A reader of this site and listener to Reconquest named Erik sent me an email question, the answer to which I think may be of general interest, so I post the correspondence here: Dear Brother Andre Marie, I recently encountered … Continue reading
Category: Philosophy
A Professor Who Demands That His Students Use Reason
Healthy Republic, Katie Petrick: If you talk about your “feelings” in one introductory law class at Faulkner University, you must cluck like a chicken. After seeing a regression of intelligent responses for the past seven years, Adam J. MacLeod, associate professor … Continue reading
The Inanity of Scientism
Catholic Stand, Bob Drury: Moses set before the people Life and Death; from another aspect, Intelligibility and Inanity. He urged them to choose life (Deuteronomy 30:19). The Transcendentals Life and Intelligibility in this context refer to a single identity. They differ … Continue reading
A Plan to Rebuild Christendom in Our Own Time
A Review of As It Is in Heaven: Christian Living and Social Order by Gary Potter, Loreto Publications, 2017 How, you may ask, would so monumental a task be possible in these disordered times when Christian morality is scoffed at … Continue reading
This is the End of the Law
Our beloved mentor, Brother Francis, used to remind us often of the importance of purpose. One way he did this was to tell the story, related in various ascetical treatises on the religious life, of the monk who used to … Continue reading
Maurice Baring Presents Xantippe
This short essay proposes to consider, not only the above-mentioned Major B.K. and General de Castelnau, but also Maurice Baring himself, as “one of God’s gentlemen,” as one whose own generous and chivalrous character is marked by a sincere, deep, … Continue reading
The Five Wounds and Five Joys of the Modern Church
First he was found faultless in his five senses, and then failed never the knight in his five fingers, and all his trust in the field was in the five wounds that Christ caught on the cross, as the creed … Continue reading
Plato and Liberal Education
[Note: This article was originally published in From the Housetops in 1946.] I. What is Education Plato conceived education as an art of perfecting man. According to this view, education is possible because man is a perfectible being. Nobody ever … Continue reading
Near Occasions of Sanctity
On a dreary New Hampshire winter afternoon, as I was preparing myself for a philosophy discussion on the subject of Ontology by attentively taking in a recorded lecture by Brother Francis, I was given one of those moments of joy … Continue reading
Calling All Lovers of Wisdom!
A philosopher is a lover of wisdom, as contrasted with a sophist, who takes himself to be already wise. If you are a lover of wisdom, boy do we have an idea for you! Beginning Wednesday, February 8, we will begin … Continue reading
How Do You KNOW That?
The philosophical subject of epistemology is the study of knowledge. Father A. C. Cotter, S.J., who was Father Leonard Feeney’s philosophy teacher, and whose book on the subject was heavily utilized by Brother Francis in his philosophy course, defines epistemology … Continue reading
Knowledge and Mystery
When I was first studying philosophy, I overheard a conversation between an eccentric old philosophy professor and one of the other seminarians. It fascinated me. This old gent said that Our Lord defended the study of philosophy in the Gospels … Continue reading
The Wisdom of Good Mentors
More than once down the years I have been told by wise men that a good leader knows how to praise you not so much for what you have done nor for what you are, but, rather, for what he … Continue reading
Introduction to the Saint Augustine Institute of Wisdom
The Saint Augustine Institute of Wisdom* (SAI) is the educational division of Saint Benedict Center. The Institute provides well-rounded and conveniently simple courses of instruction in Catholic thought. The classes available through SAI are a continuation of the studies which … Continue reading
Act and Potency in the Christian Life
In the Tuesday night Philosophy group that has been meeting since this past summer, we are now more than halfway through the course on Cosmology. We recently covered the subject of act and potency — a couple of simple words … Continue reading
