Communio Circle of the Diocese of Hamilton

You are invited to attend our next monthly meeting to be held on Friday, November 8th from 4:00pm to 5:30pm.

We will be discussing “On Psalm 45” by Robert Spaemann from Fall 2023 issue entitled “Commemorating Fides et ratio” (Volume 50.3).

Here are excerpt from the Introduction to the issue:
“No one can see the world through my eyes. If someone could, he would be identical with me. Jesus sees the world with the eyes of God.” The late German philosopher Robert Spaemann, in “On Psalm 45,” dwells on how creaturely life, in imitation of God’s own triune vitality, is ordered to festive communion, and above all to the wedding between heaven and earth that is consummated through the death of Christ, “the fairest of the sons of men” (Ps 45:2), on behalf of his bridal Church. This excerpt is taken from a two-part commentary composed by Spaemann in the last years of his life, in which the author’s philosophical acumen is joined to a sensitive biblical exegesis that is manifestly animated by prayer grounded in the liturgical life of the Church.

We will meet in the Kateri Room located at St. Michael’s Church, 240 Hemlock Street, Waterloo, Ontario. Use the east side parking lot and enter by the rear doors. Walk up the stairs. The Kateri Room is on your right before you enter the church proper.

December – “The Latent Resources in St. Augustine’s Thought” by Maurice Blondel (Fall 2023 – Volume 50.3)

You are invited to attend our next monthly meeting to be held on Friday, October 11th from 4:00pm to 5:30pm.

We will be discussing “Joseph Ratzinger on Democracy within the Church” Tracey Rowland from Winter 2023 issue entitled “In Memoriam: Benedict XVI, David L. Schindler, Roch Kereszty” (Volume 50.4).

Here are excerpt from the Introduction to the issue:
Tracey Rowland examines the opposition between sociological and genuinely theological understandings of the Church in “Joseph Ratzinger on Democracy within the Church.” The former favors a re-envisioning of authority in the Church according to the management structures, procedures, and standards of liberalist bureaucracy. Following Ratzinger, Rowland traces how the anthropology embedded in such a view depends upon an account of freedom closed to grace, which entails instead a sacred ecclesiology where hierarchy is held to radiate charismatically from Christ’s saving headship. Moreover, the good of diversified responsibility for the Church that advocates for bureaucratization can, Rowland argues, be more adequately satisfied by confessing that the institution belongs within Christ’s mystical Body. “For those who accept such concepts as the powers of the Petrine and episcopal offices being circumscribed by Scripture and tradition . . . the most important issue becomes not that of the democratization of the Church but the bond of trust between clerical leaders and the laity.”

We will meet in the Kateri Room located at St. Michael’s Church, 240 Hemlock Street, Waterloo, Ontario. Use the east side parking lot and enter by the rear doors. Walk up the stairs. The Kateri Room is on your right before you enter the church proper.

Save-the-Date:
Our next study day will be Saturday, October 19th

For those of you who want to read ahead, here are the articles we will be reading in the coming months:
November – “On Psalm 45” by Robert Spaemann (Fall 2023 – Volume 50.3)
December – “The Latent Resources in St. Augustine’s Thought” by Maurice Blondel (Fall 2023 – Volume 50.3)

You are invited to attend our next monthly meeting to be held on Friday, September 13th from 4:00pm to 5:30pm.

We will be discussing “‘Charity Builds Up’ (1 Cor 8:1)—but Which Charity? On Víctor Manuel Fernández’s Theological Proposal” by José Granados from Winter 2023 issue entitled “In Memoriam: Benedict XVI, David L. Schindler, Roch Kereszty” (Volume 50.4). The article can be downloaded from here.

Here are excerpt from the Introduction to the issue:
In “‘Charity Builds Up’ (1 Cor 8:1)—but Which Charity? On Víctor Manuel Fernández’s Theological Proposal,” José Granados assesses the present prefect for the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith’s understanding of the place of charity within Christian doctrine and life. He especially weighs Fernández’s claims that the wisdom of the faithful people is the context for theological reception of revelation, and that charity consummated in the works of mercy is the source of interpreting moral dilemmas. In response, Granados contends that these points can only be rightly affirmed if we hold that charity is first communicated by God in the incarnation and the sacramental economy, that charity is ultimately given for the sake of a communion with God that takes up and fulfills each person’s whole creaturehood, and that the Church’s first responsibility is to build up such communion, which includes faithfully preserving doctrine and calling all people to conversion. As Granados puts it, “The common confession of faith and the sacraments are not only paths to a charity that goes beyond them, but they constitute the architecture or structure of charity, without which charity is formless and disembodied.”

We will meet in the Kateri Room located at St. Michael’s Church, 240 Hemlock Street, Waterloo, Ontario. Use the east side parking lot and enter by the rear doors. Walk up the stairs. The Kateri Room is on your right before you enter the church proper.

You are invited to attend our next monthly meeting to be held on Friday, August 9th from 4:00pm to 5:30pm.

We will be discussing “The Whole in the Fragment: The Vocations of Philosopher and Poet for the Salvation of the World” by Erik van Versendaal from the Winter 2022 issue entitled The Unity and Mission of the Church: Communio at 50 Years (Volume 49.4). The article can be downloaded from here.

Here are excerpt from the Introduction to the issue:
… in “The Whole in the Fragment: The Vocations of Philosopher and Poet for the Salvation of the World,” Erik van Versendaal unfolds the theological and metaphysical principle that every prior reality dignifies the “secondary” by elevating it into communion with itself. Philosophy and poetry, each in their own irreducible way, repeat this given dynamic anew by contemplatively cherishing the surface and the participant, thereby sharing in the Church’s mission to perfect the world’s integrity in Christ. “To be taken with the superfluous dance of the parts within and beyond the whole is the beginning of contemplation, whose pious safeguarding of the show and shine of things expresses why perfect knowledge is convertible with perfect wonder.”

We will meet in the Kateri Room located at St. Michael’s Church, 240 Hemlock Street, Waterloo, Ontario. Use the east side parking lot and enter by the rear doors. Walk up the stairs. The Kateri Room is on your right before you enter the church proper.

You are invited to attend our next monthly meeting to be held on Friday, July 12th from 4:00pm to 5:30pm.

We will be discussing “A Modern Genealogy of the Metaphysics of Information” by Marco Stango from the Fall 2023 issue entitled Commemorating Fides et ratio (Volume 50.3). The article can be downloaded from here.

Here are excerpt from the Introduction to the issue:
In “A Modern Genealogy of the Metaphysics of Information,” Marco Stango brings to light how the digital age conceives of being in a way that radicalizes modernity’s attempt to render all meaning and desire purely immanent. Examining the Enlightenment and Romanticism, he shows how these two modes of modernism, despite their apparent conflict, agree in their aspiration “to remove any reference to transcendence from the horizon of history.” The tension these movements represent between a naturalization of man and divinization of nature are resolved, he argues, in the reduction of reality to information that is universally available for manipulation, and therefore no longer issues a call upon man to wonder. “The ‘intelligence’ or information of everything is originally ‘locked up,’ but it is ready to be liberated in order to fulfill . . . the highest aspirations of man: the reconciliation of man and nature/history.”

We will meet in the Kateri Room located at St. Michael’s Church, 240 Hemlock Street, Waterloo, Ontario. Use the east side parking lot and enter by the rear doors. Walk up the stairs. The Kateri Room is on your right before you enter the church proper.

You are invited to attend our next monthly meeting to be held on Friday, June 14th from 4:00pm to 5:30pm.

We will be discussing “Three Rivers: Memory as Mediation and Mission in Purgatorio and Paradiso” by Mary Taylor from the Summer 2023 issue entitled Memory (Volume 50.2).

Here are excerpt from the Introduction to the issue:
Mary Taylor dwells on the pervasive motif of memory in Dante’s Divine Comedy in “Three Rivers: Memory as Mediation and Mission in Purgatorio and Paradiso.” Recollecting and repenting his sin, the pilgrim Dante is transformed in his ascent through initiation into the mystical body’s communal memory of God for the sake of his future mission of poetic testimony to divine love. The purification that he undergoes and his personal experience of ineffable mystery in the vision of the Trinity are, therefore, features of his role as a mediator of the sacred tradition. “[N]atural memory cleansed and renewed as part of healing confession in purgatory is surpassed in paradise, engulfed in God, suffused with grace, in order to become a channel for the living memory of Christ in his body extended through time, the Church.”

We will meet in the Kateri Room located at St. Michael’s Church, 240 Hemlock Street, Waterloo, Ontario. Use the east side parking lot and enter by the rear doors. Walk up the stairs. The Kateri Room is on your right before you enter the church proper.

Save-the-Date:
Saturday, June 29th – St. Michael Church, Waterloo – 10:00am to 2:00pm
Study Day – “A Brief Catechesis on Nature and Grace” by Henri de Lubac
Ignatius Press
Amazon

Note that in July we will be discussing “A Modern Genealogy of the Metaphysics of Information” by Marco Stango. The article is available from here.

You are invited to attend our next monthly meeting to be held on Friday, May 10th from 4:00pm to 5:30pm. We will be discussing “The Sacramental Character of Truth” Rudy A. te Velde from the Fall 2023 issue entitled Commemorating Fides et Ratio (Volume 50.3).

Here are excerpt from the Introduction to the issue:
Rudi A. te Velde, in “The Sacramental Character of Truth,” affirms the natural readiness of the human person for the appeal that truth makes upon him, which is one basic reason why revelation cannot but be meaningful for man. Universal truth invites and supports its free reception in human life, which for its part receives its own full significance through the person’s assent to what is. Moreover, since created reality sacramentally directs the knower to the God who transcends it, it is fitting that Fides et ratio could advocate for the safeguarding of philosophy as among the vital concerns of religion. “The encyclical suggests that the divine self-gift of truth in and through Christ, accepted and lived in faith, places human reason in a properly philosophical relationship with truth, that is, a relationship that assumes truth to be a presence that cannot be fully mastered and appropriated.”

You are invited to attend our next monthly meeting to be held on Friday, April 12th from 4:00pm to 5:30pm. We will be discussing “Memores Domini: Living God’s Memory in a Post-Christian World” by Antonio López from the Summer 2023 issue entitled Memory (Volume 50.2).

Here are excerpt from the Introduction to the issue:
In “Memores Domini: Living God’s Memory in a Post-Christian World,” Antonio López unfolds the meaning of Christian memory as a mindful adherence to God’s calling presence, above all as God gives himself to us in Christ through the mediation of the Church. In light of Luigi Giussani’s reception of the Rule of St. Benedict, López argues that such faithful remembrance is carried out in a whole life, one which serves the further communication of the very glory of divine love to which it attends. “When the memor Domini accepts the labor of living the memory of Christ at work, when he transforms what he is doing into an offering, he contributes, in ways that always elude his grasp, to the permanence and growth of the mystery of the Incarnation in history and thus bears witness to its beauty in the midst of the world.”