Graduate and Faculty Reading Group

Dates: Friday afternoons (time and location to be scheduled with participants)

January 31, February 14, February 28, March 14, March 28, April 11, April 25

Description: Whether, how, and to what extent should religion influence government? This question – if once relatively moot – is now a central area of political contestation. Growing attention to that question, moreover, has prompted the Catholic Church to develop its teaching on it. This reading group will trace the evolution of Catholic teaching on the State, beginning with the pre-modern “settlement,” to Pope Leo XIII’s writings on modernity , through the post-war documents of Vatican II, and up to the 21st century. Our goal is to gain a fuller understanding of several questions, such as how the Church responded to secular political forms like democracy, communism, and Nazism; how Catholic Social Teaching informs the understanding of politics as such; and how the question of this relation is taken up today.

Authors/texts will include: St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, Pope Boniface VIII, Pope Leo XIII, Pope Pius XI, Pope John Paul II, Gaudium et spes, Dignitatis humanae, and Fratelli tutti.

This reading group is intended for graduate and professional students, faculty, and staff. Please sign up to join the e-mail list for this group.

Please direct questions to Elizabeth Lyon Hall ([email protected])