News and Events
Summer Employment
The Collegeville Institute is currently hiring for summer 2010 student employment positions. The summer job description is posted here for your convenience. If interested in this position, please complete the posted application and return to the Collegeville Institute, Box 2000, Collegeville, MN 56321 or email to: staff@collegevilleinstitute.org
Collegeville Institute Receives Two New Grants
The Collegeville Institute received a three-year, $150,000 grant from the John Templeton Foundation as part of the Foundation's Science for Ministry Initiative. The Way the World Is: Cosmology and the Practice of Ministry helps pastors integrate the findings of science with faith's reasoning about "the way the world is." The Collegeville Institute intends that the integrative work advanced by the project will provide pastors, their communities, and others whom the community touches, with a useable cosmology-a reasoned and compelling understanding of the cosmos as interpreted by both scientists and theologians. Board Member and Drell and Adeline Bernhardson Distinguished Professor at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, MN, Darrell Jodock, will serve as the Grant Director.
The Collegeville Institute was recently awarded a four-year $1.98 million grant to support a new initiative called the Collegeville Institute Seminars. The Seminars will gather small collaborative working groups to focus on two separate subjects. The first, the Seminar on Vocation and Faith in the Professions, will examine how Christians, employed in various professions understand their work as a Christian vocation, and the ways in which their faith influences their vocational practice and their vocational practice influences their faith. The second initiative, the Seminar on Integration in Theological Education and Ministry, will address the question of how the integration of knowledge can best be achieved in the education and formation of seminary students. The seminar will examine the issue across an ecumenical spectrum. Kathleen Cahalan, Associate Professor, St. John's School of Theology·Seminary (SOT), will serve as the Project Director. Laura Fanucci, SOT graduate and summer 2009 workshop participant, will assist.
"Inside the Institute" — December 2009
Institute Scholars Receives Grants
Susan Noakes was awarded a $70,000 grant from the University of Minnesota's Imagine Fund, which supports arts, design, and humanities scholars pursuing innovative ideas related to global problem-solving. Susan's project "Globalization of the Middle Ages" includes collaborating with international scholars to aspire to make the events of Middle Age civilizations more accessible to all.
Cyndy McRae received a Fulbright specialists grant in education and will travel to and live at Uganda Christian University in Mukono, Uganda from January to mid-February, 2010. She will teach Career Counseling to students in the Masters in Counseling program, and will assist the faculty with research methodology and development.
Ethiopian Orthodox Patriarch Visits Institute
In May the Collegeville Institute was pleased to host His Holiness Abune Merkarios, Patriarch of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, along with 15 bishops in the Ethiopian Orthodox tradition. The group met with Institute staff; Abbot John Klassen, head of Saint John's Abbey; and Fr. Kilian McDonnell, founder and president of the Institute. The assembly then toured the Institute's facilities and grounds, St. John's University and Abbey, and the Hill Museum and Manuscript Library (HMML). Later that day, the Debre Berhan St. Ourael Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church community in St. Paul, Minnesota celebrated the consecration and dedication of its new church. Both the campus visit and the celebration held special significance for the Institute, university and abbey. The events marked the unique relationship that developed between the St. John's entities and the Ethiopian Orthodox Church during the 2008/09 academic-year residency of Institute resident scholar Andualem Dagmawi.
Andualem, a native of Ethiopia and an ordained deacon in the Ethiopian Orthodox tradition, is currently working on his Th.D. through the University of St. Michael's College, Toronto, Canada. While conducting his dissertation research, he made special use of the resources of HMML, the protector of Ethiopia's manuscript heritage.
Since the 1970s, HMML has partnered with Ethiopian scholars and Orthodox officials photographically to preserve Ethiopia's manuscripts, threatened by the effects of time and regional instability. In recognition of this cooperative venture, Ethiopian bishops first visited the campus in 1973, under the leadership of then-Patriarch Abuna Theophilos.
Ethiopia adopted Christianity as its official religion in the fourth century. Prior to the arrival of Christianity, Judaism was the country's most prominent religion. Because of its relative isolation, Ethiopia still maintains many ancient Jewish and Christian practices, rituals and traditions no longer practiced elsewhere. The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church plays a prominent role in the spiritual, social, educational, cultural, artistic, and literary life of Ethiopia.
Walter Cardinal Kasper Visits Institute
Walter Cardinal Kasper, President of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, delivered the Godfrey Diekmann, OSB, Lecture and received the Pax Christi Award from Saint John's Abbey and University on March 23. A receptive audience turned out for the event which was held in the Abbey Church. Don Ottenhoff, Executive Director of the Collegeville Institute, served as emcee for the program.
Cardinal Kasper spoke on theology and faith-and the frequent lack of faith-during his address. The Cardinal also spoke about the intimate relationship between God and freedom. He stated, "Thinking of God as absolute freedom means understanding God as a liberating God and the world as a place of freedom."
"Following the trauma of the wars of religion, theology underwent a process of purification through a process of self-criticism and constructive confrontation with 
the modern Enlightenment," he said. "Today all Christian churches profess freedom of religion, avoidance of violence, tolerance and respect toward other religions; while maintaining their own identity, they seek not conflict but dialogue."
While on campus, Cardinal Kasper, along with his Secretary, Fr. Oliver Lahl, toured the Collegeville Institute. They spoke with Don Ottenhoff, Founder and President Fr. Kilian McDonnell, and Board Chair Gary Reierson.
Text archive of Cardinal Kasper's lecture
Video Archive of the Pax Christi Award Presentation and Cardinal Kasper's Lecture
Krista Tippett's interview with Parker Palmer - Repossessing Virtue: Parker Palmer on Economic Crisis, Morality, and Meaning on December 11, 2008
SOF OnDemand: » Download (mp3, 52:34) ¦ » Listen Now (RealAudio, 52:08) ¦ » Podcast
The human and spiritual aspects of economic downturn were explored with a wise public intellectual of our time, the Quaker author and educator Parker Palmer. He works with people from all walks of life at the intersection of spiritual, professional, and social change, and stresses the need to acknowledge the inner life of human beings as a source of reality and power.
HMML featured on "Speaking of Faith with Krista Tippett"
The Hill Museum & Manuscript Library (HMML) (at St. John's University) was featured on American Public Media's weekly radio program, "Speaking of Faith with Krista Tippett" on Sunday, January 18th. The program aired on all Minnesota Public Radio affiliates KNSR (88.9 FM) in Collegeville and KNOW (91.1 FM) in St. Paul/Minneapolis. For more information:
http://speakingoffaith.publicradio.org/stations/index.shtml.
http://www.hmml.org/happenings06/happenings.htm
Krista Tippett's program, Speaking of Faith, was conceived from her experience while here at the Institute.