With such a rich intellectual, artistic, and moral heritage, why among the many institutions of Catholic learning (including, of course, the Benedictine ones) are there so few dedicated to a liberating and humane education in truth, humility, and love? Glory in All Things: St. Benedict and Catholic Education Today, by André Gushurst-Moore (Angelico Press, [...]
What are our students going to be bringing into their first contact with this world? Primarily sanity. Grounded in the real virtues, cardinal and theological, they understand themselves and others as loved by God, given life by His will, sustained by His purposes. It’s Finals week at Wyoming Catholic College. Since Monday, students have been [...]
One of the administrators at my school recently asked faculty to contribute a “solidarity statement.” The email specified what was being sought: For your statement, we’re asking you to share how you personally will engage in the work of creating an inclusive and equitable campus community that truly values all. What, specifically, will you do [...]
A few weeks ago, as I was looking up my undergraduate advisor’s address, I was stunned to find that he’d passed away in September. Professor Walter T.K. Nugent was 86. He was a great teacher, a great scholar, and a great man. He equally inspired and intimidated me, and I’m deeply proud to count him [...]
The teaching of modern universities is that we inhabit a godless, indifferent, pointless material universe where consciousness itself is an accident. A prevailing nihilism settles out from this failure of questioning. If we reopen the essential questions, we can have faith that the truth will sustain us and reward us for our love of it. [...]
This is the beginning of an extraordinary adventure, one that will bond the freshmen to each other for life and form the way that they experience the world of the mind and the tradition of the West, which is their home and birthright. I mean the West, of course, in the broad cultural sense, but [...]
Despite the oft-repeated mantra, college is not for everyone. Perhaps it is time to revive the traditional notion of a person’s calling: Young people need to turn to God and pray for His help to find meaning and purpose inside a world that rejects both. For students contemplating college this fall, the time has come [...]
Wicked foolishness continues apace on the higher academic earth. The flood is sweeping away institution after institution. Yet at least one righteous man is gathering together verbal creatures of every kind—masculine, feminine, and neuter— into an ark and waiting for the flood waters to recede. First, the wicked foolishness. Almost a year ago, my fellow [...]
The letters of the alphabet, strung together in cogent meaning, might be best thought of, not as means to an end, but as an end in and of themselves—a living, incarnated creativity that encourages relationship. And I like to consider speech, in all its forms, as love letters. My youngest child, just nearing his seventh [...]
The long tradition of Catholic higher education is a substantive reality that is held in trust. Too often it has been squandered, sometimes irreparably. Yet “What We Hold in Trust” can serve as a guide for those who have hope of renewal and those who are thinking about new institutions. What We Hold in Trust: [...]
Will elementary, secondary, and university students, off campus as well as on campus, be forbidden to criticize, for example, critical race theory and the new American history curricula? And will that prohibition be extended to parents? The grandiose and centralized cradle-through-college education plans of Joe Biden and the Democratic party have now been plainly stated. [...]
My prayer for you graduates is that you will be mature, responsible, hardworking people of conviction. God will empower you to do it. He will use you for His glory and that will be the best life you could have. This address was given at the 2020 graduation of the Augustine School in Jackson, TN. [...]
Once mastered, cursive enables us to write rapidly without lifting the pen from the paper—a skill that has major advantages over printing. Cursive now stumps many college students today. Whether it can ever make a comeback seems to be an issue. At about 10 o’clock the other night, my wife called me out of my [...]
A. Wade Razzi, Chief Academic Officer at American College of the Building Arts, is interviewed by W. Winston Elliott III, Editor-in-Chief of The Imaginative Conservative. W. Winston Elliott III: Describe ACBA and its mission. The American College of the Building Arts was founded in the wake of Hurricane Hugo, which did massive damage to the [...]