Art. Sacred music. Medieval history. And the digital humanities. Margot Fassler, Keough-Hesburgh Professor of Music History and Liturgy at Notre Dame, brings them all together in her current research on Hildegard of Bingen — research for which she has been recently awarded fellowships from both the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Read More

Last week, the Vatican charged the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR), an organization that represents most of America’s Catholic nuns, with “serious doctrinal problems” and announced plans to place LCWR into a sort of receivership overseen by three American bishops.

Kathleen Sprows Cummings, associate professor of American Studies at the University of Notre Dame, said she understands why so many American Catholics have been “flabbergasted” by the decision. Read More

José E. Limón, one of the country’s foremost scholars of Latino literature, has been appointed to lead the University of Notre Dame’s Institute for Latino Studies (ILS). As the new director of ILS, he will hold the Julian Samora Chair in Latino Studies.

 

Timothy Matovina, a leading expert on Latino Catholicism, will serve as executive director of the institute, which is housed in the College of Arts and Letters. Both appointments take effect July 1. Read More

Rev. Daniel G. Groody, C.S.C., associate professor of theology and director of the Center for Latino Spirituality and Culture at the University of Notre Dame’s Institute for Latino Studies, has received the 2012 Touchstone Award from the National Federation of Priests’ Councils (NFPC).

The NFPC annually gives the Touchstone Award to a Catholic priest “whose service in the Gospel of Jesus Christ exemplifies the purposes and goals of the Federation.” Read More

The annual undergraduate award winners in theology have been announced. Read More

The 20 winners of Joyce teaching excellence awards represent faculty who have had a profound influence on undergraduate students through sustained exemplary teaching. Faculty committees in each of seven disciplinary areas review the peer and student nominations. Read More

(ST. LOUIS) Aquinas Institute of Theology will confer graduate degrees and graduate certificates on 42 men and women at a 7:00 pm commencement at St. Francis Xavier College Church (Saint Louis University) on Friday, May 11, 2012. The commencement is open to the public.

Of the 42 students graduating, 5 will receive a Doctorate of Ministry (D.Min.) in Preaching; 12 will receive Masters of Divinity (M.Div.), Masters of Arts (M.A.) in Theology, or both; 6 will receive a Master of Arts in Pastoral Studies (M.A.P.S.); 7 will receive a Master of Arts in Pastoral Studies in the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd; 13 will receive graduate certificates in Spiritual Direction, and 2 will receive graduate certificates in Biblical Studies. Read More

It is with great sadness that we report the death of Fr. Cody Unterseher, doctoral student in the Department of Theology, on April 25, 2012, in New York City. Read More

The Academy of Arts and Sciences announced the 2012 class of Fellows elected to the prestigious Academy of Arts and Sciences, and among them is Jean Porter, John A. O'Brien Professor of Theology, in the Moral Theology Area.  Read More

Before he was Pope Benedict XVI, before he was a cardinal and a Vatican bureaucrat, and before he was archbishop of Munich, the German priest and professor Joseph Ratzinger taught theology at the Universities of Freising, Bonn, Munster, Tubingen, and Regensburg, served as a theological consultant at the Second Vatican Council and wrote several widely acclaimed and influential books of theology. Touching on nearly every imaginable theological topic, that career, uninterrupted and even magnified by the theologian’s election to the papacy, will be the subject of a conference, God is Love: Explorations in the Theology of Benedict XVI, to be held at the University of Notre Dame March 25–27 (Sunday–Tuesday). Read More