Marianist Lecture

Marianist Lecture: On ‘Learning From Grief’

February 18, 2025

Fr. James Keenan, S.J., a nationally-recognized theological ethicist, spoke on the transformative power of learning from grief at the latest Marianist Lecture this month.

Keenan urged attendees to see grief not as something to “get over,” but as part of a complex and personal process of “moving forward.” “I think grief is a form of love,” he said, speaking February 9 in the Mystical Rose Oratory.

“Those who know grief … experience terrible pain and that experience is what liberates them to be responsive.”

He added, “Mourning is not something that can be finished.”

Keenan serves as the director of the Jesuit Institute and vice provost of Global Engagement at Boston College. He also founded Catholic Theological Ethics in the World Church, an international network of ethicists, and has published several books on ethics.

The Marianist Lecture, sponsored by the Marianist Center of Hawai‘i, Chaminade University and Saint Louis School, is aimed at fostering inclusive dialogue on Catholic thought and responsibility. Marianist Lecture presenters are honored with the Mackey Award for Catholic Thought, named after the first president of Chaminade University.

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Dustyn Ragasa, Ph.D., an assistant professor of Religious Studies and director of Chaminade’s Master of Pastoral Theology program, said Keenan served on his dissertation committee. In helping to introduce him at the lecture, Ragasa said he can attest to Keenan’s “generosity, wisdom, compassion and empowering insight.”

“Over the last 40 years, Dr. James Keenan, Jesuit and ethicist, has been a leading voice of hope, an advocate for the marginalized, and a prophetic voice for the call to mercy,” Ragasa said. “Father Keenan has influenced generations of ethicists around the world.”

Keenan’s talk was titled “Learning from Grief: Epiphany in the Upper Room,” and he encouraged attendees to eschew the standard “get over it” model of grief and consider Jesus’ teachings on personal growth and love.

Under that new model, he said, “grief is shared. In light of grief, one needs not to find the way back but the way forward.”

To watch Keenan’s full lecture on Facebook, click here.

Scholar: Catholic Bioethics Must Evolve

October 16, 2024

Dr. Therese Lysaught is an influential voice in Catholic healthcare

Dr. Therese Lysaught, professor at the Neiswanger Institute for Bioethics and Health Care Leadership at Loyola University Chicago, argues Catholic bioethics must embrace the fullness of the Catholic social tradition and pay more attention to ethical dimensions of healing that are relevant to people’s lives.

Addressing attendees at the latest Marianist Lecture, which was held Oct. 13 at the Mystical Rose Oratory, Lysaught also said a broadened Catholic bioethics has the ability to play a critical role in society.

In an introduction before the lecture, Chaminade’s Dr. Dustyn Ragasa applauded Lysaught’s encyclopedic knowledge of Catholic bioethics and the healthcare system while also praising her for a “big heart and unwavering compassion and commitment” to help patients.

Dr. Dustyn Ragasa praised Dr. Therese Lysault for her unwavering commitment to help the poor and ill.

“In her work, she holds theology, medicine, ethics and bioethics in profound dialogue,” said Ragasa, director of the Pastoral Theology master’s degree program.

“She’s addressed such issues as the anointing of the sick, gene therapy, genetics, human embryonic cell research, end of life, neuroscience, global health, bioethics and social justice.”

In her lecture, titled “Catholic Bioethics: Catholic Social Tradition and Human Flourishing,” Lysaught detailed three different healthcare scenarios: One involved a Guatemalan man with kidney failure, the second was an elderly Black suffering from end-stage congestive heart failure, and the third involved an 8-year-old gunshot victim.

“Open up any textbook or journal on Catholic bioethics and you will find no mention of such scenarios or of a myriad of similar issues,” Lysault said. “They don’t count as topics for Catholic bioethical analysis.”

Yet they need to be, she said.

Lysault added Catholic bioethics must incorporate a broader analysis of poverty, race and ethnicity.

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She also argued that the Catholic social tradition could help expand and re-orient Catholic bioethics around a foundation of caring for the sick and approaching the moral dimensions of health and medicine.

Lysault asserted the COVID pandemic exposed many bioethical questions like: How should few effective treatments, such as ventilators, be allocated to patients? How should scarce protective equipment be allocated among frontline healthcare workers? Could patients’ advance directives be overridden?

Dr. Therese Lysault was presented with a lei after Dr. Dustyn Ragasa introduced her to the audience. — Dr. Therese Lysault was presented with a lei from Emmalee Bugado after Dr. Dustyn Ragasa introduced her to attendees.

According to Lysault, there was nothing in the literature of Catholic bioethics to address these questions.

And four years later, she added, while secular bioethics has begun to attend to these questions, you’ll still find almost nothing in the Catholic bioethics literature about these issues.

Tackling questions such as these “will require the theoretical and practical tools of social analysis in the Catholic social tradition,” she concluded.

In her address, Lysaught also touched on a 2022 study in which researchers interviewed 10 kupuna from rural Hawaii communities about their experiences with healthcare barriers. When asked what advice they had for providers about how to improve healthcare for Native Hawaiians, the elders did not list the standard bioethical principles or any of the principles of Catholic bioethics, Lysault said.

“Rather, they appreciated providers who, to quote, ‘took the time to talk story and to get to know them as people and community members,’” Lysault said.

“They appreciated providers who shared information about themselves.”

At the end of her lecture, Lysault was presented with the Mackey Award for Catholic Thought, which honors scholarly, community and faith leaders whose body of work advances the spirit and educational mission of the Society of Mary and the Marianist Family.

Presenting her with an ‘umeke, Chaminade Student Engagement Coordinator Andrew Ancheta told Lysault the significance of the koa bowl in Hawaiian culture and remarked, “Today, you filled it with spiritual and intellectual food.”

God’s Mechanics

October 11, 2023

There was time for one more question before the close of the Marianist Lecture. Chaminade student Noelani Tugaoen stood up and politely asked, “How are we able to foster the dialogue of faith and science with those who are younger and don’t have any experience with the religious world?”

Lecturer Bro. Guy Consolmagno, S. J. half-smiled before laughing and saying, “Boy, I wish I knew the answer to that.” The audience then joined him in light laughter.

As the Director of the Vatican Observatory and President of the Vatican Observatory Foundation, Consolmagno clearly knows the answers to most any question that comes his way. A native of Detroit, Michigan, he earned undergraduate and masters’ degrees from MIT, and a Ph. D. in Planetary Science from the University of Arizona; he was a postdoctoral research fellow at Harvard and MIT, served in the US Peace Corps (Kenya), and taught university physics at Lafayette College before entering the Jesuits in 1989.

Yet on October 8th in the Mystical Rose Oratory as part of the Marianist Lecture Series, he humbly replied that he didn’t know the answer to Tugaoen’s question.

His lecture, “God’s Mechanics: How Scientists and Engineers Make Sense of Religion,” however, was packed with answers to lofty questions about science, astronomy, commonalities and differences between different religions, and – ultimately – what “believing in God gets you.” He also delved into ways that “techies” deal with why so many religions exist in our world today.

He opened his talk by playing a video from the Vatican Observatory, and then he dove head first into how scientists and engineers make sense of religion. His full talk can be viewed here.

At the Vatican Observatory since 1993, Consolmagno’s research has explored connections between meteorites, asteroids, and the evolution of small solar system bodies, observing Kuiper Belt objects with the Vatican’s 1.8 meter telescope in Arizona, and applying his measure of meteorite physical properties to understanding asteroid origins and structure.

Consolmagno also spoke with Chaminade Scholars on October 6 during lunch. The conversation was lively and insightful with much mutual respect between Consolmagno and the students. At the end of the presentation, Consolmagno was presented with the Mackey Award for Catholic Thought, given to a speaker per year. This award is given to those who help continue the Marianist charism and make a difference in the community.

The Marianist Lecture series is sponsored by Chaminade University, Marianist Center of Hawaii and St. Louis School with the next installment of the series on February 18, 2024 featuring Dr. Steve Neiheisel who will focus on Catholics in the public square during an election year.

Leading Scholar of Religion Discusses Disaffiliation

October 28, 2022

One of the most urgent issues in social science research and among catholic institutions stems from the fact that people are leaving the church and disaffiliating from religion. It’s a serious concern that Fr. James Heft, S.M., discussed during a Marianist lecture at the Mystical Rose Oratory.

Themed, “Where Have All Young People Gone?,” Fr. Heft outlined complex solutions to a complicated question. Addressing the crowd, he shared his anecdotal stories, one of which occurred during a wedding rehearsal dinner.

“I asked a young woman named Monica about her religion, to which she answered, ‘Religion was forced down my throat,’” Fr. Heft recounts. “Whoa! I told her now that you can feed yourself, what do you think? It started five years of correspondence.”

Such candid conversations need to start happening across that nation if we want to find the reasons for disaffiliation.

A 2018 study by the Institute for Advanced Catholic Studies (IACS) at the University of Southern California found that the Catholic population has been declining in the U.S., and Catholicism has experienced a greater net loss of people than any other religious tradition. The study also found that the majority of millennials raised Catholic typically now report that they are unaffiliated and there has been a significant drop in weekly Sunday attendance.

In a more recent Pew Research Study released in December 2021, those surveyed said they no longer go to church, but they still believe in God and pray. The report also revealed that those in the 18-29 age range represented the fastest decline in religious affiliation, with 36 percent rejecting any type of affiliation with a religious denomination.

“Our interdisciplinary study, ‘Empty Chairs,’ published in 2021 by Oxford University Press, offers a more detailed—I think informative—and contextualized description of disaffiliation than the Pew study, which has its limitations,” Heft asserts. “The Pew provides a good overview of a specific demographic, mainly white, affluent and well educated.”

In contrast, Heft described the sample group for “Empty Chairs” as more inclusive and representative of a more diverse cohort among the unaffiliated. The study included immigrants whose approach to religion is different than white young adults. College non-graduates, high-school graduates, non-affiliated theists, the economically disenfranchised and an older generation—that had not affiliated with any religion for decades—also participated.

“The study, however, provided some good news,” Heft said. “We document how religious parents provide warmth, appropriate religious structures and space for appropriate autonomy.”

The research also documents how fostering religious religious development in youth protects against delinquency, violence, depression and anxiety. In short, the healthy practice of religion cultivates psychological and physical well being, as well as civic involvement.

“Religious education and institutions continue to make a positive impact,” Heft asserted. “The question is: Is it secularization, the general movement in the culture, that has marginalized and privatized religion, and contributed profoundly to the situation we’re in?”

Heft admitted that disaffiliation is serious and alarming, but we shouldn’t become discouraged; there is hope. As the late religious scholar Huston Smith liked to say, “Religion gives traction to spirituality.”

“There are a lot of people suffering and hurting, and there’s nothing like an easy answer to make them more distant from faith,” Heft said. “We need to be careful in wanting to promote the faith in a deep way but not to promote it superficially. Afterall, Jesus said, ‘My God, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’”

Watch the full Marianist Lecture featuring Fr. Jim Heft, S.M, here.

The Spirituality of Justice: Racism & Climate Change

October 14, 2021

Fr. Dan Horan speaking at the Mystical Rose Oratory during Chaminade's Marianist Lecture Series

The “Catholic response” to racism, climate change and other societal injustices — including those plaguing Hawaii communities — must be one centered in faith-based action that “ought to discomfit the comfortable, humble the powerful, and lift up the oppressed,” said noted author and speaker Fr. Dan Horan during a recent talk at Chaminade’s Mystical Rose Oratory for the Marianist Lecture series.

Horan, acknowledging his own status as a “temporary guest” in Hawaii, added that people in the islands must seek to learn from indigenous communities and understand their unique ways of knowing the world so they can help craft holistic, place-based responses to the greatest crises of our time.

The engaging talk on September 26 comes as the Marianist Lecture series celebrates 25 years of promoting Catholic responsibility and service, and launches a new honor — the Mackey Award for Catholic Thought — to recognize leaders advancing the Marianist spirit and educational mission.

Horan, a columnist for the National Catholic Reporter whose most recent book is titled A White Catholic’s Guide to Racism and Privilege, was the inaugural recipient of the Mackey Award. In his lecture, Horan unpacked the writings of scholar, social activist, and monk Thomas Merton (1915-1968).

Merton may not be a household name. But in 2015, Pope Francis highlighted him as one of four “representatives of the American people” who fought for equal rights—alongside Martin Luther King, Jr., Abraham Lincoln, and Dorothy Day. Horan said Merton’s writings from the 1950s and 1960s offer important lessons for modern America, including about the importance of respecting others.

“Merton was attuned in an unusual way for a white man of his time to the failure to honor the wisdom, heritage, beauty, value and dignity of culture, traditions and religions that are not part of a Euro-American hegemony that came with the colonization to these lands,” Horan said.

He added that Merton offers “timely insights” and opportunities for further reflection on Hawaiian history, colonialism, and the “local response to both systemic racism and climate change.” Perhaps a key point of inquiry, he said, is Merton’s belief that the “spirit of God draws near not just to human beings but to the whole family of creation. Everything that exists reflects or points back to the Creator.”

In other words, Horan said, Merton would have “nodded along approvingly” to indigenous understandings of nature as not something that is separated or distinct from human existence but as central to life, familial relationships to and to society. “The global response to climate change … can only take place with the privileged species, humanity, embracing a sense of creational humility,” he said.

Horan also elucidated three points for white Christians seeking to respond to racial injustice.

He said those in positions of privilege and power because of their race must focus on diagnosis and criticism, “embracing a spirit of praxis and engagement.” They must also step back, listening to those in diverse communities rather than seeking to prescribe solutions. And they must “get out of the way,” Horan added. “They need to follow rather than lead. They need to listen rather than instruct.”

Horan sought to do just that in his own talk, opening his speech by noting that aloha is “not to be granted but always earned” and allowing time after his lecture for a question-and-answer dialogue with the audience. “As a guest, I seek to support the various strategies that the indigenous peoples of Hawaii are using to protect their land and their communities,” Horan said, near the start of his speech.

“I come to this land with a deep respect in a spirit of openness — and with a desire to learn.”