Special Guest Presentation by Patrick Flynn: "Does Morality Affirm the Existence of God?" Nearly all of us live according to a sense of right and wrong. But what are we to make of this? Where does this sense come from? Can it be explained by evolution or culture? Or does morality hint at something more?

The great current exhibition "Heavenly Bodies" of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City is having a strong impact in the Catholic world and outside the Catholic world both for what concerns the Theme - Fashion totally inspired by the Catholic Worshiped and Liturgical Tradition - and a sort of silent message : the every-day challenge of Catholicism in a Contemporary World which needs to recover the binding with the sphere of the "Sacred".

While we cannot achieve salvation on our own merits, there are things we can do to prepare ourselves to receive God’s grace, which is his activity within us, and this is how we are called to live our Lenten Season. Such gifts of grace are described by Dante Alighieri in his Divine Comedy, the centerpiece of which is Mount Purgatory, the ladder that enables our return to God. The seven stories of the mountain deal with pride, envy, wrath, sloth, avarice, gluttony and lust in light of their corresponding virtues of, respectively, humility, caritas, meekness, zeal, liberality, abstinence and chastity. This presentation will lead participants through a discussion of the Purgatorio and engage them in a spiritual exercise dealing with these seven virtues. (Scheduled to be Recorded and Aired on Thursday, March 15, 2018, at 4:00 pm Eastern / 3:00 pm Central)

Dr. Mahfood earned his PhD in Literature at Saint Louis University in St. Louis, MO, and has written and taught on Dante's Divine Comedy for over twenty years and in 2016 created a CD series on the Comedy for Now You Know Media. He is Vice-President of External Affairs and Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies at Holy Apostles College & Seminary. He is the founder and CEO of En Route Books and Media and WCAT Radio.

How are the saints represented? What typologies have artists throughout the history of art used to represent each of them? Dr. Michela Beatrice Ferri will explain the reasons for the representation of the saints from their origins to the present day. All those who listen to the broadcast should have in front of them a way to access the Internet. Dr. Michela Ferri will show which images to search in Google Images while she analyzes them. Those works that for our ancestors (in United States or in Europe) were so eloquent, small and great masterpieces of sacred art that decorate churches or are shown off in museums, today strike us for their artistic value, but the endless plot of messages in the story often escapes us. A large part of the way saints are represented is in fact characterized by specific attributes or symbols. In the first part of the conference, Dr. Michela Ferri will explain the correspondence between the individual saints and the iconographic typologies from ancient sources that are recurrent in their representation. This will include an exhaustive set of references to other voices that define the iconographic picture of each saint. In the second part of the conference we have a list of the names of the saints with their respective symbolism. (Aired on Thursday, March 8, 2018.)

​Dr. Ferri is recognized as one of the leading experts in the field of Sacred Art, and she is the Author of a volume dedicated to the dialogue between Catholic Faith and Art, devoted to an inquiry concerning Contemporary Sacred Art entitled Sacro Contemporaneo. Dialoghi sull’arte, published in 2016 by the Roman Catholic publishing house Áncora Editrice based in Milan, Italy, and scheduled for publication in spring 2018 by En Route Books and Media.

On Pope St. John Paul II's theology of suffering. (Aired on Thursday, March 1, 2018)

Dr. Goldstein received her Doctorate in Sacred Theology, Summa Cum Laude, from the University of St. Mary of the Lake. She holds the distinction of being the first woman ever to be awarded that degree from St. Mary’s. She holds her STL, Magna Cum Laude, from the Pontifical Institute of the Immaculate Conception at the Dominican House of Studies. ​

Too often in our world we look at disability as “other,” something needing to be fixed. But what happens when we look through a different lens and approach disability from a social perspective? Join us to learn more about cultural competencies surrounding disability and how small shifts in perspective can make a big impact to those with disabilities, both visible and invisible. (Recorded and aired on Friday, February 16, 2018.)
Universal Design:
The Center for Universal Design: https://projects.ncsu.edu/ncsu/design/cud/index.htm
Do IT at University of Washington: https://www.washington.edu/doit/
Web Accessibility:
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG): https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20/
Alt Tags:
How to add alt tags in a Word document: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pvu7DLJEIag
Captioning:
How to add accurate captions to a video on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJGiS83eQLk
Antaya Lee is the Disability Access Coordinator at Mitchell College in New London, Connecticut. She earned her undergraduate degrees from Eastern Connecticut State University in Elementary Education and History & Social Sciences. After graduation, she went on to teach at the elementary school level before heading back to school to earn a graduate degree. In 2013, Antaya earned her Master of Science in Counseling with a focus in Student Development in Higher Education. Disability advocacy and access is both a personal and professional passion, and in addition to her position at the College, Antaya also serves as a member of the Connecticut Tech Act Project Advisory Board. Antaya lives in Southeast Connecticut with her husband.

DSS Office Statement: “In accordance with the Americans with Disabilities Amendments Act (2008) and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, Disability Student Services is committed to ensuring that no qualified student, on the basis of his/her disability, will be excluded from participation in, denied the benefits of, or otherwise be subject to discrimination under any College program or activity. Disability Student Services determines eligibility, approves and coordinates services, auxiliary aids, and academic accommodations to qualified students with disabilities. Disability Student Services is committed to equal accessibility and supports students with disabilities in advocating and engaging in the campus learning and living community to maximize their ability to succeed.” (For more about what Antaya’s office does, see https://community.mitchell.edu/DSS.)

A Greek- and Arabic-speaking Syrian Christian, St. John Damascene was massively influential on Aquinas’ thought, especially on the issue of the worship of religious images. Aquinas borrows Damascene’s account of the use of externals in worship as grounded on the hylemorphic nature of human beings, and on the nature of human knowledge, which begins with the senses and only thereby reaches intelligible and spiritual realities. Hence, physical religious practices such as eastward prayer, ‘adoration’—bodily postures such as bowing, kneeling, prostrations, etc.—as well as the offering of sacrifices and the use of icons or religious images are means whereby the human mind is led by the senses to the contemplation of higher realities. Within this context Aquinas defends Damascene’s theory of the proper type of worship due to icons of Christ in particular, offering philosophical grounds for the bold claim that images of Christ are deserving of the worship of latria. We offer latria to these icons, not because they are creatures, but because they are images of the Incarnate Word of God, and the worship given to an image is directed to the prototype of the image. Aquinas develops this thinking through a text from the De Memoria et reminiscentia, where Aristotle explains that the movement of the mind towards an image is the same as the movement of the mind to the thing of which it is an image. Hence, Aquinas concludes that what is being worshipped in the icon is not a creature, but God Himself as represented by the icon, the latter being only a sign that leads the mind to God. (Recorded and aired on Friday, February 9, 2018, at 4:00 pm Eastern.)
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Dr. Francisco Romero was born and raised in Puerto Rico. He holds a PhD in medieval philosophy from Marquette University and an M.A. in Theology and Christian Ministry from Franciscan University of Steubenville. He is a faculty member at St. Gregory the Great Seminary (Lincoln, Nebraska) and is also a research professor at Universidad Panamericana (Guadalajara, Mexico). As a scholar, he specializes in the philosophy of religion, philosophical ethics, and in Thomas Aquinas' Arabic philosophical sources. His academic research has appeared in numerous scholarly journals and international publications including The Thomist, American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, Latin Mass Magazine, and The New Catholic Encyclopedia. He is the author of the Ite ad Thomam blog, and the founder and president of Ite ad Thomam Books and Media. He lives in Lincoln, Nebraska with his wife and eight children. For Dr. Romero’s CV, publications, and other information and materials, visit his Academia.edu Page: https://up-mx.academia.edu/FranciscoRomeroCarrasquillo

Following the lead of Pope Benedict XVI and synthesizing insights from his book on the subject, in this lecture Dr. Matthew Ramage will set out to answer these above questions by wedding the historical-critical approach with a theological reading of Scripture based in the patristic-medieval tradition. Whereas these two approaches are often viewed as mutually exclusive or even contradictory, Ramage will insist that the two are mutually enriching and necessary for doing justice to the Bible's most challenging texts. (Recorded and aired on Friday, February 2, 2018.)

Dr. Matthew Ramage is Adjunct Professor of Theology at HACS and Associate Professor of Theology at Benedictine College. He is author, contributing author, or co-translator of several books, including the monographs Dark Passages of the Bible: Engaging Scripture with Benedict XVI and Thomas Aquinas and Jesus, Interpreted: Benedict XVI, Bart Ehrman, and the Historical Truth of the Gospels.

Dr. Ramage's work has appeared in a number of scholarly journals including Nova et Vetera, Scripta Theologica, Cithara, and Homiletic and Pastoral Review as well as popular online venues such as Strange Notions, The Gregorian Institute, and Crisis. He has been interviewed by news outlets such as the National Catholic Register andFirst Things and has made periodic appearances on the EWTN programs Catholic Answers Live, Catholicism on Campus, and The Son Rise Morning Show. See
https://www.catholic.com/audio/cal/8360#.WlmNNGt_vzA

For more on his work and his CV, visit Dr. Ramage's website www.truthincharity.com.

The issue of accessibility in online learning has been waiting for attention. Until recently, however, the urgency for action has been largely absent or deferred. Intentions were good, but few formal implementation deadlines demanded immediate action. The passage of the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act in 2005 led to the 2008 b adoption of Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 (WCAG) developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The Ontario Government has set a time limit of 1 January 2021 for compliance with this standard. This presentation will consider the changing concept of disability and accessibility in online learning. It will then provide a case study of Tyndale University College Seminary in Ontario, Canada, as it prepares to implement accessibility requirements for the 2021 deadline. Recorded and aired on Friday, January 26, 2018. The audio below plays the entire webinar with the Q/A session at the end. The YouTube video provides a subtitled, visual background to the 30-minute presentation embedded within the audio.

Some resources from Ben Watson of the Faith-Based Online Learning Directors:

Screen Readers:
JAWS for Windows and NVDA for Windows
VoiceOver for both the iPhone and iPad.
Reading Apps (all for the iPhone and iPad)
Voice Dream Reader
Kindle
IBooks
Nook
Easy Reader
Pocket
Bard Mobile. This is the application from the National Library for the Blind and Physically Handicapped in the US. BARD stands for Braille and Audio Reading Download. Both audio and braille books can be accessed on the app
For reading the classics LibriVox or Audio Books Headquarters both work well.
Overdrive, an app used by libraries across the country.
App from Learning Ally. They have 75,000 mostly textbooks that have been recorded for blind and people with other learning disabilities that listening to a book can help.
Audible should be mentioned, very accessible in both Windows and IOS.
Apple’s news app for news and their podcast app for listening to podcasts.
Writing:
MicroSoft Office is very accessible.
Word processing app called Voice Dream Writer.
For blogging, Byword.
Research:
Everybody’s favorite Google app works well in both Windows and IOS and the Wikipedia app works well in IOS.

Dr. Lawrence Hopperton is the Director of Distributed Learning at Tyndale University College and Seminary. He was formerly the Director of Research for the Canadian TeleLearning National Centre of Excellence and Senior Instructional Designer for the Canadian Centre of Excellence for Refugee and Immigrant Studies.