MADISON Deborah Savage, Ph.D. of St. Paul Seminary School of Divinity at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minn., will present the third annual Pope Benedict XVI Institute on the topic of “In the Image of God: The Genius of Human Sexuality” from Monday to Thursday, June 27-30 from 10:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. each day.
Savage, who teaches philosophy and theology at St. Paul’s and also serves as the director of its Masters in Pastoral Ministry Program, will speak about human sexuality through the lens of Pope Benedict’s criticisms of the “dictatorship of relativism”: a philosophy he said, “that does not recognize anything as definitive and whose ultimate standard consists solely of one’s own ego and desires.” The Benedict Institute helps to educate and to form clergy, religious and laity in Benedict’s writings, teachings and thought on theology, philosophy on various topics.
“We can all benefit from Benedict’s insights on the dictatorship of relativism, which is not about reason, but about feelings and intuition. The Church is against that, because it is grounded in first principles, which are rooted in ancient philosophy,” said Savage, who earned a doctorate in religious studies from Marquette University, Wis., in both theology and philosophy in 2005. “Benedict talks about the gifts that men and women have separately and how they work together. He also speaks about how we must have God in all things. In light of what is going on today — like the debate about transgender bathrooms — this [presentation] would be both timely and perennial,” she said.
Savage wrote a dissertation, titled, “The Subjective Dimension of Human Work: The Conversion of the Acting Person in the Thought of Karol Wojtyla and Bernard Lonerga,” which was published in 2007. She is a recognized scholar of the work of St. John Paul II and co-founded and is co-director of the Siena Symposium for Women, Family and Culture, an interdisciplinary think tank at St. Paul’s, organized in 2003 to respond to John Paul II’s call for a new and explicitly Christian feminism.
The idea for the summer institute came from a passionate Catholic professional woman who called Father Paul Manning, St. Paul’s executive director and diocesan vicar for evangelization, in 2014. The woman, who wants to remain anonymous, offered funding for a program that promoted the teachings of Benedict. She said that she and her husband “felt that his teachings are brilliant and underappreciated and that the local Church needed to find a way to promote it and make it more accessible,” the priest said.
Allan Wright, St. Paul’s academic dean, said that he looks forward to Savage’s presentation. “More than ever Catholics need to know the basis and reason for what we believe regarding human sexuality and what has been revealed to us through Scripture and through the magisterial teaching of the Church,” he said. “For it is in speaking the truth in love that we are truly helping people live out the life that God calls each one of us too in union with himself.”
The fee for the Benedict Institute is $120 per person. Lunch is included. A limited number of scholarships that cover 50 percent of the fee are available.
[Registration information: www.insidethewalls.org or call (973) 377-1004].