To grasp the contemporary issue and to meet its challenge calls for collective effort. It is not the individual but the group that transforms the culture.
— Bernard Lonergan
The Lonergan Institute at Boston College aims to promote that transformation both within and beyond the university. Faculty members associated with the Institute have been instrumental in establishing two highly successful undergraduate programs.
The PERSPECTIVES program now embraces a coordinated series of four interdisciplinary courses, which explore the expressive arts in modernity, contemporary natural science, philosophy and theology, and the new social sciences of sociology, economics, and the law.
The PULSE program offers a unique approach to moral and social-service education that integrates theory and praxis, field placements, and academic reflection.
Departmental courses and seminars are regularly offered on Lonergan, his principal writings, and subjects which those writings illuminate, such as hermeneutics, political theology, science and religion, Christology, philosophy of art, self-knowledge, economics, the Trinity, and the history and philosophy of science and mathematics.
The Lonergan Institute also coordinates a range of other projects and activities, including the translation of Lonergan’s magisterial Insight and the publication of his work on the theory of macroeconomic dynamics.
The Institute seeks to foster a local community of Lonergan scholarship with M.A. and Post-doctoral fellowships. In addition to the local community of Lonergan scholarship that it seeks to foster, the Institute reaches a wider audience by publishing journals and monographs. Dozens of articles and book-length studies have helped to communicate Lonergan’s ideas and generate discussion, debate, and dialogue throughout the English-speaking world.
The Lonergan Center at Boston College is the “living memorial” established in 1986 to honor one of B.C.’s most distinguished teachers. The Lonergan Center houses a wide-ranging collection of Lonergan’s published and unpublished works, together with monographs, dissertations, and articles about Lonergan, as well as books and periodicals relevant to Lonergan scholarship. Just as important, it is the place to ask questions and find other inquirers. Shared interests give rise to conversation, conversation sparks insights, and insights lead to new avenues of study and new lines of questioning.