.- The Dietrich von Hildebrand Legacy Project has announced a special retreat for philanthropists and business executives will be held in conjunction with a May conference on Dietrich von Hildebrand in Rome. It is intended for those “seeking the roots of cultural renewal.”
The three day retreat, held May 27-29, has as its theme “Do Ideas really have consequences?”
An announcement for the retreat noted the importance of exploring the consequences of ideas and knowing whether ideas or human actions are more consequential.
For anyone dedicating resources to cultural renewal, or contemplating doing so, it is a “necessity” to find satisfactory answers to such questions, the retreat announcement said.
“Should one focus entirely on supporting action, or should one also dedicate resources, even significant resources, to supporting thought?” it asked.
The retreat will also provide opportunities for “high-level networking” with participants and leading churchmen, diplomats, journalists, academics and others who will join various portions of the retreat.
John Henry Crosby, founding director of the Hildebrand Project, will host the retreat. Announced attendees include philosophers Alice von Hildebrand and Hanna-Barbara Gerl-Falkovitz, First Things editor Joseph Bottum and philanthropist Roberta Green Ahmanson.
John Templeton Foundation executive Stephen Klimczuk and Robert Moynihan, editor of Inside the Vatican magazine, will also attend.
The retreat takes place amidst an international conference on the philosopher Dietrich von Hildebrand at the University of Santa Croce in Rome.
Von Hildebrand has been praised by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, as a man who will be considered “most prominent among the figures of our time.”
The philosopher, who died in 1977, stressed the importance of love, saying: “Love alone brings a human being into full awareness of personal existence. For it is in love alone that man finds room enough to be what he is.”
