Redeem the Time

Are there always new schools springing up like these, or is something happening here?

Southern Catholic College

Ave Maria University

University of Sacramento

John Paul the Great Catholic University

Living Water Arts College

Transfiguration College and blog.

I’m know I’m missing a bunch of others (feel free to name them off in the comments), but these are the newest ones I know of.

Vomit the Lukewarm is now Assimilatio Dei.

This article, although written in an entertaining and hilarious style, made me literally sick to my stomach because it likely proclaims a horrible truth. This is the way the western world ends, not with a bang but a whimper…will the civilized world sacrifice itself upon the altar of its own selfishness and vanish in the face of an old enemy?

I have less and less patience for those who don’t understand that, for the foreseeable future, this country is the last, best hope on earth. How this nation can be saved ought to be a question that everyone asks themselves in some way or another, and this means taking a hard look at what it is—or do we give a damn about our children’s future or the common good to which we are ordered? Simply raising a good family is a more than sufficient way to do one’s part for the common good, but whether or not you decide to do anything else towards this end for heaven’s sake don’t badmouth the nation in which you are blessed to live unless you are also willing to praise what you owe it and work for its good. Time and time again I run across good people’s writings ridiculing “liberalism,” “the free market,” and “modernity” without sufficiently defining any of these terms. This isn’t the time for lazy, vague generalizations that ignore one’s own experience. These are very, very serious matters that can directly affect the eternal well being of millions of souls made in the image of the living God. Be sure you realize that before rambling on with your critique.

While what could be saved and salvaged in the United States of America is ignored and ridiculed by the good guys, a storm gathers outside our borders. While good people whine and moan about “modernity” and scorn some of what they ought to be trying to save, a cruel wind is picking up speed outside the decaying walls of our city. While Thomists and others in the tradition of truth quibble over trifles and delight in the curiousities and amusements of what amounts to mere scholarship, others are substituting damnable lies for the life-changing truths that millions of souls are starving for. Philosophy of any kind dies to the extent it cuts itself off from common experience, yet there are all manner of assertions concerning theology and philosophy (here I am thinking especially about political philosophy) that are completely contradicted by their authors own actions and experiences. When we consider philosophy and theology to be either an informal, non-chalant arm-chair exercise for everyone or a clever trivia game of scholarly delight for egghead experts, we do so at our own peril. The pursuit of truth isn’t a game or a contest—it is a way of life that everyone who loves the one true God partakes of in various ways.

Scholarship is not the same thing as philosophy. All truth is, if made part of ourselves, life-changing. Truth has immense power—the one who shouts it in the marketplace will be persecuted. I don’t see as many martyrs for the truth on the good side as I do well educated elitists worried over trifles and well intentioned anti-everythings who fail to make fundamental distinctions. How many Thomists and others on the good side today would look down on Socrates if he appeared on cable TV today? A good many, I think. How many Thomists and others on the good side today would have argued against the introduction of the novel doctrines of that pagan Aristotle if they had been alive in the middle ages? A good many, I think. Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, St. Augustine, Boethius, pseudo-Dionysius, St. Thomas Aquinas and all the rest lived their lives and counseled others to do the same in accordance with what they knew to be true. They weren’t concerned with degrees and nuanced details and ornaments of thought except insofar as these things contributed to the sort of truth that transformed souls.

I would think that the goal, purpose, or end of those whose lives are devoted to truth—the teachers—ought to be wisdom. Wisdom does not necessarily entail scholarship, although scholarship is not in itself a bad thing or contradictory to wisdom. Wisdom does not necessarily entail a withdrawal from the world, nor a general rejection of all earthly institutions. Wisdom does not nessarily counsel all of us towards one particular, specific way of life but a virtuous, selfless one that seeks truth, goodness and beauty and consists of acts done out of love of these things. St. Thomas Aquinas did not live a speculative life if one took as gospel what many Thomists and others have thought “speculative life” means. Wisdom involves a lot more than scholarly articles in peer reviewed journals and ism-istic-ist-ian words. Wisdom does not simply plot a course to look out for you-and-yours and Wisdom cannot absolve one from a connection to the world you live in. Wisdom calls out in the marketplace and teaches others. It cannot help but be communicative of itself, for it is Good. It is about the eternal, yes, but it must animate us, and we live in specific times and places and regimes with specific groups of other human beings.

All of us always need to think most seriously about what we study and break out of abstract molds—we do not study the truth in an abstract vacuum, but through a very real world of flesh-and-blood. The Truth, The Way, and The Life IS a person. We are offered the opportunity to consume Wisdom Himself every Sunday. The more we disconnect what we claim to study from reality and common sense, the more we lose what we wish to know. What truly is includes what is as it presents itself to us in history, and we cannot escape the fact that we are born in specific times and places and regimes and thus have certain responsibilities to the corresponding common good of those who share this time and place and regime with us. In other words, our love of God and neighbor must occur at a certain time and place and regime. Whether we will it or no, these factors will largely determine what we study and learn even if all we study and learn is part of the highest of speculative truths. Christ himself, the Logos, the incarnate God-man, comes to us still in the form of his very flesh and blood in and at the very same definite, specific, and concrete times and places and regimes in which we are called to be a salt and light. We may as well have clear heads about it.

To the best I can determine, we ought to “Be not afraid” and go forth and conquer in whatever way the Lord directs us. Enough of hiding and snotty insinuations about what is wrong with world. Engage it.

I hope you are reading the First Things blog twice daily. Bottum writes a great little piece I can identify strongly with—I think most of us can do the same—and this is a sign of great writing, no?

I emptied my pockets on the way home: another Salvation Army kettle, a drunk man on the sidewalk with a hand-lettered sign I couldn’t read, a woman rattling change in a paper cup. I hate the city, all tarted up in its tawdry Christmas clothes. Mewing us together on its streets, it forces us to see the human stain. It forces us to know.

The post uses oft-reached for thoughts about NYC to get at oft-reached for thoughts about human nature, and succeeds. Top quality blogging! Bottum’s writing, in my humble opinion, is sometimes marred by a heightened self-awareness—but no one can escape from that these days. Call it whatever -ism-ist-ian-istic you want, it is simply hard to break free from—the air we all breathe is from the same regime and time, and there is no escape possible from this—we must simply work within it and use it to our advantage, which he does. However, when Bottum writes something without as much restraint as usual, like the above blog post, I think he is at his best. Same principle probably works for everyone, I’d imagine.

UPDATE:

I had completely forgotten about this hauntingly beautiful Christmas piece by Bottum, which also struck a deep chord when I first read it. READ IT NOW.

We can’t save the world. The reason for this is not only because it is beyond our power, but also because God in the person of Jesus Christ has already done so.

We can only ask Christ what he would have us do, and offer ourselves to Him and his Church. Any human person who partakes in the saving of the world does so by in some way pointing to He who already saved it and continues to do so still. Anyone who lives a life ordered to truth, goodness and beauty will end up “saving the world” in this way (and many other ways), even though they might never utter the name of the Son of God or even speak about him at all.

Nothing in the above is an excuse for anyone to hide their various talents or shirk their various duties to “engage the world.”

The Jacques Maritain Center (see also the Ralph McInerny Center) is one of the few outposts of Thomism around today.

Plenty of papers of interest here, here, here, here, and here. The last two conferences I can find are titled: Ethics without God and St. Thomas Aquinas and the Natural Law

No Time . . . no time . . . no. time.

And this means a lot of quicklinkingposts.

Check out these three new schools, all of which are verifiable, untelevised parts of the quiet revolution taking place against the modern academy:

Living Water Arts College combines a Thomas Aquinas College great books/liberal arts approach with the savory spices of the fine arts.

Transfiguration College combines a Thomas Aquinas College great books/liberal arts approach with an “East Side” focus to its Theology, offering up the best of Byzantine Catholicism. And hey, they even got a blog.

John Paul the Great Catholic University combines what looks like a sort of Thomas Aquinas College great books/liberal arts core curriculum with a school of technology, business, and media.

Of course, America is an intrinsically evil nation; most people are morons; none of these colleges will ever get off the ground (and even if they did they are tainted by bad, naughty modern philosophy and will only spread error); no one is as smart as, well, us (whoever “us” happens to be); and the world has already gone to hell in a handbasket and if only everyone knew . . . or maybe . . .

not.

God has a funny way of laughing last, especially at silly humans who take themselves too seriously.

Philosophy?!?

Go to e-philosopher.com or ilovephilosophy.com, of course. The Darwin Awards even get in on the act?! How about talkphilosophy.org? More here, here and likely countless other sites as well.

This Aquinas specific group looks even more interesting.

This one looks even better.

Two Aristotle groups are here and here.

This was a classic site for a wannabe liverevolt against the evils of the sophists that rule our day, I think—it has been around for a long time in web years—although it looks like it is long since overgrown with e-weeds.

Poke around yourself and let me know what you find.

Technology needs to combine with clear [educated] thinking to produce better ways of doing this online. A knowledge of the proper division and method of the sciences will be required.

There is lots to be done.

We’ll be highlighting an ever growing number of new (and largely non-Grad) blogs here in the coming days.

For now, check Real Physics out, starting with this post.

and someone we know is in the midst of a firestorm that is national news, and is blogging away…and always worth reading anyway.

Press reports tonight confirm that Alan Keyes will run for the U.S. Senate in Illinois, and although there are many challenges ahead, it will be one hell of a ride. No doubt much of the race will be closely followed by the national press, and while such platitudes get spewed forth every time there is a political campaign in Illinois, the quality of oratory on both sides ensures that something akin to the Lincoln-Douglas debates II may occur for real this time.

Buckle your seatbelts…