod to the work of the churches in the 1860s is surprising given the issues at play during the events leading up to Confederation in 1867. The colonies were torn apart by sectarian and linguistic tensions, often focused on issues surrounding religious education, the separation of church and state, and the place of religion in public life. This lecture takes a trans-denominational and trans-Atlantic approach to the Christian churches in British North America, contextualizing their concerns within global Christianity at the time, while highlighting local issues affected by the proposed Confederation.
Mark McGowan is professor of History at the University of Toronto and serves as the Senior Academic Advisor to the Dean of Arts & Science on International matters. From 2002 to 2011 he served as Principal of St. Michael’s College. He specializes in the social and religious history of Canada, with an interest in the Irish Famine migration to Canada, and in levels of Irish recruitment in the British Empire during the Great War. In 2009, his book Death or Canada was the basis for a joint Canada-Ireland docudrama on the Famine. His fourth monograph — The Imperial Irish: Canada’s Irish Catholics Fight the Great War, 1914-1918 — is upcoming.