CURRICULUM & SPEAKERS

Lumen Gentium Fellows together undergo an intellectually stimulating curriculum of deep formation in Catholic social teaching and virtuous leadership, focused on their practical application in our professional lives and civic engagement.

SPEAKERS*

Lumen Gentium Fellows will hear from a diverse array of top Catholic leaders, each of whom bring deep expertise, personal vocational experience, and unique insights into living Catholic social teaching and virtuous leadership fully and faithfully.

*Please note that confirmed speakers are subject to change based on speaker availability during the cohort term.

  • Dr. Patricia Murphy

    Associate Professor, Moral Theology, St. Augustine’s Seminary. An expert in virtue ethics, moral decision-making, and fundamental moral theology.

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  • Arthur Peters

    Executive Director, ShareLife and Deputy Supreme Knight, Knights of Columbus—the second-most senior officer of the world’s largest Catholic fraternal organization.

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  • Sister John Mary, SV

    Leads the Toronto mission of the Sisters of Life. The Sisters of Life are a Catholic religious community of women consecrated for the protection of human life.

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  • Dr. Moira McQueen

    Executive Director of the Canadian Catholic Bioethics Institute with a mandate to conduct research and education in bioethics from a Catholic perspective.

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  • The Rev. Dr. Andrew P.W. Bennett

    Director of Faith Communities at Cardus, a Canadian Christian think tank. Formerly Canada’s Ambassador for Religious Freedom.

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  • Peter Copeland

    Deputy Domestic Policy Director, Macdonald-Laurier Institute. Cultural commentator and thinker. Member of the Lumen Gentium Forum leadership group.

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  • Dr. Agnes Thomas

    Executive Director of Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Toronto, serving 21 Catholic member agencies across the GTA, who together serve thousands of our neighbours across the region.

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  • Rev. Kevin Belgrave

    Director of the Institute of Theology and Associate Professor of Moral Theology @ St. Augustine’s Seminary. Expert in moral theology and Catholic virtue ethics.

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  • Jeff Lockert

    President of Catholic Christian Outreach, a university student movement dedicated to evangelization by challenging young adults to live in the fullness of the Catholic faith.

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  • Robin D'Souza, PhD

    Gilson Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of St. Michael's College; Program Coordinator, Lumen Gentium Forum. Doctorate in English Literature.

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  • Deacon Rudy Ovcjak

    Director of the Office for Refugees, Archdiocese of Toronto—the largest refugee sponsorship agreement holder in Canada. Deacon of the Archdiocese of Toronto.

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  • Cecil Chabot, PhD

    Scholar and social entrepreneur. Coordinator, CAPP Canada; Executive Director, Moose River Heritage & Hospitality Association; Co-Founder, Indigenous Catholic Research Fellowship.

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CURRICULUM OUTLINE

Experience an intellectual and spiritual journey through the richness of Catholic social teaching and virtuous leadership. Below you will find the themes for each month of the fellowship, and corresponding questions which guide Lumen Gentium Fellows through each movement of the exploration.

MONTH 1:

CATHOLIC SOCIAL TEACHING & VIRTUOUS LEADERSHIP

Striving for Holiness & the Common Good in your Personal Mission

  1. Human beings have a deep desire for what is good, true, and beautiful—for authenticity and authority. However, this desire is often deeply entangled in a will to power over the very definitions of these realities. How can Catholic Social Teaching and Virtuous Leadership provide important correctives that help us find healing, wholeness, holiness, and happiness by “becoming who you are”? (Pope Saint John Paul II)

  2. How does Catholic social teaching enable us to address polarizing issues through core, foundational principles and meaningful dialogue? How does Catholic social teaching equip us in our lay vocations to advance God’s Kingdom where we are, and to share the Good News with our neighbours?

  3. We can’t seek peace at all costs, or it will be a false peace—a compromise with injustice and evil. Christ tells us simultaneously: “Blessed are the peacemakers” (Matthew 5:9) and “I came not to bring peace but a sword.” (Matthew 10:34). How do we reconcile these two injunctions? What is the role of virtuous leadership in discerning the right path forward?

MONTH 2:

FOUNDATIONS OF HUMAN DIGNITY—MADE IN THE IMAGE OF GOD

Christian Anthropology & Humanity in the Modern World

  1. What is the difference between the true Christian anthropology and competing ideological frameworks present in contemporary culture? How do these imagine the nature of the human being, and the human being’s relationship with society and all of creation?

  2. What are the main differences between a Catholic vision of the dignity of human life and other visions present in Canadian cultural discourse?

  3. How can we as Catholics engage with and evangelize our culture through this Christian anthropological vision of the human being? What are today’s pressing concerns, culturally speaking, and how do we apply a Christian anthropology to those concerns?

  4. What is the relevance of a Christian anthropology to your own professional life and how you can contribute to the common good through your work? In what ways does your institution’s structure, mission, programs, etc, reflect a Christian anthropology (implicitly or explicitly) and in what way does it contravene a Christian anthropology? In what ways can you influence your institution towards a greater affirmation of Christian anthropology?

MONTH 3:

THE UNITY OF TRUTH: FAITH AND REASON

The “two wings on which the human spirit rises” (Pope Saint John Paul II)

  1. What is the relationship between faith and reason? How do they complete and perfect one another? What relationship between faith and reason do we see in Canadian culture today?

  2. Through the readings, we see that faith and reason are complementary, but we often end up emphasizing one over the other. Do you fall into this tendency, and which of the two do you find has supremacy in your own life? 

  3. Practically speaking, how do faith and reason exist in harmony, or in tension in various parts of your life, and in your professional vocation?

  4. Does your institution embrace the relationship between faith and reason (implicitly or explicitly), or are faith perspectives relegated to a secondary position, or are not welcome at all? How can your institution better embrace the relationship between faith and reason? How could you influence your institution towards a greater respect and consideration of faith perspectives?

MONTH 4:

“BECOME WHO YOU ARE!”—FREEDOM FOR EXCELLENCE

Moral Agency, Rights, and Responsibilities

  1. What is the meaning and purpose of human freedom?

  2. What ideological currents and material factors in our contemporary society misuse, exaggerate and/or undermine human freedom (often simultaneously)? How can we demonstrate the difference between genuine freedom and its imitators?

  3. To those who fear that a deeper application of Catholic Social Teaching in Canadian society will undermine rather than enhance human freedom, what can we say?

  4. How do you use your freedom? In what ways to you exercise freedom in the journey towards excellence and holiness, and in what ways do you need to grow in your use of the great gift of freedom? 

  5. How do I, in my professional life, contribute to the positive exercise of the freedom of others? Does my institution contribute to the positive exercise of freedom of those we serve?

MONTH 5:

THE RESPONSIBILITY TO LEAD

The Catholic citizen for the Common Good

  1. The common good is a central, permanent principle of Catholic Social Teaching. Yet that term and its meaning are highly contested in our public discourse. How do you understand the idea of the common good in what we’ve learned so far?

  2. In Rerum novarum, Pope Leo XIII writes that “if human society is to be healed now, in no other way can it be healed save by a return to Christian life and Christian institutions.” What could the kind of Christian social renewal Pope Leo XIII calls for here look like today, and how does Pope Leo XIII distinguish between the legitimate ends of the secular State and the Church?

  3. What are the responsibilities of the Christian when it comes to cultural engagement and leadership within the wider society? How must that engagement necessarily be evangelistic?

  4. What virtues are required for you to cultivate an evangelistic attitude in your place of work, and in how you seek to influence your institution and our wider civil society?

MONTH 6:

THE GIFT OF LIFE

Public Bioethics in our Canadian Context

  1. What are the most significant ways your profession and your institution—both internally and in their wider civic role—influence how human life is valued in our culture, both positively and negatively?

  2. Where and how is the Catholic understanding of human life’s sanctity most needed in our culture today?

  3. What aspects of human life and dignity are affirmed by Catholic social teaching, which are in turn reduced or rejected by contemporary ideologies? In what ways does Catholic social teaching more completely vision the goodness of human life?

  4. What role can you play via your professional expertise and in your domain of action to contribute to a greater affirmation of the value and sanctity of human life in all its forms?

MONTH 7:

A CHRISTIAN ANTHROPOLOGY OF SEXUALITY & SEXUAL DIFFERENCE

“God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good.” (Genesis 1:31)

  1. The word “anthropology” comes up again with regards to sexuality and sexual difference in the readings. What is a definition of anthropology, and why is it functional with regards to discussing the essentiality of “male and female he created them”?

  2. How can we have conversations about these topics, which have become quite controversial of late?

  3. How can we influence various educational systems and teachers on questions of sexuality and sexual difference in today’s Canadian society?

  4. One of the challenges of our deeply ideological contemporary culture is that it can be a struggle to fully live a Christian anthropology, especially in social life. How can we live reality fully, as best we can, even despite these contrary ideological frameworks?

MONTH 8:

THE TRUE DEVELOPMENT OF HUMAN PERSONS

The Promotion of the Poor, Stewardship, Co-Creation, and Integral Human Ecology

  1. How do you understand the distinction between the idea of progress and true, authentic development, as defined by the Catholic tradition?

  2. In your profession, how have you seen the manifestation of both underdevelopment and overdevelopment? How does your institution and your industry contribute to both phenomena, and/or heal them?

  3. What does it mean to exercise a preferential option for the poor and vulnerable? How can you in your profession and your institution better live this out?

  4. In our readings this month, Pope Francis writes that “the Church’s social thought is primarily positive: it offers proposals, it works for change and in this sense it constantly points to the hope born of the loving heart of Jesus Christ.” What positive proposals have you begun to envision as you have deepened your understanding of Catholic social teaching and virtuous leadership?

  5. Integral—meaning what is essential to something—and ecology, a standard of well-being based on the harmonious and proper functioning of parts considering the end of the whole, are analytical and evaluative concepts that mark the uniqueness of the Catholic understanding of the world. They afford an understanding of the natures of things, what is proper to them, and how they function well together. What does it mean to understand how things connect and what’s good for them with an ecological lens? What does it mean to identify what is essential to well-being and flourishing in our lives? 

  6. Co-creation implies joining in the task of Creation, which is primarily God’s. When God created the world, He created it good, as a sheer gift, and out of love. What does it mean to co-create, understanding it in the context of why and how God creates? What does it mean conceptually, and how is it lived out practically? 

COMMISSIONING RETREAT:

BE A LIGHT TO THE NATIONS

Planning Your Christian Mission

  1. What new insights have you gained from this program and what new questions have arisen?

  2. What is your plan for continuing to deepen your formation in Catholic Social Teaching and Virtuous Leadership?

  3. How will this impact your mission and work?

    Retreat movements:

  • A vision for greatness

  • Reflection on your learning

  • Equipping to give testimony

  • Activation for service

  • Commissioning