Friends of the LBJ Library | Mar, 10 2015 6:00PM - 7:30PM
About the book
The New York Times bestselling historian takes on a pressing question in modern religion—will Pope Francis embrace change?
Pope Francis, the first Jesuit pope and the first from the Americas, offers a challenge to his church. Can he bring about significant change? Should he?
Garry Wills, the prizewinning historian, argues that changes have been the evidence of life in the Catholic Church. It has often changed, sometimes with bad consequences, more often with good—good enough to make it perdure. In this brilliant and incisive study, he gives seven examples of deep and serious changes that have taken place (or are taking place) within the last century. None of them was effected by the pope all by himself.
About Garry Wills
Wills is an author of more than 20 books including What Jesus Meant as well as a frequent contributor to the New York Review of Books.
In 1993, he won a Pulitzer Prize for his book Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America, which describes the background and effect of Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address on November 19, 1863. In 1998, he won the National Medal for the Humanities. He has also won the National Book Critics Circle Award.
He is an adjunct professor of history, both American and cultural, at Northwestern University and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
About the moderator
Betty Sue Flowers was director of the LBJ Presidential Library from 2002-2009. Until her appointment in 2002 as director of the LBJ Presidential Library, Betty Sue Flowers was a Kelleher Professor of English and member of the Distinguished Teachers Academy at The University of Texas at Austin. She is a Senior Research Fellow of the IC2 Institute, an Honorary Fellow of British Studies, a recipient of the Pro Bene Meritis Award, and a Distinguished Alumnus of The University of Texas at Austin.
She is also a poet, editor, and business consultant, with publications ranging from poetry therapy to the economic myth, including two books of poetry and four television tie-in books in collaboration with Bill Moyers, among them, the best-selling Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth. She hosted "Conversations with Betty Sue Flowers" on the Austin PBS-affiliate and has served as a moderator for executive seminars at the Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies, consultant for NASA, member of the Envisioning Network for General Motors, Visiting Advisor to the Secretary of the Navy, Public Director of the American Institute of Architects, on-air consultant for the nationally broadcast "The Mystery of Love," and editor of Global Scenarios for Shell International in London and the World Business Council in Geneva (on global sustainable development, the future of biotechnology, and, currently in progress, global water issues).
Betty Sue Flowers received her B.A. and M.A. from The University of Texas at Austin and her Ph.D. in English Literature from the University of London.
