Portsmouth Institute for Faith and Culture: Letter from Executive Director Christopher Fisher

Dear Friends of the Portsmouth Institute,

Amid the challenges our country has faced these past months, the Portsmouth Institute continues to be a sanctuary of hope, peace, and friendship for so many students, teachers, and lifelong learners who have made us part of their spiritual and intellectual lives. I’m humbled and grateful for the encouragement you’ve offered us. Thank you for your prayers, your support, and your willingness to help spread the word about our shared work.

The Portsmouth Institute’s annual summer conference has become New England’s premier forum for the Catholic intellectual and contemplative life. You can imagine how difficult it was for us to not be able to gather in person this year.

However, in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, we moved swiftly to take our summer conference online and offer intellectual and spiritual nourishment to people in need of hope and encouragement.

The virtual summer conference occurred over two parts: In Part One, we released one on-demand video per day via email over the course of a week. In Part Two, we hosted small-group Zoom discussion sessions throughout the day on Saturday, June 20.

Participants had the chance to engage in personal conversation with some of America’s leading Catholic voices, including Catholic University of America’s President John Garvey, spiritual writer Heather King, cultural commentator Sohrab Ahmari, and popular retreat leader, monk of Saint Louis Abbey, and Portsmouth Institute senior fellow Fr. Augustine Wetta, O.S.B.

The summer conference was graciously sponsored by our friends at the Center for Catholic Studies at the University of St. Thomas, Thomas Aquinas College, Fellowship of Catholic University Students, Cluny Media, the Manquehue Apostolic Movement, Aquinas Institute: Catholic Campus Ministry at Princeton University, the Providence College Humanities Forum, the Grace J. Palmisano Center for Campus Ministry at Merrimack College, the Brown-RISD Catholic Community, Collegium Institute for Catholic Thought and Culture, and the Center for the Restoration of Christian Culture at Thomas More College of Liberal Arts.

While we could not meet in person at the Abbey this year, our virtual summer conference offered an experience of conversation, contemplation, and (virtual) hospitality that some many have come to expect from the Portsmouth Institute.

Of course, the summer conference is the tip of the iceberg for the Portsmouth Institute programming these days.

In our initial response to the pandemic, we offered a virtual retreat in April, Crisis Converted: A Benedictine Guide to Hope, featuring Fr. Augustine Wetta, O.S.B. Over five days, viewers from around the world joined

Fr. Augustine’s virtual retreat to discover how fi ve Benedictine disciplines – stability, obedience, conversion, silence, and death – off er opportunities for hope and spiritual growth.

Portsmouth Abbey students gathered virtually over the course of the spring to participate in the Portsmouth Institute events. Students attended a Zoom fi lm screening with Catholic fi lmmaker Charles Kinnane, director of The Human Experience, and logged on for a Zoom seminar on the intersection of faith and science with noted Catholic physicist Dr. Stephen Barr. We were also pleased to support the heroic eff orts of student and parents who faithfully attended virtual lectio divina groups over Zoom throughout the spring.

Over 900 registrants join for our co-sponsored webinar on Flannery O’Connor: Imagination, Solitude, and the Oddities of Life, hosted by the Collegium Institute at the University of Pennsylvania. The panel featured four distinguished thinkers, all women, who discussed their fascination with one of the greatest American female writers.

We also joined forces with noted Princeton Theological Seminar professor Dr. Margarita Mooney and the Scala Foundation to co-sponsor a scholarly webinar featuring Dr. Carlo Lancellotti on the meaning of Benedictine education.

Before COVID-19, the Portsmouth Institute hosted our second annual Catholicism and Culture Symposium at the University Club in Providence, Rhode Island. This year’s program, which addressed the topic “To Save the Church: Perspectives on Catholic Duty,” featured New York Times columnist Ross Douthat. Dr. Jeremy Wilkins from Boston College off ered a response, and the event was and moderated by Dr. James Keating of Providence College. The event was co-sponsored by the Humanities Forum at Providence College. We were thrilled to see so many monks, faculty, parents, and alumni of Portsmouth Abbey School at the event, alongside Auxiliary Bishop Robert Evans and many clergy from the Diocese of Providence. The Institute also took students to a performance at the Boston Symphony Orchestra, sponsored a faculty panel of Pope Francis’s Laudato Si’, organized a winter stargazing party for students, and much, much more.

Thank you for all you do to help the Portsmouth Institute fl ourish. As always, please let me know if you have suggestions to make the Portsmouth Institute even more eff ective.

Best,

Christopher Fisher

Executive Director Humanities Teacher cfi sher@portsmouthabbey.org