The second annual lecture (a component in the calendar of the Research Institute) was given on 28 January, 2011.  The  first one took place a little more than a year ago (in late November, 2009), to coincide with the 25th anniversary of Fr. Lonergan’s death (27.11.1984).  For that inaugural event Fr. Michael Czerny, sj, did the honors.  He  made history in Africa by founding and forming AJAN (African Jesuit AIDS Network), dedicated to an intelligent and responsible encounter with the pandemic.  On this account he was able to speak to us authoritatively about meeting AIDS with method.   Within the past year he has been enlisted to work in the Roman Curia, as Executive Secretary  of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace.

This year we missed that target date and organized something similar on the Feast of St. Thomas Aquinas, having in mind the phrase toward the end of Insight, “… reaching up to the mind of Aquinas,” which Lonergan found to be worthwhile in that (as he says) it changed him, and that the change was the essential benefit.  This time around we were lucky again.  Another person of note in Lonergan studies:  Fr. David Burrell, csc, lately of Notre Dame, of course, but now teaching in Uganda Martyrs University, near Kampala, in Uganda.  He describes his editing and putting into book form the so-called “Verbum Articles” (around 1964) as an act of gratitude for what Lonergan had done for him when he was studying theology at the Gregorianum in the late 1950’s.  It changed him!  His topic was “Lonergan and the Human Good in an African Idiom.” Anyone familiar with Lonergan’s life knows that the nest of questions connected with the human good were a concern of his for many years – even right up to the end of his life.