Take a listen to Mere Fidelity and a discussion of The Constantine Strategy! I argue for a Trollopian conservatism with a progressive vision and my betters harass me deservedly. I worry that too much of “classical” education has become a product disconnected to classism. After all, if you are going to teach Plato, somebody should have some Greek. Second, the dialectic is key. There is no curriculum to purchase to make a school or college classical. Classical education begins in... Read more
Forget the monsters for a moment. Skip the lions and the den. The book of Daniel is an awesome blend of history and apocalyptic literature, but the best part is the last verse of the first chapter. Read the greatest miracle in the book of Daniel- And Daniel continued even unto the first year of King Cyrus. Daniel was faithful to God in Babylon. He was a captive, a true exile from his homeland. He was taken by a tyrant... Read more
On this the fifth day of the fifth month in the year 2020, The Saint Constantine Strategy will turn five. After four high school graduations, this spring marks the first graduating college class to go through the program. We make a classical higher education available to everyone who can do the work. Practical Questions, Practical Answers There is no golden age of higher education. When class size was good and professors were valued, too many people were denied access to that... Read more
Pandemic times spawn tyrants, little dictators offering security in exchange for our liberty or the life of “someone else.” We are worried so they offer us a golden calf as a savior and if we are not very careful, then we hide our fears in the play, bread and circuses, they offer. Plato and Adelia Prado know tyranny from the inside and are a good vaccine to that virus. Plato does so by exposing us to a story of tyranny to... Read more
Adelia Prado is a primary teacher that embeds a doctoral seminar in her simplest lessons. She gives us an alphabet to spell the words that can capture real life, both what is and what should be. Adelia Prado begins simply and helps us build a complex view of God’s world that we inhabit. We are helped because Prado is tied to her region of Brazil, to her language, and only after expressing that experience does she move to the universal.... Read more
Here my powers rest from their high fantasy, but already I could feel my being turned-instinct and intellect balanced equally as in a wheel whose motion nothing jars-by the Love that moves the Sun and the other stars.* Easy to forget how odd the first time instinct, usually trustworthy, and intellect jarred against each other. As a little boy, my instinct, quite correct given my experience, was that Mom and Dad may not be always right, but were better... Read more
This is the first day that many “non-essential” businesses in Houston are open. The shelter in place order has expired. What to do? My rule in this pandemic continues. Opine about nothing on which I have no expertise. Support what my God-given authorities tell me to do: bishop, governor, president. Take the advice of experts when there is a consensus. Everyone thinks we should wash our hands. Most think a face mask does some good in some situations. Hand shaking... Read more
To feel is human, passionate living is divine. The place of the rational in human life is not made greater by downplaying the need of experience and revelation. From Plato to Part, the wise have known that head listens to the heart and the heart is guided by reason. To live must include doing, making, creating. In his wonderfully profound, comic, and literary work Timaeus, Plato suggested the liver as the organ of revelation. The gods would give wisdom to the liver... Read more
We find ugliness easier to describe than perfect beauty. Stories of villainy or of complicated people are easier to write than the deeply virtuous: Lancelot is easier to write than Galahad. Peter Jackson could not make Aragorn as Tolkien made him, but introduced “growth” into a character that was already mature and kingly by the time Tolkien presents him to us in Fellowship of the King. Ugliness also can be more memorable as many readers of Dante’s Comedy demonstrate. Most of... Read more
If “these are the times that try men’s souls,” then we are blessed. To see this we must understand purgation and we have no better guide in this life than Dante.* When souls arrive in purgatory in Dante’s divine comedy, they are full of joy, because hope does not have to be abandoned and redemption is possible. However hard is the purgation or great the needed repentance, there is time and so the soul will inevitably, surely, see the face of... Read more
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