Tuesday, June 25, 2019

Summer School at the SLC

Yes, I'm going to Summer School! I'm attending, with three other GKC group friends and several other friends and acquaintances, the eight week Christendom Academy book discussion course at the Spiritual Life Center. We meet from 9 a.m. to Noon with lunch following. Mass is offered at 8:15 a.m., so yesterday I was able to complete my interview on the Son Rise Morning Show, leave home by 7:30 and arrive at the Center a little before 8:00 to prepare for celebrating the Solemnity of the Nativity of Saint John the Baptist!

We discussed Sophocles's Antigone today; last week, The Epic of Gilgamesh; next week, the Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. One of the themes we discussed today was the Greek idea of the polis, referencing H.D.F. Kitto's classic, The Greeks!

The rest of the readings:

Ecclesiastes
The Epistle of St. James
Life of St. Anthony (St. Athanasius)
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Hamlet

The purpose of the Christendom Academy:

What has the cultural heritage of Christendom taught us about what it means to be a human person? What does it means to be happy? What is the meaning of suffering? What are our duties and responsibilities, and why do we have them? What does this all have to do with God, sin and judgment, and the afterlife?

Drawing upon pre-Christian tradition (what Joseph Pieper and others have referred to as ‘original revelation’), the Catholic Church has continued throughout its history to provide answers to these questions, and provided the framework for man to understand himself and the world around him. This program will highlight the unique contributions Western Civilization has made to our understanding of philosophy, theology, spirituality, morality, and citizenship. Students will be invited to learn new ways to answer perennial questions like who am I? Where have I come from and where am I going? What contribution am I called to make for my own salvation, for the good of my family, and the good of the world?

Course content will be drawn from a handful of writings whose contents are essential to the development of Christian culture, as we delve deeply into the wellsprings of the Catholic tradition that has shaped the history of the world, and provided the lens through which every contemporary man examines himself.

More about the program, including biographies of the three tutors, here.

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