Summer Conference Focuses on Blessed Karl
On August 20, 2022, a conference was presented by the Dialogos Institute entitled “The Proclamation of the Kingdom.” Discussing evangelization, the conference examined the great commission to teach and baptize all nations. Presentations were given by Eduard Habsburg, Roy Schoeman, Derya Little, and Joshua Charles.
“There is a crisis in the zeal of the faithful to preach the Gospel,” Alan Fimister, director of the Dialogos Institute, told CNA. “The necessity of faith in Christ is questioned, as if a mere natural virtue could save us, and the duty to evangelise certain groups is either limited or denied altogether. The need to proclaim the kingdom not only to man as an individual but to man as a citizen and as the member of a family is ignored. Yet the mission to proclaim the kingdom to all nations is constitutive of the Catholic Church and is tied to the end of history and the destiny of the human race.”
Fimister pointed to the statement in Lumen gentium, the Second Vatican Council’s dogmatic constitution on the Church, that “at the end of time [the Church] will gloriously achieve completion, when, as is read in the Fathers, all the just, from Adam and 'from Abel, the just one, to the last of the elect,' will be gathered together with the Father in the universal Church."
Habsburg, Hungary’s ambassador to the Holy See and the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, opened the conference speaking on Blessed Karl of Austria and the universality of Christendom.
Schoeman, author of “Salvation is from the Jews” and a convert from Judaism, discussed the evangelization of the Jews, anti-semitism, and the coming of the Messiah.
Little, who was raised a Muslim in Turkey and authored “From Islam to Christ,” presented on the mission to Islam. St. Francis of Assisi was a particular focus for Little. It is often thought “that he just went on a mission of peace to visit the sultan, whereas he went there with the intention of converting Muslims, completely prepared to be a martyr,” she explained. Little also discussed personal experiences, the contemporary situation in Muslim countries, and misunderstandings of passages in the documents of the Second Vatican Council, particularly in Nostra aetate, its declaration on the relation of the Church to non-Christian religions.
Charles, a former speechwriter for Mike Pence and a convert, spoke on “The Mystery of the Restrainer and the Great Apostasy.”
While the conference is over, access to conference lectures is still available for on-demand viewing. To view, subscribe to the Dialogos Institute’s link below.
Dialogos Institute
The Dialogos Institute is a Romano-Byzantine theological institute devoted to the study of the patristic heritage in the spirit of Latin and Byzantine Thomism. Returning to the sources of the faith through the Socratic method of disputation, the members of the Dialogos Institute seek to contribute to the renewal of Catholic Theology and Philosophy and an authentically Christian social order through fidelity to the united witness of the holy Fathers. The Institute pursues these aims through conferences, publications and programmes of study illustrating the unity of the Church’s traditions eastern and western, patristic and scholastic, clerical and lay. To learn more, visit their website.