About Glenn Arbery

Dr. Glenn C. Arbery served as President (2016-2023) of Wyoming Catholic College, where he previously served as Dean and Associate Professor of Humanities. He has taught at the University of St. Thomas in Houston, Thomas More College of Liberal Arts, the University of Dallas, and at Assumption College where he was d’Alzon Professor of Liberal Arts. He is the author of Why Literature Matters (2001) and the editor of two volumes, The Tragic Abyss (2004), and The Southern Critics: An Anthology (2010).

Live Your Best Life!

By |2023-08-27T13:22:16-05:00January 27th, 2023|Categories: Catholicism, Christianity, Glenn Arbery, Sainthood, Senior Contributors, St. Augustine, Wyoming Catholic College|

Why is St. Augustine’s conviction of his own sinfulness the true path? Because he acknowledges that his misery is his own fault—in other words, that he had real agency in his turn away from what was truly good and beautiful. A few days ago, I happened upon a review of Deepak Chopra’s latest book, Living [...]

The Necessary Island

By |2023-01-21T10:44:55-06:00January 21st, 2023|Categories: Catholicism, Glenn Arbery, Liberal Arts, Liberal Learning, Senior Contributors, Wyoming Catholic College|

The end of a liberal education should not be escape from the corrupt contemporary world or the achievement of a purity that increasingly excludes others, but rather the cultural incarnation of the Word in our own time and our own history. Almost fifteen years ago, my wife and I took a trip to Ireland—part vacation, [...]

Resolutions and Irresolutions

By |2024-01-05T20:16:55-06:00January 4th, 2023|Categories: Catholicism, Christianity, Epiphany, Glenn Arbery, New Year's Day, Senior Contributors, Timeless Essays, Wyoming Catholic College|

The faith of our students has a Spartan or Roman openness to it, something Magian, that deeply respects the full reality of things. They understand that our deepest analogy to God is submission to the truth, but they know from this education that seeing the truth of God’s will in crucial decisions might require patience [...]

Pull Down Thy Vanity

By |2022-12-17T17:06:00-06:00December 17th, 2022|Categories: Advent, Character, Christian Living, Christianity, Conservatism, Glenn Arbery, Senior Contributors, Timeless Essays, Virtue, Wyoming Catholic College|

This Advent season does not center on our achievement; it is not the time of puffing ourselves up, but of waiting for God to reveal, as only God can, the new thing under the sun that breaks the great cycle of vanity. The greatest things are born from humility. There is something essentially comic about [...]

A Patient Madness

By |2022-12-02T13:45:06-06:00December 2nd, 2022|Categories: Advent, Catholicism, Christianity, Glenn Arbery, Senior Contributors, Wyoming Catholic College|

As our culture seems increasingly to reject its own hard-earned wisdom, it is good to remember that we wait in hope. It was disconcerting this week, reading Plato’s Phaedrus with my section of freshman at Wyoming Catholic College, to realize once again that the sophisticated Athenian world of the 4th Century BC was a glittering [...]

Advent in Uncertain Times

By |2023-12-25T10:02:09-06:00November 26th, 2022|Categories: Advent, Christianity, Christmas, Glenn Arbery, Senior Contributors, Timeless Essays, Wyoming Catholic College|

In these uncertain times, we are constantly being urged to historicize Christ, as though He were merely a symbolic figure in a moribund and culturally discredited system of thought. But Advent reminds us of the deep promise of the Nicene Creed. He was, He is, and He is to come. In this Advent, we await [...]

Thanksgiving and the King

By |2022-11-23T19:16:40-06:00November 23rd, 2022|Categories: Catholicism, Christianity, Glenn Arbery, Senior Contributors, Wyoming Catholic College|

In this age of irreverence, we have much to recover, and we cannot achieve that recovery without the hard work of self-mastery in the outdoors and the classroom, but especially without worship of the true teacher, who is Christ the King. This past Sunday, Catholics across the world celebrated The Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus [...]

The Suffered Past

By |2022-11-14T07:59:20-06:00November 13th, 2022|Categories: Classical Learning, Glenn Arbery, History, Liberal Learning, Literature, Senior Contributors, Wyoming Catholic College|

“How is this relevant?” someone might ask about some venerable work from the tradition, such as the Aeneid or King Lear or Aristotle's De Anima. The one doing the asking might seem to be in possession of a burning truth about the uniqueness of the present moment, but the more we commit the past to [...]

Veterans Day

By |2022-11-10T18:50:27-06:00November 10th, 2022|Categories: American Republic, Glenn Arbery, Patriotism, Senior Contributors, Timeless Essays, Veterans Day, Wyoming Catholic College|

For most of our veterans, it should go without saying that military discipline and experience give them a moral authority. It is a recognition—once universal—that is too often forgotten in an age when patriotism itself seems suspect to many. On this day when we honor our veterans, it’s good to recollect both the debt of [...]

Sweet Reason and the Spirits of Contention

By |2022-11-04T13:27:15-05:00November 4th, 2022|Categories: Catholicism, Civil Society, Democracy, Glenn Arbery, Politics, Wyoming Catholic College|

A radical polarization is going on in our own day. Knowing better, people interpret others as short-sighted and selfish, demonize their affiliations, and tar them with imputed evil. The hard question facing us is a political one: how long will we be able to sustain our constitutional forms? The still harder question, though, is what [...]

The Paradox of Courage

By |2022-11-01T14:49:54-05:00November 1st, 2022|Categories: Character, Education, Glenn Arbery, Great Books, History, Humanities, Timeless Essays, Virtue|

What does courage actually look like? Why is it that many who can face mortal dangers in battle lack the other virtues? How do you account for a man like Cicero, whose voice trembled at the beginning of every speech and who never distinguished himself in battle, yet who stood up to Catiline and saved [...]

Modesty and the Bashful Beggar

By |2022-10-28T17:28:41-05:00October 28th, 2022|Categories: Catholicism, Glenn Arbery, Liberal Learning, Senior Contributors, Western Civilization, Wyoming Catholic College|

Hidden behind our need for financial support is the profound reality of what our college's education confers upon our students—the tradition that has formed the greatness of the Western world, the great questions, the faith enduring for 2000 years through many different cultures and regimes. The great heritage of our civilization has been imperiled, and [...]

Honor and Fame

By |2022-10-23T14:01:17-05:00October 23rd, 2022|Categories: Aristotle, Conservatism, Culture, Glenn Arbery, Homer, Plato, Timeless Essays, William Shakespeare, Wyoming Catholic College|

Should honor and fame no longer be ends of ambition in such a world? The ancient philosophers doubted the ultimate merit of fame, but they also looked for the most spirited students, those most inclined to “undertake extensive and arduous enterprises." In response to my essay about baptizing ambition, a friend from Boston College recommended [...]

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