News & Events

17 March

7:30 – Late

Durham City Companions Club

Waddington Street, Durham DH1 4BG

Entrance by ticket only

For more information contact: m.j.pound@durham.ac.uk

On the evening of 17  February at 10.35 “Our Man in the Vatican”, is to begin screening on BBC Northern Ireland.  The program, the first in a series of three, follows the work of HE Francis Campbell, HM Ambassador to the Holy See.  As some of you may recall, last March HE Francis Campbell, with film crew in toe, made a formal visit to the Centre for Catholic Studies, in the course of which he gave two presentations, visited the Chaplaincy, shared in Evensong at the Cathedral, visited the tomb of St Cuthbert with Bishop Seamus, and shared in a dinner at the VC’s residence. 

 The series of programmes relate to this and other aspects of the Ambassadors work and will run for three weeks.  Durham footage is at the start (7-8 minutes) of week 2 (24  February).  The programmes can be viewed live in the UK via Sky and from the following morning for seven days via BBC i-player.

Jack Scollen RIP wrote a wonderful history of the parish of St Godric in 1964 to mark the parish’s centenary. This has now been reproduced with the help of the Centre for Catholic Studies, in slightly updated form, and is available at the back of St Godric’s, St Bede’s, and St Joseph’s for £4.00 per copy, payable directly to the parish. Alternatively, you may wish to contact the centre to obtain your copy.

A copy of the Centre for Catholic Studies Newsletter is now available for download below along with a shedule for the Epiphany Term’s Seminar.

Centre for Catholic Studies Newsletter

Catholic Theology Research Seminar program

A Newsletter update of the project in Receptive Ecuemism is now available for download by clicking below: 

Receptive Ecumenism Newsletter

A Durham consortium of University and faith leaders hopes that Pope Benedict XVI will accept their invitation to make the first ever papal visit to the North East of England.

Following a visit of the British Ambassador to the Holy See, HE Francis Campbell, to Durham University in March of this year, a unique partnership of University, Anglican Church and Catholic Church representatives has invited Pope Benedict XVI to present a major academic address in Durham Cathedral in the course of his September 2010 visit to the UK.

Although Pope John Paul II made a pastoral visit to the UK (including York) in May 1982, were Pope Benedict to accept the invitation, it would be the first ever papal visit to the North East of England, a region that boasts the richest Christian heritage in the UK, symbolised by the twin shrines in Durham Cathedral of Saint Cuthbert (d. 687) the Bishop of Lindisfarne, and Saint Bede (d. 735), the most learned man of his age.  Durham Cathedral, which would co-host the event with the University, is commonly regarded as the finest Romanesque building in the world and, together with the University-owned Durham Castle and Palace Green, is a recognised UNESCO world heritage site.

At a time of some increased sensitivity in Anglican-Roman Catholic relations, the strong ecumenical character of the invitation is very significant. The invitation is led by Dr Tom Wright both as Lord Bishop of Durham and as the University’s senior representative, and Mrs Maggie Wright, but is counter-signed and fully supported by Bishop Seamus Cunningham of the Catholic Diocese of Hexham and Newcastle, the Chapter of Durham Cathedral, the Abbot of Ampleforth Abbey and the President of Ushaw College, the Catholic seminary for the North of England. 

Bishop Wright said: “Durham has in recent years become a major global centre for ecumenical work and the close interlinking of Cathedral and University means that Durham is well placed to host an event which is simultaneously academic and ecumenically spiritual.”

The University’s Vice-Chancellor and co-signatory to the letter, Professor Chris Higgins, added: “The strong academic and ecumenical background of this invitation means there is simply no more appropriate place in the country to host such an academic lecture than Durham.

“Leaders of the major churches of the region are working together alongside scholars in Durham University’s department of Theology and Religion which was recently confirmed as the leading UK research department in its field in the most recent government Research Assessment Exercise.”

The original invitation has also received significant support from regional politicians, and a delegation from the consortium, headed by the Vice-Chancellor of Durham University, Prof. Chris Higgins, made personal representation to David Miliband as MP for South Shields in the North East.

Roberta Blackman-Woods, MP for the City of Durham has also added her support: “The possibility of a papal visit to Durham and to Durham Cathedral, a site of unparalleled beauty, would be of tremendous benefit to the North East. I’m sure that the people of Durham would feel great pride in welcoming Pope Benedict and the world’s media.”

Bishop Cunningham of the region’s Catholic diocese said: “In the age of Bede, before there was a single university in the world, never mind this country, this region was the foremost centre of Christian learning in the western world and it continues to be a world-regarded centre of Christian learning today.”

Prof. Paul D. Murray, Director of the Centre for Catholic Studies at Durham University concluded: “This would be an event of immense academic, ecumenical, cultural and regional significance.  Durham University and the Cathedral have a proven track-record in hosting global political and religious leaders to great acclaim and we would be delighted to welcome Pope Benedict to the region.”

For further information, a full copy of the press release can be downloaded below
FINAL PRESS RELEASE POPE BENEDICT

The initial letter of invite:
StatementReBenedictXVIinvite091028

The Rt. Rev. Dr N. T. Wright’s letter to His Excellency Archbishop Faustino Sainz Munoz, Apostolic Nuncio
ApostolicNuncioApril09

A letter to Rt Hon David Miliband, MP for South-Shields.
Letter to Rt Hon David Miliband

The Future of Trinitarian Theology:
Catholic Perspectives
One Day Colloquium
Report by Prof. Lewis Ayres

On 25 November the University’s Centre for Catholic Studies hosted, with the support of The Tablet and the Newman Association, a day conference on “The Future of Trinitarian Theology: Catholic Perspectives”.  The day was remarkable for revealing the richness of current Catholic discussion of Trinitarian theology, and for revealing the extent to which discussion of this central theme in Christian thought finds itself opening to a variety of new conversations and voices.
 
The conference was a deliberately a cross-generational discussion. Two of the giants of US Catholic theology over the past four decades acted as respondents and commentators: Professor David Burrell CSC (who taught for 40 years at Notre Dame and is now Professor of Ethics and Development at Uganda Martyrs University, Kampala) and Professor David Tracy (Emeritus from the University of Chicago).  The main papers of the day came from Dr Karen Kilby (University of Nottingham) and myself.  Professor Mark McIntosh, the new Van Mildert Professor at Durham, and a number of other figures from the Durham scene took part, including Professor Paul D.  Murray, Dr Medi Ann Volpe, and Dr Marcus Pound.  Scholars and graduate students from around the UK came to join the discussion.   

In my paper I argued that Catholic Trinitarian theology will best move into the future by returning to its roots.  Attempts over the past 30 years to claim that western theology has not taken the Trinity seriously, and thus that something new is needed, have been undermined, I argued, by a wave of scholarship on Augustine, Thomas Aquinas and a wide range of other figures.  I suggested that this scholarship does not simply “reveal” that critiques of western theology have been unfounded; rather it opens up new conversations within western theology. 

 Many previous accounts present western theologies of the Trinity as telling a monolithic story: Augustine begins, and Aquinas consummates a few basic western theses.  I would argue that the western tradition is constituted by far more of a conversation and a series of arguments, and this tradition continues to be the fruitful source of our theological work.
 
I ended my paper by suggesting that, rather than a model whereby “systematic” theologians undertake imaginative reconstructions on the basis of historical work undertaken by the “historical” theologian, all theology needs to be historical.  To understand the past is already to appropriate its meaning, and new questions are often best approached by a constant turn back to our sources in a search for parallels. 

 In the afternoon the focus of attention was Karen Kilby’s paper which struck at the heart of much recent “social Trinitarian” theology, attacking what she saw as some of its overly “robust” claims to understand the character of the divine life itself, and then to use this knowledge to offer accounts of everything from the character of the family, political programmes, urban planning, and even the ordering of church architecture.     

The centrality of the doctrine of the Trinity for Kilby rests not on its ability to serve as a resource for theologians to imagine the complexity of relationship and unity in the abstract, but to summarise and organise the principles embedded in the story of God’s action in Christ and the Christian life itself, in such a way as to emphasis divine mystery.  In this way she underlined the apophatic element to Trinitarian speak.

 Both papers were followed by intense discussion, which underlined how whatever the form of our speculation or apophaticism, Trinitarian theology is alive and well. 

(A complete version of this text can be found in The Tablet, 12 December, 2009)

Catholic Theology Research Seminar

19th January

Dr Tom Villis
‘The Chesterbelloc and Fascism’

Dun Cow Cottage
Dun Cow Lane

ALL ARE WELCOME

5:15-7:00

Drinks 5:15-5:30
If you wish to attend please email
(noting whether or you wish to dine afterwards)
m.a.volpe@durham.ac.uk