“Forgetfulness of being”—perhaps we could also call it “forgetfulness of givenness”—underlies most of the problems that we face… Final exams (of blessed memory at this point) are always a way of getting students to pull together what they’ve read and thought about during the semester, but the best exams take that knowledge and guide it [...]
This time of retrenchment is also the opportunity to begin reconceiving what a new Christian culture—made from the old—might look like… The recently revived Wyoming School of Catholic Thought has me thinking about how we escape from the “immanent frame,” as Charles Taylor describes our secular age. In a lecture and discussion led by Dr. [...]
Modestly, without arrogance or triumphalism, our graduates will be the mustard seeds of cultural transformation… Graduation is always a bittersweet time, because we have come to know the students so well, from many different sides. It is not a matter of delving into their privacy, but of seeing them in different contexts—classes, outdoor trips, liturgical [...]
The best things are not the things we buy, but those we inherit. In what Burke calls the age of “sophisters, economists, and calculators,” I am struck again by the superb phrase he uses to summon up the nobility and beauty that characterize inheritance: “the unbought grace of life”… In the junior Humanities class this [...]
Those whose intellectual heritage lies in the Enlightenment find in the contemporary world the furthest reach of an inexorable progress against forces of primitive and reactionary religious belief. What is “religious liberty” to them but a sanction for oppression?… Rod Dreher’s new book, The Benedict Option: A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation, is [...]
As important as it is to use language well, it is more important to use it to move people with the truth… For two full days, with all regular classes canceled, the seniors at Wyoming Catholic College this week presented their senior orations to faculty, fellow students, board members, and guests of the College. The [...]
Reading with leisure means reading is not about me; it’s about giving my faculties over to the contemplation of a work that’s worthy in its own right… Early in January, several of us on the faculty of Wyoming Catholic College held a one-day seminar about leisure and hope at the Shrine of our Lady of [...]
"King Lear" reminds us that only a love that cracks our hearts through loss can truly reveal the gift of the Incarnation. When John Henry Cardinal Newman writes about Advent in one of his sermons, he meditates on how this season of expectation falls at the end of the year. “All is past and gone, [...]
May this Thanksgiving be a feast of many gifts, both in the families we love and in this great nation for which we pray... Thanksgiving has always been an occasion when we offer God our gratitude for the many blessings He has given us. It is surely the most familial of our national holidays, but [...]
After his lecture to a packed house recently, Dr. R.R. “Rusty” Reno was answering questions from the audience, when one student asked him about how Wyoming Catholic College students should deal with the misconceptions others have about the liberal arts at Wyoming Catholic. Dr. Reno said he hated to have to tell him, but most [...]
For some years now, there has been a genial quarrel between those who use e-readers like Nook and Kindle and those who prefer real books with actual pages. John Senior, if he were alive today, would undoubtedly denounce my Kindle. Dr. Senior was the most prominent of the founders of the Integrated Humanities Program at [...]
After the ceremonies on August 28 [Dr. Arbery’s inauguration as President of Wyoming Catholic College], Pres. Michael McLean of Thomas Aquinas College in California presented me a gift: John Henry Cardinal Newman’s Parochial and Plain Sermons. Of course, I know Newman from other works, but I have never read his sermons. […]
On Tuesday of this week, the second-largest class in the history of Wyoming Catholic College arrived on campus, most of them with their parents. The new students are a wonderful-looking group, enthusiastic and full of spirit. After a week of preparation, they leave this weekend for the twenty-one-day trip into the Wind River Mountains that [...]
Today’s offering in our Timeless Essay series affords readers the opportunity to join Glenn Arbery as he contemplates the importance of poetry to a well-formed soul. —W. Winston Elliott III, Publisher Last year when Dr. Kevin Roberts and I first met with the senior class in a course we were co-teaching, Dr. Roberts asked what [...]