Education in the liberal arts is an ancient tradition that has slowly been eroded through our increasing attachment to approaching the world scientifically and pragmatically… The language of man reveals something significant about his nature and his relationship with the world. Language is so close to man’s nature that if it suffers a drastic change, [...]
Christopher Dawson greatly admired John Henry Newman, for he understood more clearly than any of his contemporaries the coming war of the Church against the ideologues bred by the French Revolution, utilitarianism, and secularization. As Christopher Dawson attempted to discover the sources of the ideological disruptions of the twentieth-century as well as solutions to the [...]
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. […]
People say to me, that it is but a dream to suppose that Christianity should regain the organic power in human society which once it possessed. I cannot help that; I never said it could. I am not a politician; I am proposing no measures, but exposing a fallacy, and resisting a pretence. Let Benthamism reign, [...]
“It’s all in Plato, all in Plato: bless me, what do they teach them at these schools!” C.S. Lewis’ character Professor Digory Kirke calls to light an increasingly detrimental error concerning education in the modern era. The Great Western Tradition and the permanent ideas about education that flow out of it are grounded in a [...]
Hence it is that it is almost a definition of a gentleman to say that he is one who never inflicts pain. This description is both refined and, as far as it goes, accurate. He is mainly occupied in merely removing the obstacles which hinder the free and unembarrassed action of those about him; and [...]
The secular university in the United States has reached a long-deferred moment of truth and ought to be ripe for the wisdom of John Henry Newman. Looking at the university today, its overextension, confusion about its purpose, catastrophic funding decline, and fundamental ineffectiveness for so many students, Newman could very well say, “I told you [...]
“God has created me to do Him some definite service; He has committed some work to me which He has not committed to another. I have my mission—I never may know it in this life, but I shall be told it in the next. Somehow I am necessary for His purposes, as necessary in my [...]