Last Updated: March 16, 2010

Ethics & Culture in the News:

• January 8 - Look here for Wesley Smith’s list of the top ten bioethics stories of the decade.
  
  
• November 14 - New Bishop of Fort Wayne - South Bend Praises Notre Dame Center for Ethics & Culture. More.
  
  
• August 11 - Eunice Kennedy Shriver Dies at 88. More.
  
  
• April 22 - The Food and Drug Administration says seventeen-year-olds will be able to buy the “morning-after” emergency contraceptive without a doctor's prescription. More.
  
  
• April 22 - Bishop John D’Arcy, much beloved bishop of Fort Wayne -South Bend, released a statement today clarifying the meaning of the USCCB document, “Catholics in Public Life,” and discussing in some detail its implications for Notre Dame’s decision to invite President Obama to speak at this year’s commencement exercises at the University.  You may read his statement here.
  
  
• On March 24, Bishop John D'Arcy of the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend issued a statement regarding President Obama's commencement address. Read Bishop D'Arcy's statement here.
  
  

• More News

This Week at Notre Dame:

For more information on events at Notre Dame, see the complete Ethics Bulletin.

Celebrate the 10th Anniversary of the Notre Dame Center for Ethics & Culture

On April 22, 2010, we will celebrate the 10th Anniversary of the founding of the Notre Dame Center for Ethics & Culture.  The day will begin at 11:30am with Mass celebrated by The Most Reverend John M. D’Arcy, Bishop Emeritus, in the Basilica of the Sacred Heart.  At 4:00 p.m. in McKenna Hall Auditorium, we will host a symposium on the widely celebrated new book by our senior fellow, Alasdair MacIntyre: God, Philosophy, Universities: A Selective History of the Catholic Philosophical Tradition.  Commentators include: The Reverend John I. Jenkins, C.S.C. (philosophy), Professor John Cavadini (theology) and Dean John McGreevy (history).  Professor MacIntyre will respond.  A reception and dinner will follow. 

Registration is required to attend the dinner.  To register, please visit http://cce.nd.edu/.  The cost for the banquet is $50 for all attendees. Unlike at some CEC events, you will not have the option of waiting to fill any open seat. You must reserve your seat online. A block of rooms is being held at The Morris Inn for the nights of Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday (April 21-23). To make a reservation, please contact The Morris Inn directly at (574) 631-2000 visit or http://morrisinn.nd.edu/. Be sure to specify you are with the AMS: Alasdair MacIntyre Symposium.

Fall Conference 2010: Younger Than Sin: Retrieving Simplicity through the Virtues of Humility, Wonder & Joy

This past November, the Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture hosted its 10th annual Fall Conference, entitled The Summons of Freedom: Virtue, Sacrifice, and the Common Good. Our most successful to date, the 2009 conference reflected in myriad fashion on what it means to be truly free. This year, we will continue this inquiry by a discussion centered around the proposal that humility, wonder, and joy are great among those virtues which undergird human flourishing in this world and—in the Christian tradition—lead in grace to eternal happiness in the next.  These virtues, the fullness of which Georges Bernanos identified in the state of the Blessed Virgin who, attending at the manger, is described as ―"younger than sin"—free, with a virtuous simplicity of soul, for her joyful assent to and embrace of the Truth and the Good that has set her free. We, not so "young" as she, must undertake the journey to simplicity by humility, which enables honesty concerning oneself and one’s dependence on others; wonder, which as Aristotle wrote, first leads one to seek the freedom of the truth; and joy, the delight of the soul that is able to apprehend the true and the good and draw them to itself.  

The 11th annual conference will take place at Notre Dame November 18-20, 2010. One-page abstracts for individual papers must include name, title, affiliation (academic or otherwise), address, and e-mail address. The deadline for submissions is Friday, July 16, 2010. Notification of acceptance will be mailed by Monday, August 2, 2010.  To read the call for papers, click here.  Please check back for more information about the conference, including information about invited speakers, as the date approaches.

Upcoming Conference: The Christian Personalism of Dietrich von Hildebrand: Exploring His Philosophy of Love

With the cosponsorship of the Center for Ethics & Culture, the Dietrich von Hildebrand Legacy Project is now convening an international conference in Rome for the purpose of initiating the critical reception of Dietrich von Hildebrand's work, The Nature of Love, published in 2009 for the first time in English translation.  The conference will take place at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross May 27-29, 2020.  For more information, click here.

Notre Dame Fund to Protect Human Life

An exciting new initiative, to be administered by the Center for Ethics and Culture, is The Notre Dame Fund to Protect Human Life. The Fund, together with the five person committee which will oversee it, will provide a proactive impetus for pro-life activity on the Notre Dame campus, including support of the student right to life clubs as well as involvement of the faculty and administration.  For a summary description of the scope and plans for the Fund, click here.  To donate, please visit Notre Dame Department of Development http://supporting.nd.edu/make-a-gift/.

This fall's Catholic Culture Series featured four influential and fascinating authors, none of whom were Catholic. Yet the writings of T.S. Eliot, Simone Weil, C.S. Lewis, and Fyodor Dostoevsky all shared much in common with Catholic theology and philosophy.  For more information, including video recordings of the lectures, visit here.