About the Lonergan Workshop

*Please note, scroll down for this year's schedule and logistics.*

Bernard Lonergan hoped that his work would yield “ongoing collaboration” among intelligent and faithful people. For more than fifty years, the Lonergan Workshop at Ϲ College has brought thousands of people into that cooperative project.

The Lonergan Workshop was founded in 1972 by Emeritus Prof. Fred Lawrence and his wife, Sue Lawrence. For fifty years, Fred and Sue welcomed artists, psychologists, philosophers, theologians, sociologists, people in the worlds of business, law, and medicine, educators, physicists, social workers, biologists, and many others to the Workshop, publishing the proceedings in the Lonergan Workshop Journal. Fred and Sue made it a priority that the Workshop be financially accessible to everyone who wanted to attend, and cultivated the cooperative spirit which made that possible.

At the Workshop, scholars deeply engaged in Lonergan studies come together with practitioners and experts on the year's theme; presentations are followed by ample time for conversation; and friendship and hospitality animate the whole proceeding in the spirit of its founders.

Everyone is welcome.

Logistics

The 2025 Lonergan Workshop will be held Sunday, June 15th through Wednesday, June 18th at the Ϲ College Connors Center in Dover, MA.

Registration will open on May 5th.Scholarships are available (information forthcoming).

Registration is $75 per day, or $250 for all four days. The registration fee covers all meals and drinks at the Workshop.

Rooms are available at the Connors Center for $80 per night; rooms with private bathrooms are available on a first-come, first-serve basis.

For guests flying into Ϲ, we recommend a taxi or ride-share service to the Connors Center. If you would prefer to take the train part of the way, the Connors Center is about a ten minute drive from the Natick Center T Station (the commuter rail) and about a twelve minute drive from the Needham Junction T Stop (Needham line).

“Schedule of Probabilities”

In memory of Glenn "Chip" Hughes and David Tracy, among others.

All times listed are in Eastern Standard Time (EST).

Sunday, June 15th

3:00 PM

Check-in to rooms available from 3:00 PM onward at the Connors Center, Dover, MA (coffee available)

4:00 PM

Mass (Garden Terrace Room)

4:45 PM

Conference registration opens in Entry Hall (drinks and hors d'oeuvres provided)

5:15 PM

Dinner; Welcome by Jeremy Wilkins (Estate Room)

6:00 PM - 7:00 PM

Opening Keynote (TBA)

7:00 PM

Evening reception (Dover Parlor)

Monday, June 16th

7:30 AMMass (Garden Terrace Room)
8:00 AM

Registration in Enry Hall (coffeer and light breakfast provided)

8:30 AM

Jeremy Wilkins, Welcome and Opening Remarks (Main Parlor)

8:40 AM - 10:15 AMSession 1 (all conference sessions will be held in the Main Parlor):
  • Elisabeth Nicholson, "Consciousness as Created Participation in Uncreated Light."
  • Francesca Zaccaron, "An Overlooked Heritage? Newman and Locke."
  • Benjamin Hohman, "Interpreting 'The Self' in Augustine and Lonergan."
10:15 AM

Coffee Break

10:30 AM - 12:15 PM

Session 2:

  • Geoffrey Brodie, "Applying Lonergan's Realm of Interiorty to Frame the Principle of the Education Moment."
  • Timothy Hanchin, "The Mission of the Spirit and Education for a Technocratic Age
  • Mark Miller, "Lay Formation to Continue the Tradition of Jesuit Education."
12:15 PMLunch (Estate Room)
1:00 PM - 2:45 PM

Session 3:

  • Nick DiSalvatore, "Religion Beyond Rivalry: In/Authenticity in the Outwardly Spoken Word of Scripture."
  • Roberto De La Noval, "Method in Magisterium: Normative Magisterial Performance and the Church's Doctrinal Development."
  • Matthew Vale, "Helminiak's Nonreflecting Consciousness' in Historical Buddhist Problematic."
2:45 PMCoffee Break
3:00 PM - 4:30 PMCase-Study Panel: Cyrus Olsen, Ian Corbin, and Jude Buyondo, "Consciousness, Health, and Belonging in Uganda and the U.S.A."
4:30 PM - 5:00 PMEvening Prayer (Garden Terrace Room)
5:00 PMDinner (Estate Room)
6:00 PM - 7:00 PMKeynote, TBA (Main Parlor)
7:00 PMEvening Reception (Dover Parlor)

Tuesday, June 17th

7:30 AMMass (Garden Terrace Room)
8:00 AM

Breakfast (Estate Room)

8:30 AM - 10:15 AM

Session 4:

  • Elizabeth Murray, "Lonergan's Account of the Nature of Consciousness as Experience."
  • Paul LaChance, "Polymorphic Consciousness: A Theory of Dreams, Parts, and Dissociation."
  • Jennifer Sanders, "Modern Malaise and Existential Consciousness: Becoming (Again) Castawyas through Walker Percy's Novels."
10:15 AM

Coffee Break

10:30 AM - 12:15 PM

Session 5:

  • Robert Elliot, "The Great Chain of Being Conscious: Development and Sentient Life."
  • Thomas Hughson, S.J., "Consciousness: A Question About Neanderthals."
  • Gregory Floyd, "On the Possibilities of Consciousness: From a Natural Theology to a Critical Realist Philosophy of Religion."
12:15 PMLunch (Estate Room)
1:00 PM - 2:45 PM

Session 6:

  • Mike Sharkey, "Dennett's Heterophenomenology: An Exposition and Critique."
  • Tim Muldoon, "Consciousness is Different from Algorithms."
  • Enric, TBA
2:45 PMCoffee Break
3:00 PM - 4:30 PMKeynote conversation: Hope Kean and Sofia Carozza, "The Missing Subject: Toward a Reasonable Neuroscience." (Main Parlor)
4:30 PM - 5:00 PMEvening Prayer (Garden Terrace Room)
5:00 PMBanquet (Estate Room)
6:00 PMEvening Reception (Dover Parlor)
7:00 PMArt as "the fundamental element in the freedom of consciousness" - readings and performances (Main Parlor)

Wednesday, June 18th

7:30 AMMass (Garden Terrace Room)
8:00 AM

Breakfast (Estate Room)

8:30 AM - 10:15 AM

Session 7:

  • Andres Perez-Carrasco, "Disinterestedness and Freedom at the Crossroads Between Morality and Aesthetics."
  • Cecille Medina-Maldonado, "The Fifth Level, Lived Experience, and Grace."
  • Jeremy Blackwood, "Strange Bedfellows?: Pope Francis, Ven. Leo John Dehon, and Bernard Lonergan."
10:15 AM

Coffee Break

10:30 AM - 12:15 PM

Session 8:

  • Donna Perry, “Developing a Participatory Consciousness through Human-WildlifeInteraction.”
  • Welmoed van Hoogen and Charles Tackney, “Enabling and Managing CommodifiedAuthentic Experiences: the High-Class Escort Sector in the Netherlands.”
  • Richard Grallo, “Managing Consciousness for Growth: Six Approaches to PartialSelf-Appropriation.”
12:15 PMLunch Break (lunch provided)
1:00 PM - 2:45 PM

Session 9:

  • Rodrigo Gonzalez, “Attention as Philosophical Perception: Experiential Epistemologyand the Structure of Consciousness.”
  • Humphrey Ani, “Dialectics of Consciousness and Authenticity.”
  • Pat Daly, “Natural Death, Spiritual Death, and Death Consciousness.”
2:45 PMCoffee Break
3:00 PM - 4:30 PM

Session 10:

  • Tom O’Connor, “Conversational Consciousness and Dialogue.”
  • Gerald Michael Ssebunnya, “On Feelings as Integral Mediators of Consciousness.”
  • Christopher Berger, “Political Affectivity: The Relevance of a LonerganianCommunity of Feeling for Political Theory.”
5:00 PMBBQ Dinner (Estate Room)

Thursday, June 19th (Juneteenth)

8:00 AMEarly check-out by 8:00 AM due to Juneteenth holiday
Group photo of Workshop participants.

Group photo of some of the 2024 Lonergan Workshop participants.

The speakers in the Lonergan Workshop were, in their different ways, describing how their personal appropriation of these processes enabled them to make certain advances. Fr. Whelan and I concluded that the reason Lonergan's influence on them was hard to discern was that what they had learned from him was how to make better use of their own minds, to become conscious of what they were doing when they were knowing, to think in terms of development and schemes of recurrence, to notice what is going forward in their various disciplines and to become more aware of the biases that can distort one's perceptions and analyses.
Mary Ann Glendon
Photo of Jeremy Wilkins and Fred Lawrence

Director of the Workshop, Jeremy Wilkins (left) with Director Emeritus, Fred Lawrence.

There is bound to be formed a solid right that is determined to live in a world that no longer exists. There is bound to be formed a scattered left, captivated by now this, now that new development . . . But what will count is a perhaps not numerous center, big enough to be at home in both the old and the new, painstaking enough to work out one by one the transitions to be made, strong enough to refuse half measures and insist on complete solutions even though it has to wait.
Bernard Lonergan