Episodes
Tuesday Mar 09, 2021
The Consecrated Life with Dr. Jeremy Holmes
Tuesday Mar 09, 2021
Tuesday Mar 09, 2021
We Americans are nothing if not activists. In our homes, in our careers, in our parishes we’re the people who want to make things happen. And so it may come as a surprise to read Pope St. John Paul II’s words, “In the consecrated life the proclamation of the Gospel to the whole world finds fresh enthusiasm and power.”
In 1996, after a synod about the consecrated life, St. John Paul wrote the Apostolic Exhortation Vita Consecrata, “On the Consecrated life and its Mission in the Church and in the World.”
The consecrated life—that is, the life led by monks and nuns—“is at the very heart of the Church as a decisive element for her mission, since it ‘manifests the inner nature of the Christian calling’ and the striving of the whole Church as Bride towards union with her one Spouse.”
This past week, theologian Dr. Jeremy Holmes led our seniors through a discussion of Vita Consecrata and he is our guest on this edition of The After-Dinner Scholar.
Tuesday Jan 12, 2021
On the Anointing of the Sick with Dr. Kent Lasnoski
Tuesday Jan 12, 2021
Tuesday Jan 12, 2021
St. James wrote, “Is any among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord; and the prayer of faith will save the sick man, and the Lord will raise him up; and if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven.” (James 5:13-15)
What with COVID, you’d expect we’d hear rather a lot about the sacrament of anointing the sick or as it has been called in the past Extreme Unction.
We in our day, however, are most likely to call our physician for an appointment or possibly the telehealth line than we are to call our priest asking to be anointed with oil. At least until doctors, hospitals, and the great pharmacopeia fail us and death seems imminent.
Is there still a place for anointing the sick?
Having recently taught about the sacraments, Dr. Kent Lasnoski has been reflecting on the meaning of anointing the sick.
Tuesday Dec 22, 2020
Taming the Christmas Rush with Fr. David Anderson
Tuesday Dec 22, 2020
Tuesday Dec 22, 2020
C. S. Lewis told the story of his brother's experience on a bus. As they passed a church with a creche outside, a woman remarked “Oh Lor’! They bring religion into everything. Look—they’re dragging it even into Christmas now!”
That was way back in 1959. Even then Lewis found the commercialization and secularization of Christmas revolting contrasting what he called “our feast of the Nativity” with what he referred to as “all this ghastly ‘Xmas’ racket.”
This last week before The Feast of the Nativity many are in full Xmas-rush mode: last-minute shopping, last-minute decorating, another batch of cookies or two, getting ready for family to arrive for the festivities. By Christmas Day we’ll either be slouching toward Bethlehem or we’ll arrive totally wired.
How do we avoid that? Wyoming Catholic College chaplain Fr. David Anderson reflects on his preparation and experience of Christmas.
Tuesday Nov 24, 2020
Advent: Season of Waiting with Msgr. Daniel Seiker
Tuesday Nov 24, 2020
Tuesday Nov 24, 2020
Novelist Fredrick Beuchner wrote, “In the silence of a midwinter dusk, there is a sound so faint that for all you can tell it may be only the sound of the silence itself. You hold your breath to listen. You are aware of the beating of your heart. The extraordinary thing that is about to happen is matched only by the extraordinary moment just before it happens. Advent is the name of that moment.”
As the world around us accelerates into the Christmas holiday season immediately after Thanksgiving—Santa figuring prominently at the end of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade—we Christians wait. And waiting is precisely the theme of Advent, the four weeks preceding Christmas Day and the twelve days of the Christmas season.
As we prepare for Advent, Msgr. Daniel Seiker, one of the two chaplains at Wyoming Catholic College, shared about Advent and preparing for Christmas.
Tuesday Oct 13, 2020
Chaplaincy and Spiritual Life at Wyoming Catholic with Msgr. Daniel Seiker
Tuesday Oct 13, 2020
Tuesday Oct 13, 2020
“Ours is an education of immersion,” we say on our college website “immersion in the Western tradition, immersion in the beauty and challenges of the wilderness, immersion in the treasures of our Catholic spiritual heritage.”
When planning a time to record this interview our Latin rite college chaplain Msgr. Daniel Seiker, Monsignor pulled out his schedule: “11:00 AM confessions, 11:35 Mass, 1:00 PM Adoration, 3:30 to 5:00 confessions, 5:00 PM Benediction.” He didn’t add the numerous appointments he has with students seeking spiritual direction. So it’s safe to say that our students are able to experience “immersion in the treasures of our Catholic spiritual heritage” and that we keep our chaplains exceptionally busy.
Tuesday Jul 14, 2020
Through the Gate of Lodore with COR Missionary Bob Milligan
Tuesday Jul 14, 2020
Tuesday Jul 14, 2020
“The canyon of Lodore is twenty and three-quarter miles in length,” wrote Major John Wesley Powell who was the first to descended the Green River through the canyon in June 1869. “It starts abruptly at what we have called the Gate of Lodore, with walls nearly two thousand feet high, and they are never lower than this until we reach Alcove Brook, about three miles above the foot. They are very irregular, standing in vertical or overhanging cliffs in places, terraced in others, or receding in steep slopes, and are broken by many side gulches and canyons.”
Powell and his men found the river from the Gate of Lodore very tough going with multiple long portages around rapids and the loss of one of four boats along with a great deal of supplies and scientific instruments in what he named “Disaster Falls.”
Of course those were the days before nylon, gor tex, polyester fleece, and good strong river rafts, the kind used by the recent COR Expeditions rafting trip down the Green River. Bob Milligan, a 2018 graduate of Wyoming Catholic College now on COR staff led the trip.
For more information about COR Expeditions visit the COR website.
Tuesday Jun 30, 2020
Believing in Beauty by Dr. James Tonkowich
Tuesday Jun 30, 2020
Tuesday Jun 30, 2020
The well-laid plan was to fly to Maine for vacation, but it became clear that the travel restrictions there would make for a terrible vacation. So instead, Jim and Dottie Tonkowich drove north.
Their vacation trip of about 1,675 miles went from Lander to Cody, Yellowstone National Park, Three Rivers, Montana, Whitefish Lake, Montana, Glacier National Park, and back home via Butte, Montana, Yellowstone and the Tetons. If you’re thinking to yourself, “That must have been beautiful,” you’re on track with the topic of this podcast.
Beauty just may be the way to save our troubled world.
Tuesday Jun 16, 2020
The Liturgical Music of the Christian East with Prof. Christopher Hodkinson
Tuesday Jun 16, 2020
Tuesday Jun 16, 2020
In the past Wyoming Catholic College’s Byzantine chaplain, Fr. David Anderson has been a guest on The After Dinner Scholar so you know that our students are able to attend Byzantine Divine Liturgy regularly.
What you may not know is that while in the Western liturgical tradition, Mass can be celebrated without singing, in the Eastern rites, singing is mandatory.
Assisting Fr. David musically has been Prof. Christopher Hodkinson, Instructor of Music and Fine Arts who is also our Director of Music and our guest this week.
Tuesday Jun 09, 2020
“Better is One Day in Your Courts”: Rethinking Sunday with Dr. Kent Lasnosk
Tuesday Jun 09, 2020
Tuesday Jun 09, 2020
“Many people simply cannot believe that there can be a large, leisurely center to life where God can be pondered” wrote the late Dr. Eugene Peterson. “They doubt they can enter realms of spirit where wonder and adoration have a place to develop, and where play and delight have time to flourish. Is all this possible in our fast-paced lives?”
That 1994 article by Eugene Peterson was ironically entitled “The Good-for-Nothing Sabbath.” It had a profound influence on the way I thought about not only Sunday, but rest and leisure in general. It also served as the one of the first critiques I read of the modern American concept of time that sees each Sunday and holiday as nothing but “a day off” in the service of returning to work.
Dr. Kent Lasnoski here at Wyoming Catholic College has spent a good deal of time considering and writing about the Sabbath. And his concerns have only been amplified by the enforced fast from Sunday Mass and the sacraments due to COVID-19. We may have formed or enhanced some bad habits.
Thursday Apr 09, 2020
Thursday Apr 09, 2020
St. Jerome famously said, “Ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ.” Thus knowledge of the Scriptures is knowledge of Christ and the more we know Scriptures—assuming that our hearts are right—the more we will know Christ.
While reading through the Bible is of great value and scholarly study of the Bible is also of great value, the Medieval Masters developed a method of reading the Bible they called lectio divina—and it’s not just for monks in the Egyptian desert. It’s a mystical practice for all of us.
Dr. Baxter explains more addressing “How to Perform Scripture: Lectio Divina and Reading with the Heart” in this final session of “Into the Lenten Desert: Learning to Pray with the Medieval Masters” from Wyoming Catholic College.