The After Dinner Scholar

Pro-Life After Dobbs 2: The Arguments for Abortion Rights with Dr. Michael Bolin

“Usually when I debate on this topic,” said pro-life advocate Helen Alvare, “I feel like I’m behind a podium speaking French and the other person is behind a podium speaking Finnish. There’s no common ground.”

Part of the reason there is no common ground in the abortion debate is that our pro-abortion family and friends don’t understand our arguments and we don’t understand theirs.

Wyoming Catholic College philosopher, Dr. Michael Bolin allows his students to puzzle over what might be the best philosophical argument for abortion rights: Judith Jarvis Thomson’s “A Defense of Abortion” published in the journal Philosophy & Public Affairs in 1971—about 18 months before Roe v. Wade was decided.

Pro-Life After Dobbs 1: Humanae Vitae with Dr. Jeremy Holmes

At a banquet for a local pregnancy care center the speaker noted the U. S. Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs overturned Roe v. Wade. It’s true and thanks be to God. But, the speaker suggested, quoting Winston Churchill, “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.” That is, the battle rages on and could be uglier than ever.

With that in mind, this week and next will focus on the theology and philosophy of life beginning this week as theologian, Dr. Jeremy Holmes, discusses the encyclical Humanae Vitae.

Plutarch, Politics, and the Gracchi Brothers with Dr. Tiffany Schubert

Studying the lives of men and women is complicated, but it is from that study that we see vice and virtue and the end results of each, we learn of honor and dishonor, sacrifice and selfishness, self-discipline and dissipation. 

The Greek Platonist and priest of Apollo at Delphi, Plutarch understood the project of instruction by writing the lives of great Roman and Greeks.

Dr. Tiffany Schubert has been teaching Plutarch’s Lives with the Wyoming Catholic College sophomores.

An Introduction to Leon Kass’ ”L’Chaim and Its Limits” by Dr. Daniel Shields

In his essay, “L’Chaim and Its Limits: Why Not Immortality?” Dr. Leon Kass asks, “If life is good and more is better, should we not regard death as a disease and try to cure it?”

While “curing” death may seem far-fetched, the so-called trans-human project seeks to do just that.

Kass, an Orthodox Jew, wrote the essay for those with no or with little religion. Wyoming Catholic College philosopher, Dr. Daniel Shields gave the participants in this year’s Wyoming School of Catholic Thought this introduction to Kass’ essay before we broke into seminar groups.

Leadership and ”The Abolition of Man” with Dr. Travis Dziad

In his book, After Humanity: A Guide to C.S. Lewis’s The Abolition of Man, Fr. Michael Ward writes that Lewis in The Abolition of Man, “defends the objectivity of value, pointing to the universal moral ecology that all great philosophical and religious traditions have acknowledged as self-evident.” Self-evident, that is, until just recently.

Today the idea that there might be a “universal moral ecology” seems unthinkable. My truth is my truth; your truth is your truth and good is whatever I define good to be.

Believing that ideas have consequences and having an ability to reason from premises to conclusions, C. S. Lewis saw the danger and in The Abolition of Man issued a firm warning.

Dr. Travis Dziad recently taught The Abolition of Man in his sophomore leadership course. 

Dante and The Sin of Ulysses with Prof. Adam Cooper

The eighth circle of Dante’s Hell are the Malabolge, the evil ditches. In the eighth evil ditch false counselors are punished, trapped in flames. Dante the pilgrim asks Virgil his guide about one flame in particular Virgil answers, "Within this flame find torment Ulysses and Diomedes.”

Ulysses is also known as Odysseus who, after conquering Troy, wandered ten years trying to get home to his kingdom of Ithaca, to his father, Laertes, to his beloved wife, Penelope, and to their son Telemachus. After he finally returns to all that was dear to him, Dante tells us, Odysseus succumbed to wanderlust "to gain experience of the world and learn about man’s vices, and his worth."

The voyage did not end well. Death and Hell take him. But did he deserve to be in Hell? Was his sin really as great as all that? 

Prof. Adam Cooper has been teaching Dante helps us understand.

Catholics in a Capitalist World with Mr. Thomas Sponseller

Since at least 1891 when Pope Leo XIII issued the encyclical Rerum Novarum, the Catholic Church has debated the relationship between capital and labor. It has been and continues to be a complex and somewhat contentious one.

Not at all deterred by that, Wyoming Catholic College senior, Mr. Thomas Sponseller delivered a fine senior oration two weeks ago on the topic “Catholics in a Capitalist World: Understanding Capitalism with Catholic Social Teaching.”

”Ancient” Goodness and the Christian with Miss MaryAnne Speiss (Class of 2022)

One of the highlights of the academic year here at Wyoming Catholic College is Senior Oration Week. During the fall semester, each senior prepares a thesis, a major research paper on a topic of his or her choosing. Then early in the spring semester, each senior presents the thesis as a half-hour oration with an additional half hour for questions—first from a faculty panel and then from the audience.

Last week was Oration Week 2022 and our seniors did not disappoint. 

Miss MaryAnne Speiss used her thesis and oration to explore a question that had been on her mind throughout her four years at Wyoming Catholic College. Her title was, “Ancient ‘Goodness’—Does God Hate It, Tolerate It, or Demand It?: Nietzsche and Lewis on Good, Evil, and Spirited Christianity.”

Pro-Life at Wyoming Catholic College with Jill Cook

Not long after Wyoming Catholic College began, students organized Cowboys for Life in order to speak for the protection of the unborn. Cowboys for Life has organized trips to Marches for Life in Denver and San Francisco. They spent hours praying at the corner of Second and Main here in Lander during 40 Days for Life. And on November 30, they organized an all-night prayer vigil on the eve of the oral arguments before the Supreme Court about Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, the case that may be the end of Roe v. Wade.

The current president of Cowboys for Life is Wyoming Catholic College junior Jill Cook who begins by telling us how she became active in the pro-life movement.

Machiavelli on the Stage and in the Classroom with Dr. Tiffany Schubert

Because life is brief
and many are the pains
which, living and struggling, everyone sustains
let us follow our desires,
passing and consuming the years
because whoever deprives himself of pleasure,
to live with anguish and with worries
doesn’t know the tricks
of the world or by what ills
and by what strange happenings
all mortals are almost overwhelmed.

“Because life is brief…let us follow our desires” has a contemporary ring to it. Yet those words were penned in 1512 by the playwright and philosopher Niccolò Machiavelli in his play La Mandragola, The Mandrake.

This semester, Dr. Tiffany Schubert is teaching Machiavelli’s play to Wyoming Catholic College juniors and it has led to amazing classroom conversations. Why would that be?