Vanin's lecture, Spiritual Exercises for an Ecological Age, focuses on the age of global environmental crisis. The long-term survival of the Earth is, perhaps, the most significant uncertainty in our world. Yet we lack the political and social will to deal adequately with the ecological crisis. What can help to change this? This talk will look to the rich, extensively practiced, and meaningful spiritual discipline of the Spiritual Exercise of Ignatius of Loyola. It will indicate that, if the Exercises begin to function out of a contemporary, scientifically-informed worldview, they can lead to the transformation of human thinking, attitudes, and behavior regarding the natural world, and can strengthen our commitment to live in an integral relationship with the Earth.

Vanin is an associate professor of theology and ethics at St. Jerome’s University, Waterloo, Ontario. She is also the director of the Master of Catholic Thought program at her university. Vanin's areas of research include ecological theology, feminist theologies, Christian ethics, Catholic social teaching, and especially the thought of Thomas Berry and Bernard Lonergan. She is also a longtime member of the Ecology Project Working Group at the Ignatius Jesuit Centre of Guelph, Ontario, and has participated in the offering of a number of eight-day Ignatian ecology retreats and parish missions over the past ten years. Vanin's most recent publication is Attaining Harmony with the Earth: In Search of the Whole: Twelve Essays on Faith and Academic Life, edited by John C. Haughey, SJ (Georgetown University Press, 2011). The title of her International Visiting Fellow research project at Woodstock Theological Center, Georgetown Univeristy, is Reconciliation with the Earth through the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius.  She holds a B.A. (St. Jerome's University), M.Div. (University of St. Michael's College), and a Ph.D. (Boston College).

This lecture is open to the public and made possible by the Beattie Fund. It is supported in part by the University Lectures Committee.