The After Dinner Scholar

Genesis 1 tells us, “God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”

As the college’s 2023 Wyoming School of Catholic Thought considered “The Ancient and Modern Challenges of Technology,” the Scriptures proved a vital guide to invention and evaluation.

At the school, Dr. Tonkowich gave this introduction to seminar discussions of Genesis 1-11 and Exodus 25-40.

Now have we journeyed to a spot of earth
Remote-the Scythian wild, a waste untrod.
And now, Hephaestus, thou must execute
The task our father laid on thee, and fetter
This malefactor to the jagged rocks
In adamantine bonds infrangible;
For thine own blossom of all forging fire
He stole and gave to mortals; trespass grave
For which the Gods have called him to account,
That he may learn to bear Zeus' tyranny
And cease to play the lover of mankind.

Those words set the scene at the beginning of Aeschylus’ play “Prometheus Bound.” It’s the god Prometheus who stole fire from Hephaestus and gave it along with the technology to use fire to mortals, a race Zeus, newly crowned as chief god, intended to destroy.

Dr. Virginia Arbery gave the 2023 Wyoming School of Catholic Thought this introduction to our seminar conversations about “Prometheus Bound.” You can find the text of the play here.

In the Phaedrus, Plato wrote about writing that, “it will create forgetfulness in the learners’ souls, because they will not use their memories, they will trust to external written characters and not remember of themselves.”

It seems almost beyond believing that as we worry about technologies such as artificial intelligence and smart phones, Plato considered and rejected the new technology of writing things down on paper. It’s evidence that for millennia, we humans have been inventing new things and debating about whether or not they are or are not useful—or even safe.

At the 2023 Wyoming School of Catholic Thought, the college’s adult week, Dr. Pavlos Papadopoulos gave us this introduction to our readings from Sophocles, Plato, Aristotle, and Plutarch.

Readings:

1. Sophocles, Antigone 334–375
2. Plato, Phaedrus 274c–275e
3. Plato, Laws 796e–800b
4. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1.2
5. Aristotle, Politics 1.4, 2.8, 7.11
6. Plutarch, Marcellus ¶¶14–19

Hephaestus was the Greek god of technology. Unlike Zeus, Apollo, Athena, and the others who were unspeakably beautiful and strong, Hephaistos talks in Homer’s Iliad about “my own brazen-faced mother, who wanted to hid me, for being lame.”

Wyoming Catholic College recently held our adult learning week, The Wyoming School of Catholic Thought. Our topic was “The Ancient and Modern Challenges of Technology.”

Dr. Glenn Arbery, the college president, opened up the week with these words about Hephaestus and techne from chapter 18 of The Iliad. The book can be found here.

Like all graduating seniors, Wyoming Catholic College seniors look forward to baccalaureate robes, degrees, and moving their mortarboards tassels from, right to left. But much more than the typical academic regalia, our seniors look forward to being awarded that most coveted graduation emblem, a black Wyoming Catholic College Stetson.

Those cowboy hats are the symbol of their four years of exercising mind, body, and spirit in a Wyoming Catholic College education. College dean, Mr. Kyle Washut explains how the tradition began. 

The 2023 Wyoming Catholic College graduation speaker and recipient of the college Sedes Sapientiae award was Most Reverend Samuel J. Aquila, the archbishop for the Archdiocese of Denver.

His words were realistic about the challenges we face as a culture and as a Church, but there were nonetheless words filled with hope. After the graduation ceremony, I expressed my gratitude to him saying, “Thank you. I needed that.” And I suspect we all need what he had to say.

Here are Archbishop Aquila’s words to the Class of 2023 and the rest of us.

Each year the Wyoming Catholic College senior class chooses one of its members to deliver a speech at graduation. The Class of 2023 chose Miss Emma Hermanson.

Before coming to Wyoming Catholic College, Emma Hermanson spent her high school years at a classical school in Colorado. At Wyoming Catholic, her favorite part of the curriculum was the humanities track, feeding her abiding love of literature. After graduation, Emma will be getting married and beginning her work as a high school literature and writing teacher in the fall.

Here is what Emma had to say at graduation.

For information on The 2023 Wyoming School of Catholic Thought click here.

This past Saturday, May 13 began what we’ve come to call our graduation triduum, three days of celebrating the achievements of ther Wyoming Catholic College Class of 2023.

Graduation weekend begins with the senior dinner on Saturday evening—seniors, faculty, and staff only. Monday was Commencement. And Sunday, after Baccalaureate Mass we held The President’s Dinner at which college president, Dr. Glenn Arbery, addressed seniors their parents, families, and friends along with the faculty and staff.

Here’s what Dr. Arbery had to say.

BENEDICK                                But it is certain I am loved of all ladies, only you excepted: and I would I could find in my heart that I had not a hard heart; for, truly, I love none.

BEATRICE A dear happiness to women: they would else have been troubled with a pernicious suitor. I thank God and my cold blood, I am of your humour for that: I had rather hear my dog bark at a crow than a man swear he loves me.

BENEDICK God keep your ladyship still in that mind! so some gentleman or other shall 'scape a predestinate scratched face.

William Shakespeare’s “Much Ado About Nothing” has it all: heroes, villains, loyalty and betrayal, hatred and love, serious crime and silly sidelights. At one point it veers dangerously close to utter tragedy only to come right again with true love conquering even the coldest hearts.

I asked Dr. Tiffany Schubert to begin giving us an overview of the play.

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.