The Brownson Record: Issue One, March 2022

Virtutem Forma Decorat

Ukraine, Putin, and Holy Russia When political, cultural, and religious identities converge REBEKAH BALICK

Issue One | March 2022

Quest for Truth On wisdom, the liberal arts, and spes nostra HEATH P. TARBERT

The Day the Tide Turned A few thoughts on the fullness of time JOHN-MARK MIRAVALLE

Issue One | March 2022 The Annunciation of the Lord

Our Mission As an independent journal for the Mount St. Mary’s University community, The Brownson Record seeks to promote the Catholic vision of the human person in the modern world. Through earnest reflection on the True, the Good, and the Beautiful, we constantly seek to understand the Mount’s institutional vocation as a university at once Catholic and American. Consistent with the Mount’s undergraduate mission, we aim to nourish a culture in which issues of political, social, and religious life are encountered with rigorous intellectual and moral standards.

Editor-in-Chief Harry Scherer Managing Editor Gavin Hamrick Editorial Board Emma Weinheimer Mary Lawler Jack Daly

Faculty Advisors Joshua Brown, Ph.D. Alejandro Cañadas, Ph.D. Msgr. Michael Heintz, Ph.D. Joshua Hochschild, Ph.D. John Larrivee, Ph.D.

Send us an email at brownsonrecord@gmail.com Stay updated with our social media @BrownsonRecord To make a tax-deductible contribution, visit our “Donate” page at www.brownsonrecord.com

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Table of Contents 4 Letter from the Editor

Harry Scherer Editor-in-Chief

5 This Venerable College

Gavin Hamrick & Harry Scherer Managing Editor & Editor-in-Chief

8 Ukraine, Putin, and Holy Russia

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Rebekah Balick C‘22

Catching up with Fr. Patrick

Glennamarie Rivers C‘22

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The Enduring Quest for Truth and its Defense

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Beauty and Laudato Si’

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Poetry

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The Day the Tide Turned

Heath P. Tarbert C‘98 Aaron Weisel MAPS‘22

Stephen McGinley, Claire Doll, & Tess Boegel Lecturer of Philosophy, C‘24, & C‘23 John-Mark Miravalle Assistant Professor of Systematic & Moral Theology

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Letter from the Editor Dear Reader, Thank you for picking up your inaugural issue of The Brownson Record ! I hope that this first edition serves as a welcome letter of introduction from our contributors and editors.

In this issue, Gavin Hamrick and I explain why we chose Orestes Brownson as the namesake for this journal. Rebekah Balick tackles the political, cultural, and religious questions at play in the Ukraine conflict.

Helpful advice is provided by Heath P. Tarbert, C’98 in his featured editorial on the challenge of pursuing truth. Glennamarie Rivers asked Fr. Patrick Russell, MFVA about his time as a Mount seminarian, a priest for Mount students, and his current work. Inspired by the Mount’s Laudato Si’ initiative, Aaron Weisel explores the demands of a truly humane ecology. A professor and two students challenge and delight us with incisive poetry. Finally, Dr. John-Mark Miravalle commemorates the feast of the Annunciation with a reflection on the fullness of time.

During the spring, we are blessed with the opportunity to enjoy all the benefits of living on Mary’s Mountain.

The clear skies, crisp air, and vibrant sunrises indicate

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the gifts of renewal and peace for which we so often search. In this season, we are reminded of our identities as people of the Mount, as those capable of the challenge of the ascent, the rest of the descent, the risk of solitude, and the joy of community. I am excited to enjoy these gifts with my friends during the remaining months of the semester.

I am also grateful to have seen these benefits generously displayed in the writing, editing, and designing of this journal. A sincere debt of gratitude is owed to Managing Editor Gavin Hamrick, our editorial board, and our faculty advisors for their tireless work and dedication.

I am also indebted to the Collegiate Network at the Intercollegiate Studies Institute and to Chronicle Press for their investment of time and resources, which provided us with the support needed to get our journal off the ground.

Through diligent attention to the mission of the publication and the identity of the university, I hope that this new journal serves the members of the Mount community well for years to come.

Sincerely, Harry Scherer, Editor-in-Chief

Gavin Hamrick & Harry Scherer

This Venerable College

What do the towns of Stockbridge, Vermont, Emmitsburg, Maryland, and Detroit, Michigan have in common? They all remember the presence of a 19thcentury man named Orestes Brownson: the first for his birth, the second for his life, and the third for his death.

This man from Vermont was primarily a writer.

The volume of his prose that he shared with the patient public of his time is astounding. He wrote about politics, religion, culture, and the dynamic intersection between the three. Brownson (pronounced “bronsun”) wrote as a man in the world, habitually ordering the state of things in his own age to a time gone by that might not have existed in the past, but could exist, at least mentally, in the present.

Brownson did not subscribe to a naïve idealism that sought to abstract the goodness of reality. On the contrary, he engaged with the truth of reality, no matter the consequences. He claims, for example, in his book The American Republic that “man is never a creator; he can only develop and continue, because he is himself a creature, and only a second cause.” By apparently lowering our status from that of creator to receiver, Brownson seems to insult the human impulse toward ingenuity and our modern predilection for entrepreneurship. On the contrary, Brownson is embracing the identity of the human race as a species worthy to perpetuate and participate in God’s gift of creation. In this way, Brownson understood the role of human persons in salvation history and in the political order to be deeply intertwined.

This vision, which was at once religious and

political, also engaged with the larger cultural trends of his time. Earlier in his professional life Brownson interacted with the Transcendentalists of his age, Emerson and Thoreau among them. His flirtation with this sort of natural transcendence via metaphor matured into a deeper supernatural allegiance to Christian orthodoxy in general, and eventually the Catholic faith in particular.

The fidelity that he professed manifested itself in a deep admiration for institutions that offer physical and spiritual refuge for both the faithful and their friends on earth. He knew Mount St. Mary’s and recognized it as “this venerable college, already so rich in classic associations, so hallowed by the memory of saintly virtues, and so dear to every American Catholic heart for the eminent servants of the church of God it has nurtured.” Brownson was as unrestrained in this profession of respect for the institutional vocation of the Mount in his “Oration on Liberal Studies,” which he delivered as our commencement speaker in 1853.

In this address, Brownson does not catalog the precepts of an education rooted in the liberal arts or encourage the graduates to integrate their liberal learning into their professional lives. Instead, he outlines, in a patient and descriptive manner, the nearly universal opportunities for education and the simultaneous obligations impressed upon the educated.

He says that “the practical part of our education is never received within the school room, but at home, in the streets, in the saloons, from associates, and the general habits, manners, customs, and tone of the society.” For Brownson the value of a liberal education was always

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inherently tied to the benefit it could confer upon the community. He would also likely question the project of an entirely secular education, given his claim that “not natural training but grace alone can elevate our fallen nature to genuine virtue.” Brownson came to understand human action, and by extension political and communal action, not to be a mere response to material circumstances, but to be a participation in a spiritual conflict. * * *

In our age, the secular-religious divide within the public sphere is, maybe more than ever before, regarded as sacrosanct. Indeed, Brownson’s theologically informed approach to issues of national importance would today likely be rejected as ‘problematic’ at the least. The contemporary tendency therefore is to appeal to neutral political values, devoid of all the messiness of religious dogma and the particularism they entail. Even the well-intentioned Catholic often finds himself with such a disposition. How often do we see the faith used as a mere secondary justification for support of a secular position that just so happens to be the prevailing trend of the day?

For Brownson this road was simply insufficient.

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Rather, the issues must always be analyzed and diagnosed in accordance with revelation and the power of Christian reason. In reflecting on the state of the 19th-century political economy he writes that the “political economists consider man only as a producing, distributing, and consuming machine, and seek only to get the greatest possible supply with the greatest possible demand. I look upon man as having a sentient, intellectual, and moral nature, and I seek for him the greatest possible sum of virtue and happiness.”

Brownson’s Catholicism did not simply bolster his already held support for workers’ rights and dignified labor, for example. Rather it was directly because of his faith, and the anthropology it encompasses, that he came to such a position. At The Brownson Record we find it necessary to proceed in the same direction.

It is only in light of our efforts to glorify God and honor our commitments to Him here on earth that we support any such stance, never divorcing our belief in the Gospel from any social or political proposition.

Such an approach is by no means as straightforward or efficient as the contrary, yet it is precisely what is demanded of the Catholic intellectual if he is to see his fellow man flourish as a result of his work.

Given this, we have come to view our vocation and subsequent mission as a journal to identify the

true, the good, and the beautiful on our campus and to further understand the Mount’s institutional vocation as a university at once Catholic and American. The motto that we’ve chosen to encapsulate this mission is the Latin phrase virtutem forma decorat, which can be translated to mean “beauty decorates virtue.” In this sense, “beauty” can be thought of as form, figure, or appearance; “decorates” as adorns, glorifies, or embellishes; and “virtue” as character, excellence, or worth. To us, these alternate translations emphasize all the more that the notion of beauty decorating virtue is a Brownsonian idea and one that speaks to the identity of our university.

The phrase can be found on the reverse side of Leonardo da Vinci’s Ginevra de’ Benci, which is displayed at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. This painting is the only one of da Vinci’s in the Americas and it portrays on one side the image of a young woman named Ginerva posing for a portrait at the time of her engagement, and on the other side the inscription virtutem forma decorat with a wreath of laurel, palm, and juniper surrounding it. The National Gallery explains that the “sprig of juniper (in Italian, ginepro) suggests Ginevra’s name, while the encircling laurel and palm symbolize her intellectual and moral virtue.” Juniper traditionally serves as an

image of protection or shelter from external threats seeking to harm that which the leaves envelop. In da Vinci’s presentation, it is clear that the juniper is itself surrounded by the laurel and palm.

We have come to think of the Mount as this juniper leaf, our worth decorated by our beauty.

Our position of shelter underneath the juniper is one of enormous privilege. For us, the best way to show our gratitude for this gift is through a mutual encouragement toward the intellectual and moral character that we more frequently hope for than know.

Through editorials thoughtfully composed by students, faculty, staff, administration, and alumni, carefully reviewed by a small but capable editorial board, and patiently advised by exceptional faculty, we hope to contribute to a culture of productive and serious dialogue about the political, cultural, and religious questions of our day. Our focus is proudly local and will therefore demand writing produced by the people of the Mount, for the people of the Mount.

In that spirit, we embark on a path that has already been set for us. Inspired by the people who have preceded us and encouraged by those who will follow us, we hope to recognize all that is true, good, and beautiful about our Mountain Home and think, speak, and act as those with such a pleasant recognition.

Rebekah Balick

Ukraine, Putin, and Holy Russia

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The invasion of Ukraine on February 24th may not have been entirely unexpected, but it still came rightly as a shock. Ground invasions like Putin’s seem like forgotten warfare in an era where cyber attacks and nuclear threats are the most common instruments of larger countries. Yet a traditional ground invasion, tanks and all, is not the only bit of “tradition” that Putin has resurrected. His rhetoric behind the invasion stems, at least in theory, as much from his vision of traditional Russia as it does from more “modern” economic and national security concerns.

Putin’s hatred of Ukraine is not hatred for the Ukrainian people, but for its status as a sovereign state, and for reasons that are nothing short of romantic. As revealed in his speech preceding the invasion, Putin believes that Ukraine and Russia share a common history and that that history makes them one and the same. Ukraine, in Putin’s view, has always been part of Russia, and to let it continue to exist as a separate state is an insult and a threat to the holy idea of Russia. Foundational Russian cultural events such as the “baptism of Russia” by St. Vladimir the Great took place in the land that is now Ukraine, and Putin emphasizes those events as moments of unity for the Russian people—a people that includes many of the former Soviet republics, and especially Ukraine. Thus, the existence of Ukraine as a sovereign state is a blow to Russian identity and a reminder of the fallen state of modern Russia compared to its past greatness.

Coupled with this anger over Ukraine’s separation is an increasing fear of the threat of the West. Not only does Putin fear the military threat of NATO and the EU, but he also fears the cultural encroachment of secularism, democracy, and liberalism into Russia. The fact that Ukraine has become increasingly Western is a threat both on a physical and spiritual level; the presence of a Western nation hostile to Russia on its border is a military threat in and of itself, but additionally, the Westernization of a people that Putin sees as Russia’s own is a moral and cultural insult. It is fair to say that, because Putin sees Ukraine as historically and practically part of Russia, he sees the state of modern Ukraine as nothing more than a breeding ground for Russians who oppose his idea of Russian identity. It is, to him, a place of corruption and dangerous nationalism, heavily influenced by what he sees as the decadent West and betraying its great

Russian heritage.

Unlike many Russians, Putin has access to the facts. He must know, on some level, that Ukraine is not violently persecuting Russians; that most Ukrainians do not see Russia as a liberator; and that the leadership of Ukraine is not a Nazi remnant. As such, it is tempting to write off his rhetoric about “holy Russia” as mere propaganda. However, it would be dangerous for the West to underestimate Putin’s rhetoric and the extent to which such rhetoric directs his actions. It would be equally dangerous to underestimate the strength that the narrative has over Russian and Ukrainian people. Religious history and tradition, specifically the Orthodox Christian tradition, are so intrinsically tied to the identity of Russia that it is nearly impossible to extricate them from each other. And while this interconnection is not intrinsically good or bad, it allows Putin to use religion and tradition for his political purposes.

Take the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. Putin has used the common Orthodoxy of Ukraine and Russia as a reason for their similarity and union.

However, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church has been fractioning itself away from the Moscow patriarch in an effort to distance itself from Russia nearly to the point of schism between the two churches. The political animosity between Russia and Ukraine has reflected in the church itself, and Putin is trying to use the reunion of Orthodoxy as one of his reasons for the unification of Russia and Ukraine. It is tradition, just as much as security, that Putin has invoked as justification for his invasion.

Those of us who love tradition may recognize his passion and see in it the kind of romanticism that hearkens to the medieval world. However, it is important to remember that though Putin may see himself and his war as the protection of a tradition on the eve of extinction, his methods are far from moral, and the cognitive dissonance that it takes to use violent military action against the people one claims to be one’s own in the name of a holy nation is astonishing.

His invasion and its accompanying rhetoric are an example of religion being used for purposes other than the spiritual enrichment of its people. Putin does not care for the moral or spiritual protection of his people; that is not the reason he touts Orthodoxy as a point of unification. If it were, there would be no violent war.

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Rather, Putin sees Christianity as inherently connected with Russia and appeals to that tradition to strengthen his position. He uses tradition, legend, and spirituality as a tool for power and political gain, taking advantage of the traditional Christian spirit of Russia to advance his political global agenda. This misuse of religion and religious identity should frighten and anger those of us who want to protect and honor tradition for the life that it gives to the soul.

It is ironic that Putin has used religion in his argument when he has also publicly praised the former Soviet Union, under which religious expression was severely repressed. Russia’s involvement with religion has long been more symbolic than practical. Reviving this symbolic association while lacking the historical significance to back it up would be laughable if the rhetoric did not help incite a major war.

Putin is not a religious leader, and seeking the reunification of the Orthodox religion under Russian authority is not his primary goal. However, he certainly sees the West as both a physical and cultural threat to Russia and seeks to reestablish a Russian empire to combat that threat. He uses a combination of historical and religious fact and legend to sell an idea of Russia that includes the Ukrainian people and can only be realized when Ukraine no longer has its own state.

This use of religion in pursuit of a goal that violates Ukrainian sovereignty and life constitutes both a gross misuse of tradition as a lofty goal and an example of the consequences of allowing religion to be so entrenched in politics. It should anger Christians everywhere that a tradition as ancient and beautiful as the Orthodox one is being used to justify the kinds of atrocities that are now taking place.

Fresco on the wall of the Khram Preobrazheniya Gospodnya I Pokhvaly Presvyatoy Bogoroditsy (Church of the Transfiguration of the Lord and Praise of the Blessed Virgin Mary), in Uglich, Russia

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Glennamarie Rivers

Catching up with Fr. Patrick For the past several years, Father Patrick Mary, a Franciscan of the Eternal Word, served Mount St. Mary’s University students by celebrating Mass, hearing confessions, and providing opportunities for Eucharistic Adoration and spiritual direction. Last semester, Fall 2021, marked Fr. Patrick’s farewell from the Mount; he is now at the Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament in Hanceville, Alabama. He continues to serve God through administering the sacraments to the sisters, the Poor Clares of Perpetual Adoration, who serve many pilgrims at the Shrine. We asked Fr. Patrick if he might reflect on his time at the Mount and how he would invite students to see the campus as a place that allows young adults to engage in a search for and encounter with beauty.

Where is home for you?

I’m originally from Florida, but the religious community I belong to is based in Alabama.

Where did you study as an undergraduate?

I started at the University of Miami, but during my freshman year I had a conversion experience and began discerning the religious life and the priesthood. I ended up entering the Franciscan Missionaries of the Eternal Word and, after a few years of formation, I went to finish my undergrad at Mount St. Mary’s University.

When and where did you enter seminary?

I studied theology at Mount St. Mary’s Seminary from 2008-2012.

How long have you been a priest?

I have been a priest for nine years – since June of 2012.

How long have you been at MSMU? I spent six years at the Mount as a student (two years in pre-theology/finishing my undergrad and four years studying theology in the Seminary). In addition, although I never served at the Mount in an official capacity, I had the blessing of being able to help cover some of the Masses for the students for the last several years.

In your experience, what is the most valuable thing this campus has to offer young adults of any faith?

I think one of the most valuable things the Mount and any university can offer is to instill a love and hunger for truth in the students, which, if pursued wholeheartedly, can lead to a life-changing encounter with the source of truth: God Himself.

How were you impacted by the rich Catholic history of humble Emmitsburg, Maryland? What was it like to administer the Sacraments while treading the very same ground as Saint Mother Seton, Fr. John Dubois, and Blessed Stanley Rother?

It’s easy to think of the saints as being very distant from us, but recalling that some of these holy men and women walked these very grounds is quite inspiring.

It’s a reminder that they were real people just like us.

I also personally find it very encouraging to read and learn about the struggles and difficulties that they endured and how, through God’s grace, they were able

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to overcome them and persevere to the end in fidelity to God. Additionally, they show us that living the Gospel is possible and that holiness of life and union with Christ is within the reach of every person.

What was the most compellingly beautiful element of ministering to college students at the Mount?

I have to say it was observing the deep faith of the students and their sense of reverence and devotion at Mass. I was often able to cover the Wednesday night Mass and it was clear that there was a deep conviction regarding belief in the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist. It was very edifying for me as a priest to witness.

What would you say to Mount students striving to live lives of significance on campus and beyond?

I would encourage them to cultivate a life of prayer and virtue, as well as a love for truth, goodness, and beauty. They lead us to God, who is the source of all that is true, good, and beautiful.

Fr. Patrick in the Chapel of the Immaculate Conception, photo by Brett Snow, C‘22

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Now that your time at the Mount has come to a close, where are you now and how does this work differ? What is your main apostolate?

I am currently assigned at the Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament in Hanceville, Alabama (www.olamshrine. com). At the shrine, the role of our friars is to provide for the spiritual needs of our sisters, the Poor Clares of Perpetual Adoration, as well as the locals and pilgrims that come to the shrine for Mass and to pray. We also hear confessions daily, give catechetical and spiritual talks to visiting pilgrim groups, and lead Eucharistic Healing Services, which are basically holy hours with a brief sermon followed by both general and individual benediction. In my previous assignment when living in Emmitsburg, I was the chaplain for our EWTN employees in Washington, D.C., so I would commute there a couple times each week. One assignment that continues with my recent move back to Alabama is my role as Vocation Director for our community. The main apostolate of our community remains the same as well, regardless of our particular assignments, and that is to use whatever means are available to preach and teach the Gospel and our Catholic faith and to seek out and try to bring back those who have fallen away from the practice of their faith.

Heath P. Tarbert

The Enduring Quest for Truth and its Defense

Today marks an important event in the history of Mount St. Mary’s University—the inaugural issue of The Brownson Record. It is my hope that this journal will elevate the national discourse on critical issues by providing a unique Catholic perspective from Mount students, faculty, alumni, and affiliated scholars. Orestes Brownson, in many ways, represents the lifelong quest for truth and its defense, which renders him the perfect namesake of this new journal.

As this endeavor proceeds, it is worth considering a few lessons from Brownson himself, which might help students make the most of their time at the Mount.

First, always approach your work and your studies as Brownsonian lovers of truth. Brownson begins his magisterial work, The American Republic, by noting “[t]he ancients summed up the whole of human wisdom in the maxim, Know Thyself.”

Consider hanging this two-word Delphic directive in your dorm rooms and in your faculty offices. Use it to guide your liberal arts learning and teaching at the Mount, illuminating our mission of imparting truth from all directions and disciplines in furtherance of what Brownson describes as the Catholic, or “universal truth, all truth, and all truth in and for all ages and nations.”

Why does truth matter? Because those who live by the truth live freely. As Solzhenitsyn famously advised, “Let your credo be this: Let the lie come into the world, let it even triumph. But not through me.

The simple step of a courageous individual is not to take part in the lie. One word of truth outweighs the world.”

Heath P. Tarbert was the 14th Chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and a graduate of the class of 1998.

Knowing the truth also prepares you for some unhappy certainties in life: failure, loss, and pain. Life is hard and, at times, feels deeply unfair. You may lose your job, get passed up for promotions, have friends who let you down, or see loved ones pass away too young. If you know what is true, what is good, what is right—knowledge that comes from a Catholic liberal arts education—you will overcome these challenges and be able to keep your eyes on the “universal truth” that Brownson describes.

Second, model Brownson’s curiosity and humility in matters of the mind. Brownson started as a Presbyterian. He then became a Universalist, a proto-socialist, a humanitarian, an atheist, and a Transcendentalist—all before converting to Catholicism at the age of 41. In the words of biographer Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., “In the course of a long and stormy life, Brownson took almost every side of every hot question and was a sledgehammer controversialist at every step along his tempestuous path.” Even if you do not undergo such a radical metamorphosis during your life (and I hope you don’t!), in your search for truth, you should be willing, as Brownson was, to follow your “honest convictions whithersoever they should lead.”

For students, the four years you have at the Mount are the best opportunity you will ever have in your life to shape your intellectual and moral character. It is an extraordinary time of immersing yourself in both a strong liberal arts education and our Catholic community. Upon graduating, you will move on to your next stage in life—acknowledging the

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salutary closing of doors and the happy narrowing of paths, as you commit to spouses, families, vocations, and communities. When you are 40 years old and managing a challenging career and a rambunctious family, you may not have time to meditate on Plato or Aquinas. But if you do the work now to understand fundamental truths, you will be able to draw on that wellspring of wisdom and remain grounded in truth during the hectic years to come.

As a private sector executive and public sector official, I have referenced the works of Aristotle, Kant, and other humane thinkers, but those occasions have been rare. Yet nearly every day—as the faculty can attest to—I reflect in some way on the enduring lessons and truths those great thinkers imparted. I believe I am a better man, husband, father, citizen, and leader because of the education I received at the Mount.

Finally, I encourage you to heed Brownson’s intelligent patriotism and devotion to the Constitution.

Brownson was, above all else, a Catholic. He also recognized that the American civilization, including “our social and political constitution, [and] our arrangements to secure freedom,” “comes nearer to

the realization of the Catholic ideal than any which has been heretofore developed and actualized.” Much has changed for the better since Brownson wrote these words more than a century and a half ago, but it cannot be denied that our public discourse around the Constitution grows shallower and less reasoned by the day. This new journal, along with your time at the Mount, will equip you to be (in Brownson’s words) “living men, active, thinking men, great men, men of commanding genius, of generous aims, and high and noble aspirations.” Today we would rightly say “women and men,” but the point remains: we must all strive, in Lincoln’s words, to “nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth.” Soon enough that responsibility will pass to Generation Z.

The Mount’s motto, spes nostra, which means “our hope,” has for over 200 years epitomized the school’s mission of educating students “empowered for leadership in the Church, the professions, and the world.” It is hard to think of a greater fulfillment of that mission than the ambitious and courageous efforts of Mount students and faculty to launch The Brownson Record.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, painted portrait from La Demeure du Chaos, CC BY 2.0

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Aaron Weisel

Beauty and Laudato Si’

“Lord, you are the fullness of life, of holiness and of joy.

Fill our days and nights with the love of your wisdom, that we may bear fruit in the beauty of holiness, like a tree watered by running streams.”

—Week I, Matins Beauty pervades Pope Francis’ landmark Laudato Si’ (LS), bookending the encyclical’s message.

Francis establishes it as a foundational concept from the get-go—“our common home is like a sister with whom we share our life and a beautiful mother who opens her arms to embrace us” (§1)—and concludes with a sobering reminder: “At the end, we will find ourselves face to face with the infinite beauty of God”.

Like Augustine’s reflection in Book X of the Confessions, beauty in LS is understood as an indicator of a greater reality, pointing beyond itself toward its creator: we are invited “to see nature as a magnificent book in which God speaks to us and grants us a glimpse of his infinite beauty and goodness”. And while it so undoubtedly functions, it is also an end in and of itself: bemoaning man’s autocratic and noxious imprint on creation, we are warned that we cannot “substitute an irreplaceable and irretrievable beauty with something which we have created ourselves”. Anything that, by its very nature, is worthy of contemplation can be seen as its own end.

In a publication concerned with elevating the classic transcendentals, I would be remiss in not honing in on §205: “No system can completely suppress our openness to what is good, true and beautiful, or our God-given ability to respond to his grace at work deep

in our hearts.” So how does the exploration of beauty matter to us today, simultaneously stuck and adrift in the quagmire of the technocratic paradigm?

First, we can start with beauty’s function, with a bent toward considering its role in nature.

What does it mean to say that something is beautiful? John-Mark Miravalle, in his timely Beauty: What It Is and Why It Matters, defines it as “a spiritual reality expressed in a physical form.” We should also note that beauty is inseparable from truth and goodness, as Hans Urs von Balthasar famously asserts at the opening of The Glory of the Lord:

“It [beauty] dances as an uncontained splendor

around the double constellation of the true and the good and their inseparable relation to one another. … Our situation today shows that beauty demands for itself at least as much courage and decision as do truth and goodness, and she will not allow herself to be separated and banned from her two sisters without taking them along with herself in an act of mysterious vengeance. We can be sure that whoever sneers at her name as if she were the ornament of a bourgeois past—whether he admits it or not— can no longer pray and soon will no longer be able to love.”

That truth is good should be self-evident. But when we consider the relationship truth and goodness have with beauty, we see the significance of this link. If

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Love and the Maiden by John Roddam Spencer Stanhope

all we want is a bastardized form of beauty unmoored from truth, we end up with a directionless and ultimately horizontal romanticism. If we merely want truth without beauty, we will miss the ecstatic effect beauty has upon us, which draws us out of ourselves and into communion. Then, we are left to roam a world of facts with a heart closed to wonder.

If beauty is a physical manifestation which stays true to the nature of a good reality, how is the natural world beautiful? While there are many ways, first among them seems to be that nature is ordered. If, as Paul tells us in his epistle to the Romans (1:18-20), we can glimpse the nature of its Author in beholding His creation, we can conclude that God is a being of reason and also, therefore, order: even in things we find, prima facie, ugly, the closer we look—especially at the atomic level—we find order.

So, insofar as nature is the physical manifestation of the goodness of order, it is beautiful. It is good to behold: a well-cultivated garden is, as Josh Hochschild says in A Mind at Peace “a place to rest in the presence of the beauty and intelligibility of nature.” And it is this aspect of beauty that has been hijacked by a modernity closed off to its innately transcendental orientation.

When we say that creation is ordered, the “point is,” as Miravalle says, “that nature is understandable— it behaves according to the consistent patterns that can be recognized and used for predictions and technology.

If there were no consistent patterns in nature to be recognized, predictions and technology would be out of our reach, and all the benefits that come with physical science would be impossible.” Make no mistake: Francis lauds the advances of modernity that enable man to flourish in the created order. However, modernity’s sin is the taking of this underlying order and harnessing its power, aiming it at deeply dis­ -ordered ends. “The earth, our home, is beginning to look like an immense pile of filth”, as Francis puts it.

Pollution is, objectively speaking, not beautiful: it is the manifestation of an evil reality, one that benefits the wealthy while poisoning its victims. If the earth is indeed becoming a pile of garbage, how might we counter this?

We would do well to take a look at the words of the Japanese philosopher-farmer Masanobu Fukuoka in his groundbreaking One-Straw Revolution: “Until the modern faith in big technological solutions can be

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overturned, pollution will only get worse.” Fukuoka argues vociferously that every successive attempt at solving a problem by dealing only with symptoms and neglecting the whole will only perpetuate the existing dilemmas—and these are, invariably and innately, the kinds of solutions offered by an absolutist faith in technology. Such a stance is the result of a world deeply anthropocentric and materialistic. Francis corroborates:

“We must be grateful for the praiseworthy efforts being made by scientists and engineers dedicated to finding solutions to man-made problems. But a sober look at our world shows that the degree of human intervention, often in the service of business interests and consumerism, is actually making our earth less rich and beautiful, ever more limited and gray, even as technological advances and consumer goods continue to abound limitlessly.”

The Catechism clearly and forcefully criticizes a distorted anthropocentrism: “Each creature possesses its own particular goodness and perfection… Each of the various creatures, willed in its own being, reflects in its own way a ray of God’s infinite wisdom and goodness. Man must therefore respect the particular goodness of every creature, to avoid any disordered use of things” (CCC 339).

C.S. Lewis puts it pithily in Mere Christianity, “Aim at Heaven and you will get earth ‘thrown in’: aim at earth and you will get neither.” Anthropocentrism is the latter: it is by the narcissistic, inward-looking stare during which mankind tramples upon the creation around him, like a man running over a deer because he’s too busy staring at a phone, texting. As a race marked by Original Sin and dwelling in a postlapsarian cosmos, this inward stare is bound to produce nothing beautiful—because his own, his soul is broken.

It is here that beauty is of incredible use: it is in the nature of beauty to direct the gaze of man outward (in this way it is profoundly communal). Beauty

inspires ecstasy: “To suffer ecstasy means to be placed outside oneself ”. It is first, however, that the reception of beauty into the soul is, according to St Thomas Aquinas, an act of love. Thus, we see that beauty is essential for any building up of a community seeking to counter the direction modernity is taking the earth.

And this is what Francis mentions what he calls “a good aesthetic education. … By learning to see and appreciate beauty, we learn to reject selfinterested pragmatism. If someone has not learned to stop and admire something beautiful, we should not be surprised if he or she treats everything as an object to be used and abused without scruple”. Here we see Francis making a decidedly anthropological statement—indeed, the thesis of LS seems to be that any rightly-made statement about man must be made in an ecological context: if we get man wrong, we get nature wrong. So, if man can learn to love true beauty, we may begin to cultivate a posture of humility and reverence. As von Balthasar affirms, “whoever sneers [at beauty] … can no longer pray and soon will no

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longer be able to love.”

How do we, as members of Mount St Mary’s University, partake in this mission of aesthetic education Francis speaks of? Romano Guardini, a profound influence on Francis, has some provocative words on the subject:

“Yet

there is a yes to what is happening historically that is a decision because it springs from a knowing heart. Such a yes has weight.

Our place is in what is evolving. We must take our place, each at the right point, we must not oppose what is new and try to preserve a beautiful world that is inevitably perishing.

Nor should we try to build a new world of the creative imagination that will show none of the damage of what is actually evolving. Rather, we must transform what is coming to be. But we can do this only if we say yes to it and yet with incorruptible hearts remain aware of all that is destructive and nonhuman about it. Our age has been given to us as the soil on which to stand and the task to master.”

It is hard to overstate the profundity of this argument. It is deeper than a mere acknowledgment that we cannot return to Eden—it is an affirmation of the present-day world in all its brokenness. It bids farewell to idealism and looks nonetheless to build something beautiful from the pieces. It does not refuse to look backward for advice but does refuse this backward gaze insofar as it tempts us to establish again what once was. The old order—even if it was good—is no longer possible. This does not mean saying “no” to Tradition: however, as we retrieve from the riches of Tradition that which gives aesthetic and, by extent, spiritual succor, we look to construct a radically new presentation of enduring Truth. Modernity has brought humanity to a point of no return that the Church and University has not escaped from. A beautiful Church or University residing on the quaky grounds of postmodernity will, therefore, look different than that which they were in Late Antiquity, the Middle Ages, or the Renaissance.

By definition, that which has been disintegrated cannot be fixed. But that does not mean that what is left over cannot be reconfigured in our aesthetic education.

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In the Mount’s attempts to graduate ethical leaders in service to God and others, I don’t hesitate to say we are remiss if beauty is not made a core concern of the liberal arts education so earnestly provided.

Leaders who cannot recognize beauty will—as von Balthasar warns— eventually be unable to love. While students are offered to study art in the Modern period, those who do not focus on the arts in their studies receive little chance to appreciate that which is inspired by a pre-Enlightenment worldview. As a Catholic university, getting the chance to study and bask in the uplifting and breathtaking acts of worship we might call sacred art surely would respond to Francis’ hopes of aesthetic education.

The Mount is making concrete strides to implement the hopes of LS as it joins Francis’ 7-Year Journey Towards Integral Ecology. The emphasis on the campus community’s ecological soul, landscape, and mindset are clearly essential; but perhaps what we as a university should strive for in undertaking this journey toward integral ecology is the aesthetic education Francis makes large-scale additions. Are these buildings merely utilitarian, or will they take into account the campus’s natural beauty and reflect the terrain which we call our Mountain Home? Among many lessons the Mount may draw from LS, I hope one will be such: that the man made structures which contribute to our campus must reflect the beauty with which God has always blessed us in bestowing Mary’s Mountain upon us.

Poetry HB 1171 Stephen McGinley The House’s heel attacks our door Maryland, My Maryland Defending “rights” that kill the poor Maryland, My Maryland They fleck the streets of Baltimore With children’s embryonic gore Who go as Innocents of yore Maryland, My Maryland The cowards break our sacred trust Maryland, My Maryland Pretending that their laws are just Maryland, My Maryland Fight with manly deeds, we must With wom’nly words, combat the lust That rages for our children’s busts Maryland, My Maryland.

Dear mother, must you cry again Maryland, My Maryland For children who have died in vain Maryland, My Maryland Forever, mother, come amain Leave not your children on the plain In rack and ruin, shame and pain Maryland, My Maryland Arise, oh Queen, and rule again Maryland, My Maryland.

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Beautiful Things Happen in the Morning Claire Doll

Forgiving Spring Tess Boegel

Silence encompasses all that live, all that breathe.

The sky, a faded photograph, tainted with faint periwinkle – it doesn’t know what is coming, what brilliance awaits from the sun.

She presses her hand over the seed, Feeling out, pulling up, stalks thought dead.

Life grows from her fingers like a weed.

A storm last night left the blur of mistiness, the dew clinging to the chartreuse blades of grass, the smell of minty rain. Darkness is no longer a thing of fear, but merely a colorless veil slowly being torn.

Lavender turns soft, turns bright, and gold cracks through the horizon, spilling light into the sky.

Then, all at once, silence ceases; the chatter of children’s small feet against porch steps and the ringing of church bells harmonize with the new morning.

Amid the stone-bordered plots clean, Cool, when spring rains have softened the bed She presses her hand over the seed.

And in the space where the forest meets Field she calls forth the budding flower’s head.

Life grows from her fingers like a weed.

Over a ruined building’s face, skeins Of green ivy curl up, leaves unshed She presses her hand over the seed.

Where the fire of poor planning seethed Skeletal trees stand like burnished lead: Life grows from her fingers like a weed.

In spite of what we’ve done, what we’ve said Striking at our mother, stained red, She presses her hand over the seed And life grows from her fingers like a weed.

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John-Mark Miravalle

The Day the Tide Turned

If a non-believer were to begin his research of the Christian story with the Gospel of Luke, he might understandably complain that it takes Luke a while to get to Jesus. Although he provides the most complete evangelical infancy narrative, Luke does not, in fact, begin with the narrative of Christ’s infancy. He doesn’t begin by talking about Jesus at all. The first story he tells is of a man named Zechariah, a childless man, whose wife is too old at this point to allow for any hope of offspring. Then, an angel comes and announces that their barrenness will be miraculously relieved: they are to have a son. Zechariah is skeptical of the message. He is punished by being made temporarily speechless, but God is still generous and ultimately Zechariah gets his voice back, along with his new son.

Now what our hypothetical non-believer might not know is that this is a very old kind of story. It’s the story of humanity up to this point. It’s the pattern of the Old Testament, repeated again and again, with soul-crushing regularity: God takes the initiative of unexpected generosity; humanity responds with skepticism, faithlessness, disobedience; suffering results from human resistance to God’s initiative; God is still generous, and does good things in spite of our perverse recalcitrance.

This is the kind of story that readers of the previous books of the Bible have already seen. It’s an Old Testament story, where God’s instructions are either questioned or rejected – or at least not explicitly accepted. It’s the story of Adam and Eve, of Abraham and Sarah, of Moses and the burning bush, of Gideon’s fleece, of Jonah’s flight. God has to help us, has to heal

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us and raise us up, not only with little cooperation from us, but even against our opposition. John the Baptist’s story may be recorded in the New Testament, but he’s an Old Testament figure. He is, as the Catechism says, the last of the prophets. He is, as Jesus Himself says, the greatest of those born of woman – that is, those classed with the old, familiar dispensation. His story forms a prelude, but only a prelude, to the story of the new Kingdom, as in Matthew 11:11.

Before finishing the story of John, Luke begins a new story. At first it looks like yet another birthannouncement story. An angel tells a surprised young woman that she, too, is to miraculously become pregnant, but that God will make her pregnant directly – without a man’s help – and that the child will be the Son of God. Again, up until this point no one has ever responded to an angelic annunciation with explicit acceptance. What will this girl do? What will she say?

Let’s pause. If you asked the average Christian when was “the fullness of time,” what answers do you think you’d get? If asked to point to the fullness of time, the turning-point of human history, the great crisis, the pivotal moment – what event would people select? Would they identify it as the end of the world, or the first Easter Sunday, or Pentecost? Or when?

Well, we don’t need to guess. Scripture tells us in Galatians 4:4: “In the fullness of time, God sent his son, born of a woman.” That’s right, the fullness of time is the Annunciation. It is when God sent his son to be born of a woman, and when she accepted that mission. Again, from the Catechism: “Mary, the all-holy ever-virgin Mother of God, is the masterwork

The Annunciation by George Lawrence Bulleid

of the mission of the Son and the Spirit in the fullness of time… In her, the ‘wonders of God’ that the Spirit was to fulfill in Christ and the Church began to be manifested.” For the first time, the very first time in human history, someone responds appropriately to God’s initiative. Up to this point every human being, whether due to personal sin or a wounded fallen condition, had deliberately or inadvertently thrown up obstacles to God’s plan. Now, a solitary girl says, “Let it be done unto me according to your word,” and the trajectory of salvation has begun. History has changed course. The tide has turned.

God always wanted our cooperation. He never wanted to fulfill the providential design by Himself.

Of course He is the primary Agent in all things, and the Annunciation is first and foremost about a divine Person, in the form of a man, who has come to save the world. But it’s also, in a secondary way, about a created person, in the form of a woman, cooperating in that salvific work. It’s about Mary, who willingly equipped that divine Person with his human nature, and so made Him the descendent of Adam and of Abraham, the Son of David and the Son of Man. Since his humanity was the instrument Christ used to save us, St. Irenaeus calls the woman who supplied Him with his human nature “the cause of salvation for herself and for the whole human race.”

God takes the initiative. God makes the first move in the redemption of the world. He has no need

of our help – but He asks for it. He asks us to cooperate in our own salvation, and in the salvation of others. He asks for our witness, our prayers, our sufferings – as He asked for Mary’s. To quote from the late mariologist Jean Galot:

“It is true that the Incarnation could have been presented as a work which God decided upon alone and which he achieved without any human consent. But as it was he elicited the cooperation of a woman both in the process of deciding upon the work and in carrying it out. The Incarnation had not only the goal of instituting a covenant between God and humanity, but it needed to itself be structured in such a way as to be a covenant, and so include in its establishment the element of human commitment…The most profound reason for the divine maternity is consequently to be found in the intention of divine love that manifests itself under the system of a covenant: this love seeks to promote collaboration…”

In other words, Mary’s enlistment in the project of saving the world becomes our challenge. The fullness of time has come: God has initiated, and we are, like Mary, to give our response. “For we are God’s fellow workers” (I Corinthians 3:9).

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“As we retrieve from the riches of Tradition that which gives aesthetic and, by extension, spiritual succcor we look to construct a radically new presentation of enduring Truth.” ~ Aaron Weisel, Beauty and Laduato Si’

Photo of the dome of the Chapel of the Immaculate Conception entitled Emitte Spiritum Tuum by Fr. Lawrence Lew, O.P.