Wyoming Catholic College
Annual Lecture Series
2022-2023
Each year, Wyoming Catholic College welcomes lecturers from the wider academic community to the town of Lander—distinguished men and women who contribute complementary perspectives across a wide range of disciplines. This year’s lecturers (and the dates of their presentations) are:
SEPTEMBER 9th
Daniel Mahoney, Assumption College
Dr. Mahoney is Professor Emeritus at Assumption University, Senior Fellow at the Real Clear Foundation, and Senior Writer at Law and Liberty. He is a specialist in French political philosophy, anti-totalitarian thought (especially Solzhenitsyn), and the intersection of religion and politics. He is the author or editor of twelve books including Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: The Ascent From Ideology (2001); The Conservative Foundations of the Liberal Order (2010); The Other Solzhenitsyn: Telling the Truth About a Misunderstood Writer and Thinker (2014); and The Idol of Our Age: How the Religion of Humanity Subverts Christianity (2018). He is executive editor of Perspectives on Political Science. In 1999, he was awarded the Prix Raymond Aron. His latest book, The Statesman as Thinker: Portraits of Greatness, Courage, and Moderation, was published by Encounter Books in May 2022.
OCTOBER 10th
Lorenzo Candelaria, Vanderbilt University
Dr. Candelaria joined Vanderbilt University as Professor of Musicology and Dean of its Blair School of Music. A native of El Paso, Texas and a first-generation Mexican-American college graduate, he received his Ph.D. in musicology with highest honors from Yale University, specializing in Renaissance music while pursuing a performance career. He has held professorships at the Yale Institute of Sacred Music and at the University of Texas at Austin. A recipient of the American Musicological Society’s prestigious Robert M. Stevenson Prize for outstanding scholarship on the music of Spain and Mexico, Candelaria is an award-winning author, teacher, and widely engaged speaker on topics ranging from plainchant to mariachi music to arts education and the 21st-century student demographic. Recent books include The Rosary Cantoral, American Music: A Panorama, and Listening to Music, ninth edition (forthcoming). He is currently writing Music in Early Mexican Catholicism (under contract with Boydell & Brewer). A former trustee and Vice President for Community Engagement and Education with the El Paso Symphony Orchestra, he currently serves on the board of directors of the League of American Orchestras (New York City) and the PostClassical Ensemble (Washington, D.C.). In 2019, he accepted a presidential nomination to the National Council on the Humanities for a term expiring in 2024.
NOVEMBER 11th
J. Budziszewski, University of Texas at Austin
Dr. Budziszewski is a professor of government and philosophy at the University of Texas, Austin, where he also teaches courses in the law school and the religious studies department. He specializes in political philosophy, ethical philosophy, legal philosophy, and the interaction of religion with philosophy. Among his research interests are classical natural law, virtue ethics, conscience and moral self deception, human happiness or fulfillment, the institution of the family in relation to political and social order, religion in public life, and the problem of toleration. He has written extensively, and his recent works include On the Meaning of Sex (Intercollegiate Studies Institute Press, 2012), Commentary on Thomas Aquinas’s Treatise on Law (Cambridge University Press, 2014), its free online partner volume, Companion to the Commentary (Cambridge University Press, 2014), Commentary on Thomas Aquinas’s Virtue Ethics (Cambridge University Press, 2017), Commentary on Thomas Aquinas’s Treatise on Happiness and Ultimate Purpose (Cambridge University Press, 2020), and Commentary on Thomas Aquinas’s Treatise on Divine Law (Cambridge University Press, 2021), and How and How Not to Be Happy (Regnery, 2022). For young people, he has also written the popular guide How to Stay Christian in College.
MARCH 10th
Kent Lasnoski, Wyoming Catholic College
Dr. Lasnoski grew up in Green Bay, Wisconsin, before attending the University of Pennsylvania but returned to the Midwest for graduate studies at Marquette University (Milw., WI), where he studied the theology of marriage and sexual ethics, especially in the thought of Augustine, Aquinas, Alphonsus Liguori, John Paul II, and Catholic social teaching. After earning his doctorate in 2011, Dr. Lasnoski taught moral theology as Assistant Professor at Quincy University until his move to Wyoming Catholic College in 2015, where he teaches theology and philosophy, and a practicum on marriage and consecrated life. He is a founding board member and Associate Editor of the Catholic literary and arts journal Dappled Things, serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Moral Theology, and is the Editor of the Proceedings of the Catholic Theological Society of America. He has published a monograph on marriage and consecrated life (Vocation to Virtue: Christian Marriage as a Consecrated Life), and together with his wife designs and participates in diocesan programs of marriage preparation and formation.
MAY 2nd
JD Flynn, Editor and Co-Founder, The Pillar
Before co-founding The Pillar, JD Flynn was editor-in-chief of Catholic News Agency. Before that, he was chancellor of the Archdiocese of Denver, and a senior advisor to Bishop James Conley in the Diocese of Lincoln. He has an MA in theology from Franciscan University of Steubenville, and a JCL in canon law from the Catholic University of America. He is a member of the College of Fellows at the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology, has served a consultor to the USCCB, and is published in the Washington Post, the New York Post, First Things, The Lamp, National Review, and in various Catholic publications.