Two items of note from the folks at the Albertus Magnus Center for Scholastic Studies:
First, the proceedings from their 2016 Summer School, "Thomas's Commentary on the Romans", are available for pre-order. Included in the volume are several of the papers given as lectures during the school on themes such as sacrifice, faith, and as well as the from their scholastic disputation.
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Since 2012, the Albertus Magnus Center for Scholastic Studies, in cooperation with the Benedictine Monks of Norcia, has offered a two-week summer theology program at the birthplace of SS. Benedict and Scholastica.
This year, for their fifth summer, the Center has planned a truly marvelous program: “The Transcendent Christ: St. Paul’s Letter to the Hebrews.” Participants will study St. Thomas Aquinas’s Commentary on Hebrews, exploring its rich doctrine on Christology, priesthood, sacrifice, sacraments, and worship. The Epistle offers the opportunity to explore the mystery of grace in its source, Jesus Christ, the Head of the Mystical Body, and how the excellence of the work of Christ has a threefold extension: to the whole of creation, to the rational creature, and to the justification of the saints. Seminars and lectures culminate in a full-scale scholastic disputation, with arguments offered on both sides by participants and an authoritative determination given by the appointed magister.
This will be the first year that I will be on the faculty of the summer program. Other faculty members include Fr. Cassian Folsom, OSB, Fr. Thomas Crean, OP, John Joy, Christopher Owens, Daniel Lendman, and Br. Evagrius Hayden, OSB.
The goal of the AMCSS is to offer a meaningful academic experience of scholastic theology in its original fullness: studying Sacred Scripture, St. Thomas Aquinas, and the Fathers of the Church, in the peaceful and enchanting setting of a medieval Italian town, imbued with the spiritual and liturgical life of the Benedictine monks (daily High Mass in the usus antiquior, fully chanted monastic office), and all the culinary delights of the prosciutto and black truffle capital of Italy — in other words, a Catholic feast for mind, soul, and body. This year the course dates include Norcia’s festive celebration of the feast of St. Benedict on July 11th. Pilgrimages to the nearby towns of Assisi and Cascia are included in the cost, with the option of participating in a weekend trip to Rome at the end.
The dates for the Summer program are July 10–24, 2016. Most remarkably, the cost for tuition, room, and half-board (a light breakfast and a five-course Italian dinner every day) is 900 Euros. Tuition includes a hardcover bilingual edition of the Commentary on Hebrews as well as any other course materials. A background in academic theology is not required. (Students working towards degrees may request a summary of the program with faculty credentials and a certificate of completion that they may submit for possible course credit elsewhere.)
For more information, please click here. I recommend exploring the site and letting other folks know about it. The AMCSS has a great thing going, and each year they seem to gain momentum. In addition to the (relatively few) departments of theology out there that engage seriously with the great medieval minds, we also need grassroots initiatives that offer a lively engagement with scholastic authors in a Catholic environment such as those authors enjoyed and presumed. For this, Norcia is an ideal setting.
This in, from Peter Kwasniewski:
The Aquinas Institute for the Study of Sacred Doctrine, founded by John Mortensen (recent recipient of a pontifical award), Jeremy Holmes, and Peter Kwasniewski, will be conducting its third annual Summer Program from May 24th to July 16th, 2010, in the town of Lander, Wyoming. The theme of this summer is “Man on Pilgrimage to God: The Prima Secundae of the Summa theologiae.” Serious students of Catholic theology: consider joining us as we plumb the depths of the Angelic Doctor’s most profound general treatment of moral theology, including the ultimate end of human life, the definition of the moral act in all its components, the concupiscible and irascible passions of the soul, the structure of the virtues both natural and supernatural, the goal of heroic sanctity put forth in the beatitudes, the gracious gifts of the Holy Spirit, law in its magnificent range of analogous forms (human, natural, eternal, revealed), and supernatural grace, the very foundation of specifically Christian morals. In this eight-week summer program we will read nearly every treatise in the Prima Secundae — a rare and enviable opportunity to see the whole domain of morality as the Church’s greatest theologian conceived it.
For details, visit our website.
Under the direction of the Sacra Doctrina Project
