Keeping the World Awake to God: Conference on Vatican II in January 2012

Communio is pleased to announce a forthcoming conference on the campus of The Catholic University of America in Washington, DC, January 12-14, 2012. Sponsored by the Pontifical John Paul II Institute and co-sponsored by Communio, “‘Keeping the World Awake to God’: The Challenge of Vatican II” marks the 50th anniversary of the convocation of the Council. The program, participant list, and registration information may be found here.

Topics include “Vatican II and the Catholic Contribution to Metaphysics,” “The Catholicity of the Council,” “Holiness, World, and the Meaning of Work,” “Religious Freedom and American Culture,” “Family and the Identity of the Person,” and “God, the Church, and Scientific Intelligibility.”

Speakers include Supreme Knight Carl Anderson, Catholic University of America President John Garvey, Francis Cardinal George, Communio authors and editors David L. Schindler, Nicholas J. Healy Jr., D. C. Schindler, Adrian J. Walker, Giorgio Buccellati, Antonio Lopez, FSCB, Roch Kereszty, O. Cist., Margaret H. McCarthy, and others.

From the conference description:

The main purpose of the conference is thus to provide an authoritative grille de lecture for approaching the Council as a whole in its significance for the Tradition and in relation to the current “signs of the times.” The letter of the conciliar documents, taken as a whole, contains a hermeneutical center radiating outwards from the doctrine contained in Dei Verbum and Lumen Gentium and illuminating the Council’s teaching on mission, inter-religious dialogue, modernity, religious freedom, and the like. . . . (read the complete text).

Michael Hanby: Human Making in a Sacramental Cosmos

From the Summer 2011 issue on “Work”:

Michael Hanby (bio). Homo Faber and/or Homo Adorans: On the Place of Human Making in a Sacramental Cosmos.

From the text:

Where there is no contemplation, there can be neither great art (save under the irrepressible form of suffering) nor great festivity, for without a contemplative openness to the mystery of being there can be no gratitude and joy in its gratuity. Where there is neither great art nor great festivity, there can be no “priority of man over things” and ultimately be no genuinely human and humane making, whether beautiful or useful. Where there is no priority of man over things, work ceases to be “for man”; man lives “for work,” and our instruments become our masters. . . .  Read the full text.

Michael Hanby is assistant professor of biotechnology and culture at the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family at The Catholic University of America.

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David L. Schindler. The Given as Gift: Creation and Disciplinary Abstraction in Science

From the Spring 2011 issue, on the theme of “Ascension and Pentecost”:

David L. Schindler. Creation and Disciplinary Abstraction in Science (pdf).

From the text:

The upshot is that abstractions in science are not and can never be indifferent to the reality of God or a universe under God. Each abstraction in science will imply, even if unconsciously, some conception of the unity or identity of the thing abstracted relative to God and to the universal community of beings. The God-world distinction as disclosed in the act of creation shapes the primitive nature of all distinctions, and hence all abstractions, in the cosmos. Indeed, every distinction and abstraction most basically implies a sense of the God-world relation. . . . (full text)

DAVID L. SCHINDLER (bio) is Provost and Gagnon Professor of Fundamental Theology at the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family at The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.

Also by this author:

Norris Clarke on Person, Being, and St. Thomas. (1993) | Religious Freedom, Truth, and American Liberalism: Another Look at John Courtney Murray. (1994) | Homelessness and the Modern Condition: The Family, Community, and the Global Economy. (2000) | Is Truth Ugly? Moralism and the Convertibility of Being and Love. (2000) | Creation and Nuptiality: A Reflection on Feminism in Light of Schmemann’s Liturgical Theology. (2001) | Toward a Culture of Life: The Eucharist, the ‘Restoration’ of Creation, and the ‘Worldy’ Task of the Laity. (2002) | Biotechnology and the Givenness of the Good: Posing Properly the Moral Question Regarding Human Dignity. (2004) |  The Dramatic Nature of Life: Liberal Societies and the Foundations of Human Dignity. (2006) | In memoriam: Patricia Buckley Bozell. (2008) | The Embodied Person as Gift and the Cultural Task in America: Status Quaestionis. (2008) | Editorial: President Obama, Notre Dame, and a Dialogue That Witnesses: A Question for Father Jenkins. (2009) | Living and Thinking Reality in Its Integrity: Originary Experience, God, and the Task of Education (2010) | The Anthropological Vision of Caritas in veritate in Light of Cultural and Economic Life in the United States.

The Feast of the Transfiguration

José Granados, dcjm, (bio) Embodied Light, Incarnate Image: The Mystery of Jesus Transfigured. (pdf, 2008).

From the text:

What is new and surprising in Christ is that in him we see not only a fraction of the past, but the ultimate origin from which everything comes; that he foreshadows not only a slice of the future, but the ultimate goal of the universe. In the life of the Son, time encounters its own truth by making visible the depths of eternity.

Now the glory of the one who eternally comes from the Father and eternally returns to him in love enters into the flesh, into the space where past and future, coming from and walking toward, memory and promise, are joined in the density of the present. We see then how Christ can fulfill the human experience of time beyond what is imaginable while faithfully preserving its structure. These reflections allow us to see in the Transfiguration a key to understanding the rhythm of salvation history. That the glory of Easter is anticipated on Mount Tabor is no exception, but rather a witness to Christ’s dominion over time, including the past and future. The second epistle of Peter tells us, indeed, that the Transfiguration validates the Old Testament in retrospect. From this point of view it is possible to see how the prophets and the just of the Old Testament were justified by the Spirit of Christ. We can glimpse also the meaning of Tertullian’s sentence, quoted in Gaudium et spes 22, in which he sees in the image of man a prefiguration of Christ’s image: “Thus that clay, already putting on the image of Christ who was to be in the flesh, was not only a work of God but also a token of him.” (full text)

More on the Transfiguration. More by José Granados.

Mark Sebanc. Tolkien: Lover of the Logos

From the Spring 1993 issue: Mark Sebanc, JRR Tolkien: Lover of the Logos (pdf).

From the text:

Tolkien’s is an exquisitely proleptic art that takes a pagan, pre-Christian universe and suffuses it discreetly with a sacramental holiness stemming implicitly from what Balthasar makes bold to call a Christian form. . . . . Like a colossus, Tolkien bestrides the abyss which separates the ancient and medieval worldviews from that of modern man, who has utterly lost sight of the Christ form as the primary means of access to the noumenal world. The power of the Word has been repudiated, and all around us now we see only its debased and slatternly distortions, hideous and mass-produced, like Tolkien’s Orcs. Tolkien’s art restores the incarnational, Christo-logical inclination of language. . . .  (full text).

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Jonah Lynch. Mirth and Freedom in The Magic Flute

From the Winter, 2006 issue: Jonah Lynch, Mirth and Freedom in The Magic Flute (pdf).

From the text:

Indeed no words can better be used to describe Mozart’s music than “sublime” and “natural.” Beethoven is heroic, tragic—although at the end, he too can be sublime, with the autumnal serenity of a warrior turned contemplative; Bach erects his marvelously ornate cathedrals of sound—and occasionally he too passes into a timeless realm which could be truly termed sublime, though rarely natural. But Mozart’s melodies carry something of the birth of an infant God, the remarkable union of opposite absolutes, total simplicity and infinite depth. Only here is the completely free and ever-surprising united to formal structural perfection. Mozart speaks with human words, as God spoke his Word through a birth, a life, and a death. Yet in those simple events lay the Incarnation, the eternal mission of the Son from the Father, suffering which destroys death, and transfiguration into deathless life. (full text)

Also by Jonah Lynch:  Music, Silence, and Technology

“What is Life?” conference in Krakow, June 2011

Adrian J. Walker, Robert Spaemann, David L. Schindler

A variety of Communio editors and authors participated in the June 2011 conference in Krakow, “What Is Life?: Theology, Science, and Philosophy”  organized by the Centre of Theology and Philosophy (Nottingham).

Participants included editors David L. Schindler, Adrian Walker, and D. C. Schindler; editorial board members Tracey Rowland, Antonio Lopez,  and Stratford Caldecott; and contributors Aaron Riches, Conor Cunningham, John Milbank, Robert Spaemann, Louis Dupre, Remi Brague, Simon Oliver, Mark Shiffman, Larry Chapp, John McCarthy, John Betz, Peter M. Candler, Martin Bieler, Javier Martinez, and others. (See the conference program here.) Photos courtesy Dr. Eric Austin Lee.

D. C. Schindler, John Milbank, Adrian J. Walker, Fr. John Behr

Rémi Brague, Conor Cunningham, Agata Bielik-Robson

Cardinal Scola Roundup

Below is an assortment of links to articles on Cardinal Angelo Scola. A longtime editor of the Italian Communio and frequent contributor to the English language edition, Cardinal Scola (currently Cardinal Patriarch of Venice) was appointed Cardinal Archbishop of Milan last week by Pope Benedict XVI.

Cardinal Scola is going back home. To Milan. (Sandro Magister). Meet the New Crown Prince of Catholicism (John Allen).  ‘A certain faith paves the way to open dialogue’ (Interview with  Inside the Vatican). Cardinal Scola Appointed Archbishop of Milan (National Catholic Register) Benedict’s ‘School of Community’: Venice’s Scola to Milan (Whispers in the Loggia).

Watch a Youtube video of Cardinal Scola at the 2010 Rimini meeting here.

A selection of Communio articles by Cardinal Scola available online (pdf):

The Dignity and Mission of Women: The Anthropological and Theological Foundations  (1998).

Freedom, Grace, and Destiny (1998)

Human Freedom and Truth According to the Encyclical Fides et Ratio (1999).

Which Foundation? Introductory Notes (2001)

Education and Integral Experience (2003)

The Nuptial Mystery: A Perspective for Systematic Theology? (2003)

The Unity of Love and the Face of Man: An Invitation to Read Deus caritas est (2006)

See the entire list in the Communio Author Index.

Cardinal Ouellet

Here is another brief article on Cardinal Ouellet, from Whispers in the Loggia.

From the text:

As the appointment made Cardinal Marc Ouellet one of the Roman Curia’s “Big Three” and only served to further burnish a unique resume that’s taken the Quebecois from Communio articles to Latin American seminaries, a Roman professorship, prominent ecumenical posting and seven years at the helm of Canada’s oldest diocese, perhaps the immediate uptick of talk dubbing the Sulpician prelate a leading papabile would’ve been more conspicuous by its absence. Still, having capped his first year leading the “Thursday table” of the Congregation for Bishops with the move of a fellow member of the pontiff’s “kitchen cabinet” to the helm of Europe’s largest diocese, the media-friendly cardinal-prefect has gone on the record to address speculation of his odds in a potential Conclave, saying that, for him, being Pope “would be a nightmare.” (Go to the article).

Cardinal Ouellet’s articles in Communio:

Paradox and/or Supernatural Existential (1991) The New Catechism: An Event of the Faith (1994) Woe to Me If I Do Not Preach the Gospel (1994) The Mystery of Easter and the Culture of Death (1996) Priestly Ministry at the Service of Ecclesial Communion (1996) Jesus Christ, the One Savior of the World, Yesterday, Today, and Forever (1997) Covenantal Justice (2000) Mary and the Future of Ecumenism (2003) Theological Perspectives on Marriage (2004)

Read more about Cardinal Ouellet here. See a complete list of his articles here.

D. C. Schindler. Enriching the Good: Toward the Development of a Relational Anthropology

From the Winter, 2010 issue:

D.C. Schindler (bio). Enriching the Good: Toward the Development of a Relational Anthropology

From the text:

[W]ealth is not simply a collection of possessions (or indeed an abstract measurement of their monetary value) but more fundamentally a way of being, and specifically, being good. A response to the problem of poverty requires, before some sort of redistribution of wealth, more radically a reconception of wealth, and so an “enrichment” of the notion of the good, or it risks reinforcing the individualistic atomism at the root of poverty.

Ultimately, in order to overcome the poverty of individualism, which is a spiritual poverty at the root of material poverty, we must think of the common good in its most transcendent sense, and this entails a recovery of the Platonic understanding of goodness. (full text)

Also by D.C. Schindler:

Freedom Beyond Our Choosing: Augustine on the Will and Its Objects (2002). Surprised by Truth: The Drama of Reason in Fundamental Theology (2004). ‘Wie kommt der Mensch in die Theologie?’: Heidegger, Hegel, and the Stakes of Onto-Theo-Logy. (2005). The Redemption of Eros: Philosophical Reflections on Benedict XVI’s First Encyclical. (2006). Truth and the Christian Imagination: The Reformation of Causality and the Iconoclasm of the Spirit. (2006). Why We Need Paul Claudel. (2007). Restlessness as an Image of God. (2007). Why Socrates Didn’t Charge. Plato and the Metaphysics of Money. (2009). On Experience and Reason (2010).