Chesterton Society 2009-2010 Calendar

G. K. Chesterton Society of Seattle
Calendar of Events, 2009-2010

This season's meetings of the Society will take place on the campus of Seattle Pacific University. Our October and November meetings will take place in Beegle Hall, Room 201. The remainder of the season's meetings will take place in Otto Miller Hall, Conference room 109. Beegle Hall is located at 3214 Fourth Avenue West. Otto Miller Hall is located near the corner of Nickerson and Third Avenue West, directly across Third Avenue from Royal Brougham Pavilion.

A campus map is available here. Please see building number 5 (Beegle Hall) and building number 18 (Otto Miller Hall). Driving directions to the campus are available here. Campus parking is free at the time of the Society's meetings. The Otto Miller Hall venue is accessible to wheelchairs.

Thursday, October 15, 2009, at 7:30 PM in Room 201, Beegle Hall: The Spanish Inquisition: Myths and Facts; Dr. Alberto Ferreiro
Department of History, Seattle Pacific University
Perhaps no other event in Spanish History has so haunted, and continues to haunt, not only the Spanish people, but the Catholic Church. Unquestionably, “inquisitions” in general, and the Spanish Inquisition in particular, were historical realities. The purpose of this evening’s lecture is to challenge, not the reality of the Spanish Inquisition, but the accumulation of propaganda concerning the Inquisition, beginning with the English, that came to be called “the Black Legend.” The Black Legend undoubtedly ranks as one of the most successful smear campaigns in history, affecting perceptions even to this day. The Black Legend asks us to believe that the Spanish carried out a persecution that resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Jews, Muslims, heretics, and anyone else who stood in the way of the Church; that they took this campaign of terror also to the Americas, where the number of alleged victims reached even to the millions; and that this was a uniquely Spanish campaign, unequaled anywhere else in Europe. The truth is that most of what is popularly believed about the Spanish Inquisition is based upon ignorance, fantasy, and willful distortion. This aim of this evening’s lecture is to put the Spanish Inquisition in context, in order to separate the myth from the reality.
Alberto Ferreiro is Professor of European History at Seattle Pacific University, and has authored many publications on the history of Christianity in the Iberian Peninsula.

Thursday, November 19, 2009, at 7:30 PM in Room 201, Beegle Hall: Who’s Afraid of the Renaissance?
The Once and Future Tradition of Christian Humanism; Gregory Wolfe
Editor, Image; Director, MFA in Creative Writing, Seattle Pacific University
The era of the Renaissance has long been obscured by potent and persistent myths—as that the Renaissance constituted a radical break from the Middle Ages, and that it was essentially secular. Contemporary scholarship has in fact debunked many of these myths, giving rise to a richer and more complex picture of the early modern era. In many ways, the Renaissance presents an especially relevant mirror to our own age, and the tradition of Renaissance Christian Humanism offers a model for contemporary believers. In this evening's presentation, Gregory Wolfe will provide a window onto this era, showing how Renaissance Humanists sought an incarnational balance of flesh and spirit, faith and reason, ancient... and modern.
Gregory Wolfe is publisher and editor of the journal Image and director of the low-residency MFA in Creative Writing program at Seattle Pacific University. Among his books are Intruding Upon the Timeless: Meditations on Art, Faith, and Mystery; Malcolm Muggeridge: A Biography; and Sacred Passion: The Art of William Schickel. In 2005, he served as a judge in nonfiction for the National Book Awards.

Thursday, January 21, 2010, at 7:30 PM in Conference room 109, Otto Miller Hall: Distributism, Capitalism, and the Global Economic Crisis; David Paul Deavel
Associate Editor, Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture;
Contributing Editor, Gilbert Magazine
What caused the global economic crisis? Lack of regulation of free markets? Too much bad regulation and intervention by governments? Throughout the twentieth century a number of groups—starting with Chesterton and Belloc’s distributists—have contended that capitalists are right about the dangers of socialism and other forms of statism, but that capitalism inherently leads to statism and the kind of situations we face today. As Chesterton said, Hudge (Big Government) and Gudge (Big Business) are twins. In this evening's lecture, David Paul Deavel will analyze the similarities and differences between the diagnoses and solutions offered by distributists and (particularly) Christian capitalists, arguing that the common ground and possibility for collaboration between them is greater than they often make it out to be.
David Paul Deavel is Associate Editor of Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture and Contributing Editor to Gilbert Magazine, the official publication of the American Chesterton Society. He is finishing a doctoral dissertation on John Henry Newman from Fordham University and his writing has appeared in America, Catholic World Report, Commonweal, First Things, National Catholic Register, St. Austin Review, Touchstone, and many other places.

Thursday, February 25, 2010, at 7:30 PM in Conference room 109, Otto Miller Hall: American Philanthropy in a Time of Economic Crisis; Dr. Jeffrey Cain
Principal, American Philanthropic
The proliferation of local and youthful “socially conscious” millionaires over the past decade, proposed changes in federal tax law regarding charitable deductions, the current recession, and the minor hit television show “The Philanthropist” have all contributed to a recent and growing interest in the business of philanthropy. Yet even as Americans take their place as the most generous givers in the world, the state of charitable giving – a central component of American civil society – may be changing … for the worse. Do changing attitudes toward philanthropy and the Christian virtue of charity threaten to diminish American civil society? In this evening’s lecture, Dr. Jeffrey Cain will explore recent ideas and attitudes about, and threats to, America’s charitable sector and to civil society.
Dr. Jeffrey Cain is a leading executive in the nonprofit, educational, philanthropic, and development communities. Most recently, Dr. Cain served the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI)—a national educational nonprofit committed to advancing a traditional liberal arts curriculum and the study of Western civilization—in various senior management positions, including vice president for institutional advancement, senior vice president for education and advancement, and finally as executive vice president. Currently, Dr. Cain is founding partner and principal of the consulting firm American Philanthropic.

Thursday, April 15, 2010, at 7:30 PM in Conference room 109, Otto Miller Hall: Edith Stein on the Reconciliation of Faith and Reason; Dr. Michael F. Andrews
Dean, Matteo Ricci College
Director, Faith and the Great Ideas Academic Program
Seattle University
Edith Stein was a German Jewish-born philosopher, a gifted phenomenologist and an ardent young atheist, as well as an artful interpreter of St. Thomas Aquinas and the Greek and medieval metaphysicians. After her conversion and baptism in the Catholic faith in 1922, she entered the Carmelite Order in Koln, Germany and became immersed in the thought of Teresa of Avila, Pseudo-Dionysius, and John of the Cross. After being smuggled to Echt, Holland, she was arrested by the Gestapo and sent to Auschwitz where, along with her sister Rosa, she was killed in a gas chamber in 1942. A sign of contradiction, she was declared a saint by Pope John Paul II in 1998. Who was Edith Stein? To what did her intellectual and spiritual life bear witness? Particularly, we will explore Stein’s description of the human person as a transcendent being that finds completion outside of oneself, an inexhaustible mystery ultimately destined to see God face to face. Arguing against the Enlightenment’s impoverishment of faith and reason, Edith Stein explores ratio or logos in terms of what she called “the phenomenology of empathy.” She describes faith as a “science” of the highest rational order and insists that the summit of philosophical truth reflects “the spirit of genuine philosophy alive in every true philosopher, in anyone who cannot resist an inner need to search out to the logos of this world, its ratio.” Logos implies a personal, creative meaning, namely, the primacy of the particular as against the universal. For Edith Stein, Christian faith is thus above all the option for every existing human individual as the irreducible, infinity-oriented being in search of the grandeur of reason.
Michael F. Andrews is the Dean of Matteo Ricci College, the Jesuit Humanities undergraduate college at Seattle University. He has written and lectured on Edith Stein, phenomenology, and the Catholic intellectual tradition in Europe and the United States. He is the Director of the Faith and the Great Ideas Academic Program at Seattle University and a former Senior Research Fellow at the Jesuit Historical Institute in Rome, Italy.

Thursday, May 13, 2010, at 7:30 PM in Conference room 109, Otto Miller Hall: Communicating the Gospel Today: Some Thoughts Along the Way; Dr. Tom Curran
Radio host, Sound Insight
On Pentecost, the Apostles proclaimed the message of salvation to all who heard them, “in their own language.” How can we learn to best communicate the Gospel to our contemporaries, those with whom and among whom we live and work? In this evening's presentation, Dr. Tom Curran shares some of the key principles and insights he uses when facing the challenge of preaching and teaching the message of Jesus Christ to young and old, believers and unbelievers, in formal settings and everywhere else, including at home as a husband and father.
Dr. Tom Curran is host of Sound Insight, an hour long radio program heard on weekdays in four states. He is also a popular speaker, having given almost 2000 presentations to more than 300,000 people in 35 states and 5 countries, and the author of two books. Dr. Curran holds a graduate degree from the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, and a Ph.D. in systematic theology from Catholic University of America.