(From left to right: Baron Corvo, Evelyn Waugh, Oscar Wilde, Hilaire Belloc)
Every fall since 2002, the Notre Dame Center for Ethics & Culture has sponsored the Catholic Culture Series, a series of lectures focused on prominent figures in the Catholic literary tradition. The series sprang from the Center's desire to expose Notre Dame undergraduate students - and the entire Notre Dame community - to the richness of the Catholic literary heritage. In an age when names such as Chesterton, Waugh, and O'Connor have little or no meaning to many undergraduate students, even Catholic ones, we at the Center for Ethics and Culture hope to promote such writers both for the quality of their works and the uniquely Catholic dimension of their literary perspectives.
In the past, the Catholic Culture Series has focused on such major Catholic figures as Flannery O'Connor, G.K. Chesterton, Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene, Walker Percy, J.R.R. Tolkien, Sigrid Undset, Walter M. Miller, Jr., Georges Bernanos, and Robert Hugh Benson. Last autumn, the Series examined the complex relationship between William Shakespeare and Catholicism in Elizabethan England.
This year, the series will focus on four Catholic satirists: Oscar Wilde, Evelyn Waugh, Hillarie Belloc, and Baron Corvo. Since classical times, satire has been a keen
weapon of criticism used by rhetoricians in western civilization. Some of the greatest satirists of modern times have been Catholics, yet from the Catholic perspective there are also reservations about whether satire is truly a meaningful instrument in a dialogue of evangelization, since satire is often entirely negative, failing to offer a positive alternative worldview, and since its tone can be very uncharitable. The Catholic Culture Series seeks to contribute to this debate by examining the prophetic critique of modern society which these four men offered through their satire.
Series Schedule:
All lectures will take place at 8:00 PM in DeBartolo room 155 on the campus of the University of Notre Dame.
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
"Evelyn Waugh"
Rev. Paul Mankowski, SJ, Pontifical Biblical Institute (Rome)
Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966) was a Catholic novelist who satirized British society in his literary work. Born into the upper middle class and immersed as a young adult in the social world of aesthetes and Oxford intellectuals, he mocked his contemporaries as “bright, young things” for their frivolity and materialism in his popular novel Vile Bodies. Most famous for his evocative and earnest masterpiece Brideshead Revisited, recently remade into a film starring Emma Thompson, Matthew Goode, and Ben Whishaw, Waugh’s conversion to Catholicism in 1930 deeply influenced his writing.
Fr. Paul Mankowski, a native of South Bend, will offer his reflections on Waugh’s satire at 8 p.m. on September 23. He is a scholar of Scripture and Hebrew at the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome. Many of his numerous publications are related to philology, including his book, Akkadian Loanwords in Biblical Hebrew. A graduate of the University of Chicago and Oxford University, Fr. Mankowski was ordained a Jesuit priest in 1987.
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
"Baron Corvo"
Dr. Ralph McInerny, University of Notre Dame
Born Frederick William Rolfe in 1860, Baron Corvo converted to Catholicism in 1886 and pursued a vocation to the priesthood, until he was expelled from the seminary for a lack of dedication to his studies. A controversial figure even during his own life, due to his biting criticism and suspected homosexuality, Baron Corvo is best known for his fantasy autobiography of an Englishman who is elected Pope, Hadrian VII. The novel was converted into a play for the stage in 1968 and went on to be produced on Broadway.
An accomplished Catholic author himself, Ralph McInerny will offer his perspective on Baron Corvo’s significance at 8 p.m. on September 30. Ralph McInerny was a professor of philosophy at the University of Notre Dame for over 50 years. He is an expert in the work of Thomas Aquinas, Soren Kierkegaard, and Jacques Maritain. He founded, edited, and wrote for Crisis, a journal of lay Catholic opinion, and has penned over fifty novels, including the well-known Father Dowling mystery series. His Gifford Lectures, delivered in Glasgow in 1999-2000, were published under the title Characters in Search of Their Author (University of Notre Dame, 2001). His most recent philosophical book is entitled Praeambula Fidei, Thomism and the God of Philosophers.
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
"Hilaire Belloc"
Rev. Marvin O'Connell, University of Notre Dame
Born in France in 1870, Hilaire Belloc moved to England at a young age and was educated in John Henry Cardinal Newman’s Oratory School and Balliol College, Oxford. Even as a student at Oxford, Belloc was unashamed of his fervent Catholicism, for which he was unapologetic when he became a naturalized British citizen and entered politics. Nicknamed “Old Thunder,” he had a reputation as a persuasive debater, and he stood strongly against the rising tide of secularism and modernity. He is well-known for his series of Cautionary Tales for Children satirical poems and biographies of Oliver Cromwell and Napoleon, along with numerous volumes of history, critical essays and social commentary.
Rev. Marvin O’Connell, a retired diocesan priest, was a professor of history at the University of Notre Dame for over 30 years, including a stint overseeing Notre Dame’s study abroad program in London. Among numerous other publications, he wrote an extensive and authoritative biography of Fr. Edward Sorin, CSC. He specializes in the history of the Church and British history.
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
"Oscar Wilde"
Prof. Joseph Pearce, Ave Maria University.
The flamboyant Dublin aesthete Oscar Wilde, born in Dublin in 1854, was educated at Trinity College Dublin and Magdalen College, Oxford. Most famous for The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Importance of Being Earnest, Wild excoriated Victorian society with his wit and managed to charm his way out of many dangers until he was put on trial in London for “indecency” as a promiscuous homosexual and sentenced to two years hard labor. He converted to Catholicism on his deathbed.
Joseph Pearce will make the case for this controversial figure’s Catholicism and the merits of his unmatched wit at 8 p.m. on October 14. Previously radical activist and agnostic editor of two extremist magazines in Britain, Joseph Pearce is himself a Catholic convert. He is now the author of several critically acclaimed, best-selling biographies of great nineteenth- and twentieth-century Christian authors, such as G.K. Chesterton, J.R.R. Tolkien, Oscar Wilde, Hillaire Belloc, and C.S. Lewis. He is a writer-in-residence and assistant professor of literature at Ave Maria University in Naples, Florida.
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
"Waugh Revisited "
Rev. Charles Gordon, CSC, University of Portland
Fr. Charlie Gordon, a 1978 alumnus of Notre Dame, will offer his reflections on Waugh’s satire at 8 p.m. on October 28. He is an assistant professor of theology at the Congregation of Holy Cross’ Portland University. Specializing in systematic theology and the theology in literature, Fr. Gordon did his doctoral dissertation at Cambridge University on the way the word "supernatural" was used in Shakespeare's England. Formerly a professor of theology at Notre Dame, Fr. Gordon delivered the Center for Ethics and Culture’s 2005 lecture on C.S. Lewis and the Chronicles of Narnia.
