Fr. Romanus Cessario, O.P., has joined the Patrick F. Taylor Graduate Programs in Theology at Ave Maria University. Fr. Romanus will occupy the Adam Cardinal Maida Chair of Theology. Here’s the post on the new appointment at the Theology Department blog.
UD alumni received an email today informing us that Tom Hibbs has been named our ninth president. I can’t tell you how thrilled I am about this news. Hibbs seemed one of the obvious choices to me and was on my personal short list. UD is (in my humble opinion) among the best of The Newman Guide schools. Through the travails of the past few decades, under leadership that often seemed (to put it mildly) out of step with its spirit, UD somehow managed to maintain its excellent and demanding core, which really is its heart. Hibbs is also a UD alumnus, so I know he gets that.
Congratulations to the Board of Trustees and the search committee on this superb choice!
Our readers, I’m sure, are aware of Hibbs’s work in the Thomistic tradition.
Fran O’Rourke informs us of the fourth Symposium Thomisticum coming up this summer in Rome. I have copied and pasted below the complete information as provided by Dr. O’Rourke. Notice the call for papers. The deadline for abstracts is January 1 and the deadline for completed papers is June 1.
The fourth Symposium Thomisticum will take place in Rome, 4 – 6 July 2019.
Theme of the symposium will be ‘Aquinas Philosopher Theologian’.
The venue is the Collegio Irlandese, centrally located near the church of St John Lateran.
Details are available at www.ucd.ie/philosophy/symposiumthomisticum (google Symposium Thomisticum).
Speakers will include Serge-Thomas Bonino, Therese Cory, Kevin Flannery, Joshua Hochschild, Ed Houser, Gyula Klima, Patrick Masterson, Siobhan Nash-Marshall, John O’Callaghan, Paul O’Grady, Fran O’Rourke, Alice Ramos, Andrea Robiglio, Mary Catherine Sommers, Rudi Te Velde, Candace Vogler, Giovanni Ventimiglia, Kevin White. Other speakers to be confirmed.
Papers are invited for supplementary parallel sessions on the afternoon of Saturday 6 July. While topics on any aspect of Aquinas are welcome, priority will be given to those relating to philosophy and theology. To avoid overlap, initial proposals should be sent by email to Fran O’Rourke, Emeritus Professor, School of Philosophy, University College Dublin (orourke@ucd.ie).
The deadline for abstracts is 1 January, and for completed papers 1 June 2019.
Papers will be circulated in advance; summaries will be presented at the symposium: papers will be discusssed rather than read.
Participation fee will be €150 to include refreshments and the conference banquet. Reduced student registration: €125.
Accommodation: Rooms are available at the Collegio Irlandese, approx $100 for bed and breakfast. All rooms are air conditioned; there is a swimming pool in the spacious grounds.
All inquiries to Fran O’Rourke, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy, University College Dublin (orourke@ucd.ie).
Ed Feser announced a couple days ago on his blog that his new book Aristotle’s Revenge: The Metaphysical Foundations of Physical and Biological Science will be out early next year from Editiones Scholasticae. I’m looking forward to it and I’m sure many of our readers are too. For more info see his post.
Last November I posted on the new "Thomist Tradition" series being launched by Cluny Media under the editorial direction of Cajetan Cuddy, OP. The purpose of the series, as its page at the Cluny Media site states, is to "make available the key texts of figures—both classic and contemporary, major and minor—who rightly claim membership in the living tradition which bears the intellectual imprint of their master, Thomas."
Last year, the first volume in the series was released: T.C. O'Brien's Metaphysics and the Existence of God. After making due for several years with PDF files of the original three articles from The Thomist, I was thrilled that a hard copy was being re-issued and I bought it right away.
Hot off the presses we now have Joseph Clifford Fenton's What is Sacred Theology? Fenton's book, which was first published in 1941, was originally titled The Concept of Sacred Theology and was the doctoral dissertation he wrote under the direction of Garrigou-Lagrange. You can get it here.
I should mention that the books that are being re-issued in the "Thomist Tradition" series aren't simply re-prints of the originals. A note on the series page states that each re-issue includes:
This is an admirable initiative. I hope you'll check it out for yourself and pick up copies of the great O'Brien and Fenton books while you're at it.
RJ Matava just brought my attention to a new book by Basile Valuet, OSB on St. Thomas's teaching on predestination, grace, and free will. It's the second volume of a projected four volume series that, according to a blurb from its publicity flyer, "cherche à déterminer quelle est l’authentique doctrine de l’Église catholique sur les rapports entre Dieu et la liberté humaine, essentielle quant à l’intelligence de notre destinée." The series title is Dieu joueur d’échecs? Prédestination, grâce et libre arbitre and the title of this second volume is Relecture de saint Thomas d’Aquin.
Fr. Basile is the prefect of studies at the Abbaye Sainte-Madeleine du Barroux. He was also recently appointed to the scientific committee of the Revue Thomiste. His series is published by the abbey's Éditions Sainte-Madeleine. You can purchase the second volume from the abbey bookstore here.
Our beloved Fr. Matthew Lamb died early yesterday morning due to complications from blood clotting in his lungs and pulmonary fibrosis. Fr. Lamb was a wonderful and generous friend, colleague, professor, and mentor at AMU. He was also a fine theologian and scholar. The University, the graduate theology program, and the Church owe him a great deal.
JD Flynn has published a short piece on Fr. Lamb at the Catholic News Agency here.
It was a rare homily in which Fr. Lamb didn't mention the "portals of death." Now he has passed through them. He will be greatly missed. Requiescat in pace.
A link at Ed Feser's blog today alerted me to an exciting new initiative. Cluny Media, which I'm learning about for the first time, is launching a new book series entitled "The Thomist Tradition." According to the series page at Cluny Media's website, the series "conveys a dual conviction":
1. The thought of St. Thomas Aquinas contains an incomparable fullness of wisdom.
2. The writings of the Thomists who followed him play a necessary role in mediating his wisdom to subsequent generations.
This is great! The series editor is the estimable Cajetan Cuddy, OP. Here's a list of currently available and forthcoming titles:
T.C. O'Brien, Metaphysics and the Existence of God (now available)
Joseph Clifford Fenton, The Concept of Sacred Theology (Christmas 2017)
Thomas U. Mullaney and Walter R. Farrell, Natural Law and Human Freedom: Thomistic Investigations (July 2018)
Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, The Eucharist (a new translation of De Eucharistia) (Christmas 2018)
Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, The Theological Virtues (a new translation of De Virtutibus Theologicis) (Christmas 2018)
I encourage you to check this out for yourself. I wish Fr. Cajetan's project every success!
Fran O'Rourke has sent us the following information on the upcoming Symposium Thomisticum in Athens, Greece.
***
The third Symposium Thomisticum will take place in Athens, Greece, 7-9 June 2018, kindly co-hosted by the University of Athens and Athens Academy.
Details are available at www.ucd.ie/philosophy/symposiumthomisticum
The theme of the Symposium is Aquinas and the Greeks.
Speakers will include: Therese Cory, Lambros Coulobaritsis, John A Demetracopoulos, John Dillon, Gregory Doolan, Kevin Flannery, Lloyd Gerson, Athanasia Glycofrydi-Leontsini, John Haldane, Yannis Kalogerakos, Thomas Leinkauf, Eleni Leontsini, Patrick Masterson, Evanghelos Moutsopoulos, Siobhan Nash-Marshall, Turner Nevitt, Fran O'Rourke, Eric D Perl, Eleni Procopiou, Andrea Robiglio, Carlos Steel, Georgios Steiris, Richard Taylor, Rudi te Velde, David Twetten, Kevin White, John Wippel, Markus Woerner, John Zizoulas.
Papers are invited for a number of supplementary parallel sessions. The overall number of participants will be limited to sixty; priority will be given to those presenting papers. In order to avoid overlap of topics, initial proposals should be sent by email to Fran O'Rourke (orourke@ucd.ie).
The deadline for abstracts is 1 December, and for completed papers 1 May 2018. Papers will be circulated in advance; summaries will be presented at the symposium: papers will be discussed rather than read.
Participation fee will be EUR125, to include refreshments and the conference banquet.
Participants will be responsible for their own accommodation.
Inquiries to Fran O'Rourke, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy, University College Dublin (orourke@ucd.ie).
This is coming a little late but better late than never.
This year's winner of the American Catholic Philosophical Association's Young Scholar's award is Brandon Wanless. The award is given to the best paper submitted for the ACPA's annual conference by a scholar 35 years old or younger.
Mr. Wanless's paper is entitled “St. Thomas Aquinas on Original Justice and the Justice of Christ: A Case Study in Christological Soteriology and Catholic Moral Theology.” Here's the abstract from the ACPA conference program:
This paper discusses the theme of “personal justice” in the Summa theologiae, a concept inherited from the Nicomachean Ethics wherein Aristotle says that a man is just toward himself only metaphorically, insofar as the parts of man are appropriately ordered with the higher ruling the lower and the body subjugated to the soul. This paper demonstrates how Aquinas extensively utilizes this concept of metaphorical justice across the tripartite division of the Summa in his accounts of original justice in the prima pars, the humanity of Christ in the tertia pars, and justification of the sinner in the secunda pars. As a response to critiques that Thomistic moral theology is not properly centered in the person of Christ, I will show that, for Aquinas, Christ’s personal justice both fulfills the right ordering of humanity lost through sin and restores that integrity to mankind in the grace of justification—the root of the Christian’s entire moral life.
There are two things worth noting. First, the Young Scholar's Award is a philosophy award and the paper is, as you see, on a theological topic. Second, Mr. Wanless is completing his PhD in theology at Ave Maria University. (Full disclosure: I teach at AMU. But I teach philosophy, not theology.)
But these two things, in a way, shouldn't be surprising. After all, there's an awful lot of philosophy in Aquinas's theology (materially speaking). And there's a significant amount of philosophy in Mr. Wanless's paper (materially speaking). It should also be noted that justice was the theme of this year's conference.
Mr. Wanless received the award last month in San Francisco, where this year's ACPA conference was held. His paper will be published in the next issue of the Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association.
Under the direction of the Sacra Doctrina Project
