Finds

May 13, 2025

Villanova President on Pope Leo XIV

May 13, 2025

“What to expect from an Augustinian pope”

James K. A. Smith in American Magazine:

“Excited by an Augustinian bishop of Rome, friends began texting. An email thread of St. Augustine scholars chimed in on the news, musing about the shape of an Augustinian papacy.

And that’s the question I’ve been thinking about ever since: What might we expect from an Augustinian pope? I listened to Pope Leo’s first messages with Augustinian ears. In his first words from the balcony, and then in his homily at his first Mass, I heard abiding themes from the Doctor of Grace.”

May 13, 2025

“The Augustinian Roots of Pope Leo XIV”

Gregory Grimes in Church Life Journal:

“The question of how leaders, or people of this age, will be remembered by future generations who suffer from our actions or inactions should be on the minds of all leaders, and especially a leader who must embody Christ’s servant leadership. The world is deeply in need of God’s peace and God's peacemakers. And on the other, ecological front, there is hope that Leo XIV will continue Francis’s legacy of being one of the foremost world leaders to speak unequivocally about the urgency of combating climate change, not just addressing its symptoms, but healing its root causes. What a triumph it would be if instead of battling one another, the world united to take on its common enemy—ecological catastrophe—with the Church at the forefront of that mission.”

May 9, 2025

Augustinian Friar and Villanova Alumnus Elected Pope

On May 8, Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost, OSA, ‘77 CLAS was elected the 267th head of the Catholic Church and the Sovereign of the Vatican City State during the second day of the papal conclave held in the Sistine Chapel.

Read more here!

April 24, 2025

Augustine Masterclass | “Portraits of Grief: Augustine as Student of Loss”

Register now for the “Portraits of Grief: Augustine as a Student of Loss” Masterclass webinar, which will explore grief, memory, and spiritual transformation through the lens of The Confessions of Saint Augustine. This event is sponsored by the Augustinian Institute, Augustinian Heritage Institute, and New City Press.

December 13, 2024

Masterclass Panel: The Case Against Lies: Wisdom from Augustine

What makes a lie bad—its consequences or its very nature? Augustine’s works On Lying (De mendacio) and Against Lying (Contra mendacium) tackle these questions with rigor and clarity. Together, we’ll explore his thought-provoking stance on deception. Webinar sponsored by Villanova University's Augustinian Institute and New City Press.

Watch the recording of the webinar here and check out the new English translations of the lying treatises in New City Press's recent edited volume Morality and Christian Asceticism.

Panelists:

• James K.A. Smith: Thomas Martin Fellow at the Augustinian Institute, Professor of Philosophy, Calvin University
• Ian Clausen: Editor of Augustinian Studies, Associate Professor of Teaching, Villanova University
• Colleen Mitchell: Associate Director of Outreach, Augustinian Institute, Assistant Professor of Teaching, Villanova University
• Allan Fitzgerald, O.S.A.: Professor of Theology, Villanova University, Director of Special Projects, Augustinian Institute
• James Wetzel: Professor of Philosophy, Villanova University, Augustinian Endowed Chair,
  Director of the Augustinian Institute

October 24, 2024

Wisdom from Augustine in an election year

James K.A. Smith on what we can learn from Augustine in our current political moment:

Perhaps what we can learn from him is the importance of politics as a mode of timekeeping, a particular way of inhabiting time. For Augustine, we cannot answer the question “What should we do?” unless we first answer the question “When are we?” Augustine offers a tool kit to help us forge a common life and commonweal in this long meantime of our existence. Some of these tools were picked up centuries later and put to work in the founding conceptions of political liberalism. All of them help us to understand when we are.

Published: The Christian Century

January 9, 2024

Watching Movies with Augustine: On Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon

James K.A. Smith on seeking Christ beyond fraudulent versions of Christianity:

The genius of the movie, I think, is in how not even Ernest knows which love will win out. He is an enigma to himself. Which is another way of saying: I think Martin Scorsese has made an Augustinian film.

Published: Image Journal

November 9, 2023

The Deepening Darkness

Co-authors Carol Gilligan and David A.J. Richards on the darker side of Augustine's legacy:

In our book The Deepening Darkness, in our effort to understand how Christianity became more Roman than Christian once it was elevated to being the established religion of the Roman Empire, we discovered the crucial role played by Augustine of Hippo. From this perspective, we zeroed in on his blaming of Eve for original sin, his turning away from sexual love, his endorsing the use of state power to justify violence against heretics, and above all, his relationship with his mother.

Published: Cambridge University Press

September 27, 2023

The women who made Augustine

David Lloyd Dusenbury recommends Kate Cooper's new book Queens of a Fallen World:

Kate Cooper is beautifully attuned to the fact that it is not only the secrets of Augustine’s beginnings that are shared by a woman in his life, and by his God. (The bishop rhythmically addresses God in that way – ‘my God’, Deus meus.) We know something of the dramatic presences of several women in Augustine’s life – and their still more dramatic absences – because he tells us. Yet Cooper seems to be the first historian to have asked, in a sustained and systematic way, exactly what he tells us – and what, beyond that, we can infer or conjecture.

Source: Engelsberg Ideas