THE BEACON OCT 2012
Portsmouth Abbey School 285 Cory’s Lane Portsmouth, RI 02871 (401) 683-2000 www.portsmouthabbey.org
ISSUE 1
FALL ISSUE
Islamic Protest By Eden Franz Staff Writer
Dom Julian By Doug Lebo Staff Writer
A
t six-and-a-half years old, Dom Julian began his life as a Roman Catholic by being baptized in a church in Oxford, England. His father had recently converted from the Church of England, and gave his son a choice: to be baptized as a Roman Catholic, or to remain an Anglican. He freely chose to be baptized as a Catholic. It was in that same sacristy, almost nineteen years later, that Father Julian was ordained a priest. Looking back at his sixty years as a priest—and sixty-nine years as a monk here at Portsmouth—at Downside Abbey and Worth Priory (now Worth Abbey) in Oxford, England, Father Julian remarked very strongly on one thing. Before becoming a priest, he was convinced that after hearing confession, he would “feel like a sewer.” However, after giving out many a ‘Hail Mary’ and ‘Our Father’ he was overwhelmed by the exact opposite feeling: his singular impression from the priesthood has been the overwhelming goodness of the human spirit. People’s confessions of their sins, for which they are truly repentant, lead him to the belief that the human spirit is truly tenacious in goodness and love. With little space to be wasted, the monks’ rooms lack any frivolous effects. Father Julian’s room is no exception. An Orioles baseball cap and an ancient desktop computer sit
on his desk, and he can often be found typing at the old console. An avid poet, Father Julian’s own poems, in a collection titled There Shines Forth Christ, are floating around several locations here on campus. He has also written books of prose: one on Benedict’s Rule, and another co-authored on leading a Christian life of love. Fluent in Italian, Father Julian has translated a few books from their Italian prose, but loves best Dante in the original. With such love for the written word, it makes sense that Dom Julian loves to tell stories, as any Abbey student who has heard one of his homilies knows. Arriving here at Portsmouth in September 1943, he knew both Dom Leonard Sargent, the founder of the monastery, and Dom Hugh Diman, the founder of the school. With many stories of driving Father Hugh to his sister’s house in Providence for Sunday lunch, and quite a few of him as headmaster of both Portsmouth Priory and Diman Vocational in Fall River, Massachusetts, Father Julian seems never to run out of history. The monastery farm, its workers, and the old monks who sat in the same church we do today evoke nostalgia in the hearts of anyone who hears their stories. At first, they sound like any old Christian tall tale with a glaring sense of morality, but as they go on, they become more
and more relatable, until you realize that they are much the same as the stories we like to tell today. Sitting down with Father Julian after Sunday Mass was at first quite daunting. The task of interviewing this man, who has had such a long history here at Portsmouth, was certainly an intimidating one. However, after we sat under the huge beech next to the church, I began to feel that I was not talking to a set of vestments on a mannequin. There is so much more to Dom Julian than the green surplice and the glasses on a string. Walking away after a half hour, I felt like I had gained quite a bit more than what I brought to the table. Like all the monks, Father Julian leads a quiet life. He represents for us one of the most endearing traits of the Abbey: the timeless fusion of the old and new. Even with Chase pulling into the back of the dorms, internet in Study Hall, and Tuck Dances, the Abbey somehow still retains a sense of order in its oldest traditions. The monks are still here, and we all go to church on Sundays. Father Julian may have arrived here over half a century ago, but he is still a person—he just has more stories to tell than we do. Now it’s just up to us to ask for them.
Christopher Ogden By Julia Slupska Staff Writer
C
hristopher Ogden, one of the Abbey’s most distinguished alumni, has travelled to 140 countries and reported during the terms of six American presidents. He also came to give an Elizabeth Seton lecture for the school last Friday. He summarized a few of the high points of his career, describing some of the most interesting people he had interviewed, stating, “This fed into my belief that it is people who make history, not the other way around.” He argued that each of these notables had been considered outcasts or misfits in their community at some point in their life.
Ogden graduated from Yale and began his reporting career in London before becoming a foreign correspondent in Moscow for Time Magazine. There, he met Alexander Solzhenitsyn, a dissident from the Soviet Union. Odgen described how he had to hide the notes from the interviews underneath his clothing as secret police officers surrounded the house and harangued him when he exited. Solzhenitsyn gave these interviews under the promise that they would be held secret until he gave Ogden permission; in fact, he was using the interview with Time as a safety measure in case he was
SUMMER TRAVELS
aggression from Islamic protesters directed against United States embassies throughout the Middle East and Africa has prompted an examination of the motivations and methods behind this violence. In Cairo on September 11th, protesters tore down the American flag from outside the consulate and replaced it with an Islamic flag, and the following protests injured over two hundred people and killed one. The attack on the American consulate in Benghazi took place on the same day; for nearly five hours, the proclaimed terrorists pummeled the embassy with rocket-propelled and hand grenades, assault rifles, gun trucks, and mortars. Four Americans were killed in the attack, including J. Christopher Stevens, the U.S. Ambassador to Libya. Several days later, protesters in Yemen and Tunisia surrounded and even set fire to the local American consulates, with four deaths in each country in addition to nearly a hundred injuries between the two incidents. A total of seventy-nine people died in September as a result of these protests. Originally, investigators cited the recent upload of anti-Islamic videos on YouTube as the main motivation for the violence. Chunks of video, roughly fifteen minutes long, were first put on the Internet in the beginning of July and showed trailers for a film entitled The Innocence of Musecent
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arrested again. However, Ogden pointed out, Solzhenitsyn later became a vastly influential novelist and Nobel Prize winner. Ogden then described his first trip to Beijing, right after the death of Mao Zedong. He described the visible differences and power struggle between Deng Xiaoping and Hua Guofeng. In the 1980s he returned to London where he worked with Margaret Thatcher, whom he admires as one of the world’s best political leaders. He spoke admiringly of the way she became Prime Minister in a political world dominated by men. She came from the lower middle class and became a “modern day medievalist who fought like a knight” for the causes she believed in. He also described the meteoric rise of Singapore under the rule of Lee Kuan Yew. Yew’s Confucian principals and style of government became a model for other rising countries. Lastly, Odgen relayed his interviews with Nelson Mandela, who peacefully transitioned South Africa into a democracy. Mandela controversially chose to learn about his opponents and negotiate with them. Ogden finished by telling the school not to judge the misfits or oddballs in the group, as they sometimes make huge differences because they dare to be different. Later, he gave an exclusive interview to the Beacon. When asked what part of his Abbey education helped him the most when interviewing and writing about such famous and unique people, he responded, “How to read . . . how to think independently, and not to simply parrot what I have been told.” He continued, “too many people of my generation, and of every generation, tend to think, ‘Well I can
get by if I know just enough, and if it’s only the teacher’s knowledge, he’ll give me a good grade on the test.’ That’s not learning.” He also gave advice specifically for the student journalists: “Research your subject and, before you go in, think, ‘What do I want to learn from this person?’” Mrs. Ogden, who sat in with the interview, added that one value that has always been important to him was being against plagiarism— you should never copy someone else’s work out of laziness, because “you are doing yourself a disservice.” Ogden agreed, “We are all individual thinkers, we think differently and react differently; this is why people follow different political parties. So if someone tells you this is how you should think about something, you should say ‘Not necessarily,’” When asked how journalism had changed with the internet, he mentioned the rise of anonymous sources. “You should really fight anonymity on these things. People hide behind anonymity and it’s not good. Most politicians ask for things they say to be off the record (that’s what I loved about Margaret Thatcher – she never asked that) and every time you agree to that, you lose integrity.” If your sources ask you to go off the record, try and get them to say something that can be put on record. Mrs. Ogden also stressed the importance of great editors: “Chris always says it’s a very difficult thing to write 300 words; it’s a lot easier to write a thousand.” Mr. Odgen added, “It’s very hard to write tight, but it is very important to write tight, and most of all, you have to think tight.”
NEW TO THE ABBEY
FAREWELL TO ST. BEDES
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