Department of Catholic Studies

As a part of its Modern Catholicism Lecture Series, the Department of Catholic Studies hosted a lecture by Fr. Peter Mitchell. Fr. Peter Mitchell defended his doctorate in Church History at the Pontifical Gregorian University Rome, in 2009.

As a part of its Catholic Life in Literature series, the Department of Catholic Studies at Seton Hall University hosted a reading from "Vipers' Tangle" by Francois Mauriac, which was presented by Dr. James McGlone, Professor Emeritus of Communication and Catholic Studies, and the Celtic Theater Company, featuring the Yates family.

When the deeply Confucian and culturally Orthodox literati of Beijing and Shanghai first encountered Catholic missionaries in the late Ming dynasty (1368-1644), China and the West inaugurated several centuries of uneasy dialogue and intercultural adjustments. Dr. Anthony E. Clark, Edward B. Lindaman Chair in Chinese History at Whitworth University, presents a talk on the turbulent Catholic history in Beijing and Shanghai as those two cities entered modernity and were later transformed into the pivotal centers of Chinese Communist rule. Presented in collaboration with the Asian studies Program, Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures

After nine centuries of schism, new ecumenical impulses especially since the Second Vatican Council are leading Eastern Orthodox and Catholics to a new relationship. In a Common Declaration in 1965, Pope Paul VI and Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras I of Constantinople, together aimed to remove from the midst of the Church the mutual sentences of excommunication of 1054, calling for dialogue to resolve issues separating them, and to lead towards full communion. This program will illustrate how far the Orthodox-Catholic dialogue has come. Msgr. Paul McPartlan, S.T.L., D. Phil. “The Achievements of the International Orthodox-Catholic Dialogue.” Msgr. McPartlan is The Carl J. Peter Professor of Systematic Theology and Ecumenism, and Acting Dean, School of Theology and Religious Studies at the Catholic University of America Professor Paul Meyendorff, M.Div., Ph.D. “Steps Toward a Reunited Church: A Sketch of an Orthodox-Catholic Vision for the Future” The 2010 publication of The North American Orthodox-Catholic Theological Consultation. Professor Meyendorff is the Alexander Schmemann Professor of Liturgical Theology, and Director of Continuing Education at St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary. 

The Gospels show the special attention Jesus pays to his own and other people's Hunger and reveal how being hungry is the good news branded on the human flesh and deserves to be highly considered. But God's pecularity also emerges from the matter of food that He - putting Himself above the Law and the Prophets - declares to be uncontaminated. The Gospels gently introduce the Son of God through a scarcely regarded detail: the action of cooking. What does this simple action, which distinguishes men from any other living being, tell us about the Son of God? And what do the Gospels suggest about the risen Christ when they tell He cooked bread and fish? What idea of the risen body do the Gospels let us imagine?

Internet replicates older forms of the transmission of the knowledge of our life, it gives shape to desires and values that are as old as the human being. When we look at the internet, it is not just to see the perspectives on the future that it offers, but also the desires that human beings have always had, and to which they attempt to respond, which means relationships, communication and knowledge. How to deal with the question of spirituality when the Web has become a part of the fabric of everyday life?

In 1982 Dr. Colasanti, in Rome (Italy) founded a medical center with the specific purpose of helping illegal immigrants and Roma people, all of whom were afraid to seek medical treatment in Rome. The mission of the Center was to work on medicine of migration and poverty, tropical diseases, and trans-cultural psychiatry for the migrants. It was something unique in the landscape of Italian medicine: the birth of a real laboratory for social medicine that would change medical practices. This first experience was not only a means and way to give medical aid to the poor but, at the same time, a way to recreate a new way to practice medicine. This mystical "core" of generosity, has neither "why" nor "purpose". It is without reasons because it comes from the deepest part of our essence, grounded in the presence of our God in ourselves.

The Global Christian Forum is a recent development responding to a new situation among Christians. For more than a century, mainline churches, Catholic, Protestant, Anglican, Orthodox, have been involved in the modern ecumenical movement, and after centuries of division, have achieved new levels of unity and reconciliation. Together these mainline churches represent about 1.8 billion Christians. But a new development especially in the 21st century is that some of the fastest growing Christian communities in the world are Pentecostal (more than 600,000,000 million) and evangelical groups who have generally not been involved in the ecumenical movement, and in some ways have even been hostile to that movement. The Global Christian Forum (GCF) was conceived fifteen years ago, to bridge this gap by finding ways of bringing mainline Christian churches and growing numbers of Pentecostals and Evangelicals into contact with each other. The GCF is supported by the Vatican Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, the World Council of Churches, the Orthodox churches and many others. Increasingly the Pentecostal and Evangelical organizations are supporting it as well.

From the Council of Chalcedon up to Justinian’s reconquest of Italy (451-536), numerous imperial interventions in church affairs reflect the complexity of the conflict which opposed the major ecclesiastical sees, Rome, Constantinople and Alexandria. In addition to changes in doctrine, this period of history saw major changes in the organization and power structure of the Church. Each see tried to define principles of government based on its particular understanding of the tradition and of the canons, to strengthen its influence, and to justify its claims of authority. To this end, imperial and public support had to be secured. This involved, among other things, the development of symbolic discourse and complex editorial campaigns. From this remarkable conflict emerged a tremendously consequential concept: Justinian’s pentarchic model.

Edwin O'Connor's Pulitzer prize winning novel The Edge of Sadness is a penetrating look into the soul of a vibrant and humbly profound spiritual existence that has been neglected in modern fiction. It records the rituals, governance, and congregational personality of the Roman Catholic Church in the United States that scarcely ten years later will have almost completely disappeared.

In the light of the Gospel and the Catholic spiritual tradition, the talk will explore the new relationship established by Christ between the sacred and the profane. Is it really possible that what was once considered profane - our broken world - is now the place of the sacred, and what was once hopelessly lost, and beyond the pale, is now the center?

Since Vatican II, the Catholic Church and the Baptist World Alliance have engaged in two phases of international Baptist–Catholic dialogue. The first phase, 1984-1988, published a report entitled "Summons to Witness to Christ in Today’s World." The second phase, 2006-2010, on which the program focuses, published its report entitled "The Word of God in the Life of the Church." That report addressed controversial issues between Baptists and Catholics since the sixteenth century Reformation. These include the relationship between Scripture and tradition, Baptism and the Lord's Supper/ Eucharist, the role of Mary in the Church, the Ministry of Oversight and Unity in the life of the Church. Pope Benedict XVI encouraged the dialogue members when he met them on December 6, 2007, saying "If our hope for reconciliation and greater fellowship between Baptists and Catholics is to be realized, issues such as these need to be faced together, in a spirit of openness, mutual respect and fidelity to the liberating truth and saving power of the Gospel of Jesus Christ." The report shows the important areas of consensus and convergence, as well as the continuing differences on these issues discovered by the dialogue. Bishop Arthur Serratelli and Dr. Timothy George, who both participated in this dialogue, will present their views on its importance and its achievements.

In his lecture, Fr. Kelly will provide an overview of the way Catholics have engaged in sport from the medieval period to the present and then develop a contemporary “spirituality of sport” by making use of the flow theory of psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. The flow theory is helpful for developing such a spirituality because of the close attention Csikszentmihalyi and his researchers have paid to the experiences of young people participating in games and sports over the years. That theory is also useful, because some of the basic characteristics of the flow experience – such as living fully in the present moment, a loss of consciousness of self, a sense of growth, a sense of being part of some greater entity, and an altered sense of time – are similar to the characteristics of the spiritual life as these have traditionally been described by spiritual writers. Using the flow experience as a starting point in this lecture, Fr. Kelly will propose several concrete ways the experiences of young people in sports are related to human growth and self-transcendence and can serve as preparation for the kind of spiritual life described by such figures as Thomas Aquinas, Ignatius of Loyola and Pope Francis.

From the speaker: The lecture is based on my forthcoming book (Fall 2014, Northern Illinois U Press), in which I explore the history of the medieval belief that St. Jerome invented the Glagolitic letters of the Slavs and translated the Bible and the Roman liturgy into Slavonic. I investigate the emergence of this legend in Dalmatia and the circumstances of its spread to Bohemia and Poland. Now largely forgotten, the legend of the Slavic descent of St. Jerome was used by political and religious leaders from Rome to Bohemia and beyond for nearly five hundred years until it was debunked by eighteenth-century scholars. I examine this belief within the context of wider European historical and theological thought and show that it had an effect far beyond the Slavic world.

Communication is the foundation of human interaction, connection, and community. It's the essence of interpersonal relationships, organizational and workplace life. Communication occurs in multiple contexts and forms and across institutions and networks, which usually results in challenges for the interacting parties. The more individuals involved in the communication act, the more complex the interaction and the greater the likelihood of miscommunication. The channel selected to convey a message also affects the communication process and its outcomes for participants. Given the complexities of communication, organizations struggle with communicating effectively with internal and external stakeholders. As organizations, churches are confronted with communication challenges about how to reach congregations and potential members, share their message and mission, and ways in which to build community among its members. Successfully overcoming these challenges hinges upon organizational communication competencies that involve an institutional understanding of the communication process, its elements, forms and the rules that guide interactions in specific contexts. This presentation examines social media, and the implications of this communication channel for church organizations. Social media platforms, the challenges and opportunities presented by social media, and recommendations for church communication practices involving social media are discussed with the intent of advancing organizational communication competencies in churches.

Chesterton’s social philosophy is called Distributism. By this name, he meant that a free people must belong to a property-owning democracy. Distributists wanted property distributed as widely as possible in order to guarantee political liberty. In a truly free nation, they believed citizens must be as independent as possible of both governments and of large corporations. For that reason, Distributism is opposed both to State Socialism and to Monopoly Capitalism. In a sense, Distributism belongs to the tradition somewhat misleadingly named "Philosophical Anarchism." Dorothy Day, like Chesterton, belonged to this tradition, and she was not afraid to describe herself as a “Catholic Anarchist.”