Communio Circle of the Diocese of Hamilton

You are invited to attend our next monthly meeting to be held on Friday, March 14th from 4:00pm to 5:30pm. We will be discussing “A Blood Transfusion for Theology: Pope Francis’s c’est la confiance, Thérèse, and Teresa” by Lisa Lickona from the Spring 2024 issue entitled “Reforming the Church” (Volume 51.1).

Here are excerpt from the Introduction to the issue:
In “A Blood Transfusion for Theology: Pope Francis’s c’est la confiance, Thérèse, and Teresa,” Lisa Lickona responds to Pope Francis’s call for theologians to appropriate and draw out the conclusions of St. Thérèse’s theology. Lickona shows that Thérèse’s spirituality flows from that of another great Carmelite: St. Teresa of Ávila. Although both are Carmelites, the strong connection between their spiritualties is not obvious. Teresa’s mysticism, filled with remarkable visions and spiritual ecstasies, seems rather remote from Thérèse’s “little way.” Lickona, however, shows how Thérèse’s asceticism and emphasis on “confidence” flows from Teresa’s mystical charism; both women are united in their testimony to the “primacy of God” in their lives. “In the charisms of these two women, taken as a whole, the mystical informs the ascetical in a way that unleashes the Church’s true evangelical potential, which is joy, the joy of the Gospel.”

If you are interested, Pope Francis’ Apostolic Exhortation C’est la confiance can be downloaded from here.

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, February 14th from 4:00pm to 5:30pm. We will be discussing “First of All Receptive: Aquinas on the Place of Relation and Receiving in Created Being” by Michael Joseph Higgins from the Spring 2024 issue entitled “Reforming the Church” (Volume 51.1).

Here are excerpt from the Introduction to the issue:
Michael Joseph Higgins takes a more philosophical approach to the theme of the family in “First of All Receptive: Aquinas on the Place of Relation and Receiving in Created Being.” Higgins considers the recent debate in Thomism regarding whether substance is unilaterally prior in the human person vis-à-vis God or whether our relation to God as our Creator is prior to our substance. This seemingly abstract philosophical debate has profound practical implications for the human person. Higgins argues that, in Aquinas’s mature view, “my act of receiving precedes my substance in every respect, and my relation precedes my substance in one respect and follows my substance in another respect.” This view is not blind to the paradox that my receiving somehow precedes my substance—which is to say that my receiving somehow precedes me. Higgins thus aligns himself with David L. Schindler and W. Norris Clark, contending that their view is not only closer to the spirit but also the letter of St. Thomas’s philosophy.

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, January 10th from 4:00pm to 5:30pm. We will be discussing “The Inner Necessity of Paradox in Chesterton’s Humble Orthodoxy” by Thomas Möllenbeck from the Summer 2024 issue entitled “Paradoxes of Faith” (Volume 51.2). The article can be downloaded from here.

Here are excerpt from the Introduction to the issue:
G. K. Chesterton’s distinctive writing style is highly enjoyable to many and highly irritating to some, but it is not merely a matter of style. In “The Inner Necessity of Paradox in Chesterton’s Humble Orthodoxy,” Thomas Möllenbeck shows how understanding the artistry of Chesterton’s writing involves “understanding the paradox of the artist.” It is true that Chesterton frequently uses paradox as a way of revealing the received opinion of his intellectual milieu as the vulgar error it is. But more than this, paradox permeated Chesterton’s own life. It was the self-contradictory accusations of the atheist against the Church that first opened for him the mystery of the faith. The comedic nature of his writing is revelatory of his theological and metaphysical convictions: his humor is not the opposite of sincerity; it is in fact a testament to his orthodoxy.

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:
Thomas Toast – Tuesday, January 28th, 2025 – St. Anthony Daniel Church, Kitchener

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.