Catholic Information Center

Throughout his writings, Walker Percy explores modern man’s catastrophic failure to understand who he is. This talk explains Percy’s diagnosis of this catastrophe–its nature and causes–and various false avenues of escaping it. Jennifer pays particular attention to how Percy’s understanding of the spiritual crisis of modernity–a crisis of self-knowledge– plays out in his science fiction novel, Love in the Ruins.

Panelists explore the pernicious effects of secular progressive education, and its infiltration of Catholic schools. By examining the nature and purpose of Catholic education and its roots in the classical liberal arts tradition, the panel recognizes how neglect of our own tradition undermines both faith and reason in our children. A dynamic renewal, however, is transforming and inspiring a growing number of Catholic schools who are reclaiming the Church’s tradition.

Fyodor Dostoevsky’s last and greatest novel, The Brothers Karamazov, explores the question of God’s existence against the backdrop of suffering and betrayal within a troubled family. The genius of Dostoevsky is to have grasped that there can be no love for human beings without a love for God — and conversely, there can be no belief in God without a deep and profound love for mankind. Prof. Nicholas Healy presents a brief overview of the structure and characters of the novel, focusing on the themes of solidarity and forgiveness.

Find Your Whistle: Simple Gifts Touch Hearts and Change Lives by CICDC

Responsibility to Care: What Euthanasia Victims Can Teach Us by CICDC

Unrepeatable: Cultivating the Unique Calling of Every Person by CICDC

Has liberalism failed because it has succeeded? Listen as Deneen offers an astringent warning that the centripetal forces now at work on our political culture are not superficial flaws but inherent features of a system whose success is generating its own failure.

How should Christians understand and navigate the challenges of life in 21st century America? What characterizes our time and how should we live in it as Christians, as parents, as human beings? Listen as a panel with three authors from Fare Forward discuss their pieces and the questions and issues they raise.

Sigrid Undset is best known for her novel Kristin Lavransdatter, which earned her the Nobel Prize in 1928. Although she is acclaimed for the historical and psychological realism of this portrait of a 14th Norwegian woman, her novels also contain a deeper layer of richness that can only properly be appreciated through a theological lens. In this lecture, Fr. Snyder presents some of Undset’s stories of conversion in light of St. Thomas Aquinas’s doctrine of grace. Undset’s writings illustrate to modern readers the beauty of a heart transformed by the God who is ever ancient and ever new.

Daniel C. Mattson, author of the new book “Why I Don’t Call Myself Gay: How I Reclaimed My Sexual Reality and Found Peace” discusses his personal journey to and from a gay identity and details the importance for the Church to have a prophetic role in the world in reclaiming sexual reality.

Large and Startling Figures Flannery O’Connor’s Postmodern Apologetic with Dr. Frederick C. Bauerschmidt Writing to a friend in the mid-1950s, the American fiction writer Flannery O’Connor noted that we live in an age in which “the moral sense has been bred out of certain sections of the population, like the wings have been bred off certain chickens to produce more white meat on them….This is a Generation of wingless chickens, which I suppose is what Nietzsche meant when he said God was dead.” In such a situation, she felt, subtlety could not work: “you have to make your vision apparent by shock—to the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost blind you draw large and startling figures.” Dr. Bauerschmidt explores how, through her fiction, O’Conner presented her Catholic vision by means of grotesque and often shockingly violent tales in which the absolute demands of belief clash with postmodern indifference, attempting to open jaded modern readers to the possibility of transcendent truth.

Listen Dr. Carrie Gress provides a thoroughly researched bird’s eye view of the significant cultural and military events mediated through Mary on behalf of her spiritual children. From miraculous victories to the soaring heights of culture, you have never seen Mary like this before.

Virtually everyone supports religious liberty, and virtually everyone opposes discrimination. But how do we handle the hard questions that arise when exercises of religious liberty seem to discriminate unjustly? How do we promote the common good while respecting conscience in a diverse society? Listen as John Corvino, a longtime LGBT-rights advocate, opposite Ryan T. Anderson and Sherif Girgis, prominent young social conservatives discuss these questions and more.

What does it mean to be pro-life?This three-part series, co-sponsored by the National Review Institute and the Catholic Information Center, will explore how religious believers can foster a radical culture of hospitality and loving support for unplanned pregnancies, adoptions, and children who find themselves without the generous support of family and community.

What does it mean to be pro-life? This three-part series, co-sponsored by the National Review Institute and the Catholic Information Center, will explore how religious believers can foster a radical culture of hospitality and loving support for unplanned pregnancies, adoptions, and children who find themselves without the generous support of family and community.

Listen as Archbishop Charles J. Chaput gives a bold critique of today’s America from his new book, “Strangers in a Strange Land: Living the Catholic Faith in a Post-Christian World. Alongside Mary Eberstadt and Michael Hanby, the Archbishop provides a provocative look at the post-Christian public square and the gradual erosion of the religious faith and freedom that have marked it for so long.

Listen as Fr. Richard Mullins, pastor at St. Thomas the Apostle Catholic Church, offers some Lenten advice inspired by St. Thomas More.

Listen as our expert panel discusses moving forward, mercy, and compassionate care in regards to doctor-prescribed suicide.

Men and women used to cheer: vive la différence! But now, contrary to all science and common sense, we’re supposed to believe that there is no difference. (And if you insist there is, you just might be accused of a hate crime!) Listen as Ashley McGuire author of, Sex Scandal: The Drive to Abolish Male and Female, discusses shocking examples and “inconvenient” facts that everyone needs to read—and act on.

O. Carter Snead, Director of the Center for Ethics and Culture at Notre Dame University, will examine the powers at the disposal of the U.S. President to shape a Culture of Life in America, and preview what the Pro-Life Movement may be able to accomplish in the immediate future.