In this conversation with Margarita Mooney, we consider what can we learn from the Benedictine tradition—as communicated by Newman—as we seek to cultivate a university that is animated by liberal learning. What kind of ethos should emerge within a university from a liberal education that (1) integrates the full range of disciplines--including metaphysics and theology--(2) that seeks to form the full person (understood to have both a created nature and transcendent telos), and that (3) understands that for liberal learning to reach its highest aims it must be integrated within a liturgical and spiritual tradition? Within this discussion we also consider the difference that beauty, as a constitutive element of our education and our lives, can make as seek a fully human existence.  And on a note that is more important than it might seem at first, why should wee have good food and drink at faculty and academic gatherings?

Links of Potential Interest: 

Margarita Mooney Suarez’s writings, via her personal website

Scala Foundation

Mooney et al., The Love of Learning: Seven Dialogues on the Liberal Arts

David Brooks, “The Organization Kid”

Leclercq, The Love of Learning and the Desire for God

Newman, The Benedictine Essays