The Portsmouth Institute Summer Conference

Elizabeth Lev (Art historian), Timothy P. O’Malley (University of Notre Dame), Andreas Widmer (Catholic University of America), Jason Baxter (Wyoming Catholic College)
Michael P. Foley (Baylor University), Deacon and Dr. Timothy P. Flanigan (Brown University), Erika Kidd (University of St. Thomas, Minnesota), Glenn Arbery (Wyoming Catholic College)
John C. Cavadini (University of Notre Dame), Brandon McGinley (Catholic writer and speaker), Chad C. Pecknold (Catholic University of America)

The Portsmouth Institute’s flagship summer conference was held from June 16-18 virtually, with speakers and participants joining from around the country and around the world. The theme, “As I Have Loved You” served as the focus of a collection of reflections on Christian love. The Institute proposed to its participants a consideration of the question: As Christians, how do we manifest the love of God in our lives? Contributing speakers drew on their varied areas of study and expertise to provide a panorama of meditations, touching on subjects ranging from aesthetics and beauty, to feasting and dining, to grief and loss. Speakers considered a wide range of cultural and historical dimensions of how to bring the gospel to our day. Many shared very personal experiences and insights concerning what the life of faith and love means to them. Each speaker's virtual presentation was open to questions entered into the “chat,” and organized through the assistance of a moderator. A more open evening Zoom discussion was also available to conferees. The recorded presentations are all currently available on the Institute’s website. 

Beauty and Christian Love. The conference started with exploration of “Beauty and Christian Love” offered by art historian Elizabeth Lev. Prof. Margarita Mooney of the Scola Institute at Princeton Theological Seminary introduced this opening talk of the conference, highlighting a shared mission of the Scola Institute and the Portsmouth Institute: “Scola was founded to restore meaning and purpose to education, because a good education is one that leads us through beauty towards wisdom and this event right now is absolutely in illustration of that.” In this light, Lev considered the historical context of the origins of Christianity, finding it particularly significant that the most powerful goddess of the ancient Mediterranean world was the goddess of love, Aphrodite (Venus), noting the uniquely human attraction present in our awareness of the beautiful. Ancient Greek and Roman representations of the goddess of love came to be replicated in Christian art, adapted to Christian themes. Most fundamentally, Lev offered the thesis that when Christians speak of a God who is love – not the God of love but who is love – that ground had already been prepared in part in the ancient cultural context.

Liturgy and Christian Love.  Terrence Sweeney of the Collegium Institute of Catholic Thought and Culture in Philadelphia introduced and moderated the presentation by the second speaker, Timothy P. O’Malley of the University of Notre Dame. Prof. O’Malley spoke on “Liturgy and Christian Love”, emphasizing the public, community element of liturgy. He introduced the captivating image of Pope Francis offering prayers in St. Peter’s Square emptied because of the pandemic. Rather than offering there a political plan, the pontiff offered to Rome and to the world, “the only thing that could sustain us throughout the pandemic: an act of love, of adoration, of worship.” Challenging a prevalent American treatment of religious services as more “private” and thus “non-essential,” Prof. O’Malley developed further the essential public role of religious life.

Work and Christian Love.  Professor Andreas Widmer of the Catholic University of America offered the final reflection of Day One, speaking on the concept of Work. The session, moderated by Prof. Margaret Hughes of Thomas Aquinas College (NH), bore the imprint of Pope Saint John Paul II. Drawing on his time in the Swiss Guard, Prof. Widmer spoke of the profound influence of John Paul II on his faith and his theological understanding. Turning to the creation story of Genesis, Prof. Widmer expanded on its implications for the very act of work and its role in a distinctively human existence.

Technology and Christian Love.  Michael St. Thomas, head of the Department of English at Portsmouth Abbey School, moderated the session opening the second day of the conference, a presentation offered by Professor Jason Baxter of Wyoming Catholic College. Prof. Baxter took up the challenge proposed by Institute director Chris Fisher, requesting that, if possible, he point to a positive characteristics in technology. While hinting that questioners might elicit from him a greater pessimism following his talk, Prof. Baxter contrasted a Promethean and Orphean approaches to nature, inspired by reflections of C.S. Lewis, and held hope for the possibility of fusing these two views to develop a humanistic endeavor to promote Christian love.

Festivity and Christian Love.  The second session of Day Two turned to a less common theological topic, though an everyday human experience, exploring how humans eat. Introduced by Mr. Kale Zelden, head of the Humanities program at Portsmouth Abbey School, Professor Michael P. Foley of Baylor University provided a distinctive reflection on humans as “feasters,” who do not eat merely for the sake of consumption but rather as “dining,” a culturally laden experience facing some modern day “complications.” Prof. Foley turned to Bernard Lonergan, who spoke in this connection of man’s “first work of art” as being “his own living.” The act of eating alone has historically been viewed critically in most societies. Prof. Foley spoke of eating together as a shared experience of what is not fully sharable, pointing to Dante, who notes that unlike the competitive and shrinking availability of shared food, love is such that it in fact expands when it is shared.

Medicine, Loss, and Christian Love.  The next session was shared by Deacon and Dr. Timothy P. Flanigan of Brown University and Professor Erika Kidd of the University of St. Thomas, Minnesota. The session was moderated by Prof. Michael West, teacher of English involved with the Liberal Learning for Life program the University of Dallas. Dr. Flanigan drew on his over thirty years of experience with three epidemics (HIV-AIDS, Ebola, COVID-19), describing the need to “walk with our patients… care for them.” He has been particularly struck by the courage and heroism of others on this journey of care, be they medical professionals, family members, or others. He spoke of the inevitability of human suffering, and how the American culture has difficulty accepting and living with suffering. His Ebola experience introduced him to the West African sense that God is ever-present and how its life saturated by the faith experience changes everything. He also outlined some of the distinctive characteristics of the suffering associated with COVID-19, notably its isolation and loneliness, and its distinctive fearfulness, particularly in the illness’s effect of shortness of breath. Across these differing cultural and medical experiences, he sees at the heart of Christian love a shared carrying of each other’s crosses and an appeal to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Professor Erika Kidd spoke clearly yet movingly of the loss of her child and how this so challenged a basic trust in God, presenting a great difficulty in understanding God. She saw a connection between her personal story of her loss of a stillborn son and the grief present in the writings of Saint Augustine, as in  “The Teacher” and  Confessions. Prof. Kidd thus sought to explore the relationship and possible tension between love for God and the love for God’s creatures.

Enemies and Christian Love.  The third and final day of the conference started with an examination of Christ’s most difficult of commands, to love one’s enemies. Glenn Arbery of Wyoming Catholic College set the discussion in the context of views of the ancient world, and in the work of Shakespeare. Introduced by his former student Mr. Kale Zelden, Professor Arbery emphasized the clarity of the Sermon on the Mount on this difficult command. Shakespeare encounters this hard commandment, ultimately seeking to portray a treatment of Christian love that overcomes vengeance and justice. This presents the lingering question of whether love of enemies amounts to a “suspension of justice in some way.”

The Marginalized and Christian Love.  The Abbey's Brother Sixtus Roslevich next introduced Professor John C. Cavadini of the University of Notre Dame. Professor Cavadini drew on Dorothy Day’s “On Pilgrimage”, particularly her entry from October, which speaks of “the stink of injustice and indifference,” and looks unblinkingly at human suffering and dying – but also notes “the fragrance of sanctity” that still is present. In those assisting the poor one can see opening a love where we see that we are all one, akin to husband and wife in marriage. In this love “on the margins” one can begin to “see all things new.” Prof. Cavadini also points to Pope Benedict XVI, as one sees in God is Love: Deus Caritas Est, which offers a Eucharistic and ecclesial theology in which the “we” is not closed in on itself.

Culture, the Nones, and Christian Love.  Brandon McGinley, a Catholic writer and speaker, and Chad C. Pecknold of the Catholic University of America teamed up to provide the conference’s final session. Director of the Portsmouth Institute Chris Fisher introduced them, expressing gratitude for offerings of all the speakers and the generosity of the conference’s sponsors. In this final session, Mr. McGinley turned to the virtue of life of the church as fundamentally “public” and not “private,” as both individual and social, arguing that it is thus not anti-evangelical to connect faith to the public arena. He called for an awareness of and development of Christian duties concerning justice, and religious cultural entities as essentially social.  Prof. Pecknold developed this in an examination of the relationship between politics and culture, critiquing a positivistic feedback loop that does not recognize politics and culture as being “downstream of cult” – depending on a fundamental religious dimension of human life. Prof. Pecknold challenged some of the unquestioned assumptions of contemporary culture, particularly suggesting “the elites” are presenting “new idols,” and raised the current question of integralism.

These varied meditations provide an array of insight and opportunity for reflection on Christian love. And in this spirit, we reproduce the Conference Prayer offered by Prior Michael Brunner:

We offer a special thanks to the sponsors for this year’s Summer Conference: Wyoming Catholic College; University of St. Thomas Catholic Studies Graduate Program; Cluny Media; Collegium Institute for Catholic Thought and Culture; The Providence College; Humanities Forum; Movimiento Apostolico Manquehue; Scala Foundation; University of Dallas – Liberal Learning For Life; Magdalen College of the Liberal Arts; Holy Apostles College and Seminary