The Heart of Catholic Higher Education: The Liberal Arts

Monika K. Hellwig is the Executive Director of the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities. This talk was presented at the Convocation for entering students at Sacred Heart University on September 16, 1998

A Catholic Scholar\u27s Journey Through the Twentieth Century

Monika K. Hellwig speaks on the development of Catholicism in the twentieth century. She recounts her early formational years in Europe and the differing styles of traditions held by Catholic groups at that time and eventually the sways caused by Vatican Council II. She augments these talks with the idea of an evolving tradition, rather than a static one.https://ecommons.udayton.edu/uscc_marianist_award/1006/thumbnail.jp

Global Climate Change and Catholic Responsibility: Facts and Faith Response

Citation: Braun G, Hellwig MK, Byrnes WM (2007) Global Climate Change and Catholic Responsibility: Facts and Faith Response. Journal of Catholic Social Thought 4(2): 373-401. Abstract: The scientific evidence is now overwhelming that human activity is causing the Earth’s atmosphere to grow hotter, which is leading to global climate change. If current rates of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions continue, it is predicted that there will be dramatic changes, including flooding, more intense heat waves and storms, and an increase in disease. Indigenous peoples and the poor will be most severely affected, as will Earth’s wild animals and plants, a quarter of which could become extinct in fifty years. We urgently need to switch to renewable (non-GHG emitting) energy sources, and try to live in a simpler, more sustainable way. In this article, a renewable energy expert, a biochemist, and a theologian have come together to describe the situation in which we find ourselves, and present ideas for a solution that incorporates Catholic social teaching

An eschatological critique of Catherine Pickstock’s Liturgical Theology

Catherine Pickstock’s After Writing sets out to provide an account of liturgical time, subjectivity, and worship which is capable of surpassing the deconstruction of each of these in modernity and postmodernity. Her account of the way in which each of these is treated in the old Roman Rite, however, accentuates elements of ambiguity and deferral which erase two significant elements of traditional Catholic treatments of eschatology. The iterative element of growth and progress in holiness and Christian virtue is subsumed by continuous emphasis on ambiguity and deferral, while the promise of real eschatological novelty - that God seen now only in signs will be seen later face to face - is dissolved by an excessive valorisation of liturgical presence in the mode of signs. In order to avoid a postmodern reduction, then, it is better to embrace the liturgical vision of Joseph Ratzinger, in which liturgy and eschatology are both separated and united as different modalities of the presence of Christ, in which temporal liturgical life not only participates in but is directed towards a greater future fulfilment in the eschatological presence of God