2018-2019
Free Parking / Wheelchair Accessible Refreshments Served Join us for six Friday evening lectures that take place in the Vanstone Lecture Hall, Academic Centre (SJ2). PLEASE REGISTER FOR ALL LECTURES AT: www.sju.ca/LCE
In a 2015 audience with children of the Peace Factory, Pope Francis stated: “We are all equal — all of us — but this truth is not recognized, this equality is not recognized…When we do not see this, society is unjust. It does not follow the rule of justice, and where there is no justice, there cannot be peace.” These words echo the words of Pope Paul VI who, in his 1972 World Day of Peace Message, spoke of peace as rooted in justice — a sincere feeling for our fellow human beings and for the earth, especially the marginalized and oppressed. In the 2018-2019 lectures, our speakers invite us to explore the search for peace and justice as it is present in so many aspects of our world: along the path of reconciliation; among women in the church; and in the ongoing work to overcome the injustice of the death penalty. They will consider how The Saint John’s Bible illuminates justice, the intersection of social transformation, culture, and architecture, and the challenges faced by young people who are seeking meaning and peace outside the doors of our churches.
Cristina Vanin, PhD Lectures Coordinator
7:30–9:30 PM
OCTOBER 19, 2018
DAVID WELLS Writer; Educator
WHERE ARE THE YOUNG PEOPLE?: RESPONDING TO THE DISSATISFACTION OF YOUNG PEOPLE FOR RELIGIOUS PRACTICE As Catholic Bishops from around the world gather in Rome this October to focus upon how the Church accompanies and guides young people, we need to ask ourselves: Why are young people so frequently disaffected by their encounter with the Church? And what should be our response to this apparent disconnect? David Wells will explore why, despite our best intentions, we don’t always appear to offer an effective response to the soul searching of the young. He will also look at where young people are finding a sense of meaning and belonging today, and what is likely to come out of the gathering in Rome, suggesting ways in which the Church can focus and direct more attention towards the perplexity and excitement of being young.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER DAVID WELLS is a teacher, producer of catechetical resources, a regular contributor to the annual Religious Education Congress in Anaheim, California, and a sought-out speaker on religious questions. He has published two books: The Reluctant Disciple and The Grateful Disciple. He worked with café productions on, “The Best is Yet to Come,” catechesis for those over 60 and, with CymFed, he produced “Love Chooses You,” an animation of the life of Jesus in 6 minutes, aimed at teenagers. This gifted speaker is married to Alison, has three grown children, a very badly behaved dog, and lives in Exmouth, East Devon.
» This evening’s lecture is provided in partnership with the Waterloo Catholic District School Board.
7:30–9:30 PM
NOVEMBER 16, 2018
HEIDI KIIWETINEPINESIIK STARK, PhD University of Victoria
SACRED INHERITANCE: ACCOUNTING FOR ALL OUR RELATIONS IN TREATIES What are our relationships and responsibilities to one another? How do we reconcile our differences and find ways forward to live together sustainably? The Anishinaabeg have long considered these questions. This talk details how, in bringing the Crown into a treaty relationship, Anishinaabe leaders detailed their understanding of creation and relationship to the Creator. They used treaty forums to instruct newcomers how to live with creation and how to understand the legal web of relationships they would be entering into that carried duties and responsibilities to creation. As such, the United States and Canada are always animated and conditioned by the laws of creation and the laws of the Anishinaabeg outlined in the treaty relationships that enabled them to live here, accounting for all our relations.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
HEIDI KIIWETINEPINESIIK STARK (Turtle Mountain Ojibwe) is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Victoria. She is the Director of the Centre for Indigenous Research and Community-led Engagement (CIRCLE) and the Director of the Graduate Certificate in Indigenous Nationhood. She has a PhD in American Studies from the University of Minnesota. Her research interests include Indigenous law and treaty practices, Aboriginal and Treaty rights, and Indigenous politics in the United States and Canada. She is the co-editor of Centering Anishinaabeg Studies: Understanding the World through Stories with Jill Doerfler and Niigaanwewidam Sinclair and is the co-author of American Indian Politics and the American Political System (3rd and 4th edition) with Dr. David E. Wilkins. She has published articles in journals such as Theory and Event, American Indian Quarterly, American Indian Culture and Research Journal, and Michigan State University Law Review.
» This evening’s lecture celebrates the re-launch of the journal,
The Ecumenist, under its new name, Critical Theology: Engaging Church, Culture, and Society.
7:30–9:30 PM
DECEMBER 7, 2018
CHRISTINE GERVAIS, PhD University of Ottawa
BEYOND THE ALTAR: CANADIAN WOMEN RELIGIOUS CONFRONT PATRIARCHAL POWER IN THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH This lecture will illustrate how Ontario-based Canadian women religious overcome sexist subjugation by side-stepping the patriarchal power of the Roman Catholic Church. Experiential accounts will counter the stereotypical image of Catholic nuns as being loyally compliant with the Church. We will meet women religious who challenge their institutional religion’s precepts and engage in transformative strategies to effect change both within and outside the Roman Catholic Church. We will learn what women religious have both endured and accomplished through their resourcefulness, resilience and resistance. These Canadian sisters indomitably, strategically, and sometimes subversively, innovate their spiritual spaces.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER CHRISTINE GERVAIS (PhD Sociology) is an Associate Professor in Criminology in the Faculty of Social Sciences and a member of the Interdisciplinary Research Laboratory on the Rights of the Child in the Faculty of Law at the University of Ottawa. Her teaching and research areas include children’s and women’s rights in Latin America, social justice, the collateral consequences to relatives of youth who sexually offend, as well as gender-based discrimination and criminalization in religious institutions. Her interdisciplinary studies have been published in Signs, Sociology of Religion, Religions, Review of Religious Research, Canadian Woman Studies, Journal of International Women’s Studies, Children & Society, Journal of Youth Studies, Child Abuse & Neglect and the Journal of Family Violence. She is the author of the recently published book, Beyond the Altar (Wilfrid Laurier University Press).
7:30–9:30 PM
FEBRUARY 1, 2019
JONATHAN HOMRIGHAUSEN Scripture Scholar
ILLUMINATING JUSTICE: THE ETHICAL IMAGINATION OF THE SAINT JOHN’S BIBLE When calligrapher Donald Jackson put the final touches on The Saint John’s Bible in 2011, nobody doubted that this was a monument of creativity and art unparalleled in our age. In this lecture, Scripture scholar Jonathan Homrighausen shows how this project is also a nuanced take on Scripture and the call to social ethics for the twenty-first century. Using biblical scholarship, Church teachings, and interviews with the artists, he shows how this Bible intertwines beauty and justice to stimulate the ethical imagination of its beholders on matters of justice for women, care for creation, and dialogue between Jews and Christians.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER JONATHAN HOMRIGHAUSEN (MA, Graduate Theological Union) is currently pursuing a PhD in Hebrew Bible/Old Testament at Duke University. He is an Episcopal writer and scholar on Scripture, art, and interreligious dialogue. He also works for Lucinda Mosher of Neighbor-Faith Consultancy, helping various clients walk deliberately into religious difference. He is the author of Illuminating Justice: The Ethical Imagination of The Saint John’s Bible (Liturgical Press, 2018). He spent two years with the Heritage Edition of The Saint John’s Bible while working in Archives & Special Collections at Santa Clara University.
7:30–9:30 PM
MARCH 1, 2019
SR. HELEN PREJEAN, CSJ Ministry Against the Death Penalty
DEAD MAN WALKING: THE JOURNEY CONTINUES…. The death penalty is one of the great moral issues that continues to face many countries, yet most people rarely think about it and very few of us take the time to delve deeply enough into this issue. Sr. Helen Prejean is a southern storyteller who will bring you on a journey about how she got involved with the Ministry Against the Death Penalty. This ministry believes in the dignity of all people, expresses mercy and justice by standing side by side with those who are outcasts in our society, promotes compassionate alternatives to the death penalty, and supports victims’ families.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER SR. HELEN PREJEAN, a member of the Congregation of St. Joseph, has been instrumental in sparking dialogue on the death penalty and helping to shape the Catholic Church’s opposition to state executions. Her involvement with poor, inner-city residents in the St. Thomas Housing Project in New Orleans led her to prison ministry where she counsels death row inmates in the Louisiana State Penitentiary. She has accompanied six men to their death. Sr. Prejean’s book, Dead Man Walking: An Eyewitness Account of the Death Penalty in the United States, became a movie, an opera and a play for high schools and colleges. She has also written The Death of Innocents: An Eyewitness Account of Wrongful Executions, and is presently at work on another book, River of Fire: My Spiritual Journey. She helped found Survive, a victims’ advocacy group in New Orleans. Sr. Prejean is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Pacem in Terris Award, and a Robert M. Holstein ‘Faith Doing Justice’ Award from the Ignatian Solidarity Network.
7:30–9:30 PM
APRIL 5, 2019
JANNA LEVITT Partner, LGA Architectural Partners
DETERMINISM AND OPTIMISM: ARCHITECTURE FOR SOCIAL TRANSFORMATION As an art, architecture embodies the ideologies of determinism and optimism: the belief that our physical environment both shapes and influences who we are and how we will relate to the world. By examining the design process of select projects, the lecture will illustrate the ways in which a diverse community of clients have benefited from LGA Architectural Partners’ architectural practice; one that celebrates diverse cultures, environments and social dynamics. Through a process of deep engagement and discourse with their client, site, community and environment, the work of LGA represents a rich and responsive history of buildings that delight, challenge and resonate.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER JANNA LEVITT co-founded LGA Architectural Partners (formerly Levitt Goodman Architects) in 1991. She believes architecture is an essential tool for creating living, working, and learning environments that improve the quality of people’s lives. Her projects often involve implementing transformative cultural and environmental agendas that are developed with diverse group of collaborators and communities. Ms. Levitt is an Adjunct Professor at the University of Waterloo School of Architecture and the Dalhousie University School of Architecture. She has been an Arts Build Ontario mentor, and from 2011 to 2015 served on the RAIC Steering Committee for Canada’s Architecture Pavilion at the Venice Biennale. Ms. Levitt is the architect for the renovation of the Kitchener Public Library and for the (Children’s) Museum. She is currently on the Metrolinx Design Excellence Review Panel and the Waterfront Toronto Design Review Panel.
» This evening’s lecture is the Cummings Lecture in Cultural History.
SUPPORT FOR THE LECTURES IN CATHOLIC EXPERIENCE We want to extend our gratitude to all the individuals and organizations who make it possible to bring these lectures to the community every year:
» Congregation of the Resurrection » Family and Friends of Laurence A. Cummings » Family and Friends of Ken Devlin » Family and Friends of John Sweeney » Family and Friends of John J. Wintermeyer » Friends of Michael W. Higgins » Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary (Loretto Sisters) » Jesuits of Canada » Patrons of the Lectures in Catholic Experience » Scarboro Missions » Spalding Family » Waterloo Catholic District School Board
All lectures take place in the Vanstone Lecture Hall (1004), Academic Centre (SJ2). University of Waterloo
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University of Waterloo
A B C D Parking Lots V Visitor Parking
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Academic Centre (SJ2)
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Notre Dame Chapel
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Classrooms & Library Building (SJ1)
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Ryan Hall (Residence)
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Douglas R. Letson Community Centre
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Siegfried Hall (Residence)
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Health Services (UWaterloo)
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Sweeney Hall
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J.R. Finn (JRF)
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The Funcken Cafe
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Louis Hall
PARKING INFORMATION Free parking is available on a first-come, first-served, basis in Lots A and B.
UNABLE TO ATTEND IN PERSON? Live stream video is available at www.sju.ca/lce and at YouTube.com.
Free Parking / Wheelchair Accessible Refreshments Served 7:30 - 9:30 PM | DOORS OPEN: 6:45 PM OCTOBER 19, 2018 WHERE ARE THE YOUNG PEOPLE?: RESPONDING TO THE DISSATISFACTION OF YOUNG PEOPLE FOR RELIGIOUS PRACTICE David Wells NOVEMBER 16, 2018 SACRED INHERITANCE: ACCOUNTING FOR ALL OUR RELATIONS IN TREATIES Heidi Kiiwetinepinesiik Stark, PhD DECEMBER 7, 2018 BEYOND THE ALTAR: CANADIAN WOMEN RELIGIOUS CONFRONT PATRIARCHAL POWER IN THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH Christine Gervais, PhD FEBRUARY 1, 2019 ILLUMINATING JUSTICE: THE ETHICAL IMAGINATION OF THE SAINT JOHN’S BIBLE Jonathan Homrighausen MARCH 1, 2019 DEAD MAN WALKING: THE JOURNEY CONTINUES…. Sr. Helen Prejean, CSJ APRIL 5, 2019 DETERMINISM AND OPTIMISM: ARCHITECTURE FOR SOCIAL TRANSFORMATION Janna Levitt
290 Westmount Road North Waterloo, ON N2L 3G3 www.sju.ca/LCE