Cardinal Gerhard Müller, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and Nobel laureate economist James J. Heckman will be among the speakers at the 15th annual fall conference of the University of Notre Dame’s Center for Ethics and Culture Oct. 30-Nov.1 (Thursday-Saturday).
The conference, “Your Light Will Rise in Darkness: Responding to the Cry of the Poor,” will take as its theme an admonition made by Pope Francis in his address last year to the Archbishop of Canterbury. “Among our tasks as witnesses to the love of Christ,” Pope Francis said, “is that of giving a voice to the cry of the poor.”
According to O. Carter Snead, William P. and Hazel B. White Director of the Center for Ethics and Culture, conference participants will explore questions related to the human meaning of poverty and how to care rightly for the poor in the contexts of philosophy, theology, political theory, law, history, economics, the social sciences, the biosciences, literature and the arts.
“We at the center are proud to follow the Holy Father’s lead and seriously engage the question of poverty and the poor,” Snead said. “As we do every year, we have gathered the foremost Catholic thinkers, as well as those from other traditions, to grapple together with this issue from a variety of disciplines and points of view.”
In addition to Cardinal Müller and Heckman, conference keynote speakers will include Alasdair MacIntyre, Rev. John A. O’Brien Senior Research Professor of Philosophy, and John M. Finnis, Biolchini Family Professor of Law at Notre Dame.
An opening Mass for the conference will be celebrated at 5:15 p.m. Oct. 30 (Thursday) in the Basilica of the Sacred Heart. Bishop Kevin Rhoades of Fort Wayne-South Bend will preside. All other conference sessions, which are free and open to the public, will be held in Notre Dame’s McKenna Hall, and the full conference schedule is available online here.
Contact: Stephen Freddoso, Center for Ethics and Culture, 574-631-3192, sfreddos@nd.edu