Episodes
Tuesday Jan 02, 2024
Aristotle on Friendship with Dr. Pavlos Papadopoulos
Tuesday Jan 02, 2024
Tuesday Jan 02, 2024
“Social connection,” wrote U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy in his May 2023 “Advisory on our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation,” “is a fundamental human need, as essential to survival as food, water, and shelter. Throughout history, our ability to rely on one another has been crucial to survival.”
That may come as news to many modern Americans, but back in the fourth century BC Aristotle would have told you the same things. Friendship, he wrote in his Nichomachean Ethics, “is not only a necessary thing but a splendid one. We praise those who love their friends, and the possession of many friends is held to be one of the fine things of life.”
Dr. Pavlos Papadopoulos recently taught The Nichomachean Ethics with our Wyoming Catholic College juniors and looking at, among other things, friendship.
Tuesday Dec 26, 2023
A Christmas Week Full of Martyrs with President Kyle Washut
Tuesday Dec 26, 2023
Tuesday Dec 26, 2023
This podcast was posted on December 26, the day after Christmas. It was the commemoration of St. Stephen’s martyrdom described in Acts chapter 7. On the 27th, we remember St. John, the only apostle who was not martyred. The 28th is the memorial of the Holy Innocents who were murdered by King Herod in his attempt to kill Jesus. And finally on Friday, we remember the martyrdom of St. Thomas a Becket.
Why do we do that during Christmas week? Wyoming Catholic College President Kyle Washut clarifies it for us.
Tuesday Dec 19, 2023
Pondering the Incarnation of the Divine Son with Dr. Jeremy Holmes
Tuesday Dec 19, 2023
Tuesday Dec 19, 2023
During the first weeks of Advent, the Church directs our attention to the second advent of Christ, that day when he will come again in glory to gather his people into his resurrection, remake this tired, sinful world, and set all wrongs right. When he “will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain" (Revelation 21:4).
In this last week, we focus on his first coming as the babe of Bethlehem, his coming into our world of tears, death, morning, and crying.
Theologian Dr. Jeremy Holmes in his personal spiritual life, in his scholarship, in the classroom, and in his book Cur Deus Verba: Why the Word Became Word has spend a great deal of time considering the mystery of the Incarnation, of God become flesh.
Morten Lawridsen's "O magnum mysterium," which Dr. Holmes mentioned, can be found here.
Monday Dec 11, 2023
Music at Christmas with Mr. Paul Jernberg
Monday Dec 11, 2023
Monday Dec 11, 2023
The music coming over the air—for those who still listen to the radio—and in various Christmas mixes from Pandora, Apple Music, Spotify, and so on tends to be a wild and wooly mix including everything from “O Holy Night” to “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer.” It’s a mishmash of worship, good theology, horrible theology, family, home, childhood, greed, and, of course, romance.
As we try to sort it all out, here are some thoughts from Wyoming Catholic College’s choir director and composer-in-residence, Paul Jernberg.
Tuesday Dec 05, 2023
Virgil’s ”Aeneid” with Dr. Tiffany Schubert
Tuesday Dec 05, 2023
Tuesday Dec 05, 2023
Virgil's Aeneid tells us about the founding of Rome and begins with the destruction of Troy at the end of the Trojan War, the war recounted in The Iliad. As the Greeks burn and sack Troy, Aeneas escapes with his father, his son, his household gods, and a small band of fellow refugees to found a new Troy—greater, more powerful, and more magnificent than the old Troy—in Italy.
Dr. Tiffany Schubert has been teaching The Aeneid to our Wyoming Catholic College sophomores.
Tuesday Nov 28, 2023
Jesus Christ, King of the Universe with Dr. Kent Lasnoski
Tuesday Nov 28, 2023
Tuesday Nov 28, 2023
Last Sunday was the Solemnity of Jesus Christ, King of the Universe which was instituted by Pope Pius XI with his 1925 encyclical Quas Primas (In the First) as a response to “those bitter enmities and rivalries between nations, which still hinder much the cause of peace; that insatiable greed which is so often hidden under a pretense of public spirit and patriotism, and gives rise to so many private quarrels; a blind and immoderate selfishness, making men seek nothing but their own comfort and advantage, and measure everything by these; no peace in the home, because men have forgotten or neglect their duty; the unity and stability of the family undermined; society, in a word, shaken to its foundations and on the way to ruin.”
Rather than sounding nearly 100 years old, Pius’ words sound as though they were written yesterday. Theologian Dr. Kent Lasnoski discusses why we need to pay a bit more attention to this last Sunday in the Church year as we prepare for Advent.
Tuesday Nov 21, 2023
Giving Thanks with President Kyle Washut
Tuesday Nov 21, 2023
Tuesday Nov 21, 2023
The great Roman statesman and orator, Marcus Tulius Cicero said:
In truth… while I wish to be adorned with every virtue, yet there is nothing which I can esteem more highly than being and appearing grateful. For this one virtue is not only the greatest, but is also the parent of all the other virtues.
The ancients understood—as most moderns don’t—that virtuous living makes us happy. Thus, Cicero argued, gratitude, thanksgiving is the gateway to happiness.
With the celebration of Thanksgiving Day approaching, Wyoming Catholic College President Kyle Washut had this to say about the virtue of thanksgiving.
Tuesday Nov 14, 2023
Captain Ahab and ”Moby Dick” with Dr. Virginia Arbery
Tuesday Nov 14, 2023
Tuesday Nov 14, 2023
In Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, we meet Captain Ahab for the first time long after the Pequod has left Nantucket. “There was,” says Melville’s Ishmael, “an infinity of firmest fortitude, a determinate, unsurrenderable wilfulness, in the fixed and fearless, forward dedication of that glance. Not a word he spoke; nor did his officers say aught to him; though by all their minutest gestures and expressions, they plainly showed the uneasy, if not painful, consciousness of being under a troubled master-eye. And not only that, but moody stricken Ahab stood before them with a crucifixion in his face; in all the nameless regal overbearing dignity of some mighty woe."
Dr. Virginia Arbery has taught Moby Dick for years is, once again, reading it with our Wyoming Catholic College seniors many of whom are introduced to the book and Captain Ahab for the first time.
Tuesday Nov 07, 2023
”The Merchant of Venice” with Dr. Adam Cooper
Tuesday Nov 07, 2023
Tuesday Nov 07, 2023
The quality of mercy is not strained.
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest:
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.
’Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes
The thronèd monarch better than his crown.
Those are the words of Portia, heroine of William Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice as she defends her husband’s friend Antonio from the Jewish moneylender Shylock who, Antonio having defaulted on a debt, demands a literal pound of Antonio’s flesh.
Dr. Adam Cooper has been reading The Merchant of Venice with our Wyoming Catholic College juniors.
Tuesday Oct 31, 2023
”Leisure the Basis of Culture” with Dr. Michael Bolin
Tuesday Oct 31, 2023
Tuesday Oct 31, 2023
Once every semester at Wyoming Catholic College, we hold an All-School Seminar. For the fall seminar, a week ago, all of our students and faculty read and discussed Pieper’s Leisure: The Basis of Culture.
Pieper wrote in 1947 in what was a devastated Germany. Everything was damaged or destroyed and workers were a vital necessity at all levels of the culture. It was a world of what he calls "total work," a world he believed would lose its soul without leisure properly understood.
Philosopher Dr. Michael Bolin attended one of student-led seminars and had this to share.