TONIGHT: Joseph Scheidler lecture

We hope you will be able to join the Notre Dame Vita Institute this evening at 7:30 p.m. in Geddes Hall Auditorium for a lecture, “Sorry We Missed You,” by Joseph Scheidler, National Executive Director and founder of the Pro-Life Action League, who will speak about his over three active decades in the pro-life movement.

Please mark your calendars for next week’s lecture on Tuesday, June 19^th at 7:30 p.m. in the Hesburgh Library Auditorium when Mary O’Callaghan, PhD and InForming Life co-founder and board member, will present a lecture entitled “Prenatal Diagnosis: Embracing and Supporting a Culture of Life.” 

Lumen Christi Conference in Chicago May 31

The Lumen Christi Institute, The Katholische Sozialwissenschaftliche Zentralstelle, and The John U. Nef Committee on Social Thought   present

Toward a Moral Economy Policies and Values for the 21st Century Keynote Address: Reinhard Cardinal Marx, Archbishop of Munich Presentations: Roger Myerson, University of Chicago Kevin M. Murphy, University of Chicago and Russell Hittinger, University of Tulsa  Thursday, May 31, 4:00pm Max Palevsky Cinema Ida Noyes Hall 1212 East 59th Street University of Chicago Registration Required. Event Free and Open to the Public. Register here: http://www.lumenchristi.org/moral_economy/ This event opens the Fourth Lumen Christi Institute Conference on Economics and Catholic Social Thought  and inaugurates the Institute’s Collaboration with the German-American Colloquium of the Katholische Sozialwissenschaftliche Zentralstelle.

As the United States and the global economy continue to reel from the effects of the 2008 financial crisis, we face several questions:  What went wrong? How to prevent another such crisis? Can there be moral responsibility in a globalized economy? What would a moral economy look like?  On May 31, Reinhard Cardinal Marx, the Archbishop of Munich and a leading figure in contemporary Catholic social thought, will explore these questions in a major address, “Toward a Moral Economy.” Two leading University of Chicago economists—Roger Myerson, winner of the 2007 Nobel Prize, and Kevin Murphy, winner of the John Bates Clark Medal and the MacArthur Fellowship—will offer their perspectives. They will be joined by Russell Hittinger, member of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences and co-chair of the Lumen Christi Institute’s Program in Catholic Social Thought. For More Information, http://www.lumenchristi.org/moral_economy/ Questions: info@lumenchristi.org or 773-955-5887 Persons with disabilities requiring assistance, please call 773-955-5887. The Lumen Christi Institute for Catholic Thought was founded in 1997 by Catholic scholars at the University of Chicago. Its intellectual programs complement the work of the Catholic campus ministry and engage the culture of the University of Chicago with resources drawn from the Christian intellectual tradition. The Institute’s programs include lectures, symposia, master classes, and non-credit courses. The Institute also sponsors summer seminars for graduate students, a national Program for Catholic Social Thought, and Cultural Forum events for the educated lay public.

Integritas Seminar IX and Program Mass and Dinner

The Integritas program has concluded for this academic year. We had a final seminar on Vocation, led by Fr. Bill Miscamble, C.S.C., in which the students discussed the difference between finding the way you are called to live and setting out on a career path. We talked about finding meaning and joy in the work of every day, and the challenges of trying to keep the notion of vocation in mind when so much of college seems focused on career preparation.

To wrap up the year, Fr. Miscamble also celebrated Mass for the group and we had one final dinner together. The students look forward to summers of jobs and internships, and many of them are going abroad to study next year. We hope they will take these ideas forward with them into their new adventures.

Integritas Retreat to Gethsemani

At the end of the Easter octave, the Integritas program took a retreat to Gethsemani, KY to pray with the monks of the Trappist monastery where Thomas Merton lived. For an indication of how they found the experience of praying the Liturgy of the Hours with the Trappists, when we returned to campus on Sunday evening, the students headed straight to the Basilica for a vespers service!

Best of the Angelus Award Winning Short Films

Please join us on Saturday, April 28 at 7:30 p.m. in Browning Cinema of the DeBartolo Performing Arts Center for a screening of the best of the Angelus Award winning short films, 2006-2011. The Angelus shorts have annually been screened at Notre Dame during their world tour of film festivals. The series promotes young filmmakers to create values based films, to change the culture in Hollywood. Join us this year as we look back on our favorites. This is a free but ticketed event. Please call (574) 631-2800 to reserve your tickets for the evening. The screening will last approximately 90 minutes, with a reception to follow. All films are appropriate for all age levels; bring your whole family!

CommUniversity Day

Shortly before Easter, the Integritas group participated in CommUniversity Day, a South Bend-wide day of service bringing together students from Notre Dame, St. Mary's College, and Indiana University of South Bend with community members to collaborate on projects for local nonprofit agencies and the city's parks and public spaces. The Integritas students spent two hours at Our Lady of the Road, a drop-in center operated by the Catholic Worker Community, doing some spring cleaning. They deep-cleaned the bathrooms, cleaned out the garden closet, sorted donations, mixed the compost, and prepared the garden beds for spring planting. It was amazing to see how much they were able to accomplish in a short time, and their help was very much appreciated. This weekend, Integritas travels to Gethsemani, Kentucky for a three day retreat at the Trappist monastery where Thomas Merton was a monk.

Integritas Seminar VIII

The Integritas program gathered for its penultimate seminar last night, on "Paths to Holiness." In anticipation of our upcoming retreat to the Trappist monastery of Gethsemani, we read selections from Thomas Merton's Seven Story Mountain and New Seeds of Contemplation. We also read some of the Sayings of the Desert Fathers, and excerpts from G.K. Chesterton's lives of St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Francis of Assisi. Prof. David Fagerberg of the Theology Department led the discussion, which focused on asceticism. He made a distinction between monastic asceticism, which is taken on as a specific vocation through vows, and liturgical asceticism, to which all Christians are called by virtue of their baptism. The lives of a contemplative monk and a young mother might look very different, but both equally require the practice of asceticism. 'Asceticism' comes from the Greek word askesis, which is a bodily activity of discipline and training that also affects the mind. Prof. Fagerberg explained that there are many paths to holiness, but all of them involve asceticism, training our souls to love God above all else, by disciplining our disordered passions and appetites. He emphasized that nothing in the created world is inherently bad, but through our fallen human nature we routinely abuse good things, misusing them and putting them to bad purposes. It takes discipline and self-control to use the goods of creation appropriately.

One student made a connection between liturgical asceticism and the principles of Catholic Social Teaching that we discussed in earlier seminars. By controlling our desires and refraining from excessive consumption, there will be enough resources available for all in need. Also, just as all are called to practice asceticism by virtue of their baptism, all are called to personally live according to the principles of Catholic Social Teaching.

We look forward to our retreat to Gethsemani April 13-15.

Rally for Religious Freedom

This Friday, March 23, there will be a nationwide rally for religious freedom.  At various locations across the country, people will gather at noon to protest the HHS mandate and stand against the violations of the First Amendment.

There will be a rally here in South Bend at

Jon R. Hunt Plaza

211 N. Michigan Street

"Thousands of Americans of all faiths will be participating in these peaceful rallies, organized by the Pro-Life Action League and Citizens for a Pro-Life Society to oppose the new mandate from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) that requires all employers provide free contraceptives, sterilization and abortion-inducing drugs through their health plans, even in violation of their consciences."

For more information about the rally, and for a list of other locations, visit http://standupforreligiousfreedom.com/locations/

The right to worship v. religious freedom

Our diocesan Office of Catechesis is hosting a lecture entitled "The Right to Worship and Religious Freedom: What's the Difference for the Church?" by Fred Everett, Assistant to the Bishop and Director of the Office of Family Life, on Thursday, March 22 at 7 p.m., at Blessed John Paul II Center, 1328 West Dragoon Trail, Mishawaka. It is a free event, but registration is required. Email jmartin@diocesefwsb.org to register.

TODAY: Virtue and Emotion in Aquinas

Today at 4 p.m. in DeBartolo 118, Rev. Nicholas Lombardo, OP will deliver a lecture entitled "Virtue and Emotion in St. Thomas Aquinas." Fr. Nicholas is a 2010 winner of the Templeton Award. He teaches at Catholic University of America. Please join us.

Diocesan Marriage and Family Conference

The Fort Wayne-South Bend Annual Diocesan Marriage and Family conference will be held at McKenna Hall on the campus of the University of Notre Dame March 24. Presenters will include Bishop Kevin Rhoades, Fr. Bob Lengerich, and Fr. David Mary Engo, FFM. Through a combination of plenary sessions and workshops, this conference will explore the Church's rich vision of marriage and family life as it relates to topics such as the theology of the body, family prayer, the family and work, the family as the domestic church, raising teens and dealing with issues such as infertility, divorce and homosexuality. This conference is for adults of all ages and circumstances--married couples, couples preparing for marriage, single parents, college students, clergy, pastoral ministers and anyone else interested in enriching their understanding of the vocation of marriage and family life. To view the conference schedule and register, go to the Notre Dame Conference Center's website.

TODAY: The Cost of Conscience

Today, Friday, March 2 at 4 p.m. in McKenna Hall Auditorium, Prof. O. Carter Snead of the Notre Dame Law School will deliver the Clarke Lecture in medical ethics, entitled "The Cost of Conscience." Reception to follow.

Integritas Seminar VII

Last night the Integritas program held its seventh seminar of the year, on 'Virtue and the Good Life,' led by Prof. Brad Gregory of the History Department. The texts for the seminar included excerpts from the first book of Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics, Wendell Berry's essay "Feminism, the Body and the Machine" and also his poem "Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front."

Through these readings, we explored Aristotle's and Berry's shared conception that the good life for humankind is one that achieves happiness through pursuing the good, cultivating virtue, and living as fully integrated individuals, led by reason and respecting our physical limits. They also both believe individual good to be inseparable from the common good: since humans are social animals, the good life is to be understood as one in which an individual fulfills one's responsibilities to other community members and also benefits from their companionship.

Aristotle examines these ideas principally in the context of a city-state, but Berry sees the family economy as the fundamental context for developing virtue and attaining happiness. Berry identifies many ills of our industrial age, in which quantity and efficiency are the ultimate values and materialistic concerns have crowded out all other values. Work, food production, education, and even sex have become industrialized. As a consequence, marriage has become not the commitment to mutual care and help for the bringing up of healthy children, but rather a tenuous relationship that "has now taken the form of divorce: a prolonged and impassioned negotiation as to how things shall be divided." Consumption, not self-sufficient production, characterizes industrial households, and very few choose to live in a radically different way that could truly call into question the values unconsciously adopted in our quest for convenience, consumption, and ease.

The students engaged in an extended conversation about the role of technology in all of this, fully aware that their lives especially have been inextricably intertwined with more technological gadgets than in any previous age. One student observed that Berry's attitude to technology is that it is to be considered "guilty until proven innocent" because of its tendency to make our work more unconscious, cerebral, and effortless, thus contributing to greater disembodiment and disintegration of ourselves as individuals.

Everyone liked Berry's poem and its command to "everyday, do something that won't compute," and its call to upend the materialistic values of our age. Like Aristotle, Berry recognizes that their is intrinsic value to the actions that our age dismisses as "whimsical," since the goal of life is not productivity or efficiency, but rather happiness.

Carter Snead to deliver Clarke Lecture

Next Friday, March 2 at 4 p.m. in McKenna Hall Auditorium, Prof. O. Carter Snead of the Notre Dame Law School, and incoming Director of the Center, will deliver the Philip & Doris Clarke Family Lecture as part of our Annual Medical Ethics Conference. His lecture is entitled "The Cost of Conscience." Please join us! Reception to follow.

St. Joseph County RTL hosts Dr. Alveda King

Next Tuesday, February 21, Dr. Alveda King, niece of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., will speak on the campus of IUSB. This event was planned in response to the November lecture by Betty Cockrum, president of Indiana Planned Parenthood. It is sponsored by the IUSB Right to Life Club and St. Joseph County Right to Life. The event is free and open to the public. 

Dr. King will speak at 7 p.m. in The Grille, which is the university’s student cafeteria located in the Administration Building. This is the large building that faces Mishawaka Avenue at the northwest corner of the campus. The cafeteria is at the south end of the building. Parking will be free in any campus parking lot. The nearest parking is in those lots that are off South Esther St.

We encourage all of our members to attend this important event—and please bring anyone you think might be interested in hearing Dr. King. We also encourage you to help spread the word through your churches and neighborhoods.