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Spring 2024 Royackers Lecture
March 6 @ 7:00 pm
Regis College will be hosting its annual Royackers Lecture March 6 at 7pm. Professor Jean-Pierre Fortin (Regis St Michael’s Faculty of Theology) will be presenting his lecture titled, “Looking for God in Concentration Camps: Responsible Theological Engagement of the Holocaust.”
In this lecture Prof. Jean-Pierre Fortin will argue for the reframing of the Christian doctrine of grace in light of the reality of radical evil and suffering experienced by the Jewish victims of the Holocaust. In Nazi concentration and extermination camps, inmates suffered the systematic denial of their humanity. The prisoners almost irresistibly suffered the loss of all ability to feel, think and act freely. Principles guiding moral discernment and action in “normal” living conditions could no longer be applied and God’s active presence no longer be felt in the same ways. The event and experience of the Holocaust demand a new theology of grace, because they question both the human and the divine in unprecedented fashion. The light of grace must be found and followed in the night of radical evil, suffering and dehumanization. Holocaust survivors and witnesses can help us, today, find God in the darkness of our lives, receive healing and grow into a more faithful humanity.