Eloquentia
Volume II, no. 1 December 2016
The journal of the Chavagnes Studium
Eloquentia Vol II, no. 2 - December 2016
A year of volunteer work for the Church, in a community of scholarship ... Are you a young man aged 21 30, with a uni versity degree and a desire to serve others and Almighty God, through His Church? Looking for a way to commit to an apostolic work for a short time, as a way of “doing your bit” for the Church before life gets too complicated? Perhaps you are looking for a place to discern your future vocation. Here at the Company of St Gregory we offer young men with a university education the chance to serve God intensely through work in education for a limited period: usually for two years. But it is sometimes possible to help out just for a year, or even for a term. In exchange for your commitment, we offer Members of the Company of St Gregory are like the full bed and board, travel costs and a small Fellows of a late medieval College in Oxford, Cam- monthly stipend. bridge or Eton.
Daily mass, community life, cultural activi
We eat together, pray together, and fulfil a mission ties (including visits around Europe) and of teaching and learning at the heart of Chavagnes we’ll train you as a Catholic teacher. International College, a Catholic school for boys.
More information: www.chavagnes.org/gregorians
All photos copyright of Chavagnes Studium 2016. Except for Cover: Lorenzo Leonbruno da Mantova (died 1537) - The Nativity. Public domain image.
Eloquentia Vol II, no. 2 - December 2016
Eloquentia is published by Chavagnes Studium, a non-profit association which operates a Liberal Arts study centre in the west of France. Chavagnes Studium 96 rue du Calvaire 85250 Chavagnes en Paillers France www.chavagnes.org/studium
Eloquentia Volume 2, no. 1. DECEMBER 2016
In this issue Meet the Teachers: Denis Boyles Editorial Mary and GK Chesterton, by Fr Mark Lawler) Summer Conference Report by Alan Frost Father Simon Henry’s Conference Notes ‘Looking down on the consecrated life’ by Daniel Heisey OSB ‘Victory of Our Lady over all Heresies’ by Bishop Schneider Meet the Teachers: Dr Conlon What is Chavagnes? Conference homily of Bishop Athanasius Schneider, OCR ‘Why Liberal arts at Chavagnes?’ by James Battye Life at Chavagnes ‘Robert Burns for Catholics’, by Ferdi McDermott
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A new Catholic Liberal Arts degree at the heart of Catholic Europe BA Hons in the Liberal Arts with French : A 2-year intensive programme of Literature, History, Latin and French, Philosophy and Theology, Mathematics and Science. Based in the heart of the Vendée, with classes in our historic fomer seminary at a local French university college, plus special sessions throughout Europe, including Italy, England and Spain. Applications are being accepted for enrolment from September 2017 for young men; women’s accommodation available from 2019.
Institut Catholique d’Etudes Supérieures
A fully accredited Bachelors degree in two years (eight 10-week terms) for less than $60,000 total cost. Bursaries are also available. In partnership with ICES, the Catholic university of the Vendée. www.chavagnes.org/studium
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goal, one that can be shared easily and effectively with others. I have written more than 15 books in various genres. Teaching one course in the Studium yields the same amazing result. 2. You have been teaching Homer, Euripides and Sophocles this term at the Studium. What approach have you been taking, and how does the study of ancient Greek literature respond to the needs of modern students?
Meet the teachers at Chavagnes Studium Literature professor Denis Boyles talks to Eloquentia. 1. Professor Boyles, could you explain how you came to get involved with the work of Chavagnes International College? The opportunity to work alongside professionals dedicated to teaching in tutorial settings is a rare one, and this is the strength of the Chavagnes Studium and the upper-level courses at Chavagnes International College. Teaching small groups of students affords not only the opportunity for students to learn material in a meaningful way, but also gives those who teach in this fashion a wonderful, rewarding collegial experience, one that is very far removed from the templated, institutional approach used generally in higher education. I have taught in universities in the US and Europe and I am currently teaching students at a private French university. In none of these places is it possible to give such narrowly focussed instruction to a small number of students. It's a remarkable experience for both students and teacher. The only equivalent I can think of is writing, a process that takes you very deep into a carefully constructed line of enquiry in pursuit of a useful
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We've been looking at these as examples of literature not as standalone "classics" but as work contextualised to the "world" in which they were created. The result is a very intensive examination of literature as an expression of social, political and cultural assumptions. Learning to read in this way is essential to an understanding of any historical period, certainly including our own. As an experienced journalist and editor at the New York Times Magazine and many other publications, and as the editor of many nonfiction books, I understand how a powerful set of assumptions can be used to explain and instruct. This mechanism would not be unfamiliar to any of the classical writers we study. 3. How do Homer and Greek tragedy fit into the wider vision of liberal arts study? Homer and the others we study demonstrate the ways in which the strength of an idea can trump character, setting and plot as the most important element of a literature. The Greeks' genius for representation is foundational to an epistemological understanding of art and philosophy and for all that follows from a study of them.
4. What would you hope that your students would gain from study of this course? How to read closely and wisely. 5. How does the Studium environment compare with other college and university experiences? The Studium provides an extremely luxurious approach to education. Where else can a student command the extended attention of a professor who works hard to help a student achieve a shared goal? It's a venerable approach to instruction, but one perfectly suited to the modern world. Denis Boyles teaches literature at the Chavagnes Studium.
Editorial
Ferdi McDermott
In this issue we report on our summer conference on the theme of The Virgin Mary in Liturgy, Literature and Life. The papers will all be published in book format in the new year, but for the moment we share with you some particular highlights. This term has been a busy one, because we have welcomed our first students at the Studium, embarking on their study of the liberal arts. The first cohort of two young men (one from the UK and one from the USA) have been working hard on Euclid, Plato, Homer, Euripides, Thucydides, and other great men of Greek cutlure, as well as studying French. After Christmas they will be moving on to Rome: its history, its literature and its politics, whilst continuing with Euclid and delving into the Scriptures too.
These are sombre times, aren’t they? But we have decided to light a candle rather than curse the darkness. We will defend and cherish what the poet Roy Campbell called “the sacred cities of the mind”. trusting that humanity will come back to them, as it always has done. But also because goodness, beauty and truth are always right. Might is right in the short term; in the long term, only right is right. In these pages we also interview some of the teachers; readers will note that Chavagnes is a powerhouse not just of teaching, but also of research. Because every good teacher never stops being a student too. Thanking you all for your support in 2016, I wish all of you a happy and holy Christmas!
Mary as the Model of the Church in the writings of G. K. Chesterton Father Mark Lawler Extracts from the paper given at our 2016 summer conference Chesterton ascribed his very faith and conversion to the Blessed Virgin. The cult of Mary does not, Chesterton insists, lead us away from the Invisible God, as some Protestants suggest, but rather brings us back to her Son. The attempt to separate Mother and Child strikes him as futile: “those holy heads are too near together for the haloes not to mingle and cross.” Throughout his life Chesterton was accused of Mariolatry, of giving too high a place to Mary. He felt that since God had already given her the highest place, who was he to disagree with the Almighty. “Nothing amuses Catholics more” he wrote, “than the suggestion, in so much of the old Protestant propaganda, that they are to be freed from the superstition called Mariolatry, like people freed from the burden of daylight.” Although brought up in a Protestant household he knew nothing of what he described as: That strange mania against Mariolatry; that mad vigilance that watches for the first faint signs of the cult of Mary as for the spots of a plague; that apparently presumes her to be perpetually and secretly encroaching upon the prerogatives of Christ; that logically infers from a mere glimpse of the blue robe the presence of the Scarlet Woman.
Chesterton believed any attack on the Mother of God to be literally diabolical because there was an eternal battle between the Woman and the Serpent. “I will put enmities between thee and the woman, and thy seed and her seed: she shall crush thy head, and thou shalt lie in wait for her heel.” He sums up more than four centuries of attacks on our Blessed Mother as a "little hiss that only comes from hell."
Fr Lawler is presently engaged in researching for a Doctoral thesis on G. K. Chesterton. He is Chaplain at Chavagnes Internationzal College and also teaches as part of the Chavagnes Studium programme. The full text of his paper on Chesterton and Our Lady will be available in the proceedings of the conference; see p. 11).
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Above: conference delegates on board the Vendée’s own Orient Express dining cars.
SUMMER CONFERENCE 2016 Alan Frost, MA, MEd.
Chavagnes International College in western France has a long and distinguished history. This history goes back to the thirteenth century when it was donated to the Catholic Church by a local noble family of English origin; for several hundred years it was occupied as a monastery by Benedictine monks. After the French Revolution, here in the heroic Vendée region, it was for two hundred years one of France’s most distinguished seats of Catholic learning, educating thousands of boys who went on to become priests, bishops, doctors, poets and leaders throughout France, re-established as a Catholic institution by Fr. Louis-Marie Baudouin in 1802. Since 2002 this clearly hallowed ground has become the home of an in-
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ternational Catholic college, offering an individualised classical education to boys from around the English-speaking world. In 2016 during the summer vacation, the College held a gathering for about forty lecturers, religious and various friends and visitors under the aegis of the Chavagnes Studium, the Colleg’s Liberal Arts Study Centre. The Conference proved a success and will be held again next summer, with the intention of this becoming a yearly feature, especially in the light of the College (Chavagnes Studium) now offering an undergraduate degree course in the Liberal Arts. The full title of the Conference was ‘The Virgin Mary in Liturgy, Literature and Life’, inspired by the 300th anniversary of the death of St. Louis-Marie de Montfort celebrated in 2016. He is known especially for his devotion to the Blessed Virgin and for his preaching. Of particular importance are his books ‘True Devotion to Mary’ and ‘The Secret of the
Page 6: Mr McDermott addresses the Conference; Bishop Schneider with the Comtesse de Suzannet and Anne Catherine de Suzannet. Above: conference delegates; Mr Gerhard Eger; at the tomb of St Louis de Monfort.
Rosary’. Over a period of four days several distinguished speakers gave impressive and enlightening talks, the guest of honour being His Lordship Bishop Athanasius Schneider from Kazakhstan.
Liturgy’, and Fr. Michel Favalier, F.M.I., who paid tribute to the priest who set up the original College as a junior seminary, ‘The Venerable Louis-Marie Baudouin and the Spirituality of the Incarnation’.
The Bishop gave a talk on ‘The Blessed Virgin Mary and the Defence of the Faith’. Headmaster and founder of the modern College, Ferdi McDermott gave several wide-ranging talks, principally on ‘The Life and Legacy of St. Louis Grignion de Montfort’ and on ‘Our Lady’s presence in the literature of the British Isles’.
The Catholic writer Donal Foley, a member of the group for the whole Conference, anticipated the centenary celebrations in Portugal next year with a talk on ‘Our Lady of Fatima and the Church’. Another conference delegate, though not among the speakers this year, was Fr. Simon Henry, parish priest in Leyland, Lancashire and GB National Chaplain of the Military and Hospitaller Order of St. Lazarus of Jerusalem. He has posted much interesting detail and impressive photographs from the Conference on his ‘Offerimus Tibi Domine’ blog.
The Chaplain to the College, Fr. Mark Lawler spoke on ‘G.K.Chesterton on Mary and the Church’, the subject of his current PhD research. The previous chaplain, Fr. Bede Rowe, tackled the deep subject of ‘Mary as the New Ark of the Covenant’. Two visiting guest speakers were Mr. Gerhard Eger who delivered a very broad talk on ‘Approaching Mary through the
Before and after the talks each day, solemn High Masses were celebrated in the College Chapel, a number of sixth formers and former pupils coming along to attend, serve and assist with the singing.
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Above: the Refectory and gardens at Chavagnes during the conference. Below: the chapel of the Sisters of La Sagesse in St Laurent sur Sèvre.
Indeed, the College choir has released two CDs of religious music. Two outstanding features of the liturgical devotions, which included Offices, were firstly: a Pontifical High Mass at the Faldstool in the Extraordinary Form celebrated by Bishop Schneider with attendant priests assisting as Deacon and Sub-deacon. Secondly, the memorable and stirring singing by the choir and the congregation of ‘Chez nous soyez Reine’, effectively the anthem of the Paris-Chartres annual pilgrimage. Just inside the College entrance is a beautiful little chapel where Fr. Baudouin is buried and here some Low Masses were celebrated as well as the praying of the Rosary. Meals, and the food and wines were much appreciated, were taken in the refectory, while outside tables in the gardens provided ambient places for relaxation and discussion. The College is situated in a quiet village in a delightful and rural part of France, the Vendée region. An interesting tourist feature nearby is a preserved and spectacular railway with original stations. Part of the rolling stock includes first class dining cars
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from the old Orient Express, lovingly restored and once again the food was excellent, served by staff in period uniforms.
The terminus of the round trip is a short walk from St. Laurent-sur-Sevres, where St. Louis-Marie de Montfort is buried. Bishop Schneider led prayers and silent devotion by his tomb; very special moments, a very special place where lies one of the great promoters of the Rosary and the ineffable importance of Our Blessed Mother Mary in the life of a Catholic. Ad Jesum per Mariam! Finally, and something of a ‘treat’, were two evening visits to local chateaux. The chateaux retain their ancient splendour, and are literally only a walk away from the College. The link to those troubled times through the family members whose ancestors fought for the survival of the Catholic Faith in 18th century France is also sensed and maintained through the ongoing history of the International College in Chavagnes. Alan Frost is a retired teacher and freelance writer for various Catholic newspapers and magazines.
Father Simon’s Conference Notes Various reminiscences courtesy of Fr Simon Henry’s blog Bishop Schneider gave an excellent homily on Our Blessed Lady and spoke on "The Blessed Virgin Mary and the Defence of the Faith". His theme was that she is the destroyer of all heresies. Because she was the first to believe in the Incarnation she is also the first to destroy unbelief. He also spoke of the need not just for the joy of love (amoris laetitia) but also of importance of realising the joy of clarity (claritatis laetitia) in the present day Church. We visited the tomb of Venerable Fr Louis-Marie Baudouin, just a minute's walk from the Studium. Fr Mark Lawler, the College Chaplain, spoke on "Mary as the Model of the Church in the writings of G. K. Chesterton". Fr Lawler is presently engaged in researching for a Doctoral thesis on G. K. Chesterton. Chesterton ascribed his very faith and conversion to the Blessed Virgin. Fr Bede Rowe, spoke on "Our Lady as the Ark of the Covenant". A title, when understood with its symbolic and biblical roots, acts as a corrective to distorted Old Testament exegesis and reminds us that Mariology is not some minor branch of ecclesiology tagged on to the our understanding of the Church but as central, powerful and cosmic. Mr Gerhard Eger spoke on "Approaching Mary through the Sacred Liturgy". It was an historical survey of Mary's place in liturgical celebrations bringing the realisation that we have lost much that is Marian in the liturgy over the years. Despite the rigours of academe and liturgical celebration, there was also great opportunity for the human celebration and forging new friendships. Indeed, Bishop Athanasius spoke of the warmth of the atmosphere as being that of a family gathered together at the conference. The garden was a great place to relax and enjoy a local Vendéan apéitif; lunch and supper were served in the College Refectory. Coffee on the terrace. We travelled to Montagne sur Sévre to visit the tomb of St Marie Louis de Montfort by train, taking lunch on the restaurant car from the Orient Express. And very enjoyable it was! The full title of the conference was The Virgin Mary in Liturgy, Literature and Life, inspired by the 300th anniversary of his death being celebrated this year. He is known especially for his devotion to the Blessed Virgin and for his preaching. We followed in the footsteps of Pope St John Paul in visiting the shrine, where Bishop Athanasius led our devotions. We were invited to a local chateau, Chardière Castle, for cocktails one evening. It is still lived in by one of the descendants of the Count of Suzannet, who led the Army of Lower Poitou during the Vendée Wars in 1799.
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Above: the impressive buildings of Chavagnes International College. Below: delegates at the Conference in the lecture hall.
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Special pre-publication price Order your copy of the proceedings of the 2016 Chavagnes Studium Conference for a special price of 20 euros, including shipping.
This attractive paperback volume of about 150 pages includes all the papers delivered at the Chavagnes Summer Conference 2016, together with a selection of otherwise unavailable essays on related Marian themes by key Catholic scholars. To reserve your copy, simply email studium@chavagnes.org
Publication: Lent 2017
2017 Chavagnes Studium Conference Monday 31st July to Friday 4th August 2017 with optional stay until Sunday 6th August
Mary and Martyrdom “A sword shall pierce your heart so that the secret thoughts of many may be revealed.” An inter-disciplinary conference under the patronage of Mary as ‘Mater Dolorosa’, linked with reflections on Christian martyrdom through the ages. Provisional paper titles include: Devotion to the sufferings of Mary in the early Church Mary as Co-Redemptrix: perspectives from literature and theology The civil war of the Vendée, 1793 to 1800 The Church as a “sign of contradiction” in post-Revolution France Christians under communism Christians in the Middle East today Liturgical perspectives on the sufferings of Mary The Mater Dolorosa in Art and Music Mary in English Literature The Virgin Mary and challenges for modern families Daily Mass and devotions, Catholic conviviliaty with French food and wine. Visits to a vineyard, to historic sites linked to the Vendée uprising, to the Puy du Fou historic theme park, to local shrines and châteaux.
For full details: email studium@chavagnes.org
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Looking down on the consecrated life
Daniel J. Heisey
Strategically perched on a hill in Granada, the Alhambra began as a fortress in the late 800s, so about 170 years after the Muslim conquest of Spain. It reached its current proportions in the early fourteenth century. A vast palace in grand Moorish style, it rambles with courtyards and fountains, arches and towers.
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n the small town of Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, stands a state historical marker commemorating Irving Female College, locally known simply as Irving College. Founded in 1856, it was a liberal arts college for women; it closed in 1929. It was named for Washington Irving, one of the most famous American authors of the nineteenth century, but now remembered, if at all, for writing two short stories, “Rip Van Winkle” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.”
By Irving’s day, Spain had been a Catholic kingdom again for more than three hundred years, and it was recovering from the ravages of Napoleon’s occupation of the country. For all his admiration of Spain, Irving brought to it the expectations of a male Protestant from a young republic. He liked to sit on the balcony of the Alhambra’s Hall of Ambassadors and, using a pocket telescope, watch the world go by. His observations on one occasion are worth considering even beyond a Year of Consecrated Life.
One day while he looked about with his spyglass, he “beheld the procession of a novice about to take the veil; and remarked several circumstances which excited the strongest sympathy in the fate of the youthful being thus about to be consigned to a living tomb.” He noticed “that she was beautiful; and, from the paleness of her cheek, that she was a victim, rather than a votary. She was arrayed in bridal garments, and decked with a chaplet of white flowers, but her heart evidently revolted at this mockery Irving (1783-1859) wrote eighteen books, including of a spiritual union, and yearned after its earthly a five-volume biography of George Washington loves.” (1855-1859) and a three-volume biography of Christopher Columbus (1828). Irving kept facts Irving then saw that “a tall, stern-looking man from spoiling a story: his Columbus “proved” one walked near her in the procession; it was, of course, could not sail off the edge of the Earth. Thus, it is the tyrannical father, who, from some bigoted or sorfair to say that medieval people did not believe the did motive, had compelled this sacrifice.” Also in world was flat until the nineteenth century. the group “was a dark handsome youth, in Andalusian garb, who seemed to fix on her an eye of Irving’s interest in Columbus was part of a larger agony.” Irving took him for “the secret lover from fascination with Spain and Spanish history. From whom she was forever to be separated.” 1826 to 1829 Irving was part of the American embassy in Spain, and by that time he had made his “My indignation rose,” Irving wrote, “as I noted the name as a writer and was well-connected within De- malignant expression painted on the countenances mocrat politics, especially in his native New York. of the attendant monks and friars.” Irving watched In 1829 he got permission to spend some time in the as “the procession arrived at the chapel of the conAlhambra, and then he published a collection of sto- vent,” where, he assumed, “the sun gleamed for the ries and essays based on his days there. last time upon the chaplet of the poor novice, as she crossed the fatal threshold, and disappeared within 12 Eloquentia Vol II, no. 2 - December 2016
“For all his admiration of Spain, Irving brought to it the expectations of a male Protestant from a young republic ...” the building.” He further imagined “the scene passing within; the poor novice despoiled of her transient finery, and clothed in the conventual garb; the bridal chaplet taken from her brow, and her beautiful head shorn of its long silken tresses.” He imagined hearing “her murmur the irrevocable vow,” as she “extended on a bier: the death-pall spread over her, the funeral service performed that proclaimed her dead to the world; her sighs were drowned in the deep tones of the organ, and the plaintive requiem of the nuns; the father looked on, unmoved, without a tear; the lover—no—my imagination refused to portray the anguish of the lover—there the picture remained a blank.” Eventually he saw the people leaving the chapel, all but one. “My eye afterwards was frequently turned to that convent with painful interest,” he confessed. “I remarked late at night a solitary light twinkling from a remote lattice of one of its towers. ‘There,’ said I, ‘the unhappy nun sits weeping in her cell, while perhaps her lover paces the street below in unavailing anguish’.” However, Irving had as his assistant a Spanish man in his mid-thirties, “my gossiping squire, Mateo Ximenes,” who daily confounded Irving’s fabricated stories about the locals with reports more accurate and mundane. In the case of the unhappy, unwilling nun, Ximenes “interrupted my meditations and destroyed in an instant the cobweb tissue of my fancy,” because “with his usual zeal he had gathered facts concerning the scene, which put my fictions all to flight.” Namely, much to Irving’s discomfiture, “The heroine of my romance was neither young nor handsome; she had no lover; she had entered the convent of her own free will, as a respectable asylum, and was one of the most cheerful residents within its walls.”
Irving’s romantic illusion being shattered, he brooded on the nun’s unwitting betrayal of him. “It was some little while,” he said, “before I could forgive the wrong done me by the nun in being thus happy in her cell, in contradiction to all the rules of romance; I diverted my spleen, however, by watching, for a day or two, the pretty coquetries of a darkeyed brunette, who, from the covert of a balcony shrouded with flowering shrubs and a silken awning, was carrying on a mysterious correspondence with a handsome, dark, well-whiskered cavalier, who lurked frequently in the street beneath her window.” Along with meeting Irving the voyeur, we see Irving the provincial, unable to comprehend that someone would freely enter a monastery. Irving on that balcony represents anyone, of whatever faith, who sees someone entering religious life as evidence of some sinister plot to control others, or perhaps as a way for immature people to run away from responsibility. Doubtless the young ladies of Irving College would have understood someone willingly and cheerfully following a daringly unusual path. Daniel J. Heisey, O. S. B., is a Benedictine monk of Saint Vincent Archabbey, Latrobe, Pennsylvania, where he is known as Brother Bruno. He teaches Church History at Saint Vincent Seminary.
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The victory of the Blessed Virgin Mary over all heresies Bishop Athanasius Schneider, OCR.
“R
Paper given at the Chavagnes Studium summer conference, August 2016. EJOICE,
O VIRGIN MARY,
FOR THOU ALONE
HAVE DESTROYED ALL HERESIES IN THE WHOLE
WORLD. Thou believed the word of the Archangel Gabriel. A virgin still, thou brought forth the Godman; thou bore a Child, O Virgin, and remained a Virgin still. Mother of God, intercede for us“. These words Holy Mother Church prays since more than a millennium in the Divine Office and in the Votive Mass of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the Tract after Septuagesima from the Common of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
The battle of the Blessed Virgin Mary against Satan, who is spreading errors and heresies in the world, is already indicated by God’s words after the fall in sin of Adam and Eve: “I will put enmity between you and the Woman, between your offspring and hers. He will crush your head while you will strike at his heel” (Gen 3:15). Pope John Paul II taught in his Marian Encyclical Redemptoris Mater, that Mary is collocated in the very center of the battle of Christ against Satan: “Mary, Mother of the Incarnate Word, is placed at the very center of that enmity, that struggle which accompanies the history of humanity on earth and the history of salvation itself. In this history Mary remains a sign of sure hope” (no. 11). Why has the Blessed Virgin Mary destroyed all heresies? Because She believed that the Son of God would incarnate and become man. The Christian faith consists essentially in the faith in Christ true God and true man. For one who believes in the Divinity of Christ will accept all that Christ taught. The Blessed Virgin Mary was the first who believed in the Incarnation of God and since then this faith will never perish on earth until the Last Judgement. Through the faith of Mary the true faith was established on earth and she was the first who believed and therefore she is most powerful to destroy unbelieve and heresy.
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Pope Pius X spoke about Our Lady as of the noblest foundation of the house of our faith: “To Mary it was said: “Blessed is She Who has believed, because the things promised Her by the Lord shall be accomplished.” (Luke 1:45). The
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promise was that She would conceive and bring forth the Son of God ... Therefore, since the Son of God made Man is the “author and finisher of faith” (Heb. 12:2), we must recognize His Most Holy Mother as the partaker and, as it were, the custodian, of the divine mysteries. We must acknowledge that, after Christ, She is the noblest foundation on which is built the house of faith for all ages.” (Encyclical Ad Diem Illum, February 2, 1904). When Saint Francis de Sales in the year 1602, after much long and hard work, crushed Protestantism in the region of Chablais, he wrote on the arch of the choir of the church in Thonon, the principal town of that region, the words: “Gaude Maria virgo, cunctas haereses sola interemisti in universo mundo (Rejoice, O Virgin Mary, for thou alone have destroyed all heresies in the whole world)”. The Saint Doctor of the Church confessed hereby in a solemn way the Blessed Virgin Mary as the guardian of the fundaments of the whole Christian life, of the true faith. Saint Louis Grignion de Monfort says in his Treatise on true Devotion to the Blessed Virgin: “Mary has authority over the angels and the blessed in heaven. As a reward for her great humility, God gave her the power and the mission of assigning to saints the thrones made vacant by the apostate angels who fell away through pride. Such is the will of almighty God who exalts the humble, that the powers of heaven, earth and hell, willingly or unwillingly, must obey the commands of the humble Virgin Mary. For God has made her queen of heaven and earth, leader of his armies, keeper of his treasures, dispenser of his graces, worker of his wonders, restorer of the human race, mediatrix on behalf of men, destroyer of his enemies, and faithful associate in his great works and triumphs.” (n. 28) In Bishop Fulton Sheen’s book “The World’s First Love”, we find the following profound thoughts about the Blessed Virgin Mary: “Mary existed in the Divine Mind as an Eternal Thought before there were any mothers. She is the Mother of mothers—she is the world’s first love. When [the Ameri-
can-born painter] Whistler was complimented on his famous portrait of his mother, he said, “You know how it is; one tries to make one’s Mummy just as nice as he can.” When God became Man, He too, I believe, would make His Mother as nice as He could—and that would make her a perfect Mother.” In the book The Mystical City of God of the Venerable Mother Mary of Agreda, who lived in Spain in the 17th century, we can find deep insights into the faith of the Blessed Virgin Mary: ‘In few words the holy Elizabeth described the greatness of the faith of most holy Mary, when, as reported to us by the evangelist Luke, She exclaimed: “Blessed art thou for having believed, because the words and promises of the Lord shall be fulfilled in Thee” (Luke 1, 45)’. The faith of the most holy Mary was an image of the whole creation and an open prodigy of the divine power, for in Her the virtue of faith existed in the highest and the most perfect degree possible; in a certain manner and to a great extent, it made up for the want of faith in men. The Most High has given this excellent virtue to mortals so that, in spite of the carnal and mortal nature, they might have the knowledge of the Divinity and of his mysteries and admirable works: a knowledge so certain and infallibly secure, that it is like seeing Him face to face, and like the vision of the blessed angels in heaven. The same object and the same truth, which they see openly, we perceive obscured under the veil of faith. One glance at the world will make us understand, how many nations, reigns and provinces, since the beginning of the world, have lost their claims to this great blessing of the faith, so little understood by the thankless mortals: how many have unhappily flung it aside, after the Lord had conferred it on them in his generous mercy, and how many of the faithful, having without their merit received the gift of faith, neglect and despise it, letting it lie idle and unproductive for the last end to which it is to direct and guide them. It was befitting therefore, that the divine equity should have some recompense for such lamentable loss, and that such an incomparable benefit should find an adequate and proportionate return, as far as is possible from creatures.
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t was befitting that there should be found at least one Creature, in whom the virtue of faith should come to its fullest perfection, as an example and rule for the rest. All this was found in the great faith of the most holy Mary and on account of Her and for Her alone, if there had been no other creature in the world, it would have been most proper, that God should contrive and create the excellent virtue of faith; for according to our way of understanding, Mary by Herself was a sufficient pledge to the divine Providence, that He would find a proper return on the part of man, and that the object of this faith would not be frustrated by the want of correspondence among mortals. The faith of this sovereign Queen was to make recompense for their default and She was to copy the divine prototype of this virtue in its highest perfection. All the other faithful can measure and gauge themselves by the faith of this Mistress; for they will be more or
less faithful, the more or less they approach the perfection of her incomparable faith. Therefore, She was set as Teacher and example of all the believing, including the Patriarchs, Prophets, Apostles and Martyrs and all that have believed or will believe in the Christian doctrines to the end of the world.
Mary existed in the Divine Mind as an Eternal Thought before there were any mothers. She is the Mother. Our supereminent Lady, Mary, possesses much greater rights and titles to be called the Mother of faith and of all the faithful. In her hand is hoisted the standard and ensign of faith for all the believers in the law of grace. First indeed, according to the order of time, was the Patriarch and consequently he was ordained to be the father and head of the Hebrew people: great was his belief in the promises concerning Christ our Lord and in the works of the Most High. Nevertheless incomparably more admirable was the faith of Mary in all these regards and She excels him in dignity. Greater difficulty and incongruity was there that a virgin should Conceive and bring forth, than that an aged and sterile woman should bear fruit; and the patriarch Abraham was not so certain of the sacrifice of Isaac, as Mary was of the inevitable sacrifice of her most holy Son. She is the One, who perfectly believed and hoped in all the mysteries, and She shows to the whole Church, how it must believe in the Most High and in the works of his Redemption. Having thus understood the faith of Mary our Queen, we must admit Her to be the Mother of the faithful and the prototype of the Catholic faith and of holy hope.“ (Book 2, Chapter 3). The inestimable treasure of the virtue of divine faith is hidden to those who have only carnal and earthly eyes; for they do not know how to appreciate and esteem a gift and blessing of such incomparable value. The world was without faith. How many men whom the world has celebrated as great, powerful and wise have precipitated themselves, on account of the want of light of faith, from the darkness of their unbelief into most abominable sins, and thence into the eternal darkness of hell! And they are followed by the bad Christians, who having received the grace and blessing of faith, live as if they had it not in their hearts.
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e should not forget to be thankful for this precious jewel which the Lord has given us. We have continually to exercise this virtue of faith, for it places us near to our last end, after which we strive, and brings is near to the object of our desires and our love. Faith teaches the sure way of eternal salvation, faith is the light that shines in the darkness of this mortal life and pilgrimage; it leads men securely to the possession of the fatherland to which they are wayfaring, if they do not allow it to die out by infidelity and sinfulness. Faith enlivens the other virtues and serves as a nourishment of the just man and a support in his labors. Faith confounds and fills with fear the infidels and the lax Christians in their negligence; for it convinces them in this world of their sin and threatens punishment in the life to come. Faith is powerful to do all things, for nothing is impossible to the believer; faith makes all things attainable and possible. Faith illumines and ennobles the understanding of man, since it directs him in the darkness of his natural ignorance, not to stray from the way, and it elevates him above himself so that he sees and understands with infallible certainty what is far above his powers and assures him of it no less than if he saw it clearly before him. He is thus freed from the gross and vile narrow–mindedness of those who will believe only what they can experience by their own limited natural powers. The soul, as long as it lives in the prison of this corruptible body, is very much circumscribed and limited in its sphere of action by the knowledge drawn from the coarse activity of the senses. Let us appreciate, therefore this priceless treasure of the Catholic faith given us by God, watch over it and practice it in great esteem and reverence. Writing in 1935 about the founding of the Militia Immaculatae back in 1917, St. Maximilian said: The Freemasons in Rome began to demonstrate openly and belligerently against the Church. They placed the black standard of the “Giordano Bruno” under the window of the Vatican. On this standard the archangel St. Michael was depicted lying under the feet of the triumphant Lucifer. At the same time, countless pamphlets were distributed to the people in which the Holy Father was attacked shamefully. “Right then I conceived the idea of organizing an active society to counteract Freemasonry and other slaves of Lucifer.”
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In 1939, writing in the Latin magazine for priests which he began publishing a year earlier, Miles Immaculatae, Saint Maximilian Kolbe said this about the Masonic demonstrations against the Church and Masonry’s evil designs: some enraged hands dared to write such slogans as, ‘Satan will rule on Vatican Hill, and the Pope will serve as his lackey,’ and other such insults. Now these unreasoning acts of hatred toward the Church of Christ and his temporal Vicar were not the inept rantings of a few individual psychopaths, but the manner, way and plan of action deduced from the Masonic rule: Destroy all teaching about God, especially the Catholic teaching. In their plan they use many and various kinds of societies, which under their leadership promote neglect of Divine things and
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the breakdown of morality. This is because the Freemasons follow this principle above all: “Catholicism can be overcome not by logical arguments but by corrupted morals.” And so they overwhelm the souls of men with the kind of literature and arts that will most easily destroy a sense of chaste morals, and foster sordid lifestyles in all phases of human life . . . To bring help to so many unhappy persons, to stabilize innocent hearts so that all can more easily go to the Immaculate Virgin through whom so many graces come down to us, the Militia Immaculatae was established in Rome in 1917. We can imagine what Saint Maximilian Kolbe would say today regarding the widespread promotion of immorality in television, movies, music and the arts; and we can ponder to what extent Freemasonry — which is truly an arm of Satan — has contributed and continues to contribute to the current state of affairs. But we are sure that the humble immaculate Virgin Mary crushes Satan’s proud head (cf. Gen. 3:15).
The Immaculate Virgin Mary will surely crush the greatest heresy of all times which is the heresy of the Anti-Christ: “Who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ ? He is antichrist, that denieth the Father and the Son” (1 John 2: 22). The greatest enemy of the Christian faith is not an army with material weapons, but an army of those who are equipped with ink and pen in order to undermine and pervert the virginal purity of the Catholic faith. In his “The Ballad of the White Horse” (a great poetic meditation on the defeat of the King of Denmark in the year 878 by the King of England Alfred the Great) G.K. Chesterton narrates the following words of a vision of King Alfred: “I know that weeds [destructive errors] shall grow in it faster than men can burn. And though they scatter now and go, in some far century, sad and slow. I have a vision, and I know the heathen shall return. They shall not come with warships. They shall not waste with brands [torches], but books be all their eating, and ink be on their hands. Not with the humour of hunters or savage skill in war, but ordering all things with dead words. What though they come with scroll and pen. By this sign you shall know them, that they ruin and make dark. By God and man dishonoured, by death and life made vain, know ye the old barbarian, the barbarian come again with scroll and pen”.
According to Saint Louis Grignion de Montfort Our Lady needs apostles in order to prepare with Her triumph the final victory of Jesus. These apostolic souls should be instructed by Mary and totally consecrated to Her service, entirely dedicated in Her hands to the mission to snatch the souls from the darkness of the errors and of from the danger of the final perdition, as we are witnessing in our days the immensity of the evil which the powers of darkness have installed in all the corners of the world. When Saint Louis Grignion de Monfort announces the Gospel, it seems that he scandalizes through the harshness of his language in insisting on the Marian slavery. Yet, we are living in a world of slavery. The slavery of money, of power, of lust, of the passions, of the fashion, of the public opinion, of, of the narcotics, of the television, of
Bishop Schneider with some young Portuguese visitors at the Studium conference. the internet, of the pornography. The results are before our eyes: despair, frustration, neurosis, violence, degradation: the price of the sins according to the words of Saint Paul (cf. Rom 6: 23). The original temptation “You shall be as God” (Gen 3: 5) drives men to all kind of slavery under the pretext of freedom. The cry “It’s forbidden to forbid” opened the door to all kind of violence and depravations of the souls and as well of the body. The chains which bind one to Mary as Her servant and slave, are in reality wings according to Saint Louis Grignion de Monfort. Just like Jesus came to us through Mary, so let us go back to Him on His wonderful way he came to us. With these words begins Saint Louis Grignion de Monfort his admirable book, a sacred Code of the end-times, capable to form the apostles, the Saints and the combatants of the last battles which the Apocalypse indicates.
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ishop Fulton Sheen wrote in his book “The World’s First Love: Mary, Mother of God”: “As the mother knows the needs better than the babe, so the Blessed Mother understands our cries and worries and knows them better than we know ourselves.” Pope Leo XIII indicated the prayer of the holy Rosary and the veneration of the powerful Queen of the Holy Rosary as the surest means of help and protection in times of the spiritual danger which causes the spreading of heresies: “It has always been the habit of Catholics in danger and in troublous times to fly for refuge to Mary, and to seek for peace in Her maternal goodness; showing that the Catholic Church has always, and with justice, put all her hope and trust in the Mother of God. And truly the Immaculate Virgin, chosen to be the Mother of God and thereby associated with Him in the work of man’s salvation,
has a favour and power with Her Son greater than any human or angelic creature has ever obtained, or ever can gain. And, as it is Her greatest pleasure to grant Her help and comfort to those who seek Her, it cannot be doubted that She would deign, and even be anxious, to receive the aspirations of the universal Church. This devotion, so great and so confident, to the august Queen of Heaven, has never shone forth with such brilliancy as when the militant Church of God has seemed to be endangered by the violence of heresy spread abroad, or by an intolerable moral corruption, or by the attacks of powerful enemies. Ancient and modern history, and the more sacred annals of the Church, bear witness to public and private supplications addressed to the Mother of God, to the help She has granted in return, and to the peace and tranquility which She had obtained from God. Hence Her illustrious titles of helper, consoler, mighty in war, victorious, and peace-giver. And amongst these is specially to be commemorated that familiar title derived from the Rosary by which the signal benefits She has gained for the whole of Christendom have been solemnly perpetuated.“ (Encyclical Supremi Apostolatus Officio, September 1, 1883). Saint Pius X. encouraged Catholics to take refuge to Our Lady in times of the persecution of the Catholic faith: “We earnestly desire that everyone in the world who is called a Christian will draw near to this love of the Virgin during this time when we honor the Mother of God in a more solemn manner. The persecution of Christ and the most holy religion He founded is now raging bitterly and fiercely. At this present time, therefore, there is a serious danger that many will be deceived by the increasing number of errors and ultimately abandon the Faith. “Therefore let him who thinks he stands
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take heed lest he fall.” (1 Cor. 10:12) More than that, let us all humbly beg God through the intercession of the Mother of God that those who have fallen from the path of truth may repent ....The Church will always be attacked, “for there must be factions, so that those who are approved may be made manifest among you.” (1 Cor. 11:19) The Virgin, however, will always assist us in even the most difficult trials; She will always continue the battle She has been waging ever since Her conception. Thus every day we can say: “Today the head of the ancient serpent was crushed by Her” (Antiphon of the Office of the Immaculate Conception). (Encyclical Ad Diem Illum, February 2, 1904). The Second Vatican Council teaches in the Dogmatic Constitution Lumen gentium, that the Church “imitating the Mother of her Lord, and by the power of the Holy Spirit, keeps with virginal purity the entire faith” (no. 64). Saint Augustine spoke of the Church as a “chaste virgin whom the Apostle speaks of as espoused to Christ (cf. 2 Cor. 11.2). Do, in the inner chambers of your soul, what you view with amazement in the flesh of Mary. He who believes in his heart unto justice conceives Christ; he who with his mouth makes profession of the right faith unto salvation brings forth Christ. Thus, in your souls, let fertility abound and virginity be preserved.” (Sermon 191). From the first centuries of the Church there is preserved a collection of religious poems, called the “Odes of Solomon”. They were written against the spreading of the Christian gnostic doctrine inside the Church. The most dangerous corruption, which Satan spreads, is the corruption of the mind, the corruption of the virginal purity of the Catholic doctrine. The battle between Mary and Satan, between the Church and Satan will last until the end of the time, but Satan will never conquer the purity of the faith Mary and the integrity of the doctrine of the Church, because there will always remain the souls of the simple and pure ones, in the invincible “sensus fidelium” inside the Church. In this poem Our Lady, the Blessed Virgin Mary and Mother of God and the Church are
Chavagnes Studium
seen almost as one person. The Blessed Virgin Mary who is the Mother Church, speaks through the mouth of the Church to the souls who seek refuge and strength in midst of the seduction of the heresy: “Grace was swift and dismissed the Corruptor, and descended upon him to renounce him. And he caused utter destruction before him, and corrupted all his work. And he stood on the peak of a summit and cried aloud from one end of the earth to the other. Then he drew to him all those who obeyed him, for he did not appear as the Evil One. However, the perfect Virgin stood, who was preaching and summoning and saying: O you sons of men, return, and you their daughters, come. And leave the ways of that Corruptor, and approach me. And I will enter into you, and bring you forth from destruction, and make you wise in the ways of truth. Be not corrupted nor perish. Obey me and be saved, for I am proclaiming unto you the grace of God. And through me you will be saved and become blessed. My elect ones have walked with me, and my ways I will make known to them who seek me; and I will promise them my name.” (Ode 33). A true child and a true servant of Mary will always keep intact and pure the holy Catholic faith. To sin against the purity of the Catholic faith will signify to slander the virginal purity of the Blessed ever-Virgin Mary. The sins against the purity of the faith, that means the sins of heresy, spoil the soul and so the soul loses its virginal purity of the mind, of the intellect and as a consequence usually also the chaste purity of the body. The virtue of the purity of the faith is deeply linked with the virtue of chastity. In these our dark times of doctrinal confusion with its deceitful flashes of relativism, naturalism and anthropocentrism often times covered under the mask of “dialogue” or “pastoral accompaniment”, let us often invoke our Lady with confidence and filial love : “Rejoice, O Virgin Mary, for thou alone have destroyed all heresies in the whole world. Mother of God, intercede for us“.
Our objectives
To provide an opportunity for young people to gain a solid intellectual formation through the study of the Liberal Arts in a strong academic and Catholic environment which includes daily participation in the Sacred Liturgy. To provide a degree-level formation to equip young people to teach core subjects to High School pupils aged up to 16, and the humanities to UK Advanced Level or the USA’s AP tests (up to age 18), including French as a foreign language. To provide an ideal pre-seminary grounding in the Liberal Arts for young men considering a vocation to the priesthood. 18
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Meet the teachers at Chavagnes Studium Doctor Tom Conlon talks to Eloquentia about his mathematics teaching in the Studium. Dr Conlon, could you please tell readers how you became involved with Chavagnes, and also tell us about your resarch interests outside of the classroom?
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t a time when the expensive phase of life was drawing to close (i.e. my three children had moved on to university and the mortgage had been paid off ) I was working as an engineer in the telecommunications industry at a period when transferring projects to India was more fashionable than it has since become. To facilitate such a transfer, my employers were seeking voluntary redundancies on quite generous terms. So, basically to see what else life might bring I decide to accept their offer. As immediate activities, while thinking what to do in the longer term, I re-established links with subjects I had been interested in much earlier in my life and did A level Latin and German. I saw the advertisement for Chavagnes in the Catholic Herald and thinking that this was the sort of thing I might do for a bit, I responded. I had not explicitly intended to stay involved with Chavagnes for as long as I have but that is how things have
Otto von Guericke, Father of German Experimental Physics
worked out, and I am now beginning my fifteenth year of association with this interesting place. Before I began working in the computing industry, I had done a PhD in mathematical logic at Bristol and consequently have had a particular interest in the foundation of mathematics and a more broadly focussed one in the foundational ideas of the physical sciences generally. Serendipity played a large role in the weaving together of these interests with my linguistic ones. In the summer of 2006 Theresa and I spent a couple of weeks touring the old DDR, visiting places whose names still resonate in the intellectual and political history of Europe - Berlin, Potsdam, Brandenburg, Wittenberg, Jena, Magdeburg and Gottingen. At Magdeburg we visited the Otto von Guericke museum as one of the tourist attractions of the city and on the day we left, I bought, simply as a souvenir, a facsimile copy of his opus magnum Experiment Nova Magdeburgica de Vacuo Spatio. Browsing this book a little later, it struck me that here was a subject I could engage with. Von Guericke, who in Germany enjoys the soubriquet "Father of German Experimental Physics", was a substantial figure in scientific history about whom very little had been written in English. The materials on which to base a biography were almost entirely in Latin and German. Von Guericke lived in the generation before Newton and, quite apart from his own enormous experimental advances, was a key contributor to the forging of ideas that underpinned science for next two hundred years. All these factors made him a very attractive subject and my book Thinking about Nothing was completed and published in 2011.
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erendipity continued to play its part in steering my interests. Some 15 years before Guericke's own book appeared in 1672 the Jesuit Gaspar Schott had, with von Guericke's full approval, brought von Guericke's work to international attention and particularly to that of the circle around Robert Boyle who immediately repeated and extended von Guericke's experiments. I had read most of what had been published about Schott in English and was mildly interested and reasonably knowledgeable about him. Serendipity intervened when, on a casual browse on Google, I cam across a note by the Oxford historian Sir Noel Malcolm, on his researches in an archive in Leeuwarden in the Netherlands. Noel was interested in Philip Ernest Vegelin, a Calvinist Dutch courtier and diplomat with connections to the Parisian scientific circle around Marin Mersenne. As an obiter dictum, he remarked that the archive contained some twenty letters from Schott to Vegelin, which, as these had not been mentioned in anything I had read about Schott, fired my interest. I knew from contacts in Magdeburg that the German expert on Schott was Emeritus Professor Hans J. Vollrath, whose career as a professor of mathematical education at the university of Wurzburg, followed exactly in Schott's footsteps at a distance of some three and a half centuries. I got in touch with Hans and was surprised to learn that he knew nothing about these letters but was very interested. With some guidance from Sir Noel and the very willingly given assistance of the archivist at Leeuwarden, we were able to obtain digital copies of the Schott-Vegelin correspondence and began working on it with Hans. We soon extended the project to a pro-
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gram of transcribing, translating and annotating all of Schott's extant correspondence. Over the next three years we worked through a total of 176 letters - about half from manuscripts mostly in Latin but some in Italian and a couple in German - and the other half, all in Latin, from contemporary printed sources. The project proved more wide ranging than we had initially anticipated. For instance the manuscripts came from archives at Basel, Leeuwarden, Erlangen, Groningen, Munich and in Rome, from the Gregorian and the Archivum Romanum Societatis Jesu. Some of the printed sources were also elusive - the most unlikely one being an 18th century compilation of letters sent to the Danish Royal family in the preceding centuries. (Schott, it transpired, had been the mathematics teacher of an illegitimate scion of this family). Hans was primarily interested in German publication and we published two books in German on the various aspects of the correspondence and an article in the journal Archivum Historicum Societatis Jesu. For me the main publication aim was to have the correspondence appear as a catalogue in Oxford's University's Early Modern Letters Online database,maintained by the History Department. This aim was achieved early in 2016. My collaboration with Hans Vollrath continues and we are now working on the von Guericke correspondence. We have, in the context of Schott, already transcribed and translated a significant number of important letters which are in Latin and about his scientific interests. Owing to the bombing of Magdeburg in 1945, much of the original manuscripts of his correspondence, concerning his political and diplomatic career, have been lost and today only about 200 letters, which were completely or partially transcribed by prewar German scholars, survive. Von Guericke wrote mostly in early modern German which is not an easy read even for a German native speaker. Finally serendipity has again recently woven an unexpected connection between my interests. Last year I was asked to give a course on Euclid Books 1-6 for Newman College Ireland. To prepare this I read the first sections of T. L. Heath's monumental work on Euclid quite closely. At around the same time my Ph.D supervisor was dying. I had been his friend for 40 years and visited him regularly in his last stroke-afflicted years. After he died in August of this year, I wrote a Wikipedia article
A meeting of minds ... Dr Thomas Conlon in conversation with Denis Boyles at the Chavagnes Studium.
(John Penn Mayberry) seeking to explain his ideas about the foundations of mathematics to a wider audience. John was a mathematical philosopher and if I had to condense his philosophy of mathematics into one sentence, it would be "the notion of potential infinity is dispensable in mathematics."This is very radical stance given that this notion, first expounded in Aristotle's Physics, underwrites the natural numbers which appear to be at the very heart of mathematical pedagogy as well of the practice of working mathematicians. Being serendipitously familiar with Euclid Book V, it occurred to me that the very first place where this notion is seriously used is in Euclid's handling of ratios in Book V. Since I realised this, I have been working on an article to show that Euclid could have obtained the geometric theorems of Book VI without recourse to his use of the potential infinite in his treatment of ratios.
2. You are teaching a course on Euclid at the Chavagnes Studium. What is the significance of Euclid to young students today, and how does this study of early mathematics fit into the wider picture of Liberal Arts? I read somewhere recently that Euclid, like Vergil, fell from the hand of its author on to the desk of the school boy as an evergreen classic. Vergil hangs on, but Euclid sadly lost this status in the early part of the 20th century. I don't think anyone would read Euclid today as their primary instruction in mathematics. So a student today only sees Euclid as refracted through the prism of their own exposure to modern mathematical pedagogy. For them reading Euclid is one road to intellectual maturity - of realising what they have learnt in an infantile uncritical way was not obvious to the most able minds of the past and to appreciate how the ideas that underpin mathematics were forged in a long
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historical process. Also, to be a first hand witness of the rigour and ingenuity deployed in Euclid is to see with one's own eyes one aspect of the coruscating achievements of ancient Greece which should make one humble but also proud to be an heir to the world of classical antiquity. If the aim of a Liberal Arts education should be to expose students to the best that has been written and thought and to give them over arching perspectives on who we are as a civilisation and a culture and the influences that formed us, then Euclid's claim to be a component of such an education speaks for itself. Dr Conlon and students share a geometrical joke. 3. How are the current Studium students responding? Is it a fruitful exercise? (b) An appreciation of some basic positions in the philosophy of mathematics - especially those of Plato, ArI think this question would be better directed to them istotle and Kant, rather than to me. My general impression however is (c) An appreciation of the remarkable subsequent histhat once they have managed the conceptual reorien- tory of problems first raised in Euclid e.g. the "squartation necessary to appreciate Euclid's perspective - ing" of rectilinear figures and the impossibility of e.g. that a line does not HAVE a length, as we auto- "squaring" the circle, the scope, the limitations of Eumatically think today, but simply IS a magnitude to clidean straight edge and compass constructions and be compared with other similar magnitudes but not the impossibility of the trisection of an angle by Euwith dissimilar ones - they find the course interesting. clidean means, the development of non-Euclidean I think the historical and philosophical aspects of the geometry through denial of Geometric Postulate 5. course recommended themselves more strongly than (d) A reverence and admiration for the culture and the technical details of proofs of propositions. people that produced civilisation-forming work of this calibre 4. What would you expect students of your course to (e) Finally, some knowledge of good, old fashioned take away from it, when they have finished? plane geometry.
I would make the following, perhaps too aspirational, list in no particular order. (a) A general sense of how Euclid's thirteen books are structured.
Dr Conlon teaches Mathematics at the Chavagnes Studium. His work on Otto von Guericke and the vacuum, ‘Thinking about Nothing’, is available from Amazon.
“We call those studies liberal, then, which are worthy of a free man: they are those through which virtue and wisdom are either practised or sought and by which the body and mind is disposed to the best things. “ Pier Paolo Vergerio, The Character and Studies Befitting a Free-Born Youth (c. 1402.)
At Chavagnes the study of the humanities is in the great tradition of liberal education. This kind of education is not simply a dry theory, nor is it restricted to those subjects now named humanities, although its principles are mostly clearly seen in our teaching of these disciplines. Liberal education is the transmission of our great western cultural patrimony to our young. But it is more than that: its aim is to make every student his own man: free and capable of using his reason, fit to take part in the “great conversation” begun in fifth-century Athens and continuing to this day. 22
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What is Chavagnes? 2009, including an inter-disciplinary conference on the theme of “Mary at the heart of culture,” on the occasion of the Tercentenary of the death of St Louis Marie Grignon de Montfort. From September 2016 our new BA Honours in the Liberal Arts, with French language and literature, provides an unprecedented opportunity for young people in Europe to study the Liberal Arts in the Catholic tradition. Initially, we are operating the Studium as a natural extension of the College for boys which has flourished for the last fifteen years. This means that the Studium for the time being welcomes only young men, either those who have already completed their secondary education at Chavagnes, or applicants from outside. Admission for young ladies (to the Studium) is envisaged once the programme has become more firmly established.
The Venerable Louis Marie Baudouin, declared Venerable by Benedict XVI.
The Chavagnes Studium has developed this new degree programme in partnership with ICES (www.ices.fr), the Catholic university of the Vendée, and is also assisted in academic questions by a distinguished International Advisory Board.
O
n the site of a 13th century Benedictine priory, in a small French town in the Vendée, Chavagnes International College is the continuation of a junior seminary founded by the Venerable Louis Marie Baudouin in 1802 and granted a royal charter by King Charles X in 1826.
Chavagnes International College is a not-for-profit organisation under French law (Association de la Loi de 1901), founded in 2001. The Diocesan Bishop, Monseigneur Alain Castet and the Diocesan Director of Catholic Education are both members of the Board. A separate governing body (Association de la Loi de 1901) has recently been created for the Studium, in It has been delivering a general academic programme order to comply with the requirements of civil and to boys aged 11-18 through the medium of English canon law. since 2002 and has successfully prepared boys for entrance to Oxford, Cambridge and other prestigious The College (including both the School and the Stuuniversities in Europe and America. dium) is also supported by the Cardinal Allen Trust, a UK registered charity (No. 1139044), founded in The Chavagnes Studium is a centre for research and 2010 to foster the development of the Catholic edustudy of the Liberal Arts in the Catholic tradition and cation apostolate at Chavagnes. has organised various conferences and courses since
Visit us online at
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A child of Mar y will never perish Homily of Bishop Athanasius Schneider, OCR.
Delivered during the summer conference
In honour of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Our Lady, the Mother of God and our Mother
A mother ’s heart is the most “ beautiful work of God in the
Dear brothers and sisters! In this Holy Mass we are venerating the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Mother of God and our Mother, and all Christian generations had called her with this filial and tender name “Our Lady”. To invoke and to venerate Our Lady is a privilege and a duty of every Christian. Because the Holy Spirit spoke through the mouth of Mary in her Magnificat: “All generations shall call me blessed” (Luke 1: 48).
We do venerate Mary, because God had venerated her in a most sublime manner, when He had preserved her from any stain of the sin because God wanted to prepare for His Only Begotten Son a most worthy temple, in which He would be conceived, nine month dwelling and be nourished from the immaculate body of Mary and be really and yet virginally born from Mary. The entire heaven greeted and venerated Mary though the mouth of the Archangel Gabriel: “Blessed art thou among women” (Luke 1: 28).
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When we celebrate the Holy Sacrifice of Mass in a Catholic church, we are in the house of God, in the house of Jesus Christ. To be in the house of Jesus Christ means to be in the house of Mary, for mother and son can not be separated. Where is Mary, there is always Jesus. Saint Louis Marie Grignion de Montfort said: “You never praise or honour Mary without Mary’s praising and honouring God with you. Mary is altogether relative to God; and indeed, I might well call Her the relation to God. She only exists with reference to God. She is the echo of God that says nothing, repeats nothing, but God. If you say `Mary’, She says `God’. St. Elizabeth praised Mary and called Her blessed because She had believed. Mary, the faithful echo of God, at once intoned: `Magnificat anima mea Dominum’; `My soul magnifies the Lord’ (Lk 1: 46). What
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temporal life and the heart of Our Lady is the most beautiful work of God in all creation..
”
Mary did then, She does daily now. When we praise Her, love Her, honour Her or give anything to Her, it is God who is praised, God who is loved, God who is glorified, and it is to God that we give, through Mary and in Mary” (Treatise on True Devotion, n. 225). Mary is the true mother of Jesus Christ and Jesus is true God and at the same time true man. From the first moment in which the Eternal Son of God began to be man in womb of Mary, He didn’t cease to remain always true and eternal God. The Incarnation of the Son of God did not diminish the plenitude of His Godhead. For this reason we call Mary not only Mother of Jesus or Mother of Christ, but we call her in a more appropriated manner Mother of God, because Jesus was always God. Mary, the Mother of God is also our true spiritual mother. Saint Louis Marie Grignion de Montfort gave this admirable teaching about the maternity of Our Lady towards us: “Just as in natural and bodily generation there is a father and a mother, so in the supernatural and spiritual generation there is a father who is God and a mother who is Mary. All true children of God have God for their father and Mary for their mother; anyone who does not have Mary for his mother, does not have God for his father. This is why heretics who hate, despise or ignore the Blessed Virgin, do not have God for their father though
they arrogantly claim they have, because they do not have Mary for their mother. Indeed if they had her for their mother they would love and honour her as good and true children naturally love and honour the mother who gave them life. […] Jesus is still as much as ever the fruit of Mary, as heaven and earth repeat thousands of times a day: “Blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.” It is therefore certain that Jesus is the fruit and gift of Mary for every single man who possesses him, just as truly as he is for all mankind. Consequently, if any of the faithful have Jesus formed in their heart they can boldly say, “It is thanks to Mary that what I possess is Jesus her fruit, and without her I would not have him.” We can attribute more truly to her what Saint Paul said of himself, “I am in labour again with all the children of God until Jesus Christ, my Son, is formed in them to the fullness of his age.” Saint Augustine, surpassing himself as well as all that I have said so far, affirms that in order to be conformed to the image of the Son of God all the predestinate, while in the world, are hidden in the womb of the Blessed Virgin where they are protected, nourished, cared for and developed by this good Mother, until the day she brings them forth to a life of glory after death, which the Church calls the birthday of the just. This is indeed a mystery of grace unknown to the reprobate and little known even to the predestinate! 34. God the Holy Spirit wishes to fashion his chosen ones in and through Mary” (Treatise on True Devotion, no. 30. 33-34). Our Lady gave birth to Jesus without physical pains, without physical injuries, She gave birth to Him in supreme joy, for She gave birth to the Light of the world, to the true joy of the world, to the Saviour of the world. To us, the members of Christ’s Mystical Body, She gave birth in great spiritual pains standing beneath the Cross of Christ (cf. II Vatican Council, Lumen gentium, no. 58). Therefore She is also the sorrowful Mother, whose Immaculate Heart is pierced by the sword of the suffering for the sake of us, her spiritual children and all humankind.
We all have place in the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Let us accept Mary in the house of our life. Let us choose Her consciously as our beloved mother. Let us entrust to Her all our faith, all our worries, all our petitions. Maria has a heart, She has a maternal heart, an immaculate heart, but also a heart pierced with the word of immense sorrows. Her heart is such a wide as to embrace all humanity. It is the will of God to hear our prayers and to grant us His graces through Mary. Saint Bonaventura said: God could create a more beautiful earth and a more beautiful heaven, but he could not create a more beautiful mother than Mary, the Immaculate Mother of His only Begotten Son. A heart of a mother is the most beautiful work of God in the temporal life and the heart of Our Lady is the most beautiful work of God in all creation. And this Mother Mary is also our mother, is mine and your mother. Go to Her, venerate Her, love Her, ask Her. A servant and a child of Mary will never perish (servus et filius Mariae numquam peribit). O Mary, Our Lady, o Mother of God and our beloved Mother! Help us to love more Jesus, help us to be more courageous witnesses and confessors of our Catholic faith. From all our heart we want to be always true children of Mary. Help every one of us! O Mother of the Church help the Church in this time to overcome the current enormous and unprecedented crisis of faith! O Mary, you can help us, because you are the Mother of God and you must help us, because you are our sweet Mother. Amen.
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Why Liberal Arts at Chavagnes? James Battye
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s the boys return home and the school closes for the Christmas holidays, so ends the first term of the Chavagnes Studium. And it has been an exceedingly fruitful one, filled with discovery and discussion, and one from which I have emerged stimulated and enlightened. During the term, we have been discussing the origins of Western civilisation, beginning with Archaic Greece, going right through to the rise of Alexander the Great. We have examined Greece from all intellectual angles. In literature, we have studied the epic poems of Homer, the Iliad and the Odyssey through to the innovations made by the Greek tragedians: Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides. We have considered the groundbreaking work of Euclid in the field of Mathematics, as well as the work of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, and the ways in which such thinkers enriched philosophical thought in Greek civilisation, and their ramifications throughout the history of Philosophy. We have looked at the development of Athenian democracy; how it was formed, and how it has been subsumed into the greater political landscape of the West today. Scepticism about the study of the past and of the passing down of tradition seems commonplace, especially amongst my generation. I hear them ask repeatedly: ‘Why should we concern ourselves with the actions of civilisations that died out centuries ago? Of what practical use is it?’ I must admit, I am guilty myself of such scepticism, and before I arrived, I fear I would not have been able to answer such questions with a suitable degree of sincerity. Coming to Chavagnes to study Liberal Arts has affirmed for me the true value of the past. It is what we glean from the past that at least clarifies, if not justifies, our position, and illuminates our future.
James Battye in a Mathematics tutorial with Dr Conlon.
At Chavagnes, the Holy Mass is central. It provides a focus, and serves as a daily reminder of how to lead our lives as Catholic gentlemen. This latter phrase, ‘Catholic gentlemen’, appears problematic to the majority of society, and not merely because of the inclusion of the word ‘Catholic’. C.S. Lewis reflected upon this in his preface to Mere Christianity, stating: ‘To be honourable and courteous and brave is of course a far better thing than to have a coat of arms. But it is not the same thing. Worse still, it is not a thing everyone will agree about. To call a man "a gentleman" in this new, refined sense, becomes, in fact, not a way of giving information about him, but a way of praising him: to deny that he is "a gentleman" becomes simply a way of insulting him.’ I think that the aforementioned scepticism, particularly in the modern world, about tradition is to blame. Lewis’ emphasis upon our redefinition of the word ‘gentleman’ to suit contemporary standards has culminated in our loss of sight of the meaning of the word altogether. As these contemporary standards seem to eschew tradition as a means of facilitating, if not ensuring, ‘progress’, the traditions of the Church are now dismissed. It is only through the study of Liberal Arts in the Catholic tradition that we appreciate what my uncle, Mr. Jonathan Battye, would call ‘the epistemological value of tradition’, and this must form the basis of social progress. This is what shall motivate me as we approach the next term and the new year, refreshed and reinvigorated; prepared to face what lies ahead, already armed with at least a little of the wisdom of our forefathers. James Battye is a student at Chavagnes Studium.
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Life at Chavagnes When a multitude of young men, keen, open-hearted, sympathetic, and observant, as young men are, come together and freely mix with each other, they are sure to learn one from another, even if there be no one to teach them; the conversation of all is a series of lectures to each, and they gain for themselves new ideas and views, fresh matter of thought, and distinct principles for judging and acting, day by day. Blessed John Henry Newman, Idea of a University, Discourse 6. Of course, at Chavagnes there is a tough and interesting course of studies to follow, and highly qualified teachers to see you through it, but the best lessons are those that students will learn together, in a spirit of Christian friendship. The experience of spending two years of early adult life with other like-minded Catholic gentlemen can be a life-changing experience. These young students of today are going to change hearts and minds in tomorrow’s world and form the next generation of Catholic leaders.
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Robert Burns for Catholics: Singing Auld Lang Syne with the Angels Ferdi McDermott (From a speech delivered at Chavagnes, January 2014)
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he 25th January, has been a deeply anchored part of my personal calendar since I became a student of Edinburgh University nearly twenty years ago. That night is the night of heavily distilled Scottishness that commemorates the nation’s most famous and beloved bard, a night known throughout the world simply as Burns Night. Robert Burns, known by Scots as Rabbie Burns, was born into a farming family at Alloway in Ayrshire in 1759. He died in Dumfries at the early age of 37. During his short life he took the Scottish literary world by storm, and secured a place for himself in history and in legend. Every year, lovers of Scotland throughout the world mark the 25th of January, the day of his birth (in 1759) with an evening of song, poetry, speeches, comradeship, food and what he affectionately called Scotch Drink: Gie him strong Drink until he wink, That's sinking in despair; An' liquor guid to fie his bluid, That's prest wi' grief an' care; There let him bowse an' deep carouse, Wi' bumpers flowing o'er, Till he forgets his loves or debts, An' minds his griefs no more. Solomon's Proverbs, xxxi. 6,7.[1] Of course, there are other occasions where people praise each other, celebrate their friendship and let the emotions flow freely; some dry, and others not. I remember experiencing something like this many times at a certain kind of prayer meeting, and similar scenes can be witnessed in Glasgow pubs on most nights of the week. But there is something particularly striking about a setting which combines this with the solidity of ceremony and tradition. It is a noble thing, I think, to confer a sense of the sacred on such a celebration of comradeship and gratitude. It reminds us of the deep dignity of the simplest of our emotions. It does the religious man no harm to remember that these things are always and everywhere sacred, even for non-religious people.
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Robert Burns, Soctland’s national poet.
After all, a man’s a man, for a’ that, as the Bard would have it. God created men to live in friendship and good cheer, and Rabbie Burns famously saw through the pessimism of Calvinism to the Catholic truth that all men, places and things have an intrinsic goodness about them that we should try to love. Somehow January seems just the right time for this kind of consolation. It is such a long month, and in this part of the world much colder and darker than December. The solace in winter that Burns Night undeniably brings is probably the only reason why, in modern times, the Scots managed to resist the public celebration of Christmas for so long; until the nineteen seventies, in fact. They already had one winter feast of loving, forgiving and remembering the poor. Why spend good money on another? (You know how careful the Scots are with their money.) Thirty years after Scotland started celebrating Christmas publicly, we have managed to spoil it (or at least our public observance of it) in Scotland and everywhere else. But the potential for genuine cheer that Burns Night possesses remains mysteriously intact, and so for any of you with the scantiest claim to Caledonian kinship, I recommend its observance without reserve. Burns and his poetry evoke all the joys and sufferings of raw humanity, and with the help of the whisky that accompanies the other traditional fare for the evening – haggis (a surprisingly delicious sausage made of minced sheep offal, oats, onion and pepper), turnips and potatoes – the event, with all its speeches, laughter and song brings people closer together as they reflect on what makes us human and why, despite its hardships, life is always worth living. (Burns had, incidentally, no time for those who would disagree with this sentiment. In his On a Suicide, he harshly quipped: Earth'd up, here lies an imp o' hell, /Planted by Satan's dibble;
There's nought but care on ev'ry han', In ev'ry hour that passes, O: What signifies the life o' man, An' 'twere na for the lasses, O. Green grow, &c. … For you sae douce, ye sneer at this; Ye're nought but senseless asses, O: The wisest man the warl' e'er saw, He dearly lov'd the lasses, O. Green grow, &c. Burns Night at Chavagnes
/Poor silly wretch, he's damned himsel', /To save the Lord the trouble. ) … Scottish culture is about heavy and unsubtle things: the pipes, haggis, potatoes, predestination. Even the nation's favourite drink, the Uisce beatha (water of life) can be very un-nuanced in its effects on man. The architecture too is heavy and solid. Perhaps all this heaviness owes something also to Scotland’s historic poverty, geography, climate and the rugged closeness of its people to the harsh realities of existence. It is in such circumstances that sometimes the purest and most enduring expressions of human emotions are forged. Because with those bass notes reverberating in our bones – the drone of the pipes, the swell of the ocean, the reality of constant wet weather, the closeness to death and illness - we are apt to express deep emotion with great facility. Millions living today have (even many times) sung these words of Burns: “Now here’s a hand, my trusty friend; and gie’s a hand o’ thine … We’ll tak’ a cup of kindness yet for the sake of auld lang syne.” And that moment for all of us, I wager, has often been one of great emotion. But Burns’ passion was not just reserved for brotherly love. His fascination with the ladies was a constant leitmotif of his short life. It puts me in mind of a scandalous thing an old priest of the Isles once said to me, as I enjoyed his Gaelic hospitality: “you’ll find us all a bit Jansenist, but at least we enjoy our falls from grace.” A similarly bracing message, about the ladies this time, is found in one of Burns’ most popular songs: Green grow the rashes, O; Green grow the rashes, O; The sweetest hours that e'er I spend, Are spent amang the lasses, O.
Auld Nature swears, the lovely dears Her noblest work she classes, O: Her prentice han' she try'd on man, An' then she made the lasses, Burns fathered twelve children by four women, including nine by his wife Jean Armour. Seven of his children were illegitimate, including the first four by Jean before they were married in 1788. So the man knew his subject. The poet himself analyses “the various species of young men” whom he divides into two kinds: “the grave and the merry”. The former are either “goaded on by the love of money,” or wish only “to make a figure in the world." He much prefers "the jovial lads, who have too much fire and spirit to have any settled rule of action, but without much deliberation follow the strong impulses of nature”. “I do not see,” he continues, “that the turn of mind and pursuits of such a one as the following verses describe - who steals thro' the vale of life, amusing himself with every little flower that fortune throws in his way, is, in the least, more inimical to the sacred interests of piety and virtue. I do not see but he may gain heaven as well as he who, straining straight forward, and perhaps bespattering all about him, gains some of life's little eminences, where, after all, he can only see and be seen a little more conspicuously than he whom in the pride of his heart, he is apt to term the poor, indolent devil he has left behind him.”[2] But perhaps we will hear more of this anon, when we come to toast the lassies. Burns is a proto-Romantic. His poetry is in clear continuity with the medieval machars of Scotland, professional poets who composed poetry to mark the highs and lows of everyday life for recitation to their noble patrons. He shared with later Romantics such as Scott a nostalgic affection for his country’s medieval heritage, an attitude which went some way to healing the historic distrust for all things Catholic. Burns, in common with most of his generation, certainly perceived Catholicism as ‘other’ and laying no particular claim on his universe, but he had Catholic friends and admirers.
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In a day when most of Scotland’s chattering classes were content with the new appellation ‘North British’, Burns made a stand for the defence of Scottishness and what he saw as the Scottish virtues of honesty, simplicity and natural nobility: What though on hamely fare we dine, Wear hoddin grey, and a' that. Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine, A Man's a Man for a' that. For a' that, and a' that, Their tinsel show, and a' that; The honest man, though e'er sae poor, Is king o' men for a' that. [3] He bewailed the fact that Scotland was content to sell her culture and soul for English gold: The English steel we could disdain, Secure in valor's station; But English gold has been our bane, Such a parcel of rogues in a nation! [4] One of Burns’ most enthusiastic admirers was Dr John Geddes, Catholic bishop and Vicar Apostolic for the Lowlands. He was the elder brother of the biblical critic and priest Alexander Geddes, also known to Burns. John and Alexander Geddes knew something of the harsh, rural life that Burns had lived: the two brothers had been junior seminarians at Scalan, a tiny (illegal) house of formation near Glenlivet for lads destined for the priesthood. They wore the kilt, lived on salmon and porridge, and washed in an icy stream each morning, in a valley surrounded by moutains where, according to Alexander, the sun never shone.
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Burns first met Dr John Geddes at the house of Lord Monboddo in Edinburgh during the winter of 1786-7. Geddes took an interest in the poet's work, and was responsible for persuading five seminaries, including that of the Scots College at Valladolid (of which he had once been Rector) to subscribe to the Edinburgh Edition of Burns’ work in 1787. Burns took Geddes's own copy, bound with blank sheets for taking notes, with him on his Highland tour, and delayed returning it for two years. Writing to Geddes from Ellisland on 3rd February 1789, the poet apologised for having kept the book so long: 'You will see in your book, which I beg your pardon for detaining so long, that I have been turning my lyre on the banks of the Nith. Some larger poetic plans that are floating in my imagination, or partly put in execution, I shall impart to you when I have the pleasure of meeting with you...' Letters of Bishop Geddes about Burns were recently discovered in a collection held by the Scottish Catholic Archives[5]. They give us an interesting snapshot of Burns' activity in Edinburgh and Ayrshire, at a time when, although on the brink of literary success, he was still effectively on the run from the parents of his future wife, by whom he had already sired two illegitimate children. His star was clearly rising nonetheless. In one letter, Bishop Geddes writes: “Burns, with whom I am intimately acquainted, though he was only Hireman to his elder Brother until August 1786 and never before that time master of ten pounds: yet read a great deal having been for many years a subscriber to a circulating library at Kilmarnock; had a little chest for holding books at the fireside, and on the Sundays, if the weather was good, instead of going to the Kirk, went to a wood with some Poet[ry]. Amendments were offered to him by
Dr Gregory and others; but he would not adopt one of them; because he said; he was to publish his own Poetry. The Excuses he made to me for the Irreligion and some Licentiousness in the book were, that he only attracted the wild notions of the Religionists in the west, and that he had done good [and] that when he published his Poems he was not acquainted with that, [but of that] I am not a competent judge.” In many letters throughout 1787 Geddes introduced, with some considerable zeal, more and more of his acquaintances to the work of Burns: “You will have heard of the Ayrshire Poet Mr Burns, who was a ploughman until a few months ago. His poems have been lately printed here, and the subscribers were near to three thousand: he has truly a great genius and might improve himself much, as he is only twenty eight years of Age: but, I think, he will not be easily advised: he is one of those, who think for themselves, which to some degrees is laudable. I have been twice in company with him, and we are great friends.” Another manuscript in the collection highlights Burns’ discreet Jacobite sympathy that has become synonymous with most Scottish patriotism, and his nostalgia for the Stewart (Catholic) kings. “Wrote by Burns on the window of an Inn at Stirling at the sight of Stirling castle: Here once the Noble Stewarts reigned and laws to Scotia well ordaind But now unroofd their palace stands Their sceptre swayd by other hands In idiot race to honour lost who knows them best despise them most” Burns was a fine satirist. His victims included the political and religious hypocrites of his day. When Burns was made to do public penance for three weeks, after his being admonished by the Kirk for his dalliance with Jean Armour (whom he later married), he recast in immortal Scots the Pharisee’s prayer of our Lord’s parable, featuring a drunken and debauched elder who has a lively appreciation of God’s mercy for himself but not for others. The elder Holy Willie praises himself and God in the same breath: I bless and praise Thy matchless might, When thousands Thou hast left in night, That I am here afore Thy sight, For gifts an' grace A burning and a shining light To a' this place.[6] The irony is delicious; and the conceited attitude it
commemorates is - we must admit - a familiar part of everyone’s experience of religion. Of course, we are always ready to see Holy Wille in anyone else but ourselves. But Burns was aware enough of his own wretchedness, and frequently begs Heaven for mercy. He also, famously, asks for self-awareness: “O wad some Power the giftie gie us To see ourselves as other see us.”[7] A journalist visiting us a couple of years ago was bemused to hear one of our boys talk about St Burns. The poor innocent had assumed that with all the fuss we made of the man he must surely be a saint. For my part, I certainly pray to meet old Rabbie one day, with his ‘enthusiastic heart of love’ alongside his generous and courteous friend, Bishop John, if – that is – I am forgiven all my sins as I pray the Power above has forgiven them theirs. The Bard made these verses for the family of a Minister whose hospitality he once enjoyed. Turning to the angels, we can make them our own: for all those we have loved and lost, and all those we have loved and kept, over the years. The beauteous, seraph sister-bandWith earnest tears I prayThou know'st the snares on ev'ry hand, Guide Thou their steps alway. When, soon or late, they reach that coast, O'er Life's rough ocean driven, May they rejoice, no wand'rer lost, A family in Heaven![8] [1] ie. “Give strong drink unto him that is ready to perish, and wine unto those that be of heavy hearts. Let him drink, and forget his poverty, and remember his misery no more.” Proverbs xxvi 6,7. [2] Burns’ 1st Commonplace Book (April 1783 - October 1785) [3] For A’ That and A’ That [4] Such a Parcel of Rogues in a Nation [5] Facsimiles of some of Geddes’ letters can be consulted on line at http://www.catholic-heritage.net/ [6] Holy Willie’s Prayer [7] In To a Louse, where the poet records the shame of a lady in church who is unaware that a large louse is crawling around on her new hat. [8] From O Thou Dread Power Ferdi McDermott is Principal of Chavagnes International College and Rector of the Chavagnes Studium.
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Y|z{à à{x zÉÉw y|z{à Chavagnes ... for 21st century Renaissance men.
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