The After Dinner Scholar

Dante's Divine Comedy - 2 with Dr. Tiffany Schubert

Last week Dr. Tiffany Schubert discussed Inferno, the first book of Dante’s Comedy. Our friend and former colleague Jason Baxter remarked that in Inferno, “Dante’s poetic violence is meant to melt down the hard heart so that it can be reforged into something new.”

Purgatorio is the place where that melted down and malleable heart finds the forge, the place where the hammer of suffering purges all impurities and fashions our hard hearts into hearts perfected.

And finally Paradiso shows us the path of choosing the good, true, and beautiful habitually as we gaze on the Face of God eternally “lost,” as the hymnwriter put it, “in wonder, love, and praise.”

Dante's Divine Comedy - 1 with Dr. Tiffany Schubert

Midway in the journey of our life

I came to myself in a dark wood,

for the straight way was lost.

Ah, how hard it is to tell

the nature of that wood, savage, dense and harsh—

the very thought of it renews my fear!

It is so bitter death is hardly more so. (Inferno 1.1-7)

During Lent and now during Easter, our sophomores, under the guidance of Dr. Tiffany Schubert, have been reading Dante's Divine Comedy in their humanities class. And while that reading is academic, no one can avoid Dante’s emphasis throughout the poem on our spiritual lives.

The Four Last Things in Holy Week with Dr. Kent Lasnoski

Saint Ephrem the Syrian said, “We give glory to you, Lord, who raised up your cross to span the jaws of death like a bridge by which souls might pass from the region of the dead to the land of the living.”

The cross is the bridge from death to life, from Hell to Heaven, from the judgment we deserve to the grace we can never deserve, from eternal captivity to the self to eternal freedom in God.

With that in mind, during this Holy Week, it seemed appropriate to rebroadcast a conversation with theologian Dr. Kent Lasnoski about the four last things.

"No Pain, No Gain: The Radical Nature of Sacrificial Love" with Moira Milligan

January 31 to February 2 the Wyoming Catholic College community enjoyed days packed with senior orations. Each senior, having written a thesis in the fall, presents his or her findings in a 30-minute lecture followed by questions from a faculty panel and the audience. It is a wonderful celebration of all our students accomplish in their years at Wyoming Catholic and it’s always a privilege to have students as guests on the podcast.

Moira Milligan’s oration was entitled “No Pain, No Gain: The Radical Nature of Sacrificial Love.” And she began with how she chose her topic.

The Eucharist and Wyoming Catholic College with Dr. Jeremy Holmes

This podcasts is "about the Great Books and the liberal arts," something that sets The After-Dinner Scholar apart from other audio blogs from Wyoming Catholic Collage.

Case in point, the college has launched a new podcast entitled “The Eucharist with Wyoming Catholic College” inspired by conversations about the National Eucharistic Revival.

The podcast features Wyoming Catholic College President Kyle Washut and, our guest, theology professor and academic dean, Dr. Jeremy Holmes.

Jesus Christ, King of the Universe with Dr. Kent Lasnoski

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.

Sacred Music and Renewal with Mr. Paul Jernberg

There was a time not too long ago when every church had a church choir. Ordinary people knew how to sing parts and often tackled difficult pieces of music with wonderful results.

At Wyoming Catholic College, the choir loft in our oratory and, during special masses such as our upcoming graduation mass, the choir loft at Holy Rosary Church here in Lander are crowded places. Our students love to sing.

And this spring semester they have the added inspiration of a new choir director, our Composer in Residence, Paul Jernberg. Mr. Jernberg is also the founder and director of the Magnificat Institute of Sacred Music.

Jesus Condemned Commentary by St. Augustine read by Dr. Jim Tonkowich

St. Augustine of Hippo who lived AD 354 – 430 delivered 124 lectures moving verse-by-verse through the entire the Gospel of John. This being Holy Week, here is lecture 116 in which Augustine discussed Jesus’ final condemnation by Pontius Pilate in John 19:1-16.

This is what St. Augustine had to say.

The text is copyrighted by d by the Christian Classics Ethereal Library.

Sacred Signs with Dr. Kent Lasnoski

Papal biographer and scholar George Weigel is fond of saying that for Catholics, “stuff matters.” Stuff like our physical bodies, bread, wine, water, incense, candles, bells, linen, altars, and ashes. Catholic Christianity is deeply incarnational, rooted firmly in God’s good Creation. And that rooting shows itself most clearly when we worship, that is, in the liturgy of the Mass.

Fr. Romano Guardini was one of the towering Catholic intellectuals of the twentieth century who for all his erudition, wrote a simple little book entitled Sacred Signs in which he gently and simply explained this connection between  material and the inner world of the spirit.

The book is a favorite of theologian Dr. Kent Lasnoski and a wonderful book to read during these last weeks of Lent.

Exploring ”The Brothers Karamazov” with Dr. Tiffany Schubert

Alexey Fyodorovitch Karamazov was the third son of Fyodor Pavlovitch Karamazov, a landowner well known in our district in his own day, and still remembered among us owing to his gloomy and tragic death, which happened thirteen years ago, and which I shall describe in its proper place.

Thus begins Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s last and arguably his greatest novel, The Brothers Karamazov. Recounting the story of Fyodor Karamazov and his three sons, Alexey, Ivan, and Dmitri, Dostoyevsky addresses suffering, the existence of God, good and evil, crime and punishment, worldliness and holiness.

Dr. Tiffany Schubert and our Wyoming Catholic College seniors have just finished reading the book.