- Feb 5, 2002
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I entered the Roman Catholic Church a little more than 20 years ago now, and my experiences in non-sectarian, public-charter classical education, first as a teacher, and then for a decade as a school leader, were a necessary condition for it. The soil of my soul was tilled by Socrates. To Tertullian’s exasperated question What does Athens have to do with Jerusalem? I say: everything, bro. Everything.
There was also the influence of my wife and her family; the birth of my first daughter; my own Catholic-leaning (though officially ecumenical) Christian secondary education; basically the entirety of the Ignatius Press catalogue up to that point; a mildly-mystical experience of watching one of the red banners hanging from the church ceiling at Pentecost swaying in an air current that mysteriously affected only it and not the others; my first experiences singing Gregorian chant and attending the old Latin Mass; the pathos of having watched earlier that year live on broadcast television the final days and death of Pope John Paul II, the spectacle of a papal requiem Mass, that magnificent funeral homily by Cardinal Ratzinger, his zinger of a pre-conclave homily (the “dictatorship of relativism” one), and the thrill of seeing him step out on to the balcony as Benedict XVI on what just happened to be my son’s 3rd birthday.1
But prior to that, going deep into the practice and then the theory of Paideia-movement liberal education did so much to cure me of my prolonged and sophomoric Nietzschean delusions about the amor fati and the death of God.
Continued below.
classicaledreview.substack.com
There was also the influence of my wife and her family; the birth of my first daughter; my own Catholic-leaning (though officially ecumenical) Christian secondary education; basically the entirety of the Ignatius Press catalogue up to that point; a mildly-mystical experience of watching one of the red banners hanging from the church ceiling at Pentecost swaying in an air current that mysteriously affected only it and not the others; my first experiences singing Gregorian chant and attending the old Latin Mass; the pathos of having watched earlier that year live on broadcast television the final days and death of Pope John Paul II, the spectacle of a papal requiem Mass, that magnificent funeral homily by Cardinal Ratzinger, his zinger of a pre-conclave homily (the “dictatorship of relativism” one), and the thrill of seeing him step out on to the balcony as Benedict XVI on what just happened to be my son’s 3rd birthday.1
But prior to that, going deep into the practice and then the theory of Paideia-movement liberal education did so much to cure me of my prolonged and sophomoric Nietzschean delusions about the amor fati and the death of God.
Continued below.
How a Public School (Eventually) Made a Catholic Christian out of a Cocksure Nihilist
A reflection on how Socratic teaching, Mortimer Adler, and Flannery O'Connor led one teacher from public classical education to the Roman Catholic Church.
classicaledreview.substack.com
