Head of Philosophy, Heythrop College, London

GOD AND GOODNESS: RELIGIOUS COMMITMENT AND THE DEEPENING OF THE MORAL LIFE

25th - 27th May 2010 at Pluscarden Abbey.

1. Tuesday 25th May at 2.45 pm
Grace and Responsibility

2. Wednesday 26th May at 10.15 am
Vocation and Divine Commands

3. Wednesday 26th May at 2.45 pm
Last Judgement and First Principles

4. Thursday 27th May at 10.15 am
Holiness and Culture

Each year the Abbot and Community of Pluscarden Abbey sponsor a series of four lectures by an invited Theologian on an aspect of Catholic Theology. Previous Lecturers have included Bishop Michael Evans, Fr Aidan Nichols OP, Fr Thomas Weinandy OFM Cap, Fr Anthony Meredith SJ, Fr Paul McPartlan and Fr Tom Herbst OFM. The Lectures are held on the Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday after Pentecost in St Scholastica’s Retreat House at the Abbey. They are open to all who wish to attend and are free. Limited accommodation is available at the Abbey and those who wish to stay should book as soon as possible. There are also many places to stay in the Elgin area: contact the local tourist office: 01343 542666.

The Lecturer
Fr Peter Gallagher is Head of the Department of Philosophy at Heythrop College, London, and Superior of the Jesuit community in Wimbledon. From school in Glasgow, he went on to study Theology and Philosophy at Heythrop, Oxford and the Centre Sèvres, Paris. He was awarded his Ph.D. from King’s College, London in 1995 with a dissertation on “Plotinus’ correction of some Gnostic misunderstandings of his theory of Intellect”. After teaching in secondary schools for several years, he returned to Heythrop to teach History of Philosophy. He now teaches Greek philosophy, continental philosophy and aesthetics. A current area of research considers feminist readings of Plato’s Phaedrus.

The Lectures

Introduction

Too rigorous a separation of religion and ethics can disappoint the person discovering or renewing a religious commitment. These four lectures will explore ways of strengthening the link in ordinary life between faith and virtue. Openness to the grace of God, for example, can provoke the taking up and vigorous exercise of new or neglected responsibilities. “What do You want me to do?” we can ask God. His reply may turn out to be a call to keep His commandments and to investigate previously unsuspected areas of application of His holy Law. That Law is somehow inscribed in our hearts already and helps construct such rationality as we possess and influences our practical reasoning. God’s judgement, personal and final, on the quality of our moral life could easily daunt us very much. His ways are not our ways. Yet His goodness speaks to and informs our virtues. The saints are for us models of splendid ethical as well as spiritual living and their virtuous communion parallels all our other cultures.

Lecture 1: Grace and Responsibility

The virtues and the virtuous life are acquired by effort and training supported by divine grace. Prudence, the charioteer of the virtues, includes self-knowledge which is a kind of “seeing where we are going” The main impediment to having this clarity of understanding is the wound of sin. Fallen reason is clouded and we are caught up in the long struggle between good and evil. The will and the intellect are both attracted to and repelled by the truth which confers freedom in this struggle.

Lecture 2: Vocation and Divine Commands

The virtue of courage instils a constancy in the pursuit of the good. This search is life-long but not without progress and achievement along the way. Obedience to the will of God, both as revealed in His Law and in personal vocation, is part of the settled moral landscape of the believer. Fidelity to what is understood in this way is nourished by prayer and the sacraments. “Sacramental rationality” can include ways of thinking about everyday life which are open to sacrifice and reparation.

Lecture 3: Last Judgement and First Principles

The virtue of justice requires an appropriate attention to God and to the other people. The forces of evil inhibit giving God His due and undermine harmony and the common good. God is, it seems, drawing the soul towards judgement. The strangeness or difference of God can intimidate us: we are never completely initiated into His ways. Freedom is at odds with fear yet the autonomous and religious moral agent may live out of an appropriate fear of God. The last things are inescapably part of the background to the acceptance of grace.

Lecture 4: Holiness and Culture

The virtue of temperance informs the exercise of the imagination. Curiosity about goodness drives us forward. The quest for perfection embraces a schooling of the heart which hopes to find good desires there. Love is attentive to what God might be saying, even commanding, and to the needs of others. The Holy Spirit sheds light on all of this. Grace prompts cooperation with what is revealed by this light.

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To arrange accommodation, contact the guestmaster or the Warden (women).