Stephen Minnis, the president of Benedictine College in Kansas, leads the students in praying the Rosary on their knees every Wednesday for the nation and the world.

From the recent Associated Press report on the college’s enrollment growth and expansion:

“At a time when U.S.…

Today, with a group of students, I went through just seven sentences of Friedrich Jünger’s Failure of Technology, taking an hour and a half to let the text speak. And, as so many insights hit my students, one insight after another, I said: “This is what reading is really about.…

apnews.com/article/cathol…

This article betrays one of the fundamental problems with Catholics in America: the meaning of our religion is not dictated by the political whims and positions of the state. It is not politically conservative to care about liturgy. A Catholic does not

Remember, it was Plato who first used the word θεολογίας (theologias). (Republic 379a) Theology is true philosophy. #ReginaScientiarum

On the Plato deathbed story: it’s not a new anecdote, it’s not a new text, it’s not even a newly discovered scroll.

*Maybe* researchers found a few new words on a previously analyzed scroll, but if so they haven’t shared details, they just put out an ambiguous press release.

The Spirit moves in mysterious ways…

“Some saints are privileged to extend to us their patronage with particular efficacy in certain needs, but not in others; but our holy patron St. Joseph has the power to assist us in all cases, in every necessity, in every undertaking.” — St. Thomas Aquinas

Will at least one journalist covering the Herculaneum research please ask specifically what new text was found in the Philodemus scroll about Plato’s deathbed scene that wasn’t already known decades ago?

papyri.info/dclp/62441

Where are the X philosophers / classicists who are helping to report the actual news about the Herculaneum scrolls? So far most have fallen for the idea that the Plato deathbed anecdote with the Thracian flutist is new, even though it’s been written about at length.

The earliest scholarly reports identify as new only: 1. More precise knowledge of Plato’s burial place; 2. A different date for when he was sold into slavery.

Carbonized Herculaneum papyrus reveals Plato's burial place | Archaeology News Online Magazine archaeologymag.com/2024/04/hercul…

If you’ve ever heard a piece of music spoiled by being played at the wrong speed—say a vigorous triumphal hymn turned into a slow plodding dirge—you can appreciate Plato’s concern here.

The siloing of disciplines is what is new; the solution is to return to something like the classical ideal of ordered, integrated knowledge. That’s what John Henry Newman was going for in the 19th C, trying to adapt the medieval ideal for the post-Enlightenment university.

Broke: Plato was a caring teacher who tried to point people in the right direction
Woke: Plato was an arrogant finger-wagger who criticized people's faults

One man's 'hater' is another man's lover of truth. This 'new' story was already known, and was interpreted as a lesson about ordering pleasure (duly acknowledged in the flute-playing) to the measure of the universe. Here is Voegelin in 1957:

“Poet Wendell Berry and his wife’s lawsuit against the University of Kentucky’s plans for the removal of a controversial mural in Memorial Hall was dismissed, but the judge said the mural cannot be destroyed.”

Every term, I ask my students their biggest takeaway from my ethics course. Invariably the most common response is that they have agency with respectable to their own character. e.g. They can develop intellectual perseverance instead of just accepting they have short attention…