ITEST Webinars

Fr. Dominic Ibok, D.Min., presents on his Faith and Facebook: Evangelizing a Rural Parish Community in Southeast Missouri through Social Media with Dr. Sebastian Mahfood, OP, as respondent for the April 23, 2022, ITEST webinar.

The book description is below:

In Southeast Missouri, where Catholics are a minority, the challenge of diminishing participation and reduced membership requires an intentional engagement of the inactive members and the unaffiliated within the community. Unfortunately, many members of the laity do not have the awareness or skills to evangelize. In a rural community, the challenges seem more significant due to limited personnel and resources.

This book aims to equip the laity with the skills and tools to evangelize inactive Catholics and the unaffiliated. It involves their growing in prayer, study, generosity, evangelization, and the discernment of their charisms. With the benefit of social media engagement like Facebook live stream, an opportunity to engage and evangelize is available for our rural parish community. The resources from experienced lay evangelists in evangelization and social media engagement will provide a template that can enhance the development of a program on evangelization for my rural parish community.

To test the effectiveness of these resources, seventeen participants engaged in a nine-week program to learn how prayer, study, generosity, evangelization, the discernment of their charisms, and teamwork can prepare them for evangelization. This thesis engaged the inactive Catholics and the unaffiliated in rural Southeast Missouri by using Facebook live stream as an evangelization tool. The focus of this project is thus reminding active Catholics of their responsibility to evangelize and how utilizing a familiar social media portal like Facebook can enhance the process even in a rural community.

For more, see https://enroutebooksandmedia.com/faithandfacebook/

ITEST has the challenge to engage the young and the old by showing how science and faith are compatible. Many have left our Church. Many more will leave if they do not hear something different and compelling. In this webinar we will discuss what the Philosophy of Conscious Energy is and how it can help ITEST with this challenge.

We will be discussing a new paradigm, or way of looking at reality. This new paradigm provides a way to express and explore items of faith using terms from modern science like evolution, energy and change of state. We will provide at least three examples.

https://faithscience.org/conscious-energy/

For information concerning the 1962 Vatican monitum on the Writings of Fr. Teilhard de Chardin, SJ, please see https://www.ewtn.com/catholicism/library/monitum-on-the-writings-of-fr-teilhard-de-chardin-sj-2144

This webinar focuses on the philosophical movement of Transhumanism and its quest to transcend biological limits toward enhanced life. The emphasis on transhumanist transcendence will be compared to the hybridity of posthumanism. Both movements will be contextualized within an evolutionary framework.

SISTER ILIA DELIO, OSF, PHD

Transhumanism advocates deeply transformative technologies for the betterment of humankind – a world in which the frailties of human biology are transcended. Sister Ilia will examine Transhumanism, compare it to Posthumanism, which emphasizes hybrid relationships, and contextualize these movements in an unfinished universe.

NICHOLAS M. SPARKS

A RESPONSE TO SISTER ILIA DELIO

First, I register my agreement with Sister Ilia Delio, arguing that posthumanism can help Christians to recover insights obscured by Enlightenment humanism. Then, I note a few points of disagreement: (1) the relationship of nature and techne; (2) the account of nature as computational and informational; (3) to what extent a classical Christian view of the person and of nature is already consonant with the insights of posthumanism; (4) and finally, the proper understanding of the transition to a cybernetically-embedded and mediated mode of individual and social existence.

In this episode of I Thought You'd Like to Know, Dr. Stacy Trasancos presents for the Institute for Theological Encounter with Science and Technology on Assessing Contemporary Science in the Light of Faith. (January 15, 2022)

Today we hear, “Follow the science!” People use that idiom as if to say that science is the path to all truth and that if we follow where science leads, we will never be led astray. But science doesn’t work like that. The Catholic Church has a long history, codified in Genesis and professed still in our Creed, that science is the study of the handiwork of God. Science is a search for truth, but it must be guided by the light of faith. Dr. Trasancos tells about her efforts to reunite contemporary science back with theology and philosophy in a more mature way than the Middle Ages when science was first born of Christianity. To authentically follow science in the light of faith will be the way to true progress in technology that benefits humanity, both in this world and the one to come.

https://faithscience.org/theology-of-science/

In this episode of I Thought You'd Like to Know This, Too, Dr. Thomas P. Sheahen and Rev. Lawrence C. Brennan, S.Th.D., discuss God's providence and omnipresence. (December 11, 2021)

Have you been told that science and religion are incompatible? Do you think you have to give one up to be consistent?

You don’t. In this book, MIT-trained physicist Thomas Sheahen explains how you can:

trust in God more readily, by realizing that God is not limited by space and time
expand your human thinking and step up to a higher plane of understanding
realize that religion and science are complementary paths to knowledge–not opposed
understand that God thought up the laws of nature and uses them in creation.

https://www.enroutebooksandmedia.com/everywhen/

https://www.faithscience.org/everywhen

DR. STACY TRASANCOS
The Data from the Eucharistic Miracles

In writing her latest book with Fr. George Elliott, Behold It is I: Scripture, Tradition, and Science on the Real Presence (Tan Books), Stacy Trasancos had to look deep into the data from the investigations of Eucharistic miracles. What she found was surprising and, at times, disappointing. In a commitment to the truth, she will present the data from the three miracles she studied: Lanciano, Bolsena, and Buenos Aires. Ultimately, she argues for the limits of science and the certainty of faith in Jesus Christ.

MSGR. EUGENE MORRIS
At the Church’s Foundation: the Lord’s Real Presence

Holy Mother Church teaches us that the Most Holy Eucharist is the source and summit of the Christian life (Catechism of the Catholic Church #1324). This means that Christian spirituality flows from the Most Holy Eucharist (the source) and so Christian actions should be directed towards Him (the summit). At the heart of this profound assertion is the Church’s consistent teaching regarding the Real Presence of Our Lord in the Most Blessed Sacrament.

The Institute for Theological Encounter with Science and Technology presents Dr. Chiara Simeone-DiFrancesco in Counterfeit: The Psychology of Pornography -- The Science, the Effect on your Marriage or Vocation, and the Gospel Take on It (October 23, 2021)

This presentation will look at understanding why persons of both sexes engage in pornography, and how it affects their relationships. The particular emphasis here is on matrimony and the wounds pornography inflicts, even when one spouse is unaware of the use of pornography. What is the draw? How does pornography connect with other mental health disorders? What is its psychological function and how does it affect marital intimacy? What about when pornography is engaged in together by a couple? Why and how is this still harmful to their relationship? What are the underlying areas that need developing and healing for a person to overcome it? What happens when these are not specifically addressed and the person just stops cold turkey? Are there still risks? If so, what are they? Why do partners often feel betrayed when they discover their spouse has been using pornography? What are the necessary ingredients for the traumatized spouse to be healed? What is the porn-engaging partner’s responsibility and task in the healing process? What controls over the situation can be attained?

In this episode of I Thought You'd Like to Know, Catholic missionary and evangelist Romuald Simeone presents on Christ's Dialogue Method of Witnessing, Part 2: Becoming Witnesses of Jesus (September 5, 2021)

In this episode of I Thought You'd Like to Know, Catholic missionary and evangelist Romuald Simeone presents on The Dialogue Method that Jesus Used to Gospel Witness. (September 4, 2021)

In this episode of I Thought You'd Like to Know, Catholic missionary and evangelist Romuald Simeone presents The Gospel of John: Will the Real Jesus Please Stand Up? with ITEST (August 28, 2021)