important milestones - university of st. thomas
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Important Milestones
Aquinas Lecture Series 2005
The University of St. Thomas is a private institution committed to the liberal arts and to the religious, ethical and intellectual tradition of Catholic higher education.
Jan. 27, 20057:30 p.m. Cullen Hall4001 Mt. VernonFree and open to the public. For details call 713-525-3592.
Well-known Catholic ethicist Germain Grisez ofMount St. Mary’s Seminary, Emmitsburg, Md., willdeliver the 2005 Aquinas Lecture “The Restless HeartBlunder” sponsored by the University of St. Thomas’Center for Thomistic Studies. In his lecture ProfessorGrisez will address a difficult moral question. Heasserts that St. Augustine’s famous dictum – “Thouhast made us for Thyself and our hearts are restless tillthey rest in Thee” – while true, is often incorrectlyunderstood.
Grisez will argue that everyone can, and most peo-ple sometimes do, choose something for the sake of anend that they desire for itself, not for the sake of any-thing further, despite realizing that attaining that endwill leave them seeking still other ends.
Professor Grisez is author of numerous books andarticles on moral theology and Christian ethics, but he is probably best known as a proponent of the “New Natural Law Theory.” Professor Grisez answeredthe call of the Second Vatican Council for a renewalof Catholic moral theology with a mas-sive four-volume series entitled: TheWay of the Lord Jesus, three volumesof which have been completed:Volume I: Christian MoralPrinciples; Volume II: Living aChristian Life Volume III: DifficultMoral Questions.
The Restless-HeartBlunder
Germain GrisezFlynn Professor of Christian Ethics,
Mount St. Mary’s Seminary, Emmitsburg, Md.
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Li Bo Yan grew up in the disastrous Chinese CulturalRevolution. Her parents
dreamed of a better future for theirdaughter. They named her Li Bo,which literally means “stand on top ofthe wave” or “gone with the wave tosurvive.” After the 10-year nightmareof political isolation and repressionwas over, Deng Xiao Ping, areformer, became the leader of Chinain 1978. George H.W. Bush came to Beijing in 1974 as chief of the U. S. Liaison Office in the People’sRepublic of China. By 1988, he waspresident. Always a friend of China,Bush and the policies he embracedendeared people like Li Bo, whofound their way to the United Statesbecause of the warming relations with the West.
She had earned a BA in English ata university in Shanghai, spent twoyears preparing for the admission testsfor graduate business school and twomore years getting a visa.
“All I had when I left China was a small, brown suitcase and $200 for a trip halfway around the world to a country where I knew no one,” Li Bo said.
This woman is not easily discour-aged.
She adopted Laura as her Englishname. When Laura reached LosAngeles in 1993, she still had a roughroad ahead of her before finding a newhome at the University of St. Thomas.The University of California at LAwas too expensive for one who sup-ported herself by baby-sitting andwaiting tables. She eventually bought acar and landed in Houston. On herfirst trip to the University of Houston,she took the wrong interstate andfound herself approaching Beaumont.“It was one more thing that made mefeel that I was just a little Chinese girlin a huge country where it seemed noone cared for me,” she said without ahint of self-pity. Laura attended UHfor one semester but felt all alonethere. One day, quite by acci-
dent, she drove past the University ofSt. Thomas. “I immediately felt thewarmth of UST,” she recalled.
She was sent to InternationalStudents’ Advisor Deacon RichardGlor, now retired. Scores of interna-tional students have heart-warmingstories about Glor, and he about them.“He treated me with enormous respectand kindness,” she recalled. “He wasthe first person in the United Stateswho was concerned about my well-being and that I lived in a terrible$200-a-month apartment. He was notlike the others; he just said, ‘Well, let’sjust see how we can help you here.’”
She later met Dr. Yhi Min Ho, nowretired dean of the Cameron School ofBusiness. “He accepted me uncondi-tionally for the MBA program. He’s avery wonderful man,” she said.
Laura joined the vast army of inter-national students who, at one time oranother, found themselves working forGlor. She worked for him on week-days, and she worked as a waitress atFu’s Garden. “I did not have a week-end to myself for three years,” shesaid, simply as a matter of fact. Duringher studies, she attended two classeswith Michael Patrick Maroney. Theybegan seeing each other outside ofclass. Glor, the paternal counselor,made sure that Michael was acting inLaura’s best interests. “Richard waslike a father to me,” she recalled. “Hetreated us international students likehis own kids.” Laura credits CameronSchool of Business Professor AnneDavis as being the matchmaker,because she put Laura on a projectteam with Maroney.
They graduated with MBAs,Michael in 1995 and Laura in 1996.
When the Chapel of St. Basil wascompleted in 1997, Michael and Laurabecame the first couple to wed there.Glor performed the ceremony. InJanuary 2004, Laura gave birth totwins, a boy and a girl. Glor baptizedthem. Laura is presently approachingthe end of her journey to U.S. citizen-ship and about to begin the nearly
year-long journey to becoming aCatholic. Glor had something to dowith that, too, one suspects.
Laura is grateful for the welcomingreception she got at UST. “He [Glor]married most of us and is like a fatherto watch us grow. When we were inour last semester, he would shoo usout and make us get jobs. He wantedus to be successful in the real world,”she said.
Laura wants to give back to USTand is in the early stages of a projectinvolving a Chinese photojournalistand film maker. “I want to show
international students and parentsaround the world that UST is a warmand welcoming place where studentsare safe and cared for,” she said.“Most parents want their children inplaces where they will be cared for.”
She also wants to meet the formerpresident Bush she admires so muchfor his diplomacy and policies thatmade it possible for her to come to the United States. Now that she is riding a wave of comfort andeconomic security, she will very likely get her wish.
– Tom Overton
From China To Texas: From Li Bo to Laura Maroney
noble family who wanted to see their brilliant son as the abbot of a wealthy monastery, like Monte Cassino, not amember of the new mendicant Order of Preachers (Dominicans) pledged to a rigorous form of poverty. Thomas
prevailed, however, becoming the greatest scholar of an age renowned for its scholarship. St. Pius V proclaimed St.Thomas a Doctor of the Universal Church in 1567. In the Encyclical Aeterni Patris, of 1879, on the restoration of
Christian philosophy, Pope Leo XIII declared him “the prince and master of all scholastic doctors” and laterdesignated him patron of all Catholic universities, academies, colleges, and schools. John Paul II in his encyclicalFides et Ratio says of Thomas Aquinas, “In him, the Church’s Magisterium has seen and recognized the passion
for truth; and, precisely because it stays consistently within the horizon of universal, objective and transcendenttruth, his thought scales ‘heights unthinkable to human intelligence.’”
Publish and Thrive!The success of the Center is, in large part, a function of the excellence of its faculty, who are very active in
professional organizations and in scholarly publishing. Dr. Sommers serves on the Executive Council of theAmerican Catholic Philosophical Association, whose annual meeting the Center hosted here in 2003. Dr. R. Edward Houser has been instrumental in making the International Congress on Medieval Studies inKalamazoo a “magnet” for Thomists from all over North America, bringing together well-established scholarsand younger, promising faculty. Recently, two Center faculty members have been Visiting Fulbright Professors:Dr. John F.X. Knasas at the Vilnius Pedagogical University and the University of Vilnius in Lithuania (Spring2004) and Dr. John Deely at the New Bulgarian University in Sofia, Bulgaria (Spring 2005).
The display case in the entrance to Sullivan Hall is filled with books published by the Center and its faculty,including Dr. Tom Osborne’s The Love of Self and Love of God in 13th Century Ethics (Notre Dame, 2005).Two books in the Center’s Thomistic Studies series at Notre Dame Press will appear this fall: Laudemus virosgloriosos: Essays in Honor of Armand Maurer, CSB, R. Edward Houser, editor, and Benedict Ashley, The Way
Toward Wisdom: An Interdisciplinary and Intercultural Introduction to Metaphysics.
Li Bo Yan ’96 (Laura Maroney) and her trusted friend Richard Glor.
Celebrating 25 Years of Thomism, continued from page 1
rev17996_UST 6/23/05 10:25 AM Page 3
Aquinas Lecture Series 2006
St. Thomas Aquinas was not directly engaged indisputes with non-Christians, but in his Summacontra Gentiles he gives principles to be used forsuch disputes. The lecture will summarize themain elements of his method of establishing thecredibility of the Christian religion. Then someattention will be given to the viability of themethod today, including current objections to theThomistic proofs for the existence of God and tothe biblical miracles. Some consideration will begiven to new apologetical approaches.
Avery Cardinal Dulles, a native ofAuburn, N.Y., and a Harvardgraduate, has authored morethan 700 articles and published22 books. He entered the JesuitOrder, was ordained a priest in1956 and was awarded his doctoratein Sacred Theology from the Gregorian Universityin Rome in 1960. He served on the faculty ofWoodstock College from 1960 to 1974. Pope JohnPaul II appointed him a cardinal in 2001.
Avery Cardinal Dulles,S.J.Laurence J. McGinley Professor of Religion and Society, Fordham University
Feb. 21, 20067:30 p.m.Jones Hall3910 YoakumFree and open to the publicParking: Moran Center, Graustark and W. AlabamaContact: Pam Butler at 713-525-3591 or visit www.stthom.edu
Educating Leaders of Faith and Character
The Apologeticsof St. Thomas Aquinas
Dr. Mary Catherine Sommers bestows the very first Order of St. Thomas Medals on Avery Cardinal Dulles and George Strake
UNIVERSITY of ST. THOMAS
2007 AQUINAS LECTURE
Tuesday January 30 at 7:30 PM
Cullen Hall
Educating Leaders of Faith and Character
Practical Reasoning after the ‘Fall’
John M. RistProfessor Emeritus, University of Toronto
Visiting Professor, Istituto Patristico Augustinianum, Rome
Sponsored by
CENTER FOR THOMISTIC STUDIES
Special thanks to the following:
Dr. Robert IvanyMs. Pamela Butler
Mr. Ken De DeDominicisMr. Scott Galeki
Ms. Marionette MitchellMs. Eileen PerkinsMr. Howard RoseMs. Sandra Soliz
For more information about the Center for Thomistic Studies please contact:
Dr. Mary Catherine Sommers, DirectorCenter for Thomistic Studies
University of St. Thomas3800 Montrose Boulevard
Houston, TX 77006713-525-3591
Pavlo Sodomora Fulbright Scholar Program 2007-2008 Visiting Scholar
Associate Professor Danylo Halytsky Lviv National Medical University Ukraine
Sponsored by: Dr. John Deely Project: Problems in rendering philosophical terms into Ukrainian (based on works of St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Augustine) Class Taught: PHIL 6393-St. Thomas and St. Augustine: A Comparative Reading Colloquium: February 14, 2008, Ukraine: Historical and Philosophical Sketches
Center for Thomistic Studies Welcomes Fulbright Scholar Kalevi Kull
10/9/2008
Fulbright Scholar Kalevi Kull, professor in biosemiotics, and head of the Department of Semiotics at the University of Tartu, Estonia, is visiting the Center for Thomistic
Studies at University of St. Thomas this semester.
His home base, Tartu University, is one of the major centers in the field of
semiotics. Kull’s fields of interest include biosemiotics, ecosemiotics, general semiotics, theoretical biology, history and philosophy of life science. His publications
include a number of papers in the journals Semiotica, Sign Systems Studies, Biosemiotics, Cybernetics and Human Knowing, European Journal of Semiotics, and
edited volumes, including “Jakob von Uexküll: A paradigm for semiotics and biology” in Semiotica (2001). He is an editor of the journal Sign Systems Studies
since 1998, and a book series co-editor at Mouton de Gruyter. He has been one of the founders of the Jakob von Uexküll Centre. He is an honorary member of the
Semiotic Society of America, of which he is the 5th Sebeok Fellow.
The Center for Thomistic Studies is an active participant in the Fulbright Program. Two Center faculty members have been Visiting Fulbright Professors, Dr. John F.X.
Knasas at the Vilnius Pedagogical University (VPU) and the University of Vilnius (VU), Department of Philosophy of Lithuania in spring 2004 and Dr. John Deely at
the New Bulgarian University in Sofia, Bulgaria in Spring 2005. In addition, the
Center hosted Fulbright Scholar Dr. Pavlo Sodomora, associate professor in the Latin Language Department, Danylo Halytsky Lviv National Medical University, Lviv,
Ukraine in 2007-2008.
THE SEMIOTIC SOCIETY OF AMERICA, OCTOBER 16–19, 2008
SPONSORED BY THE UNIVERSITY OF ST THOMAS, HOUSTON
COUNTRIES REPRESENTED
1. ARGENTINA:
Manuel Libenson Department of Communication, Universidad Argentina de la Empresa (UADE).
2. BELGIUM:
Mark Reybrouck, Section of Musicology, Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium.
3. BRASIL:
Irene Machado, PhD., School of Communications and Arts, University of San Paolo, Brazil; Scientific Editor of MATRIZes. Journal of the
Post-graduation Program on Sciences of Communication, University of San Paolo.
Vicente Martinez Barrios, Universidade de Brasilia, Brasil.
Elisa de Souza Martinez, Universidade de Brasilia, Brasil.
Lucia Santaella, final plenary roundtable.
4. BULGARIA:
Veronika Azarova, New Bulgarian University, Bulgaria.
Antoaneta Dontcheva, Plovdiv University, Bulgaria and Georgi Kapriev, Sofia University, Bulgaria.
5. CANADA:
David Lidov, York University.
Fernando Andacht, University of Ottawa and Mariela Michel, University of Ottawa.
Dejan Ivkovic, York University, Toronto, CA.
Maureen Connolly and Thomas D. Craig, Brock University, St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada.
Stéphanie Walsh Matthews, Ryerson University, Toronto, Canada.
Marc Champagne, York University, Toronto, Canada.
6. CHINA:
Xin Bin, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing, P. R. China.
Ji Haihong, Nanjing Normal University.
Zhang Jie, Nanjing Normal University.
Yan Zhijun, Nanjing Normal University, China.
7. COLOMBIA:
Carlos E. Vasco, Universidad Distrital (Bogota) and Universidad del Valle (Cali, Colombia) and Adalira Sáenz-Ludlow, University of
North Carolina-Charlotte, co-author.
8. DENMARK:
Jesper Hoffmeyer, Copenhagen University, Denmark.
9. ESTONIA:
Kalevi Kull, University of Tartu & Institute of Zoology and Botany, Estonia.
10. FRANCE:
Anne Hénault, Université de Paris IV Sorbonne.
Noureddine Bakrim, Université de Provence, Aix-en-Provence, France.
11. GERMANY:
Elize Bisanz, Lüneburg University, Germany.
Rolf-Dieter Hepp, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany.
Rita Sabine Kergel, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany.
12. GREAT BRITAIN:
Sara Cannizzaro, London Metropolitan University.
Deana Neubauer, London Metropolitan University.
Wendy Wheeler, London Metropolitan University.
13. ITALY
Augusto Ponzio, Dipartimento di Pratiche linguistiche e analisi di testi, Facoltà di Lingue e Letterature Straniere, Università di Bari.
Antonio Savorelli, Ph.D., Communikitchen Research, Imola, Italy.
Susan Petrilli, Bari University, Italy.
14. JAPAN
Yukihide Endo, Department of English, Hamamatsu University School of Medicine, Hamamatsu City, Shizuoka Pref, Japan.
15. NETHERLANDS:
Gerard J. van den Broek, Central Archives Selection Agency (CAS) of the Interior Ministery, Haren, The Netherlands.
16. POLAND:
Piotr Jaroszynski, John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, Poland.
17. PORTUGAL:
Isabel Marcos, New University of Lisbon.
18. RUSSIA:
Alisa Zhila, Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, Russia.
19. SINGAPORE:
Donald Favareau, National University of Singapore.
20. SWEDEN:
Henrik Uggla, Associate Professor of Brand Strategy Royal Institute of Technology Sweden.
21. TAIWAN:
Hsiu-chih Tsai, National Taiwan University.
Elena Yakovleva, Meiho Institute of Technology, Taiwan.
UNIVERSITY of ST. THOMAS
2008 AQUINAS LECTURE
Thomas Aquinas and the Controversy Concerning Unity of
Substantial Form in Human Beings
Educating Leaders of Faith and Character
Msgr. John F. Wippel Ordinary Professor in the School of Philosophy at The Catholic
University of America
Thursday January 317:30 p.m.
Cullen Hall
Sponsored by
CENTER FOR THOMISTIC STUDIES
Special thanks to the following:
Dr. Robert IvanyMs. Pamela Butler
Mr. Ken De DeDominicisMs. Marionette Mitchell
Ms. Eileen PerkinsMr. Howard RoseMs. Sandra Soliz
Members of Phi Sigma TauStudents of the Center for Thomistic Studies
For more information about the Center for Thomistic Studies please contact:
Dr. Mary Catherine Sommers, DirectorCenter for Thomistic Studies
University of St. Thomas3800 Montrose BoulevardHouston, TX 77006-4696
www.stthom.edu
Educating Leaders of Faith and Character
The Order of St. Thomas bestowed upon the Center for Thomistic Studies co-founders, Rev. Victor Brezik, CSB and Hugh Roy Marshall
Philosophy Faculty gathers to celebrate Fr. Brezik’s 95th Birthday
