In this lecture, Jennifer Newsome Martin, associate professor in the Program of Liberal Studies with a joint appointment in the Department of of Theology and director of the de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture, will consider—alongside such theological interlocutors as St. John Henry Newman, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Pope Benedict XVI, Remi Brague, and others—the paradoxical origins of a Catholic culture rooted in such non-Catholic cultures as Athens and Jerusalem. The lecture aims not only to characterize the phenomenon of Catholic culture writ large as having to do with the human desire for God and the welcoming of all that is proper to the life of the human being, but also to articulate the relationship between ethics and culture—and, put more strongly, an ethics of culture—specifically within the context of liberal arts education.

This lecture is sponsored by the John C. Schuster Memorial Fund.