On Dec. 8, 2023, the John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin awarded an honorary doctorate to Professor Carl A. Anderson, founding Dean of the Washington Session of the Institute and past Supreme Knight of the Knights of Columbus.

Rev. Prof. Mirosław Kalinowski, Rector of the Catholic University of Lublin, and His Excellency Wiesław Śmigiel, Bishop of Toruń, addressed the assembled guests in honor of Prof. Anderson. Following the awarding of the honorary degree, Prof. Anderson presented a lecture on the importance of the life and teaching of St. John Paul II for the twenty-first century.

The awards ceremony and Prof. Anderson’s lecture are available to watch on YouTube.

Prof. Anderson served as Vice President of the Washington Session of the Institute from its founding in 1988 until 2022, and was its Dean until 1998. Since 1983, he has also taught as a visiting professor at the Institute’s Rome Session at the Pontifical Lateran University. As Supreme Knight of the Knights of Columbus from 2000 until his retirement in February 2021, he led the world’s largest lay Catholic organization with more than 2 million members worldwide. From 1983 to 1987, he worked in the White House of President Ronald Reagan. For nearly a decade, Professor Anderson served on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. He has been a frequent participant in international congresses on the family organized by the Holy See. In 1998, he was appointed by Pope John Paul II to the Pontifical Academy for Life. He was appointed as an auditor to three Synods of Bishops. He also served as a member of the Pontifical Councils for the Laity and for the Family, and as a consultor to the Pontifical Councils for Justice and Peace and Social Communications. He is the author of A Civilization of Love: What Every Catholic Can Do to Transform the World and co-author of Our Lady of Guadalupe: Mother of the Civilization of Love, both New York Times bestsellers. He was also the editor with Msgr. Livio Melina of The Way of Love: Reflections on Pope Benedict XVI’s Encyclical Deus Caritas Est and co-author with Rev. José Granados of Called to Love: Approaching John Paul II’s Theology of the Body. His most recent book is These Liberties We Hold Sacred: Essays on Faith and Citizenship in the 21st Century.

Retrieving Freedom: The Christian Appropriation of Classical Tradition, the latest work by Institute faculty member D.C. Schindler, received third-place honors in the Faithful Citizenship/Religious Freedom category of the 2023 Catholic Media Association Book Awards, as announced during annual Catholic Media Conference.

The volume is available from the University of Notre Dame Press, in their series  “Catholic Ideas for a Secular World.”

From the publisher:

Retrieving Freedom is a provocative, big-picture book, taking a long view of the “rise and fall” of the classical understanding of freedom.

In response to the evident shortcomings of the notion of freedom that dominates contemporary discourse, Retrieving Freedom seeks to return to the sources of the Western tradition to recover a more adequate understanding. This book begins by setting forth the ancient Greek conception—summarized from the conclusion of D. C. Schindler’s previous tour de force of political and moral reasoning, Freedom from Reality—and the ancient Hebrew conception, arguing that at the heart of the Christian vision of humanity is a novel synthesis of the apparently opposed views of the Greeks and Jews. This synthesis is then taken as a measure that guides an in-depth exploration of landmark figures framing the history of the Christian appropriation of the classical tradition. Schindler conducts his investigation through five different historical periods, focusing in each case on a polarity, a pair of figures who represent the spectrum of views from that time: Plotinus and Augustine from late antiquity, Dionysius the Areopagite and Maximus the Confessor from the patristic period, Anselm and Bernard from the early middle ages, Bonaventure and Aquinas from the high middle ages, and, finally, Godfrey of Fontaines and John Duns Scotus from the late middle ages. In the end, we rediscover dimensions of freedom that have gone missing in contemporary discourse, and thereby identify tasks that remain to be accomplished. Schindler’s masterful study will interest philosophers, political theorists, and students and scholars of intellectual history, especially those who seek an alternative to contemporary philosophical understandings of freedom.annual

From May 30 to June 3, the John Paul II Institute hosted its first Summer Fellowship on “Gender, Technology, and Culture.” Twenty undergraduate and graduate students, as well as recent graduates, from across the U.S. and Canada enjoyed this unique opportunity where academics and cultural activities helped them deepen their understanding of these questions that go to the heart of our current cultural and ecclesial experience. 

Closing seminar summer fellowship

During the morning, Institute faculty members taught seminars on topics including “What is Gender?,” “Sexual Revolutions,” and “The Meaning of Fruitfulness.” Through the Institute’s interdisciplinary approach to education, students were able to think about the themes of the Fellowship from perspectives including theology, law, psychology, philosophy, bioethics, etc.  

Students at the National Gallery of Art
IMG_2575
Afternoons and evenings were devoted to cultural activities in the Washington, DC area, to allow encounters with beauty, art, and nature to contribute to the students’ reflections on our themes. In addition to a concert at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and a hike in Rock Creek Park, the Summer Fellows enjoyed a guided visit to the National Gallery of Art to reflect on the nature of the artistic endeavor and what it reveals about the culture in which it arises. Can we ultimately separate art and culture from ourselves and what we value or consider most important? 

One of the participants highlighted the fruitful relationship
between thought and action: “The fellowship included high academic discussion
and dialogue with professors, and our conversations included an embodiment.
There were trips to the gallery, the symphony… these things weren’t just words,
but living them out in a very creative way.” (Joseph Hempfling)

The topic and dates for the 2024 Summer Fellowship will be announced in the fall semester.

Group of participants

On Tuesday, May 9, the John Paul II Institute celebrated its thirty-fourth graduation liturgy at the Redemptor Hominis Chapel of the Saint John Paul II National Shrine. His Excellency John O. Barres of the Diocese of Rockville Centre was the principal celebrant and homilist. Bishop Barres encouraged the new graduates to root their future work of evangelization in contemplation of “the radiant Face of the Risen Christ.” (full text of homily)

Mr. Patrick Kelly, Chairman of the Institute’s Board of Governors and Supreme Knight of the Knights of Columbus, closed the event with remarks to the graduating class on the co-responsibility of the laity and the clergy for the life of the Church, in particular through her missionary mandate. (full text)

The graduates of 2023 are joined by Dr. David Crawford, Mr. Patrick Kelly, Bishop John Barres, and Fr. Antonio Lopez.

The 2023 graduating class included:

For the Degree of Master of Theological Studies

Maria Teresa Briggs
Carmine Cicalese
Sr. Mary Gabriel Devlin, SV
Christian Duran Pinzon
Emma Girton
Erica Kane
Andrea Polito
Sonny Ramirez
Ailsa Skuodas

For the Degree of Licentiate in Sacred Theology

Fr. Tommaso Badiani

For the Degree of Ph.D. in Theology of Person, Marriage, and Family

Andrew Shivone

Dr. Michael Hanby, Associate Professor of Religion and Philosophy of Science, published the lead article in an online roundtable hosted by the Theopolis Institute.  Dr. Hanby’s article is titled “The Earth is the Lord’s and the Fullness Thereof: Creation ex nihilo and the ‘Rules’ for Theological Engagement with the Sciences.”

Dr. Hanby’s article is the first within a Theopolis Conversation. Over the course of a month after the article’s initial post on February 15, the Theopolis Institute posted a response to the initial article each week. At the conclusion of the month, Dr. Hanby shared a response to his previous respondents titled “There Is Nothing Outside Creation.”

The initial article, the responses, and Dr. Hanby’s final statement can be read on the Theopolis Institute’s website here.

Below is an excerpt from the initial article.

In brief, the “science and theology” question is not first a historical or sociological question because every attempt to post the question will tacitly presuppose an answer to the more basic questions about the nature of being (and the being of nature) in relation to God and the sort of God to which nature is hypothetically related.  Beneath this question, in other words, are the still more primitive questions:  Who is God?  What is the world?  These are the fundamental questions at issue between theology and science.

For the remainder of this essay, therefore, I will attempt to sketch an answer to these questions, to think through creation in its philosophical or metaphysical meaning—by no means its only meaning—to suggest how it might govern theological thinking about modern science and even why it is the rationally superior alternative to modern science.

—Dr. Michael Hanby, Theopolis Conversation “The Earth is the Lord’s and the Fullness Thereof: Creation ex nihilo and the ‘Rules’ for Theological Engagement with the Sciences”

Things to Focus On

A thing…is inseparable from its context, namely, its world, and from our commerce with the thing and its world, namely engagement. The experience of a thing is always and also a bodily and social engagement with the thing’s world. In calling forth a manifold engagement, a thing necessarily provides more than one commodity. Thus a stove used to furnish more than mere warmth. It was a focus, a hearth, a place that gathers the work and leisure of a family and gave the house a center.

—Albert Borgmann, Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life

Humanum: Issues in Family, Culture & Science is the online quarterly review of the Pontifical John Paul II Institute. Read the full issue on the Humanum Review website.

Table of Contents

Re-Source: Classic Texts

Feature Articles

Witness

Book Reviews

  • William R. Hamant: Hyperreality: The Prison of Our Own Device
    Mulder, Frank, Hyperreality: How Our Tools Came to Control Us
  • Matthew John Paul Tan: Playing for Eternity
    Bosman, Frank G., Gaming and the Divine: A New Systematic Theology of Videogames
  • Katrina Bieler: What Does Home Mean?
    Gress, Carrie and Noelle Mering, Theology of Home: Finding the Eternal in the Everyday
    Gress, Carrie and Noelle Mering, Theology of Home II: The Spiritual Act of Homemaking

Statement of Msgr. Philippe Bordeyne, President of the Pontifical John Paul II Theological Institute for Sciences of Marriage and Family, on the 10th anniversary of the election of Pope Francis:

Pope Francis, it has been already 10 years!

13 March 2023 will mark the 10th anniversary of Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s accession to the papacy. Successor to John Paul II and Benedict XVI, who had participated in the Second Vatican Council of bishops or experts, Francis is the heir of it.

Within CELAM, he was involved in the conciliar reception, which the Latin American Episcopate engaged together with the faithful, in a long process of conversion and evangelisation. Looking back, the dynamics of this process can be better understood.

Paying attention to the concrete realities affecting the poorest extends the gesture of God in the Incarnation of His only Son: missionary disciples are called to ‘go forth” and to spread the Good news of the Father’s mercy, following Christ who died and rose again. As the first pope to choose the name of the rich young man who became the “poverello” of Assisi, Francis has never ceased to direct our gaze towards the existential peripheries where the saving action of God’s grace is manifested.

Born from the insights of St. John Paul II, who conceived the original project of a specialised faculty of Theology, implanted in the various cultures, our Pontifical Institute has received a new impetus from Pope Francis following a new Synod on the family. Through the Apostolic Letter Summa familiae cura of 2017, we were entrusted with the mission of practising theology in dialogue with the other sciences, to enable the local Churches to better accompany families, especially those suffering from wounds, and to accompany them by ensuring that the resources of their cultures, renewed by the light of the Gospel, are enhanced.

In daily contacts with students arriving to Rome from over 40 countries, and with the academic authorities of our 10 associated sections and centres, I can see the fruitfulness of this orientation.

In the audience granted to the Institute on 24 October 2022, Pope Francis touched the hearts and minds of our students by inviting them to study not only the conjugal dynamics of marriage, but also the love that develops between siblings, between generations, in the extended family and in relationships of social proximity. In doing so, he has encouraged them to write theses and dissertations that start from the concrete and stimulate actions (hands). This Latin American approach reaches Africa and Asia, where the extended family supports people in the vicissitudes of life. It also offers new perspectives to Western churches. Taking seriously the competences of families to build more fraternal societies is a response to the urgent needs our time, as Francis expresses them in his two social encyclicals, Laudato si’ and Fratelli tutti.

A decade cannot be celebrated in one day; it will take at least a year to become aware of what we have received from Pope Francis, to give thanks and to continue the journey. This is why, at the beginning of this academic year, we asked Professor Richard Gaillardetz, from Boston College, to provide the “lectio inauguralis,” highlighting the ecclesiological challenges of Francis’ pontificate. He showed how synodality belongs to the process of a fresh reception of the Second Vatican Council. This article will soon be available in our review “Anthropotes,” available in e-book format.

Its English version will be published in the March 2023 issue of Theological Studies.

In order to pursue the enhancement, at the international level, of the seeds produced by the pontificate of Francis, we will organise on 25 and 26 May 2023, in collaboration with the Faculty of Theology of the Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro, the COCTI (Conference of Catholic Theological Institutions) and CELAM, an online colloquium on ‘Joy and Fraternity as New Loci Theologici’.

10 years already! As the universal Church continues its journey ‘Towards a Synodal Church’ through continental meetings, we pray the Lord that He may keep Pope Francis in joy and clarity as the barque of St. Peter.

Philippe Bordeyne
President

Dr. D.C. Schindler, Professor of Metaphysics and Anthropology, joined the Institute for Human Ecology for a book panel discussion and lecture on Incomprehensible Certainty: Metaphysics and Hermeneutics of the Image (Notre Dame Press, 2022) by Thomas Pfau, the Alice Mary Baldwin Professor of English at Duke University.

Following Dr. Pfau’s presentation of his book, Dr. Schindler presented comments and joined a panel discussion with Msgr. Robert Sokolowski (Catholic University of America).

Below is video footage from the event which was held on February 28, 2023.

YouTube video

Last night Stanisław Grygiel, a long-time professor at the Central Session of the Institute in Rome and a great friend and collaborator of the faculty of the Washington Session, passed away at the age of 88. 

Having studied at the Pontifical Faculty of Philosophy in Krakow and the Jagiellonian University, Prof. Grygiel earned a doctorate in philosophy at the Catholic University of Lublin under the direction of then-Archbishop Karol Wojtyła. He remained a friend, student, and interpreter of Wojtyła for the rest of his life. Following 20 years as a lecturer in philosophy and editor of the Polish journal Znak, Prof. Grygiel accepted the call of Pope John Paul II to join the original faculty of the newly-founded Pontifical John Paul II Institute in Rome. Prof. Grygiel remained on the faculty as a regular professor until 2007 and then part-time until 2019.

Students at the Washington Session of the Institute will recall Prof. Grygiel as a frequent and beloved visiting professor, as well as the 2013 McGivney Lecturer. His McGivney Lectures, entitled “

Prof. Grygiel once observed that Karol Wojtyła had always been occupied with understanding the human person in terms of love. This point formed the foundation of his own philosophical work as well. As witnessed by his epigram, extra communionem personarum nulla philosophia, Prof. Grygiel’s work centered especially on the human person, deepening our understanding of the person’s communal nature, especially in light of the man-woman relationship. His work reflected upon and developed the great wealth of insight contained in the magisterium of his close friend Saint John Paul II, whose vast works he edited.

His many students and colleagues will remember his intellectual depth, poetic style, and unquenchable curiosity. He exuded not only the philosophical habitus of reflection and openness, but also a memorable charm.

In gratitude for Prof. Grygiel’s teaching and his witness, we pray that he will be received into the radiant light of Christ and rejoice in the communion of saints.

The John Paul II Institute in Washington, DC, joins with the universal Church in thanksgiving for the life and the teaching of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI at his passing into eternal life.

From his long collaboration with the Institute’s founder, St. John Paul II, to his own vast theological writings, to his profound example of faith and humility, Pope Benedict’s life and work are a treasure that will continue to bear fruit in the life of the Church.

We are thankful to God for the child-like simplicity, the impassioned totality, and the indefatigable joyfulness with which Benedict XVI followed Christ and served the Church. He helped all of us to perceive the luminosity of faith and to surrender to Christ’s life-giving beauty. He taught us to discover God’s love and to grow human by living in the memory of that ever-greater love. Although a note of sadness for his departure remains, the certainty that he will continue to accompany us from the house of the Father and the hope that we may one day sit together at the heavenly table give us peace. This certainty also encourages us to ask to be allowed to live more fully for the Eternal and to carry out our task more profoundly and joyfully for the sake of the Church.

At this moment, we also recall particularly the times that Benedict XVI spent with the Institute community and are grateful for his paternal care for our work:  

Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger: Jesus Christ: Yesterday, Today, and Forever (January 20, 1990)

Benedict XVI: Address to the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family, on the 25th Anniversary of Its Foundation (May 11, 2006)

Benedict XVI: Address to the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family, on the 30th Anniversary of Its Foundation (May 13, 2011)

We pray for Pope Emeritus Benedict, who has fallen asleep in the Lord: may the eternal Shepherd receive him into his kingdom of light and peace.