Episodes
Tuesday Jan 31, 2023
Augustine’s Confessions with Dr. Daniel Shields
Tuesday Jan 31, 2023
Tuesday Jan 31, 2023
St. Augustine was a prominent teacher of rhetoric in Roman North Africa and in Italy. Despite his success, he was restless, constantly casting about for what was true until he found his rest through faith in Christ. A great sinner, we learn in his Confessions who became a great saint.
Dr. Daniel Shields is attending sophomore humanities this semester and has been reading through Confessions with our students and he shares with us what he finds so compelling about the book.
Tuesday Dec 13, 2022
Caesar, Virgil, and The Aeneid with Dr. Pavlos Papadopoulos
Tuesday Dec 13, 2022
Tuesday Dec 13, 2022
When Aeneas visits the underworld in Virgil's Aeneid, he sees great heroes who have died and great heroes yet to be born.
Here is Caesar, and all the offspring
of Julus destined to live under the pole of heaven.
This is the man, this is him, whom you so often hear
promised you, Augustus Caesar, son of the Deified,
who will make a Golden Age again in the fields
where Saturn once reigned, and extend the empire beyond
the Libyans and the Indians....”
It’s no surprise that Virgil wrote such extravagant praise of Caesar Augustus into his epic. After all, Caesar Augustus gave him the job of creating the founding myth of the Roman Empire that had supplanted the Roman Republic.
As he has been teaching The Aeneid to our Wyoming Catholic College sophomores, Dr. Pavlos Papadopoulos has been thinking a great deal about that transition.
Tuesday Nov 29, 2022
”Fathers and Sons” with Dr. Tiffany Schubert
Tuesday Nov 29, 2022
Tuesday Nov 29, 2022
Ivan Turgenev began his novel, Fathers and Sons, with a father, Nicholai Kirsanov, as he awaits the arrival of his son, Arcady, who after years of study in St. Petersburg, is paying a visit to the family estate. When Arcady arrives, he has with him his best friend and mentor, Evgeny Bazarov, a medical student--and nihilist.
Bazarov is skeptical about everything with the exception of science. It is a position that played well in cosmopolitan St. Petersburg, but which seems a bit out of place in farm country.
Dr. Tiffany Schubert has taught the novel to our Wyoming Catholic College juniors and tells us a bit more about the book.
Tuesday Nov 08, 2022
”Markmaker” with Mary Jessica Woods
Tuesday Nov 08, 2022
Tuesday Nov 08, 2022
In Markmaker the new science fiction novel by Mary Jessica Wood (Wyoming Catholic College Class of 2019), tattoos are not optional. They define identity by commemorating birth, ancestry, accomplishments—even crimes. Though sworn always to record the truth, one tattoo artist tattoos a lie resulting in the banishment of an innocent man. He’s devastated at his dishonesty, but that leads him….
Perhaps it would be best to let Mary Jessica Woods tell us more about the story.
To order Markmaker by Mary Jessica Woods, click here.
Tuesday Sep 27, 2022
The Wife of Bath and the Meaning of Marriage with Prof. Adam Cooper
Tuesday Sep 27, 2022
Tuesday Sep 27, 2022
Geoffrey Chaucer begins The Canterbury Tales describing the beauty of April and the countryside coming back to life. It is the time, he tells us, “Than longen folk to goon on pilgrimages.” “And specially,” he adds, “from every shires ende / Of Engelond to Caunterbury they wende.”
A small company of pilgrims forms and, as the go, each tells a tale.
Like the Samaritan woman Jesus spoke with in John chapter four, The Wife of Bath says she has had five husbands not to mention “other companye in youthe.” She is a wealthy woman who had been on pilgrimage as far as Jerusalem. She is also rather fond of sex and knows quite a bit about marriage.
Prof. Adam Cooper has been reading The Canterbury Tales with Wyoming Catholic College juniors and shared these thoughts.
Tuesday Aug 02, 2022
Journeys Among the Dead by Dr. Glenn Arbery
Tuesday Aug 02, 2022
Tuesday Aug 02, 2022
In his poem The Four Quartets, T. S. Eliot wrote:
“What the dead had no speech for, when living,
They can tell you, being dead: the communication
Of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living.”
In Homer’s Odyssey, Virgil’s Aeneid, and Dante’s Divine Comedy, we read about encounters with those who have died. Odysseus seeks wisdom from the prophet Teiresias and his mother, Anikleia (Odyssey 11.1-224). Aeneas meets his father Anchises, parent and prophet (Aeneid 6.739-983). And Dante holds a long conversation in Heaven with his great-great-grandfather, Cacciaguida who also assumes the role of prophet (Paradiso 15-17).
What can we learn from these fictional encounters with the dead? Dr. Glenn Arbery gave this introduction at the 2022 Wyoming School of Catholic Thought.
Tuesday Jul 26, 2022
Introduction to William Faulkner’s ”Go Down, Moses” by Dr. Virginia Arbery
Tuesday Jul 26, 2022
Tuesday Jul 26, 2022
Author Ann-Marie MacDonald noted, “It’s important to attend funerals. It is important to view the body, they say, and to see it committed to earth or fire because unless you do that, the loved one dies for you again and again.”
In “Go Down, Moses,” the final chapter of his novel Go Down, Moses, William Faulkner tells us the story about a funeral. The deceased is a young man executed in Chicago for murder. Home is back in Mississippi and his grandmother who raised him is determined to bring him back home to bury him. For that she’ll need a great deal of help.
Dr. Virginia Arbery gave the 2022 Wyoming School of Catholic Thought this introduction to Faulkner’s story.
Tuesday Jul 19, 2022
Introduction to Sophocles’ ”Antigone” by Prof. Adam Cooper
Tuesday Jul 19, 2022
Tuesday Jul 19, 2022
Antigone’s brother Eteocles fought for Thebes and King Creon. Her other brother, Polyneices, fought against Creon and thus against Thebes. In battle they killed each other. Creon buried Eteocles with full military honor. But regarding Polyneices, has ordered, “No one shall bury him, no one mourn for him, / But his body must lie in the fields, a sweet treasure / For carrion birds to find as they search for food.”
His sister, Antigone, won’t stand for it.
Sophocles’ tragedy, “Antigone” was one of the readings as the 2022 Wyoming School of Catholic Thought considered “Mortality and Eternity.” In the play Antigone risks and loses her life over the filial duty of burying the dead.
Before we broke up into seminar groups to discuss the play, Prof. Adam Cooper gave us this introduction.
Tuesday Jul 05, 2022
Introduction to Leo Tolstoy’s ”The Death of Ivan Ilych” by Dr. Glenn Arbery
Tuesday Jul 05, 2022
Tuesday Jul 05, 2022
In the big building of the law courts, during a break in hearing the case of the Melvinskys, the members and the prosecutor met in Ivan Yegorovich Shehek's office, and the conversation turned to the famous Krasovsky case. Fyodor Vassilievich became heated demonstrating non-jurisdiction, Ivan Yegorovich stood his ground; as for Pyotr Ivanovich, not having entered into the argument in the beginning, he took no part in it and was looking through the just-delivered [newspaper].
“Gentlemen,” he said, “Ivan Ilyich is dead!”
Thus begins Leo Tolstoy’s 1886 novella, The Death of Ivan Ilych, the first reading for the 2022 Wyoming School of Catholic Thought. It’s intriguing that the story begins with Ivan Ilych’s death, recounting his life and his dying as a flashback after we hear of his funeral.
At the Wyoming School, Wyoming Catholic President, Dr. Glenn Arbery introduced Tolstoy’s novella this way.
Tuesday Jun 21, 2022
A Semester of Latin Hymns with Prof. Eugene Hamilton
Tuesday Jun 21, 2022
Tuesday Jun 21, 2022
NUNC, Sancte, nobis Spiritus,
unum Patri cum Filio,
dignare promptus ingeri
nostro refusus pectori.Now, O Holy Spirit (given) for us
One with the Father (and) the Son
condescend to enter [us] at once
(you) having been poured into our breasts
Wyoming Catholic College students study Latin during their freshman and sophomore years. From there they move to two years of Latin reading groups. One of the groups this last semester read Latin hymns including Nunc Sancte nobis Spiritus.
Prof. Eugene Hamilton—better known simply as Magister—led the reading group along with Dr. Travis Dziad. Prof. Hamilton is our guest on this podcast.