Prof. Michael Healy (Philosophy, Steubenville) recalls two guest lectures held during his student days at Loyola: encounters with Hans Küng and Dietrich von Hildebrand that moved him to shun the era's fashionable embrace of heresy and to rejoice in the truths that can be known about man and God.
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What conclusions can we draw from Pope Benedict's address to the Jesuit-run Gregorian University?
First of all, there is real conflict between the worldly culture's idea of the good and the true good of man, which is found in God:
"Today," he continued, "we cannot fail to take account of the confrontation with secular culture, which in many parts of the world tends ... not only to deny all signs of God's presence in the life of society and of individuals, but, with various means that disorient and confuse man's correct understanding, seeks to undermine his capacity to listen to God.
Theologies of religious pluralism that disregard the uniqueness of Jesus Christ as the one savior of man and the uniqueness of the Church do not serve the truth:
"Nor can we ignore," he added, "relations with other religions." Such relations "are constructive only if they avoid all ambiguities that in any way weaken the essential contents of Christian faith in Christ, the only Savior of all mankind, and in the Church, a necessary sacrament for the salvation of all humanity."
The secular human sciences err and cannot be trusted uncritically when they disregard the truth about man, whose nature is directed toward love of God and love of the other, not self-seeking:
Other human sciences such as psychology, social science and communications, "precisely because they concern human beings, cannot omit a reference to God. Indeed, man, both in his interior and exterior aspects, cannot be fully understood if he is not recognized as being open to transcendence."
He continued: "Deprived of his reference to God, man cannot respond to the fundamental questions that disturb, and always will disturb, his heart; questions that concern the aim and, hence, the meaning of existence. ... Man's destiny, without reference to God, cannot but be the desolation of anguish that leads to desperation. Only with reference to God-Love, revealed in Jesus Christ, can man discover the meaning of his life, and live in hope, even while experiencing the evils that injure his personal life and the society in which he lives. Hope ensures that man does not close himself in a stagnant and sterile nihilism, but opens himself to generous commitment in the society in which he lives in order to improve it."
Pontifical universities and Jesuit universities in general are institutions with a religious mission and should be noted for their instruction in authentic Catholic doctrine:
Highlighting the fact that the integral formation of young people "is one of the traditional forms of the apostolate of Company of Jesus," the Holy Father recalled how the university's statutes and general regulations are currently being renewed, in order, he said, "to define the identity of the Gregorian University more clearly, facilitating the preparation of the most appropriate academic programs for carrying out its mission."
"As an ecclesial pontifical university, this academic institution is committed to 'sentire in Ecclesia et cum Ecclesia.' This is a commitment that arises from love for the Church, our Mother and Bride of Christ."
This isn't going to help Apopka, Florida's reputation as a place where stupidity reigns in public life: school teachers put eighth-graders through an abusive day-long demonstration of discrimination.
Apparently it's OK for teachers and administrators to subject children to unjust treatment if they're doing it for a "progressive" purpose. I thought this sort of experiment was a fad that ended in the '70s, but officials in Florida still need to get some education themselves about Ethical Restrictions on Human Experimentation. To start with, experimenting on people without their consent has to be totally excluded.
Somebody please sic on the lawyers on these people.
Time to write something a little less controversial. Here's my latest from Catholic Exchange. It concerns the Catholic education of children.
Dawn Eden writes that a NJ newspaper's article about a supposed no-blogging policy for high school students was misleading. A diocesan spokesman told her that the school only banned the posting of certain types of material: personal identifying information, comments about the school, and comments about other students. If that more moderate policy is actually being followed by the school administrators, then I think the fuss is settled.
Not bad: a school in liberal Newton, Mass., cancelled Halloween observances in response to complaints. It's good that somebody in this very P.C. place respected the objections of offended religious parents -- whether Christian, Jewish, or Muslim, we don't know yet.
The article also doesn't say quite what the parents' objections were. The old Celtic pagan holiday that fell on the 31st seems relatively benign, a bit of harmless myth-making, so I don't object to that too much, except on the grounds that I don't want public schools to promote neo-paganism. But in the pop culture, Halloween has become an opportunity to celebrate figures of evil and horror, and (call me a fundamentalist, but) I don't want that degraded phenomenon to have a platform in the schools. After all, if it weren't for the schools promoting Halloween, it would be a pretty minor annual affair, as it deserves to be.
Every time I have the slightest twinge of doubt that Catholic school is worth the money, something like this happens.
Apparently, some athletes Osbourn High School in Manassas decided to have a "sexual incident" one afternoon, to use the clinical term from the article. And did the parents discipline their children, or move to another state? No -- according to WMAL, a local station, they complained that their rutting children were punished too severely.
Whenever parents attack the authorities for punishing their misbehaving kids, one can only assume it's displaced anger from shame. They think that by defending their children, they can refrain from blaming themselves. That's the charitable interpretation -- the less charitable one would be that they really think there's nothing wrong with such an "incident."
I will be completely happy to write that tuition check next month.
Now that our phone line and internet is hooked up again, I have spent part of the day surfing the net. In so doing, I couldn't help but notice some of the debates over homeschooling take place. While nobody disagrees that the education usually is superior to that of public schools, there is some question as to how well adapted homeschooled children are socially after they graduate.
In my experience, it depends upon the parents. I have seen both good and bad. In one particularly egregious example, one of my friends roomed in college with a homeschooled fellow who grew up in a very sheltered environment -- to the point of social inneptitude. For example, he was clueless as to who Darth Vader was.
Another story takes place within the context of a particular post-conciliar traditionalist schisms, which has attracted many adherents to a certain geographical locale. As soon as the girls reach their late teens or early twenties, they marry guys in their late thirties to early forties. They simply cannot relate to guys their own age, as the girls find the guys their own age too socially immature and too sheltered to maintain decent employment and support a family. So, obviously, this is the downside.
On the other hand, some of the most socially well-adjusted young men I have met were also homeschooled. I'm thinking, in particular, of a friend of mine whom I met through the FSSP. His parents were both military officers and took the view that homeschooling was about raising their children to be tommorrow's Catholic leaders. Therefore, they didn't see homeschooling as sheltering their children, but as an apprenticeship to maintaining one's faith while venturing forth in the real world.
So besides the usual homeschooling activities of catechesis, reading, writing, mathematics, history, geography, etc... their kids also participated in sports, the arts, community service, choir practice, boy scouts and even scuba-diving (my friend's father explained that this wasn't just phys-ed, but a reinforcement of the lessons learned in mathematics and geography as well.) Another homeschooled friend of mine, who I met through the charismatic movement, did small-aircraft piloting rather than scuba-diving.
In each case, some of the other parents in the respective parish thought these parents were too libertine, wasteful and risky with the lives of their children. But their children have all turned out well. They came out from homeschooling well-adjusted young adults, with real life skills and capable of assuming responsibility. All have all kept the faith. They are all grateful for their home-schooling background, and remain close to their parents. One is about to graduate with a double-degree in fine arts and engineering. The other is a well-liked pilot and aircraft mechanic. Both are active in their faith.
On the other hand, a lot of my homeschooled friends whose parents sheltered them have turned out aweful. The one that breaks my heart the most is an ex-girlfriend who rebelled against her parents, got involved with a drug-addict, had a child that was given up for adoption, never finished high-school, and now works in the so-called "adult entertainment" field and is bitter against both her family and the Catholic faith. Others have become a variation, albeit not as bad.
So my point is that homeschooling depends upon the parents. If parents use homeschooling to shelter their kids from the real world, this is not good. But if parents use homeschooling to prepare their kids for the real world, then the results are much better than a public school education.
The same can be said about private Catholic schools. I know some traddy schools that simply shelter kids, and the kids graduate knowing all sorts of facts and figures, but still socially and emotionally immature. On the other hand, St. Gregory's Academy -- under the auspices of the FSSP -- openly has as its purpose not only classical education of teenage boys, but their formation and growth from boys into responsible young men. Thus the boys are expected to participate in sport, theatre, music and various social activities. When they graduate, it is a educated and well-adjusted young men.
Whatever other -isms they believe, most professors believe in postmodernism. My definition of that term is: "The belief that there is no absolute Truth, there are only 'truths' that are constructed in our minds. Dialogue is, therefore, not a tool that can be used to discover Truth, but merely a word-game that people use to construct 'reality' in their minds."
That isn't an exhaustive definition of postmodernism, but I think that's a fair summary. Where does this idea come from? I'm sure Beregond can give us its supple, nuanced intellectual history, beginning with Decartes' revolutionary idea that knowledge begins with one's intellect and not the senses, and extending through his (Beregond's) bete noir, Immanuel Kant.
However, I am not an intellectual, and although I do not doubt the role of ideas in the formation of the postmodern critique (for it is surely not a philosophy), often I look to more concrete things when I ask why someone thinks a particular way. I submit that one of the reasons is the university library.
Not just the library, to be sure -- there is also the Registrar's office, the deans, the Faculty Senate, and all the other little rule-making and -enforcing entities on campus. But the library is the entity I am mad at tonight, so the library will be my example.
You may know, if you've read Catholic Light before, that I'm finishing my M.A. thesis project (Open Source Shakespeare). To accompany the site, I am writing a substantial paper, and so I have checked out books from the library. Tonight, I realized that 13 of them are overdue, and I owe the library $32.50.
I figured I'd pay the fine and renew the books. Not so fast! the library Web site said. There is a hold on my library privileges. I called the library, where a recording told me that I would have to bring in the books before I could renew or check out books.
"That's got to be a mistake," I thought. "I'm done with classes, and I'm rarely on campus. Surely they aren't going to make me physically go to the circulation desk."
I called the circulation desk. A nice young lady confirmed that yes, indeed, I would have to drag 13 books halfway across the county in order to get my records cleaned up.
"Is this some kind of collegiate hazing?" I asked. She didn't get the joke. "Let me get this straight: if I come in, I can renew the books, right?"
"Yes, absolutely. Come to the desk, and we'll check them in, and check them back out to you," she explained.
"And why can't we do that over the phone?"
"They have to be checked back in, because they're late."
"I know they're late, and I'll pay the fine. I have no problem with that. But I'd rather not have to make a 40-mile round trip just to renew some books."
"Hold on for a moment, please." Sound of a brief, muffled conversation. "Yeah, my supervisor says you have to come in person. Otherwise, we'd have to do an override."
I thanked her and hung up, without asking the obvious question: what's bad about giving me an "override"? Would it disturb the balance of the universe if they simply said, "Yes, Eric, you can keep the books you need. Don't worry about using your vacation time at work, or leaving your family for most of an evening. We'll renew the books and you can pay the fine the next time you're on campus"?
Nobody else has requested any of the overdue books. I'll pay the fine, or else they won't give me a diploma. Either this is a petty punishment for forgetting the due date, or it's a dumb rule that nobody has thought about but must be followed unquestioningly.
Library book regulations are a small thing, to be sure. But they are part of the web of intricate, arbitrary rules that make up the modern university. Other American institutions (except governments) actively try to make things easier on the people they serve. Not universities, which are run like medieval fiefdoms, complete with their own legal systems.
It's unsurprising that academic professionals — who know no other life, having spent their adult years in this milieu — would think that Truth is a construct and words are weapons used to advance one's personal will. That is precisely what their workplace teaches them.
Two articles from AP: Wheelock's Latin textbook gets an update, including a web site, audio clips, and racy poems.
