Our last session will be Thursday, June 11, 2015 at 7:45 PM in the Common Room of the Rectory.  This is a change from the originally scheduled date.

We'll wrap up with a discussion of St. Athanasius's On the Incarnation.  This is classic work elucidating the reason why it is so necessary for our savior to be both God and man simultaneously.

Our final slate of texts and meetings will be as follows:

Thursday, December 4, 7:45PM

G. K. Chesterton, The Ball and the Cross

Thursday, February 5, 7:45 PM

William Shakespeare, The Tempest

Thursday, March 5, 7:45 PM

St. Anselm, Cur Deus Homo (Why God Became Man)

This is a classic work in which St. Anselm presents an enduring theory regarding the logic of God choosing to ground our salvation on the incarnation, passion, and death of Christ.

Thursday, April 9, 7:45 PM

Mary Shivanandan, Crossing the Threshold of Love: A New Vision of Marriage, Part I

We will use this text to explore St. John Paul II’s Theology of the Body.

Thursday, May 7, 7:45 PM

Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

We will use this text to understand and critique one of Christianity’s most robust interlocutors.

Thursday, June 11, 7:45 PM

St. Athanasius, On the Incarnation

We will omit meeting in July and will resume in August with the following texts:

• For Thursday, August 7, 7:45PM:

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.  Any translation is acceptable, but the preferred one would be that produced by J.R.R. Tolkien.

• For Thursday, September 4, 7:45PM:

C.S. Lewis, Pilgrim’s Regress

• For Thursday, October 2, 7:45PM:

G.K. Chesterton, St. Thomas Aquinas

• For Thursday, November 6, 7:45PM:

C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

Here are the texts that we will consider for our next two sessions:

Thursday, May 8, 7:45 P.M.:

St. Anselm, Proslogion.  This is the work in which St. Anselm proposes his famous ontological argument for the existence of God.  An online translation may be found at:

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/anselm-proslogium.asp

Thursday, June 5, 7:45 P.M.:

Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice.  Although not an explicitly religious work, Austen’s Pride and Prejudice offers an opportunity to examine the way we form and act on judgments regarding others.

Here is the reading list for the St. Alphonsus Great Books group through April 2014.

Please note that the sessions in December and January will meet on the second Thursday of the month.

Thursday, December 12, 2013

C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves.  In this work, Lewis explores the differences between four kinds of love: affection, friendship, romantic love, and Christian love (agape).

An online version may be found at:

http://online.santarosa.edu/homepage/jaharonian/TheFourLoves.pdf

Thursday, January 9, 2014

Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol. 

There are numerous versions of A Christmas Carol online, some with illustrations, some without:

http://www.literature.org/authors/dickens-charles/christmas-carol/chapter-01.html (no illustrations)

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/46/46-h/46-h.htm (with illustrations)

Thursday, February 6, 2014

St. Teresa of Avila, The Interior Castle.  This is St. Teresa’s classic work on the contemplative life.

An online translation may be found at:

http://www.ccel.org/ccel/teresa/castle2.html

Thursday, March 6

David Bentley Hart, The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss.  In this work, Hart critiques the demiurgic notion of God assumed or proposed by both the advocates of mechanical Naturalism, the dominant worldview of our age, and, often as not, even theists.

Thursday, April 3

St. Thérèse of Lisieux, The Story of a Soul.  This is St. Thérèse’s classic and hugely influential autobiography.  A recommended translation is The Complete  Therese of Lisieux (Paracle Giants), translated by Robert Edmonson.

Online versions may be found at:

http://www.storyofasoul.com/

http://www.ccel.org/ccel/therese/autobio.html

The texts for our next four sessions will be as follows.  We will continue to meet in the rectory of St. Alphonsus Church at 7:45.  Please note that we will not be meeting in July.

August 1, 2013:

Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman, Parochial Sermons:

            “Holiness Necessary for Future Blessedness”

            “The Immortality of the Soul”

            “The Religious Use of Excited Feelings”

            “The Religion of the Day”

Online versions of these sermons may be found at: http://www.newmanreader.org/works/parochial/volume1/

September 5, 2013:

Flannery O’Connor, Short Stories:

            “Everything that Rises must Converge”

            “Judgment”

            “A Temple of the Holy Ghost”

            “The Turkey”

October 3, 2013:

The Letters of St. Ignatius of Antioch.  St. Ignatius, the third bishop of Antioch, was an early martyr of the Church, dying around the year 100 A.D.  He wrote seven letters to the Churches along his route to Rome.  We will focus particularly on his Letters to the Magnesians, Trallians, and the Romans.

 Online translations of these letters may be found at: http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/ignatius.html

November 7, 2013:

St. Athanasius, The Life and Affairs of Our Holy Father Antony.  This work by St. Athanasius is one of the seminal texts in the development of the Church’s understanding of the spiritual life.

An online translation of this work may be found at (one needs to scroll down a bit; the text begins after the italics with “Athanasius: Life of Antony):

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/vita-antony.asp

As we begin Lent and head into Easter, we'll be discussing the following texts on the following dates:

March 7: The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis

April 4: The Dark Night by St. John of the Cross

May 2: A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle

June 6: The Everlasting Man by G.K. Chesterton