The Brownson Record: Issue Two, May 2022

Virtutem Forma Decorat

The Meaning of the Mount On the founding myth of Mary’s Mountain JOHN SINGLETON

Remembering John Donovan A part of him always remained above HUNTER LUERS

Issue Two | May 2022

Work and Communion On labor as a response to grace MSGR. MCLEAN CUMMINGS

Issue Two | May 2022 St. Joseph the Worker

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

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The Meaning of Mount St. Mary’s

John Singleton C’86

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Shanghai Locked Down

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Remembering John Donovan

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Interview: New CLA Dean Bryan Zygmont

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Review: Common Good Constitutionalism

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Work and Communion

Taylor Radell C’22

Hunter Luers C’24

Gavin Hamrick Managing Editor Joseph Baldacchino C’70

Msgr. McLean Cummings Seminary Director of Spiritual Formation

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Letter from the Editor Dear Reader, Thank you for picking up your second issue of The Brownson Record! I hope that you enjoyed the inaugural issue and that our print and online content encouraged stimulating conversation among family and friends.

In this issue, John Singleton, C’86 introduces us to the founding myth of our university and thereby articulates the meaning of the Mount. Taylor Radell shines light on the desperate situation in Shanghai and the despair of a perpetual lockdown policy. We honor the legacy of the late John Donovan through a thoughtful remembrance by Hunter Luers. Gavin Hamrick sat down with incoming CLA dean Bryan Zygmont to discuss his professional experience, interests, and plans for the college. Joseph Baldacchino, C’70 reviews Adrian Vermeule’s new book, Common Good Constitutionalism. Finally, Msgr. McLean Cummings reflects on the history and spirituality of the feast of St. Joseph the Worker.

At this time of the semester, when our campus is nothing short of idyllic, we anticipate a time of rest and recreation with those we love. Even as the delightful temptress of nostalgia invites us seniors to reverse our attention from a focus on the future, I’m beyond

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excited to walk across the stage with my friends and classmates at commencement. During these final days of our short stay in Emmitsburg, I’m reminded of what Robert Frost said best: nothing gold can stay.

As always, I am grateful for the work of Gavin and the rest of the editorial board, for the contributors and faculty advisors. I am particularly indebted to Brett Snow, who offered us many of the beautiful campus photos featured in this issue. Again, thanks are owed to the Intercollegiate Studies Institute and Chronicle Press, without whom we could not attempt to fulfill our vocation as a journal.

After a year of work on this endeavor with my good friend Gavin Hamrick, I’m thrilled to hand the reins of the journal off to him. I am confident that he and his editorial board will maintain the standards that we set for ourselves early in the project and that this publication will continue to serve as a source of patient reflection on the true, the good, and the beautiful by the people of the Mount, for the people of the Mount.

Holy Mary, Spes Nostra, pray for us!

Sincerely, Harry Scherer, Editor-in-Chief

John Singleton

The Meaning of Mount St. Mary’s

Origin stories explain first things. Superpowers are sprung from unlikely sources. Freighting a pileof-rocks or a hole-in-the-ground with extravagant properties can be a temptation for a founder consumed with launching an ambitious venture. Over time, however, the collected stories of a place can confirm a unifying theme - a mythology - and reveal a higher truth. What begins as myth can end in revelation.

In 1805, the founder of Mount St. Mary’s discovered an arboreal grotto on the side of a mountain.

Reminding him of Catholic shrines in his native France, Fr. John Dubois vowed to name a school for the Mother of God on that very spot. More than two centuries later, his university, born from a mysterious cave, continues to bear fruit.

An underexplored detail of Dubois’ creation story is that in the beginning there was light. Looking for lodging at the end of a long day, the weary priest glimpsed at what he thought was a candle in a window.

Making the climb up the mountain on horseback, he found nothing and collapsed in exhaustion. The next morning, he awoke in an enchanted garden. In front of him was the vista of St. Joseph’s Valley, behind him a mysterious grotto-cave. Reaching into the darkness, Dubois affixed a cross to acknowledge the glimmer that had guided him to that providential height.

The origin of Mount St. Mary’s is unrivaled in its mythological content. Its survival over two centuries can be attributed to its immersion in stories and symbols of archetypal design. Invoking supernatural events, e.g., ‘the discovery of a cave,’ and beings, e.g., ‘the Mother of God,’ Dubois inclined his institution

John Singleton, C’86, MBA’87 lives in Annapolis, Maryland with his wife Karen. They have been married for 29 years and have three sons.

toward an inherited narrative that can only be described as epic. By aligning his school with mythological themes that communicate to the mind and heart, he invited into his fledgling project a pattern producing reality of enduring consequence.

Like the womb of the mother, the cave is a birthplace. From the wisdom of Plato, to the heroism of Homer, to the nativity of Christ, the mythology of a ‘grotto’ is gripped with getting things born. At Mount St. Mary’s, fecundity is an undeniable attribute.

Not just the birthplace of a university, the Grotto invites personal conversion. Fr. Dubois, educated in the classics, was alert to these subtleties when he founded his mountain school. Wedded to legends-ofold, matriculation from the Mount is structured like a heroic crucible, where virtue is tested and heroism hangs in the balance. But like childbirth, spiritual trial is stubbornly inefficient, producing successors painstakingly and one-at-a-time.

At Mount St. Mary’s, historical account, personal observation, and moral intuition converge in a familial way. The golden woman on the side of the mountain does not stand alone. Clothed with the sun and full with child, Our Lady is pregnant with possibility. Domestic bliss, that heroic endeavor, is at the moral center of Mary’s Mountain, exemplified in the presence of the Blessed Mother and the proximity of the Father-Son-and-Holy Spirit.

American Catholic education, which traces its roots to Emmitsburg, is preparation for the family unit.

The superpowers of Mount St. Mary’s are felt not in the achievement of a credential or in the accomplishment

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of high office, but in the formation of a happy home.

True-myth might be the only way to explain the birth of a university from a grotto-cave on the side of a mountain. What is the mythology of Mount St. Mary’s?

The presence of a towering height is an assertion of value. Its majesty submits a proposition and evokes a response. Built into the Mount’s elevation is a story that speaks of a proper relationship between that which is above and that which is below. Before the construction of the golden Mary, there was a primordial symbol of celestial places embodied in nature herself.

A mountain connotes ascent, a spiritual rising. It turns out a pile-of-rocks is ripe with meaning. A holein-the-ground conjures a cave where a holy child was born and where the chains of death were conquered.

Shrouded in ancient myth, the cave discovered by John Dubois became the birthplace of a historic Catholic university that reconciles an abundance of mythological themes, many of which God created even

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before the Church.

At Mount St. Mary’s, there is a mountain and there is Mary, a garden and a golden woman. These archetypes mirror the Book of Genesis and the Book of Revelation, the first and last chapters of the Bible.

In Genesis, Eden is located on God’s holy mountain with a river running through it. In Revelation 12, the golden Woman of the Apocalypse confronts a serpent at the end of time. On Mary’s Mountain, the Queen of Saints stands triumphant with her foot on the head of a snake.

Mythology with its synthesizing language can garner glimpses of a grand design, but paradox, with its jarring reversals, can lead to unexpected insight. Until 1973, Mount St. Mary’s was an all-male institution.

Yet, the central figure upon which the university spins is a woman, a hero who makes men into their best selves by having given birth to the best man that ever was. Hierarchical by nature, this Catholic school sits

Photo of the Pietà at the Grotto by Brett Snow

on the side of a mountain. With pinnacles and peaks pointing skyward, the patriarchy is topped by a fiercely feminine protagonist whose aspect is maternal but whose aura is oppositional. Counter-cultural figures have hailed disproportionately from tiny Emmitsburg - heroes, saints and martyrs. This recurring theme is as sure as the surging and ebbing of the tide.

Charting patterns over the course of centuries without a religious order to chronicle its achievements, the meaning of the Mount is hidden in plain sight.

An independent Catholic school, the character of the place has been maintained not by a charism but by a spirit of independence and a litany of saving personalities. Notre Dame has the Congregation of the Holy Cross. Villanova has the Augustinians. Mount St. Mary’s is a menagerie of outsiders herded from far and near, starting with John Dubois, who was not a representative of a religious order, but a solitary priest pitted against insurmountable odds.

To plumb the meaning of Mount St. Mary’s is to discover a golden thread in the lives of its improbable advocates and graduates. Defined by false starts and second chances, certain defeat has been reversed for more than 200 years through an exercise in maternal vigilance. Whether discerning for the priesthood or the professions, the Mount declares the family unit as the source and summit of personal identity.

This pattern producing reality presides over Mary’s mountain, implying a body which is being moved and a force which is moving it, at a pace that can only be described as cyclical. Emmitsburg has not born its last saint. When the dye was cast with the discovery of a Grotto cave, the Mount fell into a fecund pattern, a biology that cannot be easily overturned.

Declared dead many times, Mount St. Mary’s knows its way out of the grave. This habit of unexpected comebacks is an attraction and an inheritance. From its unwanted birth in 1808 to its bankruptcy in 1881 to the near-death experiences of the 20th and 21st centuries, the Mount follows a familiar figure out of the grotto-cave. Mount St. Mary’s was not founded by a wealthy industrialist, but by a refugee priest on the run from a war on the Church.

Ancestral voices beckon on Mary’s Mountain. It’s

an invitation to a family reunion. Trading childish ways for parental discretion is its high command. Creative types matriculate from Mount St. Mary’s, clerical, professional and familial, who reflect the image of the divine family by the sincerest form of thanksgiving: imitation. To be a graduate of the Mount is to have learned from the Immaculate Conception herself how to get things born. The Father and the Son, heroes of the family unit, are there too, snatching victory from the jaws of defeat. At the Mount, the ubiquity of the Holy Family declares that no worldly authority – social, educational, or governmental – may obfuscate the family unit. Graduates of Mount St. Mary’s change the world not by atomizing the human footprint but by multiplying the People of God. The family unit is storytelling at its most reliable. Its parts are based on a higher form. Despite its academic setting, the meaning of Mount St. Mary’s is not a thought experiment or a statistical analysis.

It’s a participatory act that requires courage. It’s the recapitulation of a family drama. It’s the story of Christ and his Saints.

Sketch of Fr. John Dubois, founder of Mount St. Mary’s

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Taylor Radell

Shanghai Locked Down 8

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The traditional signs of spring — blooming flowers, warmer weather, occasional showers — are ever present in the city of Shanghai; unfortunately, Shanghai’s residents are banned from seeing these hallmarks.

In early April, the Chinese government imposed far-reaching lockdown measures for Shanghai, China’s financial hub, in response to the omicron variant. These restrictions have confined each of the city’s 25 million residents to their homes indefinitely after roughly 10,000 cases were detected. Only allowed outside for routine testing, Shanghai’s citizens are forbidden from leaving their apartments, a measure that is enforced by imposing military presence in the city and a barrage of health care professionals in white hazmat suits.

Similar to China’s ‘zero-COVID’ policy at the start of the lockdown, those that tested positive for the virus (regardless of the presence of symptoms), were forcibly shipped to separate isolation facilities with questionable living conditions to quarantine alone.

The elderly and young children were not exempt from this fate, with these two vulnerable populations being removed from their homes in the middle of the night. CNN reported on the story of a mother, identified only by her surname Zhu, whose two-yearold daughter tested positive and was taken from their home to such a clinic. Zhu received little information about her daughter from authorities after her removal beyond sporadic updates that she was in ‘good health’.

While Zhu’s daughter will presumably recover from the coronavirus physically, the emotional and mental scars that will remain from being severed from her mother at such a vulnerable time will take longer to heal.

Shanghai authorities have recently adopted new draconian measures in the name of achieving the ‘zero-COVID’ standard. Posts from the Chinese microblogging site Weibo showcase hazmat suit-clad officials installing 6-foot-tall green metal fencing around the buildings of those who test positive, entrapping them in their spaces as if they are caged at the zoo. CNN reporter David Culver, who is experiencing the lockdowns in Shanghai, reported that authorities sealed his door to ensure he did not leave his apartment, lest he wish to face the consequences.

These appalling conditions are only made worse when one takes into account the dire food insecurity that the citizens of Shanghai experience. Forbidden

from leaving their residences, civilians are mandated to rely upon government food deliveries that seldom come and with few too groceries to survive as personal stockpiles have dwindled. Neighbors cry out to other neighbors to barter food, medication, and other necessary supplies that are needed for survival. Third party grocery deliveries are similarly stretched thin and are only available to those that pay the high premiums.

Voices of dissent are silenced swiftly by Chinese Communist Party (CCP) censorship. Angry netizens take to social media platforms like Weibo only to have their comments deleted. A six-minute video titled ‘Voices of April’, which plays the cries of locals voicing their frustrations about the oppressive lockdown measures over video of empty Shanghai streets, was virally shared. Shortly thereafter, the Chinese government scrubbed all traces of the video off their internet, even going as far as to restrict the word “April” from search results on Weibo.

At what point do lockdown measures such as these stop being preventative and become oppressively punitive? Is it when we remove infants and toddlers from their parents and send them away, often without basic supervision, attention, and care? Is it when we seal off people in their homes and ensure their subservience by fencing them in like dogs? Is it when we silence any voices that conflict with the party narrative on the abhorrent conditions through which everyone is suffering?

The Shanghai case questions the validity of lockdowns as an adequate response to COVID entirely. At the start of the pandemic in early 2020, before much was known about the virus, lockdowns seemed as good a strategy as any to slow the spread of COVID and learn more about the virus. But as we have seen in Shanghai and in other cases around the world, lockdowns have repeatedly been used as a vehicle by which to suppress personal freedoms and infantilize the masses through paternalistic measures of control. It implies that the CCP, and other parties that initiate lockdowns at this stage of the virus, are more concerned with coercing and exercising power over their people than preventing the spread of the virus.

The intense pressure that lockdowns places on societies has strained the mental fortitude of their citizenry. The isolation and loneliness that are inherent to lockdowns inevitably lead to a mental health

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crisis with affected populations. As Alex Gutentag of Compact puts it,“abandoning individual rights didn’t save society from ruin - it is how we ended up with… a social fabric even more tattered than it was before the novel coronavirus.”

And now, as we near day 780 to slow the spread, it has become clear globally that societies can and should collectively learn to live with the virus and allow individuals to determine their own personal mitigation strategies with which they are most comfortable.

Authorities in Shanghai have grossly mismanaged their city’s response to COVID-19 and oppressed their people into forced obedience, starvation, and loneliness with no end in sight. The case of Shanghai demonstrates that total or “real” lockdowns, something for which some American pundits clamored in 2020, do more to suffocate the

will of the people than to improve COVID statistics.

Shanghai authorities continue to allow their citizens to near the brink of starvation, to crush any dissent to these drastic policies, and, ironically, remain complacent in letting their population go without necessary medical attention. The Chinese Communist Party’s actions have been successful in convincing millions of angry Shanghainese people (and worldwide observers to this tragedy) that a government’s response to the virus is to be feared more than the virus itself.

Someday, hopefully, the people of Shanghai will be permitted to emerge from their homes and rejoice in the fruits of springtime. But so much damage has already been done. Those that survive will be forever scarred with the memories of the horrors experienced during their drawn out winter.

An icon of the 120 Martyrs of China, who were killed between 1648 and 1930. The saints were canonized by Pope John Paul II in 2000.

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Hunter Luers

Remembering John Donovan

With sorrow and tenderness, the passing of Dr. John Donovan, the emeritus professor and former chair of the philosophy department who spent the last decade of his life sharing in the sufferings of Christ, was announced in March. Donovan served Mount St. Mary’s for over two decades, holding various integral positions, including the director of the university’s Honors Program, chair of the faculty, department chair, chair of the Faculty Governance Committee, and a plethora of other positions that aided the Mount in reaching its Catholic and academic potential. Although he wore many hats well, it has been witnessed that he always held the same goal no matter the position: to institute a robust Catholic philosophical identity within the Mount’s comprehensive and interdisciplinary core curriculum.

When Donovan entered the Mount family in the 80s, he was a guiding force in ensuring a proper restructuring of the core academic program. He desired to reformulate this platform with particular crossdepartment themes with the goal of shaping young people intellectually so they may live by a morality centered on the unity of the truth ordered toward God. Donovan was able to ask the vital question of how philosophy fits into a Mount experience, ultimately encouraging students to seek the truth in thought and logic in accordance with faith. This vocation of boosting the Mount’s Catholic liberal arts character is reminiscent of a simplicity of the past that has now since grown into something new. For many, Donovan is a reminder of what the Mount used to be; for them, he embodied the old spirit of the Mount that was

forcefully focused on comprehensively shaping the minds of students to recognize the true, good, and beautiful within the Catholic liberal arts tradition. Dr. Thane Naberhaus, the current chair of the philosophy department, described Donovan’s foundational roots

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in the Mount community: “Mount St. Mary’s was a special place, and it still is, and John was one of those people that made it special… [John] was intimately involved, to an astonishing degree, in the creation of the Mount St. Mary’s that I came to know and deeply love and appreciate when I first came here.”

Donovan served as chair of the philosophy department for about five years and, during that time, oversaw the formation of the Master of Arts in Philosophical Studies (MAPS) program, which provides “an opportunity for advanced study of philosophy, emphasizing both the history of philosophy and major topical areas, with attention to how these inform and are informed by the Catholic intellectual tradition.” Additionally, in his time as chair, Donovan was a mentor to many of the faculty. Notably, both Dr. Joshua Hochschild and Dr. Michael Miller say he was an advisor on their paths toward tenure and attaining the next step on their respective intellectual journeys.

Hochschild said, “John was an insistent force in my success as a teacher and a scholar…He always told me to find my own voice and find the way that works for me with my personality and style… [John] knew that we could be better and challenged and wanted us to grow in the best way.” Miller likewise stated, “He was able to say that formation was important, but he was an encouraging and calming voice in the scary waters of achieving tenure.” In this sense, Donovan was a supportive leader, one who was willing to see the best in others and help them cultivate their own uniqueness for not only the betterment of their academic progression but also for the greater Mount community.

It should be no surprise to know that Donovan encouraged the intellectual stimulation of all his students so that they may tackle philosophical and ethical issues with a sense of purpose and sincerity. This trait is an aspiration for many of the Mount’s current faculty, who remember Donovan’s involved teaching methods, such as Dr. Richard Buck: “I still see him as a model. I hope to become the kind of teacher that he was, exhibiting a kind of passion, care, and concern, holding students to high standards. His spirit will live on within the lives that he has touched.” Another testimony from Buck brings to light his genuine and heartfelt teaching style: “He would challenge as a teacher, but he cared for the students and wanted to let them know that they were good people; he saw the

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good within them.” Donovan is remembered for his exuberant passion witnessed not only in his teaching, which he especially expressed when conversing about his favorite philosophers, but also within academic discourse and conversations with others. Donovan led and participated in a number of research projects among faculty during summers, along with a variety of productive discussions across departments. He is described as being slightly formal in his approach but overwhelmingly personable and easy to talk with, making for the perfect conversation partner, especially when discussing what is best for those in the Mount community.

There is no doubt that Donovan was a foundational centerpiece in the Mount’s academic community; his service is a witness to this fact. When Donovan first arrived at Mount St. Mary’s, he had a plant brought into his office, which he kept until his last day. As time passed, Donovan continued his zealous work, and so did his plant, which found its way to grow up his walls and around the room. Dr. Miller remembers this plant and its grandeur, an emblem in itself of Donovan’s legacy: “It was peaceful just like him. Calming and impressive, it left its physical presence, as demonstrated in John’s eternal impact. He grew into the Mount as the plant grew into the walls.” Donovan was remembered similarly by so many, as Dr. Sarah Scott, the current director of the Honors Program, said, “He was a kind, wise soul with a gentle wisdom.”

Donovan was a constant reminder for many about how to live like Christ with a serene and kindly countenance, fully demonstrating an intense desire for the fulfillment of an authentic Catholic liberal arts education. As Naberhaus recalled, “he was humble and had such an impressive mind.” Dr. William Collinge echoed the words of the 3rd-century philosopher Plotinus when asked to remember Dr. John Donovan’s legacy as a servant on Mary’s Mountain: “A part of him always remained above.” While here at the Mount, a part of Dr. John Donovan always remained above; he was always focused on preserving the truth for the sake of the good. Now, a part of Dr. Donovan remains with us at this university, reminding us always of what it means to represent a genuinely Catholic liberal arts education.

Gavin Hamrick

Interview: New CLA Dean Bryan Zygmont On April 20, Executive Director of Communications Donna Klinger shared that Bryan Zygmont, Ph.D., will be starting as dean of the College of Liberal Arts at the beginning of August, assuming the position currently held

by Peter Dorsey, Ph.D. Zygmont received his Ph.D. in art history, criticism, and conservation from the University of Maryland and is currently Associate Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Professor of Art History at Louisiana Tech University. Dr. Zygmont sat down for an interview with the Record the day after the announcement to share his vision for the college.

Dr. Zygmont, please tell us a little about yourself.

Before arriving at Louisiana Tech University, I was at Clark College, which became Clark University. I was there for a decade, and in many ways, it was sort of like the Mount: a small Catholic liberal arts college, but without the cool core, which I feel like you guys own. I make beer and pizza. My only talent, probably, is making beer and pizza. What my kids probably like most about me is that I make pizza. What my wife likes most about me is I make beer. I like movies and playing video games and reading books and doing all the nerdy things. I also have a 9000 piece Lego Colosseum in my office.

As you enter into this new role as Dean of the College of Liberal Arts, your understanding of the character of a Catholic university is going to be an essential part of how you’ll lead. What is, in your view, a Catholic university?

When I was finishing my work at the University of

Maryland, people would ask me, ‘Where do you want to work?’ There were two answers to that question; both of them were true, but one was more true than the other. The first answer was ‘wherever I get a job,’ because I didn’t want to be an unemployed Ph.D. in art history. But the real answer was, ‘I want to end up in a small Catholic liberal arts college.’ The reason why I wanted to go to a Catholic school, beyond it being part of my own faith tradition, was the ways in which I believe that the good faith-based institutions really take an interest in helping mold and create good, ethical citizens of the world who view their education and their opportunities in life as a way of making the world in which we live better.

There are 5300 colleges across the U.S. and over 200 of them are Catholic. What specifically drew you to settle with us on Mary’s mountain?

When I was applying for jobs, what I hoped to do was return to a school that was similar to where I came from, which was a small, liberal arts college that had faith and community as very much part of the ethos of the school. I applied for fifteen jobs and the one thing I said to my wife again and again was: ‘the only one I would run to was [the Mount].’ One of the reasons is the size. The other thing I really wanted to be a part of was the core curriculum, which gives students the opportunity to have a shared intellectual experience.

And the other thing I would say is the Mount’s description in the mission statement as a proudly pluralistic environment. As an institution of higher learning, and one that has its roots within the Catholic

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tradition, there is a way to find common ground among all different makes and beliefs. We’re all on a faith journey. When I think about the boxes that were ticked for me at the Mount, it was all of them. There is a Catholic with a big-C and a catholic with a little-c in a way that I am enthusiastic about. It’s not just the sites of the school, or the location of the school, or the Catholicity of the school, or the core. It’s all those things brought together.

In the wider academic and professional world, it seems that success is increasingly being measured solely in terms of accolades and credentials. As the new CLA dean, how do you plan to guide the success of students while at the same time taking into account the moral and spiritual nature of the person?

I tell my kids when they get out of the car every day to ‘be kind and try hard.’ Those are the things that really matter to me. When I think about what success means for an institution, we can talk about the Fulbright,

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which is an amazing program. I say this as someone who had a Fulbright grant and it’s the second line on my tombstone. But you know what’s a better line on my tombstone? The fact that a young lady came into my office today having had a problematic interaction with someone in our community and I talked to her for 45 minutes and although I didn’t fix the problem, I listened to her and am going to work to make things right. What this means to me is that I’m doing things that don’t show up on spreadsheets, they don’t show up on potential incomes for people. I hope people graduate from our school with degrees and jobs, and I also hope that they exit our university as a powerful agent for good and change in the world. We can celebrate the goods and excellences because we had a role in that being possible, too. It’s not just about diplomas and jobs and credentials; it’s about those intangible things that make the world a better place.

As a college founded in 1808, we at the Mount have played an integral role as both an observer

and participant in the American story. What role do you see your intellectual background playing in helping us understand our vocation as a Catholic and American university?

I’ve been an art historian and that’s probably what I know the most about in terms of scholastic learning.

What I really am is the one who’s fascinated by learning and about the world at large. Right now, I’m reading the autobiography of T.E. Lawrence, a British officer who lived during the Arab Uprising of the 1910s. This has nothing to do with art history. Last month, I read Augustine’s Confessions. Again, nothing to do with art history. We read Augustine not necessarily because we want to learn about him, although that’s part of it. Part of it so that we feel empowered to turn that self-analysis upon ourselves. Augustine was nothing if not someone who recognized ‘here I am, and here I was. There’s a path that got me here; let me think about that.’ Now, reading Lawrence’s autobiography, I’m thinking, “this is St. Augustine all over again!” It’s a man thinking about his place in the world, what he’s done, the good he’s achieved, and the bad he did on the way. When I think about the American intellectual tradition, part of it is understanding the world at large but also embracing learning in a very broad way. The liberal arts tradition is learning that all the things we do are related, they are connected. Your very major, philosophy, politics, and economics (PPE), is about this connectedness of academic disciplines. That’s a really cool major. When I think about what I am as an art historian, I remember that art history is not about art. It’s about an object, a thing, the Colosseum for example, and asking the question of what we can learn about economics, politics, religion, and sociology by looking at this one thing. What does the Colosseum tell us about the economic prosperity of Rome at the end of the first century? What does it tell us about politics and the ways in which Vespasian utilized entertainment as a way of controlling the masses? What does it tell us about aesthetics and the ways in which those who were using a new material, concrete, in a new architectural space, the arch, as a way of constructing this? What does it say about sociology, knowing that this space was hierarchized; the landowners sat here, the emperor over there, the sniveling idiots like the three of us were up here? When I think about art history, it’s the greatest disciple in the history of the world, because

Bryan Zygmont at Louisana Tech University

everything turns into it somehow. My dissertation was on the interaction of aesthetics, what things look like, and politics in the early American federal period.

I got to talk about economics, politics, philosophy, religion, sociology, and identity. Before my trip for my interview, my only visit to your neck of the woods was in 2003 when I visited the Seton Shrine because Gilbert Stewart painted her husband in New York City in 1794. How did I know about her? How did I get to your back door? Because of a painting. I don’t know history like the historians, and I don’t know about philosophy like the philosophers, and I don’t know political science like the political scientists; at the same time, I know enough from my study of art history to have a nice drink and a conversation with them.

What ideas do you have for the CLA? At my core, I am a collaborator. If you give me seven smart people in a room, we can come up with a really good idea together and it’s not my idea, it’s our idea, and our idea is always better than mine. The other thing I am is a data collector. I like collecting data to make informed decisions. It would be pretty arrogant of me for me to say “Gavin, be prepared. The sheriff’s coming to town. The sheriff, who has spent but a couple of hours on your campus, has all the answers. He’s only met six people, don’t matter, he knows what to do.”

What I want to do is come to campus, meet and talk to everyone I can, and find out what we, not me, want this college to be. I want to collaborate with them, not boss them around. There might be a fine line between leadership and bossing around, and I get that too. I want to meet everyone I can, find out what their goals, their dreams, their obstacles, and their challenges are and think about what we can do together to make the experience you have in this college, and even the students who are unfortunately in a different college at the Mount, how to make that experience better. I want to have conversations and collaborate with people and look at what we do well, and how to do those things better, and what can we do that we’re not doing and do those things as well as we can.

A long-standing part of the Mount’s institutional mission has been to defend a certain conception of human dignity, as is the case for most Catholic schools. There is often disagreement about what

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protecting human dignity requires. What would be your approach to navigating those types of disagreements on campus?

If you guys ever go off to graduate school, you get eight people, seven of whom think they’re smartest people in the room, arguing about stuff, and inevitably what we came down to is: you attack ideas, you don’t attack people. This idea of engaging with ideas that are distinct from people has always served me well as both a teacher and as a human being. One of the commonalities of any good discussion is respect for the human, in terms of acknowledging that you’re talking with another person who has thoughts and feelings, but also that we can disagree amicably in a way that allows us to continue a conversation. When it comes to the idea of the dignity of the human person, it can mean different things for people, but there’s a common area in the Venn diagram for what human dignity means that we can universally agree on. Maybe that’s a starting point in order to have an open dialogue. I think dialogues are always good when they allow people to explain what they think, but they also hear what other people think, not necessarily as a way of persuasion, but as a way of understanding a point of view that might be different from our own. I think that’s one of the real benefits of having a debate.

A debate is an exchange of ideas where both sides have an opportunity to both hear and be heard. Any conversation should be rooted in those two things.

Look, I’m 46 now. What I think about the world now has changed a lot since I was 26. Part of that is me admitting to the world that I don’t have everything figured out just yet. There’s an openness with that and I would always encourage people to be open to ideas they haven’t yet considered. I did, and I think that’s made my life richer and more joyful. When people get really disagreeable in arguments, it’s because they think they have their whole life figured out already and they might never think something differently about things, but they might, and I think that’s good. Boy, you’re bringing the heat today by the way. I thought you were going to ask me my favorite color or what I wanted to be when I was in 2nd grade.

On that note, is there anything else you would like to share with the community, including favorite color?

I went to Arizona, so cardinal and navy. When I was

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in 2nd grade, I wanted to be the shortstop for the Milwaukee Brewers. What do I want people to know?

I think more than anything, I’m very happy to return to a place that seems familiar to me, while at the same time being new. I’m an inherently happy and joyful person and it seems like I can be a happy and joyful person there. I have a pennant on my door that I had specially made by Oxford Pennants. I ordered twenty of them and gave out nineteen. The pennant says, “Fight the Good Fight.” I’m excited about fighting the good fight there and helping and watching other people fight the good fight. I bet there are people at the Mount who work tirelessly to make your experience as a student better and to make the school better for the community at large. I’m inspired to be a part of that and really excited to get going.

What animates your devotion to “fight[ing] the good fight”?

I was talking with a classicist about this at another institution, and he talked about the hero’s quest, like Odysseus on this colossal mission. There’s also the idea of justice and goodness. I had never really thought about this. It’s from the Christian Bible, from the book of Timothy: “I will fight the good fight, I will finish the race.” The really good things, the things that make us a better institution, that bring us happiness and joy and purpose, those things aren’t easy. They are a struggle. I don’t mean this in a bad way; it requires effort. When I think about the fight, the fight is the effort. The goodness is the purpose of it all. There are places where that kind of motto or esprit de corps or mission is more appreciated than others. To get back to the boxes I was ticking, I don’t know how to say this in a way that is articulate, but I feel like I can be the dean I most hope and aspire to be at a place like the Mount. I hope I can impact our students and I can inspire our faculty and work in the community and make everything better.

I’m not going to tell you I’m going to make it great, or that it’s not great already, or good, or that it’s not good already. I aspire for better. I think better is always a goal and there are some places where fighting the good fight is valued and treasured and when I was applying for this job, and interviewing for this job, and thinking about this job, it seemed to me that this was that kind of place.

Joseph Baldacchino

Common Good Constitutionalism: True and False Versions

In his recently released book Common Good Constitutionalism, Harvard Law School Professor Adrian Vermeule puts forward, as an alternative to what he describes as the now dominant originalist and progressive approaches to American law, a methodology that purportedly would recover the Western world’s classical legal tradition and adapt it “as the matrix within which American judges read our Constitution, our statutes, and our administrative law.”

According to Vermeule, the centerpiece of the classical legal tradition that he advocates is “that law should be seen as a reasoned ordering to the common good, ‘the art of goodness and fairness,’ as the Roman jurist Ulpian put it—an act of purposive and reasoned rulership that promotes the good of law’s subjects as members of a flourishing community of peoples and nations.”

The largest point of the tradition Ulpian favors, Vermeule writes, is that “public authority is both natural and legitimate—rather than intrinsically suspect, as one might infer from certain strands of the liberal tradition. Yet that authoritative rule is bounded and limited by the very condition that gives it legitimacy: that the ruling authority always act through reasoned ordinances conducing to the common good, public rather than private interest.”

Vermeule notes that his version of comJoseph Baldacchino, C’70 is editor of the academic journal Humanitas and is a member of the Advisory Board of the Mount’s College of Liberal Arts.

mon good constitutionalism (hereinafter CGC) “is not legal positivism, meaning that it does not identify all law with the rules laid down by those authorized to do so by social conventions; on the contrary, it allows that the truth of legal propositions sometimes depends on the truth of moral propositions.” CGC “draws upon an immemorial tradition that includes, in addition to positive law, sources such as the general law common to all civilized legal systems (ius gentium) and principles of objective natural morality (ius naturale), including procedural legal morality.”

Positive law is hardly lacking in the classical tradition, Vermeule continues; “it represents a legitimate specification by the public authority of general principles of legal morality that need concrete embodiment, the specification of local rules that take account of local conditions, and is therefore called ius civile, literally the ‘law of the city.’”

Vermeule concedes that the duty to determine or specify the positive law implies “that the judges or other officials who determine the meaning of law at the point of application are duty-bound to follow a kind of textualism, at least presumptively. But this is not the positivist form of textualism that simply equates law with positive enacted texts; rather it is textualism justified by reference to political morality.” Accordingly, he says, “positive enacted texts are always read against a back-

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Reproduction of the 1936 Barry Faulkner Mural by Gabriel Prundeanu under commission of Stan Faryna, CC BY-SA 2.0

drop of, and if at all possible, in accord with, the broader legal background of natural law.”

He notes, for example, that the “so-called sovereignty of the states is best understood as a constitutional principle of respect and comity that the highest authority [the federal government] should take into account, out of prudent respect for legal justice and small-c constitutional arrangements. But like other constitutional principles, it . . . is subject to reasonable determination by public authority ordering it tothe common good. . . . it should not be understood as a hard constitutional limit on the acts of the highest authority.”

In contrast to his favored CGC, Vermeule asserts, “both progressivism and originalism . . . are positivist approaches, albeit in different ways.”

The “revolutionary positivism of the progressive,” he says, quoting Rafael de Arizaga, “denies substantively the normative claims of the natural law in the name of the liberation of the individual will,” while “the genteel positivism of the originalist . . . denies methodologically the normative claims of the natural law in the name of preserving the will of semi-mythical lawgivers.”

As a concrete example of a Supreme Court decision based on progressivism, Vermeule points appropriately to Obergefell v. Hodges (2015), which announced a right to same-sex marriage and nullified state laws across the nation that had confined marriage to members of the opposite sex. The majority based its opinion on a constitutional right to “define and express [one’s] identity.” Since this “constitutional right” was nowhere to be found in the Constitution, whence did it come? Vermeule explains that the “progressive judge instrumentalizes the law in the service of a very particular liberationist narrative, in which ‘rights’ are continually ‘expanded’ to free an ever-larger set of individuals from unchosen obligations and constraints—legal, moral, and traditional, even biological. . . .

Obergefell’s radical and public dismissal of a legal restriction that prevailed in Western law for millennia, stamping it as unreasoned prejudice and

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animus, was no accident. The dynamic commitments of legal progressivism are illuminated and measured precisely where, and because, it departs from the inherited constraints of law.”

Concerning originalism, Vermeule writes that the theory “comes in several varieties” but underlying them is “the common view that constitutional meaning was fixed at the time of the Constitution’s enactment (or that of relevant amendments), and that this fixed meaning ought to constrain constitutional practice by judges and other officials.” So far, so good. But he insists on categorizing originalism as a form of positivism, which by definition excludes any normative element in interpretation; and on this basis he de-

clares any form of originalism that actually works in practice to be impossible.

To illustrate the impossibility of adhering to originalism in actual practice, Vermeule cites a critique of originalism put forth by Ronald Dworkin. According to Dworkin, as summarized

by Vermeule, originalists face a dilemma: “originalism is committed to ‘public meaning,’ but . . . ‘public meaning’ is itself ambiguous . . . . In one version of originalism, meaning is based on expected applications; in another, meaning is based on the principles embodied in semantic content.”

But how does one interpret a phrase such as “cruel and unusual punishment”? Should it “refer to a particular set of punishments that, according

to the expectations of the ratifiers and framers[,] . . . the provision would cover and thus outlaw?

(This would seem to follow from the adoption of the expected applications version of meaning.) Or should it be taken at a higher level of generality to refer to an abstract principle, somehow defined (at the highest level of abstraction, a principle against morally unjustified punishments)? Dworkin argued that the choice between these two versions of meaning could not possibly be made from within originalist premises. Rather the originalist would always and necessarily . . . have to make the choice between the two conceptions of meaning on the basis of normative principles of political morality, not given by the theory itself.”

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The problem is that, in defining originalism as, by definition, based on positivist premises, Vermeule, Dworkin, et al. have set up a straw man.

Recall the quotation cited above that originalism “denies methodologically the normative claims of the natural law in the name of preserving the will of semi-mythical lawgivers.” Balderdash! Any American originalism worthy of the name gives enormous weight to the Constitution and related documents but not for any reason of static historical particularity.

On the contrary, these documents are accorded decisive interpretive weight because they embody in practical form the very same classical legal tradition including natural law that Vermeule professes to cherish. And the entire constitutional framework—including the limitations on federal authority flowing from state sovereignty, which Vermeule calls “pernicious”—is explicitly ordered to the common good.

What the originalists, in common with the framers of the American Constitution, keep constantly in mind, and Vermeule apparently does not, is that every person has a sense of what ought to be done in changing circumstances to promote the well-being of all—Aquinas calls this internal sense synderesis—but each is torn by conflicting desires toward self-indulgence or arbitrariness for oneself or one’s group. For goodness to prevail in a society requires that individuals restrain their lower impulses in favor of the one action in the unique circumstances of each particular moment intuited as simultaneously good for the individual and for all persons because inspired by the Divine Will.

But because all persons are perennially conflicted with higher and lower impulses, experience teaches that no one can be expected at all times to act out of genuinely moral motives. Hence morality itself requires that governments exist to formulate laws and norms of behavior in order to help restrain the human tendency toward the arbitrary.

But since governments are themselves composed

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of fallible human beings, morality dictates further that restraints also be imposed on government officials.

As James Madison explained in Federalist No. 51: “[W]hat is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary.

If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.”

To achieve this last objective, the Constitution divides government in America between two levels—state and federal--and then further divides the federal government into three departments having distinct powers: legislative, executive, and judiciary. As described by Madison in Federalist No. 45: “The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. . . . The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinarycourse of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State.”

The powers reserved to the states are collectively known as the “police powers”: the authority to enact laws to protect the health, morals, and safety of the community. These powers are considered a general attribute of sovereignty. The latter passed from Great Britain, along with independence, to the thirteen original states in the Treaty of Paris of 1783: “His Brittanic Majesty acknowledges the said United States, viz., New Hampshire, Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia, to be free sovereign and Independent States.” By

contrast, the “few and defined” powers of the federal government are those that were explicitly delegated to it by the people of the states when they ratified the Constitution.

In Federalist No. 51, Madison emphasized that the division of powers between the federal and state governments promotes the public good and that the states should jealously guard against encroachments from an overreaching federal authority: “In the compound republic of America, the power surrendered by the people is first divided between two distinct governments, and then the portion allotted to each subdivided among distinct and separate departments. Hence, a double security arises to the rights of the people. The different governments will control each other, at the same time that each will be controlled by itself.”

It follows, as President George Washington noted in his 1796 Farewell Address, that all public officials—and indeed all citizens—have a moral duty to respect and obey constitutional restraints: “It is important . . . that the habits of thinking in a free country should inspire caution in those entrusted with its administration, to confine themselves within their respective constitutional spheres, avoiding in the exercise of the powers of one department to encroach upon another. . . .The necessity of reciprocal checks in the exercise of political power, by dividing and distributing it into different depositaries, and constituting each the guardian of the public weal against invasions by the others, has been evinced by experiments ancient and modern . . . . To preserve them must be as necessary as to institute them.”

Washington added that, should changes in the constitutional distribution of powers be desired, they ought to be achieved “by an amendment in the way which the Constitution designates. But let there be no change by usurpation; for though this, in one instance, may be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed. The precedent must

always greatly overbalance in permanent evil any partial or transient benefit, which the use can at any time yield.”

For reasons of morality, in sum, the framers imposed a variety of restraints on government in America. Madison said explicitly that such constitutional checks were “inventions of prudence” (Federalist No. 51) intended, by placing advance restrictions on the human passions “sown in the nature of man,” to promote “the common good” (Federalist No. 10).

Vermeule, too, claims to rely on prudence to further the common good. But instead of respecting the “inventions of prudence” built into the Constitution, he counts on public authorities as they go along to apply the common good “to a set of particular circumstances by means of the faculty of prudential judgment.” He insists that this “prudence is by no means unstructured discretion.

It is given shape by an account of the ends for which discretion must be used. . . . The obligation of the public authority is to act . . . through rational ordinances oriented to the common good.”

In short, Vermeule counts on government officials, notwithstanding the fragility of fallen human nature, always to do the right thing for the simple reason that it is the right thing; contrary to Madison’s admonition cited above, he counts on public authorities to be “angels.” To the extent, therefore, that the brand of “common good constitutionalism” advanced by Vermeule as preferable to originalism is put into practice, attainment of the common good in the real life of society is likely to be diminished.

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Msgr. McLean Cummings

Work and Communion Throughout most of the world, Labor Day is celebrated on May 1 in commemoration of the Haymarket Riot, which occurred at a labor rally in Chicago on May 4, 1886. The communist movement seized upon the affair, making the first of May an annual exaltation of the proletariat. Even a metro stop in Moscow is named Pervamayskaya, which translates to ‘First of May’. To distance a desirable commemoration of workers from socialism, President Grover Cleveland favored placing the holiday in early September in the United States. Pope Pius XII had another way of countering the communist celebration of labor: he dedicated May 1 to the memory of St. Joseph the Worker.

While little is told us about St. Joseph in Sacred Scripture, we are informed that he was a tektōn (cf.

Mt. 13:55). Usually portrayed as a carpenter with a carpenter’s square in hand, the term describing his trade has a wider meaning, implying a craftsman working in wood or stone. St. Joseph seemed perfectly suited to become the Patron Saint of Workers.

By 1955, when Pius XII instituted the feast, the awful plight suffered by many workers during the Industrial Revolution had passed. The original rally in Haymarket Square was already calling for an eighthour workday. While many persons in underdeveloped parts of the world still suffered (and continue to suffer) from inhumane working conditions, a new threat to workers had arisen.

Just a few years earlier, in 1947, Catholic philosopher Joseph Pieper had issued his famous essay, Leisure: Basis of Culture. In it, he exposed the

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modern phenomenon of a culture of ‘total work.’ This mentality, Pieper argued, has made many think of leisure as a vice or at least as a mere necessity ordered to restoring energies for more work. No longer would one work to live, but now people seemed to live in order to work. Pieper points out that the word ‘leisure’ in Greek is also the word for ‘school’; in other words, leisure, properly conceived, is a humanizing and ennobling activity, consisting of endeavors worth doing for their own sake and not as a means to an end.

The world of ‘total work’ had arisen in both communist and Western societies. It presupposes a materialist worldview. Man is reduced to what he does, measured by the utility of his output. “[T]he process of production… is itself understood and proclaimed to be the intrinsically meaningful realization of human existence,” writes Pieper.

This context can help us see the Feast of St. Joseph the Worker in a new light. Yes, certainly, we grasp the value and dignity of work from the humble dedication of such an extraordinary saint. If God willed this luminous figure to dedicate many hours to manual labor, it must be not only a worthy life, but a genuine path to sanctity. Nonetheless, we see clearly in the example of St. Joseph that work was not the end all and be all of his life. It did not define who he was or serve as the measure for his self-worth.

On the contrary, St. Joseph surely worked primarily or even exclusively for the purpose of providing the necessities of life for his wife, Mary, and the Child entrusted to them. One of the greatest sacrifices of his life must have been the time that his

work kept him away from home or perhaps even away from Nazareth. Certainly, he would have had a workshop in the house, as is commonly depicted, but he also would have had to seek work on buildings and equipment elsewhere or travel to markets to buy materials or sell finished items.

In our ‘total work’ mentality, ‘hard worker’ is a compliment, and failing to be a hard worker is considered a defect. Would one think of St. Joseph as a hard worker? The term does not seem to fit the great saint. As mentioned, he surely sought to limit the amount of time that he was kept from the company of Jesus and Mary. Moreover, communion with God would have been his greatest priority, both limiting his work time and characterizing it. Likewise, would the description ‘hard worker’ suit a Benedictine monk laboring at making beer or cheese? The motto of Benedictines, of course, is ora et labora, which translates to ‘pray and work’. Their prayer is work (liturgy has been called the “work of God”, opus dei) and their work is infused with prayer. Joseph, too, would have had his mind on God, laboring while recollected, not bustling with fervid activity.

As the expression ‘total work’ indicates, work canbecome a threat to man, to all that truly humanizes and elevates him. Only when one is focused, as Joseph was, primarily on love of God and neighbor - neighbor beginning with family - does work find its proper context and place in the hierarchy of values. Work serves to humanize man when he lives on a transcendent

The above is a photo of the statue of St. Joseph taken outside of Mary, Queen of Peace Chapel in Pangborn Hall, captured by Brett Snow.

horizon. In the world of ‘total work,’ on the contrary, demands are made which increasingly exclude time to serve God or family. Then work enslaves and oppresses man, even though he pursues his work willingly and freely.

This can occur as easily in a secular liberal society as in an atheistic communist one. The ‘total work’ mentality can trap people in offices and airports, as well as sweatshops and coalmines. Many men and women in affluent societies are pursuing careers to find self-fulfillment. They believe that money, status, and success in a particular field will bring them happiness.

To this end, they dedicate all their time and energies, finding, too often, that transcendent values and interpersonal relationships are pushed lower on the scale of values by career advancement. They may also look back on their college education, regretting that they did not study more ‘liberal arts’ before beginning to train for a useful career, often a technical one.

St. Joseph reminds us of this, too. While he no doubt apprenticed as a boy with his father, he also would have learned to read. This was not so that he could read manuals on carpentry, but so that he could better open his mind and heart to God through the history, poetry, and prophecy of the Sacred Word.

The Feast of St. Joseph the Worker reminds us that work, like all created realities, is good insofar as it serves the glory of God. It will do this, only if the worker works for love of God and neighbor and not for personal ambition. St. Joseph, pray for us!

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“Reaching into the darkness, Dubois affixed a cross to acknowledge the glimmer that had guided him to that providential height.” ~ John Singleton, The Meaning of Mount St. Mary’s

Front cover: Photo of a statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary at the Grotto by Brett Snow Back cover: Photo of the dome of the Chapel of the Immaculate Conception entitled Emitte Spiritum Tuum by Fr. Lawrence Lew, O.P.