The After Dinner Scholar

“We know,” St. Paul wrote to the Christians in Rome, “that in everything God works for good with those who love him, who are called according to his purpose.”

Those words from St. Paul can and should comfort us. Nothing happens in our lives or our world that God does not intend to bring about good for His children. His providential care surrounds us. On the other hand, terrible things happen in our lives and in the world around us. Does God will evil? Allow evil? Maybe evil is not what we think it is?

Dr. Michael Bolin has been reading St. Thomas Aquinas’ Compendium Theologiae with our Wyoming Catholic College sophomores considering, among other things, that “all things are governed by divine providence.”

In almost every walk of life and vocation, the ability to express yourself orally with clarity, precision, and persuasiveness are vital. That’s obvious for priests, teachers, salespeople, politicians, and lawyers, but consider that engineers, managers, administrators, builders, doctors, at-home moms, and…well, you name it… make presentations and proposals to individuals and groups.

This semester Dr. Virginia Arbery and Dr. Tonkowich each have two sections of sophomores for Trivium 202 and sat down for this conversation.

Fr. Gerard Manley Hopkins, S.J. (1844-1889) is considered to be one of the greatest poets of the Victorian Era though, oddly, the Victorian Era never read Hopkins. While, imitating his father, he wrote poetry while growing up, he burned his early poems when he decided to become—of all things—a Roman Catholic priest, having been raised High Church Anglican and he wrote no poetry for years.

His later poetry, the poems we have today, were only published thirty years after his death.

Wyoming Catholic College President, Dr. Glenn Arbery suggested Hopkins' poem "Spring" would be a good one to consider during this Octave of Easter.

St. Augustine of Hippo who lived AD 354 – 430 delivered 124 lectures moving verse-by-verse through the entire the Gospel of John. This being Holy Week, here is lecture 116 in which Augustine discussed Jesus’ final condemnation by Pontius Pilate in John 19:1-16.

This is what St. Augustine had to say.

The text is copyrighted by d by the Christian Classics Ethereal Library.

Papal biographer and scholar George Weigel is fond of saying that for Catholics, “stuff matters.” Stuff like our physical bodies, bread, wine, water, incense, candles, bells, linen, altars, and ashes. Catholic Christianity is deeply incarnational, rooted firmly in God’s good Creation. And that rooting shows itself most clearly when we worship, that is, in the liturgy of the Mass.

Fr. Romano Guardini was one of the towering Catholic intellectuals of the twentieth century who for all his erudition, wrote a simple little book entitled Sacred Signs in which he gently and simply explained this connection between  material and the inner world of the spirit.

The book is a favorite of theologian Dr. Kent Lasnoski and a wonderful book to read during these last weeks of Lent.

This week the Wyoming Catholic College campus is deserted. Our dorms are empty. The kitchen and dining hall are silent. It’s Spring Outdoor week.

A Wyoming Catholic College education begins with three weeks backpacking in the mountains of Wyoming. After that, they spend an additional seven weeks in the backcountry, a week at a time during our fall and spring Outdoor Weeks.

Why? Dr. Tom Zimmer, Assistant Professor of Leadership and Outdoor Education and Director of the college's Experiential Leadership Program and COR Expeditions answers that question.

Whether it’s fermions and bosoms or air, earth, fire, and water or nothing but water, the question “What is the world?” has a long history and there have been many answers.

Wyoming Catholic College freshmen discover the many answers in Philosophy 102, going on this semester. Dr. Henry Zepeda has been teaching them the philosophy of nature and the material world and I asked him why student’s journey through philosophy begins here.

Defeated in the attempt to war against God, fallen from Heaven, chained in the fiery muck of Hell, Milton’s Satan nonetheless declares:

The Romantics in the nineteenth century saw Satan as the real hero of Paradise Lost, a mighty warrior who will not except defeat, will not apologize for his rebellion, insists on fighting on against impossible odds, and asserts his inner convictions, his inner identity no matter what.

Others aren’t so sure.

Prof. Adam Cooper has been teaching Paradise Lost to our Wyoming Catholic College juniors, debating, among other things, the character of Satan and his demon hoards.

Alexey Fyodorovitch Karamazov was the third son of Fyodor Pavlovitch Karamazov, a landowner well known in our district in his own day, and still remembered among us owing to his gloomy and tragic death, which happened thirteen years ago, and which I shall describe in its proper place.

Thus begins Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s last and arguably his greatest novel, The Brothers Karamazov. Recounting the story of Fyodor Karamazov and his three sons, Alexey, Ivan, and Dmitri, Dostoyevsky addresses suffering, the existence of God, good and evil, crime and punishment, worldliness and holiness.

Dr. Tiffany Schubert and our Wyoming Catholic College seniors have just finished reading the book.

Exactly 13 years ago today, Pope Benedict XVI noted in his Angelus address, “Lent is like a long ‘retreat’ in which to re-enter oneself and listen to God's voice in order to overcome the temptations of the Evil One and to find the truth of our existence. It is a time, we may say, of spiritual ‘training’ in order to live alongside Jesus not with pride and presumption but rather by using the weapons of faith: namely prayer, listening to the Word of God and penance.”

On February 21, 2010, the day Pope Benedict made that remark, Lent had already begun. For us, today is Shrove Tuesday, the eve of Ash Wednesday and the beginning of this season of spiritual retreat. Fr. Godfrey Okwunga, who grew up in Nigeria, is Wyoming Catholic College’s Latin chaplain and had this to say about Lent.