Graham Greene Lecture Thursday Night

I've gotten a notice from the Seattle Chesterton Society I wanted to share with you.  If you are living in the Seattle area I recommend that you attend if you can.

Graham Greene: Catholic Literary Modernist

Rev. Dr. Mark Bosco, S. J.

Loyola University Chicago

It is something of a cliché that the so-called modern age witnessed the death of God, religion, or both. Modernist writers, among those most aware of their own “modernity,” have done much eulogizing of faith. The success of this Modernist “project” is, of course, complicated by the persistence of religion. Moreover, the modern period produced writers the likes of T.S. Eliot, Evelyn Waugh, and Graham Greene, to name only a few. I would like to suggest ways in which we can understand Greene as a representative “Catholic Modernist” who re-imagines Catholicism through modernist aesthetics, modernist sensibilities. In particular, I would like to develop the historical trajectory of this Catholic literary revival as a kind of Catholic literary modernism, and see in Greene's work, especially, how this is embodied.

Mark Bosco, S.J., holds a joint appointment as associate professor in English and Theology at Loyola University Chicago, and serves as its director of the Catholic Studies Program. His scholarship focuses on the intersection of Catholic theology, aesthetics, and literature. His book publications include Graham Greene's Catholic Imagination (Oxford UP 2005), and two edited volumes, Academic Novels as Satire: Critical Studies of an Emerging Genre (Edwin Mellen, 2007) and Finding God in All Things: Celebrating Bernard Lonergan, John Courtney Murray, and Karl Rahner (Fordham UP, 2007). He has published in such journals as The Southern Review, The Flannery O'Connor Review, and LOGOS: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture.

Please see our full Events Calendar for more details pertaining to meetings.  Parking at the Newman Center is extremely limited. It is recommended that commuters park in the nearby "N5" lot on the University campus, accessible via the north gate at NE 45th St and Memorial Way. The fee for evening parking in the University lots is $5.00. Campus maps showing the exact location of the N5 lot are available here.

We look forward to seeing you Thursday evening!

For more infomration on the Chesterton Society: 

http://www.seattlechesterton.org/

For more information on Fr. Bosco: 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Bosco

G.K. Chesterton Society

I went to a meeting of Seattle's G.K Chesterton Society last night, and heard Dr. David Whalen of
Hillsdale College give a talk on Cardinal John Henry Newman. The talk was given, appropriately, in the Catholic Newman Center, by University of Washington, where the society is currently holding it's talks.

You may ask why I write about Cardinal Newman in a blog about the arts, but if you know much about Newman it is quite understandable. Newman was an advocate of Catholic education and liberal arts studies, holding that we must study each discipline separately, then integrate them to a whole. He argued for Catholic Universities on the grounds that theology was a necessary part of the liberal arts.

The evening began with a brief reading from Chesterton that fit the nights topic, then Dr Whalen's talk. Dr. Whalen was articulate, funny, and personable. He teaches on literature and the Great Books and is quite well versed in Newman's writings. Afterward there was a social hour during which I pressed further a question, part of which Dr. Whalen had artfully dodged and caught up with several old friends from Seattle's Catholic community. I recommend all my readers folllow this link to the society and check out there upcoming events.

http://www.seattlechesterton.org/