Our Mission
The Nesti Center for Faith & Culture provides education and formation to help people examine, discern, and live out the relationship between the Gospel’s universal call to love and the worldview and values of the dominant American culture.
Our Vision
Founded by Fr. Donald Nesti CSSp in 1994, the Nesti Center for Faith & Culture aims to bring a faithfully Catholic voice to the ongoing dialogue between faith and culture. Through this dialogue, the Center seeks to foster relationships, mutual understanding, and opportunities for collaboration with people of all backgrounds and beliefs. We strive to form people of faith who have fully integrated the human, spiritual, social and intellectual dimensions of their lives. This developmental process integrates theoretical and practical learning to help people communicate God’s unconditional love for the world and serve the common good.
As a recognized Catholic Cultural Center of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Culture and Education, the NCFC offers academic programs, learning opportunities, and ecumenical, interreligious, diocesan and community partnerships. Participants in the NCFC programs address America’s complex social, political, and religious questions through reflection, dialogue, scholarship, and civic experience.
This course is an introduction to the history and development of the Church’s understanding and teachings on marriage of which God is the author. This will include: how Church law has changed in the last 100 years, away from a juridical to a personalist, spiritual understanding of marriage as a path to holiness (Lumen gentium, V) and “an intimate partnership of life and love” (Gaudium et spes, no. 48ff); marriage as covenant, sacrament and “vocation in service to communion” (Catechism, no. 1602 ff) is central to the call and mission of the domestic church. This will include an understanding of the goods of marriage, including the quality of intimacy and communication, as well as the quality of freedom required for valid consent to mutual self-giving of the vows. The contemporary challenges of fertility management, divorce, and related concerns will be addressed within the overall charism of marriage as covenant love, a living sign of Christ and his church.
This course gives a historical overview of the family’s place in society across the ages. Whereas the family has always been the primary agent for performing certain tasks from birth to death, there have been significant changes in family responsibilities over the past 150 years. Many family functions have shifted to other institutions, and thus the family is often dependent on “experts” in health care, education, recreation, protection of children, etc. Pope John Paul II called a Synod to address such issues because of the family’s essential role as “the basic cell of church and society.” Pope Francis called another Synod thirty years later, asking once again how do we support and strengthen the family, how to “accompany” them through these challenging times. His post synodal exhortation Amoris Laetitia articulates the synodal teaching in today’s context. The focus of the course will be on the “partnership model” proposed in the U.S. Bishops’ document, A Family Perspective in Church & Society, and used successfully in a growing number of other institutions such as schools, hospitals, and social welfare agencies.
This course is an introduction to the history and development of the Church’s understanding and teachings on marriage of which God is the author. This will include: How Church law has changed in the last 100 years, away from a juridical to a personalist, spiritual understanding of marriage as a path to holiness (Lumen gentium, V) and “an intimate partnership of life and love” (Gaudium et spes, no. 48ff); marriage as covenant, sacrament and “vocation in service to communion” (Catechism, no. 1602 ff) is central to the call and mission of the domestic church. This will include an understanding of the goods of marriage, including the quality of intimacy and communication, as well as the quality of freedom required for valid consent to mutual self-giving of the vows. The contemporary challenges of fertility management, divorce, and related concerns will be addressed within the overall charism of marriage as covenant love, a living sign of Christ and his church.
This course gives a historical overview of the family’s place in society across the ages. Whereas the family has always been the primary agent for performing certain tasks from birth to death, there have been significant changes in family responsibilities over the past 150 years. Many family functions have shifted to other institutions, and thus the family is often dependent on “experts” in health care, education, recreation, protection of children, etc. Pope John Paul II called a Synod to address such issues because of the family’s essential role as “the basic cell of church and society.” Pope Francis called another Synod thirty years later, asking once again how do we support and strengthen the family, how to “accompany” them through these challenging times. His post synodal exhortation Amoris Laetitia articulates the synodal teaching in today’s context. The focus of the course will be on the “partnership model” proposed in the U.S. Bishops’ document, A Family Perspective in Church & Society, and used successfully in a growing number of other institutions such as schools, hospitals, and social welfare agencies.