Wisdom and Discipleship: Honoring Francis Cardinal George
The Saint Benedict Forum is pleased to partner with their friends at the Lumen Christi Institute and Aquinas College to honor the great Francis Cardinal George, O.M.I., who passed away last year. On Tuesday, April 5th, at 7:00...
A Godly Humanism:Wisdom and Discipleship in the Thought of Francis Cardinal George
Tuesday, April 5th, 7:00 p.m.
Wege Ballroom Aquinas College 1607 Robinson Road SE
Free and Open to the Public
The Saint Benedict Forum is pleased to partner with their friends at the Lumen Christi Institute and Aquinas College to honor the great Francis Cardinal George, O.M.I., who passed away last year.
Bishop David Walkowiak will be present to open us in prayer and share a little about his friend, the late Cardinal. John Pinheiro, professor of history and director of the Catholic Studies Program at Aquinas, and Omar Gutierrez, Special Assistant to the Archbishop and Manager of the Office of Missions and Justice in the Archdiocese of Omaha, will both speak on Cardinal George's final book, A Godly Humanism: Clarifying the Hope That Lies Within, published posthumously.
Finished by Cardinal George nine days before his death, A Godly Humanism offers an account of the Catholic intellectual life by one of the most gifted thinkers to serve as bishop in the American Church. It draws on figures such as St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. John Paul II, and Pope Benedict XVI to express a vision of the Church as a communion built around the relationship of God to human beings and of human beings to one another. The book provides a starting point for the interpretation of “Pope Francis’s Magisterium [as] evidence of another horizon having been opened more clearly for believers.”
Gay and Christian: Exploring Vocation, Friendship, and Celibacy
The Saint Benedict Forum is pleased to host an ecumenical symposium, "Gay and Christian: Exploring Friendship, Vocation, and Celibacy." Eve Tushnet, Wesley Hill, and Joshua Gonnerman will all be speaking at this timely event. The symposium is free and open to the public.
The Saint Benedict Forum was pleased to host Eve Tushnet, Joshua Gonnerman, and Ron Belgau for a powerful symposium on Gay and Christian: Exploring Vocation, Friendship, and Celibacyon Monday, February 22, 2016 at Hope College. All three speakers gave powerful testimonies and inspired a diverse crowd of 300 students, faculty, administration, parishioners, and others.
The three talks were:
“The Radical Challenge of Gay Celibacy”Eve Tushnet
“A Different Conversation: Changing How We Think about Gay Politics” Joshua Gonnerman
“Understanding the Bible's Teaching on Homosexuality”Ron Belgau
See below for the video of the talks.
Ron Belgau is the cofounder of Spiritual Friendship, an ecumenical group blog dedicated to recovering the Church's traditional teachings on friendship and applying them to contemporary debates about homosexuality. He has studied philosophy at the graduate level at St. Louis University and Notre Dame, and has taught ethics, medical ethics, and philosophy of the Human Person at St. Louis University. He is a nationally known speaker, and in 2015 became the first openly gay Catholic to speak at the World Meeting of Families, in conjunction with Pope Francis's visit to Philadelphia
Joshua Gonnerman is a writer and doctoral student in theology at The Catholic University of America, writing his dissertation on Augustine's theology of grace and predestination. His articles have appeared in First Things, Spiritual Friendship, and PRISM Magazine.
Eve Tushnet is the author Gay and Catholic: Accepting My Sexuality, Finding Community, Living My Faith and Amends: A Novel. She lives in Washington, DC. Hobbies include sin, confession, and ecstasy. She blogs at Patheos and has covered topics ranging from pro-life horror movies to the US National Figure Skating Championships. She was received into the Catholic Church in 1998.
This event is co-sponsored by Hope College's Religion Department, Women's and Gender Studies, Campus Ministries, Center for Ministry Studies, GRACES, and the Our Sunday Visitor Institute.
"Mary is a Christian Thing": Director Jared Ortiz Speaks on Mary to Protestant Students
On December 15, Dr. Jared Ortiz spoke to 800 students at Holland Christian High School about the meaning of Mary and how she can help us prepare to receive Christ at Christmas. Watch the video.
On December 15, Dr. Jared Ortiz spoke to 800 students at Holland Christian High School about the meaning of Mary and how she can help us prepare to receive Christ at Christmas. Ortiz's talk begins around 4:55.
Eduardo Echeverria Discusses Catholic-Reformed Dialogue
On March 5th, Eduardo J. Echeverria, Professor of Philosophy and Theology at Sacred Heart Seminary in Detroit and a leading voice in Catholic-Reformed dialogue, delivered a lecture entitled “Catholic and Reformed Ecumenism: Basis, Boundaries, and Benefits.” Echeverria, a scholar of the Dutch Reformed theologian G.C. Berkouwer (1903-1996), gave a fascinating presentation on Berkouwer’s developing views on the Catholic Church. He also used Berkouwer’s position to illustrate the parameters of Catholic-Reformed dialogue. Mark Husbands, the Leonard and Marjorie Maas Professor of Reformed Theology at Hope College, offered a response, which generated a fruitful and challenging discussion.
Leading up to the event, scholars at Hope met together over a series of meals to discuss Vatican II’s Unitatis Redintegratio and Berkouwer’s The Second Vatican Council and the New Catholicism. This facilitated a friendly and lively exchange between members of the two traditions. Following Echeverria’s talk, this same group met together to continue the dialogue. The Saint Benedict Forum will continue to host events in Catholic-Reformed dialogue to deepen this important conversation between the College’s founding tradition and the Catholic Church.