- Feb 5, 2002
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Fr. Dwight Longenecker
It was one of those serendipitous meetings that are anything but a coincidence. I was in Oklahoma conducting a Lenten parish mission and asked my hosts if it would be possible to make the three-hour drive to visit Clear Creek Monastery.
We arrived in time for Mass in the new, half-built Abbey church. A short tour with the assistant Guestmaster was followed by lunch with the monks. We had to hurry back so I could speak in the parish that evening, but as we came out of the refectory with the other guests, one of the monks greeted me. It was the Master of Oblates, Dom Francis Bethel. We chatted for a few moments about mutual friends and fellow Benedictines, and as we went through the bookstore he mentioned the book he’d written.
Before I knew it I had a review copy in my hand. Fr. Bethel is one of the men who, as a student at the University of Kansas in the 1970s, came under the influence of Professor John Senior. Senior and his colleagues Franklyn Nellick and Dennis Quinn founded the Integrated Humanities Program. Fr. Bethel eventually entered monastic life at Fontgombault Abbey in France and returned to the United States in 1999 to help found Clear Creek Abbey in Oklahoma.
Continued below.
theimaginativeconservative.org
John Senior and the Restoration of Realism by Francis Bethel (Thomas More College Press, 2016)
It was one of those serendipitous meetings that are anything but a coincidence. I was in Oklahoma conducting a Lenten parish mission and asked my hosts if it would be possible to make the three-hour drive to visit Clear Creek Monastery.
We arrived in time for Mass in the new, half-built Abbey church. A short tour with the assistant Guestmaster was followed by lunch with the monks. We had to hurry back so I could speak in the parish that evening, but as we came out of the refectory with the other guests, one of the monks greeted me. It was the Master of Oblates, Dom Francis Bethel. We chatted for a few moments about mutual friends and fellow Benedictines, and as we went through the bookstore he mentioned the book he’d written.
Before I knew it I had a review copy in my hand. Fr. Bethel is one of the men who, as a student at the University of Kansas in the 1970s, came under the influence of Professor John Senior. Senior and his colleagues Franklyn Nellick and Dennis Quinn founded the Integrated Humanities Program. Fr. Bethel eventually entered monastic life at Fontgombault Abbey in France and returned to the United States in 1999 to help found Clear Creek Abbey in Oklahoma.
Continued below.
John Senior and the Restoration of Realism
John Senior’s great contribution was to forge a middle way between indoctrination and the chaos of complete relativism. Instead of indoctrinating students, the classical knowledge of a Christian culture provided the tools and the framework for true education. (essay by Dwight Longenecker)
theimaginativeconservative.org
