Advent Reflections for the Family

December 15th, 2014 by Web Master

Strengthening the family has, from the very beginning, been essential the work of the ITI and many of its graduates. In keeping with this tradition, graduate Maruška Healy (2005) has written a wonderful guide for families about how to bring the celebration of Advent into the home. Steeped in theology and drawing from the great Advent traditions of the Church Maruška gives a beautiful witness for the domestic church on the USCCB Marriage web site. …Read More

Seeing With Other Eyes

December 13th, 2014 by Web Master

It seems that the season of dancing is beginning here, and just the other weekend a group of students had the opportunity to go to a ball in Innsbruck, a town about four hours west of our little Trumau. The fellow-students who invited us are brothers who have had the privilege of spending many winters in Innsbruck. What was so remarkable about this visit to Innsbruck with them was how much their eyes were opened …Read More

Students, Stones and the Gifts of God

November 21st, 2014 by Web Master

Let us place a stone for you. There is a light burning in an un-renovated room of the Schloss.  Students trickle in and out at all hours of the day and night.  Some come to look and they stay to work.  They stay for hours discussing their studies, talking and singing. But what are they doing? It started as a joke and a dream.  Fr. Juraj Terek, the Byzantine Chaplain at the ITI, was surveying …Read More

Bliss and Adventure in God’s Plan

November 14th, 2014 by Web Master

Reflections of a Student from the Studium Generale Program The International Theological Institute, located in the quaint metropolis of Trumau, Austia, where the wise meet the wiser, foreign mingles with familiar, and, above all, where the creature encounters the Creator in a new and real way more and more each day. Sounds a bit fantastical, huh? Well, it could be because I am inclined to lean a bit on the dramatic side of the personality …Read More

Studying Theology in the Midst of a Suffering World

November 7th, 2014 by Web Master

It was a crisp Autumn morning in the fateful year of 1939. In shock, the world watched as the ravings of a mad man beguiled an entire nation, and plunged the world into the unthinkable: another World War. It was under the dark shadow of the Third Reich that the calm, intelligent face of an Oxford Don looked out over a gathering of young people –who could have no way of imagining the horrors that …Read More

ITI added to the Newman Guide!

October 23rd, 2014 by Web Master

The Cardinal Newman Society has added the ITI to its list of recommended Catholic Schools, noting that the ITI is a “faithfully Catholic institute… situated in the beautiful Austrian countryside just south of Vienna, Austria.” For the full article that includes an interview with alumnus Max Becher, click on the link below. http://www.cardinalnewmansociety.org/CatholicEducationDaily/DetailsPage/tabid/102/ArticleID/3625/New-to-The-Newman-Guide-The-International-Theological-Institute.aspx

ITI – Waste or Investment of Time?

October 17th, 2014 by Web Master

Thoughts from a current MMF student: A friend of mine asked me during thesummer holidays if I really wanted to enroll in the second year of my MMF studies at the ITI. He was wondering if it is not just useless drilling in theology and a waste of time which could have been spent more effectively (at work, for example). As it happens, I enrolled in my second year, and week by week I become …Read More

An ITI Father’s take on “How to Dad”

October 10th, 2014 by Web Master

A current student at the ITI shares some of his reflections on fatherhood here at the ITI. See the Fourth Pillar in action!  From his blog post on Sunday, September 28, 2014: HOW TO DAD What is it that makes life fulfilling? When one is doing what he is created to do.  When one finds his purpose so to speak. Being a dad is just that. Men are created to father. What a joy it …Read More

Reflections on Summer at the ITI

October 3rd, 2014 by Web Master

Twentieth Century English spiritual writer Caryll Houselander, waxes eloquently about the importance and beauty of the purposeful emptiness that occupies the center of our very being in her wonderful book, Reed of God. The title of the book also acts as a principle image as she exhorts us to be reeds of God, filled with the breath of God, the Holy Spirit, and allowing Him to pass through us to into the world beyond. The …Read More

Three Memories of Two Canonizations

May 2nd, 2014 by Web Master

I am recently arrived back from the canonization of Pope Saint John Paul II and Pope Saint John XXIII in Rome. I have not had hardly enough time to reflect on what it means that they are canonized, or what a gift it was to be there to witness it, but at very least  I am able to articulate a bit of what the experience was like. And so I think I must tell you my …Read More