We're still here!

I haven't posted for a while, but here's an update of things going on at Transfiguration College. We've had some marvelously productive curriculum meetings, and have the philosophy and theology courses largely worked out. Graduates of Transfiguration College will be unlike anyone else in the world. I envy them. We are also continuing to pursue bricks and mortar. Things are heating up on that front, and I will let you know as soon as I know anything definite.

Please help us with your prayers. We have been asking anyone who is interested in Transfiguration College to join us in praying and fasting from meat and dairy every Wednesday, in accordance with Byzantine customs.

Why Start a New Catholic College?

I remember riding in a car to an academic function a few months ago with an older philosophy professor and a member of the religious studies department at the school in which I now teach. We were making pleasant conversation, when the woman from Religious Studies mentioned the now-defunct project for Chicago Catholic College. Apparently the Cardinal had mentioned the project at a meeting of Catholic educators a few years ago, and it brought about a firestorm of protest from the representatives of the Catholic colleges in Chicago. Why would one need a new Catholic college when Chicago has Depaul, Loyola, Dominican, and St. Xavier?

This reaction shows, I think, exactly why we need a new Catholic college. The existing Catholic colleges generally think that the way that they function is entirely within the boundaries of acceptable orthodoxy. You may find that hard to believe, but I see it from the inside. The administrations have seen enrollment and prestige grow as a result of their commitment to secularity. The faculty were hired with little attention paid to any sort of Catholic identity, and don't see any need to adjust what they teach in the light of the Gospel. Many, in fact, have made a commitment to critical theory in their academic work that makes the Gospel a dead letter. It would be unfair to expect such faculty to change their teaching in the light of the Gospel; after all, it wasn't part of the terms of their employment. All of this has happened with little or no episcopal complaint. As a result, most Catholic colleges are not able to recognize the problem, and are unlikely to change even if someone at the college did recognize the problem. To try to make them change at this late date would be like trying to make an oak tree turn into a maple.

Rather than attempting to do the impossible miraculous, it is better to start from the beginning, to construct a college with an institutional commitment to Christian orthodoxy from top to bottom.

Why Patristics?

The concept of a Great Books school perhaps doesn't need too much explanation. After all, there have been many succesful schools that take that approach to education. But why have such a school where a substantial proportion of the books are the writings of the Fathers of the Church? Why read those guys?

Let me describe the problem that such a question poses, via a quote from Chesterton:

It is very hard for a man to defend anything of which he is entirely convinced. It is comparatively easy when he is only partially convinced. He is partially convinced because he has found this or that proof of the thing, and he can expound it. But a man is not really convinced of a philosophic theory when he finds that something proves it. He is only really convinced when he finds that everything proves it. And the more converging reasons he finds pointing to this conviction, the more bewildered he is if asked suddenly to sum them up. Thus, if one asked an ordinary intelligent man, on the spur of the moment, "Why do you prefer civilization to savagery?" he would look wildly round at object after object, and would only be able to answer vaguely, "Why, there is that bookcase . . . and the coals in the coal-scuttle . . . and pianos . . . and policemen." The whole case for civilization is that the case for it is complex. It has done so many things. But that very multiplicity of proof which ought to make reply overwhelming makes reply impossible. There is, therefore, about all complete conviction a kind of huge helplessness.

I am so convinced of the value of reading the Fathers of the Church that trying to come up with an argument to that effect is like the man trying to make an argument for civilization. My reaction is somewhat more like this: ``Why not study patristics?'' But let me try to come up with one reason.

The Church in the modern age is confronted with a culture that is inimical to it. Not only is the world not Christian, it is actively, virulently anti-Christian. That which is sinful is considered virtue. It looks hopeless, doesn't it? How could the Church transform such a culture?

Well, the time I describe is not the present age, but the age in which the Fathers lived and wrote. The Roman Empire was a civilization fundamentally at odds with Christian revelation. For evidence, I give you the words of Justin Martyr, who was a man born into the pagan Roman culture.

But as for us, we have been taught that to expose newly-born children is the part of wicked men; and this we have been taught lest we should do any one an injury, and lest we should sin against God, first, because we see that almost all so exposed (not only the girls, but also the males) are brought up to prostitution. And as the ancients are said to have reared herds of oxen, or goats, or sheep, or grazing horses, so now we see you rear children only for this shameful use; and for this pollution a multitude of females and hermaphrodites, and those who commit unmentionable iniquities, are found in every nation. And you receive the hire of these, and duty and taxes from them, whom you ought to exterminate from your realm. And any one who uses such persons, besides the godless and infamous and impure intercourse, may possibly be having intercourse with his own child, or relative, or brother. And there are some who prostitute even their own children and wives, and some are openly mutilated for the purpose of sodomy; and they refer these mysteries to the mother of the gods, and along with each of those whom you esteem gods there is painted a serpent, a great symbol and mystery. Indeed, the things which you do openly and with applause, as if the divine light were overturned and extinguished, these you lay to our charge; which, in truth, does no harm to us who shrink from doing any such things, but only to those who do them and bear false witness against us.

The Roman Empire was a bad, bad place, where unwanted children were cruelly exploited for the pleasure of others. Any sort of Christian transformation of this culture seemed an impossible dream. And yet, within the span of three centuries Christianity went from being cruelly persecuted to the official religion of the empire. Such practices as Justin describes were, in large part, ended. The good guys won! We call those good guys the Fathers of the Church.

We live in a world that is similar in many ways to the Roman Empire. We don't sell our children into prostitution, at least not explicitly, although our society is hypersexualized, and many are likely to end up exploited in some way or other. We kill many of our unwanted children through abortion, and in fact create children for the express purpose of exploitation in in vitro fertilization and embryonic stem cell research. These practices are so common that opposition to them is characterized as extreme. Any sort of Christian transformation of this culture seems an impossible dream.

Could it happen? We know it can happen, since it already did. One can deduce possibility from actuality. The Fathers triumphed. It took centuries and the blood of many martyrs, but it happened. It seems that it would be a good thing to do to study how they did it. How did they present the Christian gospel to a world that seemed immune to it? What modes of discourse did they use? How did they act? How did the bishops govern? How did the people live?

We are in the same situation that they were in. Such study cannot fail to be profitable to us. Thus, we propose a Byzantine Catholic Great Books school where patristics is an integral part of the curriculum.

The Evangelical Power of Beauty

I still remember the first times I experienced the Byzantine Liturgy. The first time was in Bethlehem, PA during my short time as a seminarian. I was overcome by the beauty of the music. Here was a parish without organist, without choir, where the liturgy was sung by the entire congregation in harmony. I was able to pick up the melodies pretty quickly, and sang along for two glorious hours with hymns of overwhelming depth. I wasn't in tears after the liturgy, but my sentiments were something like those of Augustine:

``I wept at the beauty of your hymns and canticles, and was powerfully moved at the sweet sound of Your Church's singing. Those sounds flowed into my ears, and the truth streamed into my heart: so that my feeling of devotion overflowed, and the tears ran from my eyes, and I was happy in them.''

After seminary, I went to Marquette to get a doctorate in philosophy. Providentially, a Melkite parish (St. George) was just down the street. I walked in one Sunday, and again was profoundly affected. This time, what struck me first of all was the sound of bells coming from behind the iconostasis, sounding like sleigh bells. What could be happening? It was like a child hearing Santa on the roof. Soon, Something Important was going to happen! Then the priest and the altar servers processed out from behind the screen, and we sang the great doxology. Something important did happen: Christ came among us, and I was hooked. I've been worshiping in Byzantium ever since.

I don't bring up my experience because there's anything particularly special about me. I bring it up because I think it is typical of the reactions of the world to the liturgical traditions of the East. Our liturgy is missionary as Pope Benedict pointed out, by means of the very beauty present within it.

What impressed onlookers about the liturgy was precisely its utter lack of an ulterior purpose, the fact that it was celebrated for God and not for spectators, that its sole intent was to be before God and for God "euarestos euprosdektos" (Romans 12:1; 15:16): pleasing and acceptable to God, as the sacrifice of Abel had been pleasing to God.

Beauty draws us up to the transcendent God. Beauty is evangelical. In fact, in the postmodern world of today, where there is no general confidence in any sort of metaphysics, it might be that beauty becomes the way to evangelize. I think that it is possible to do metaphysics, but even so, I recognize that a proof for the existence of God is not a proof for Christianity. Such a thing cannot be offered. But Beauty, the beauty of Eastern Christian practice, can be persuasive. David Bentley Hart puts it thus: "[Christianity] stands before the world principally with the story it tells concerning God and creation, the form of Christ, the loveliness of the practice of Christian charity--and the rhetorical richness of its idiom." In other words, Christianity presents a vision of life that persuades through its beauty. Our music, liturgy, and iconography can be evangelical, as it was for the emissaries of Prince Vladimir, who said "When we came to the country of the Greeks, we were brought to where they celebrate the liturgy for their God... We do not know if we were in heaven or on earth... We experienced that there God dwells among men..."

It is my hope that Transfiguration College can contribute to the re-evangelization of the world through our emphasis on beauty. It is the reason that our curriculum will have seminars on the liturgy, that we will teach the chant of our churches, and that our students will have practical experience in iconography.

The purpose of this blog

I am going to use this weblog to present some reflections on why I think the world needs Transfiguration College. These reflections have no official character--I am not the president of the college, nor do I make policy. I am simply a prospective faculty member who has fallen more and more in love with the idea as we have progressed, and who wishes to explain the basis for that love.

Transfiguration College

This weblog is to present news of an exciting new educational institution, Transfiguration College, a Byzantine Catholic Great Books college. The page will be updated soon. Stay tuned!