My Lenten Thursday Nights

Every Thursday evening during Lent, I plan to attend the 5:30 p.m. Mass in the Extraordinary Form of the Latin Rite at Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church and then go study Dante's Divine Comedy at the Spiritual Life Center (SLC). The series, An Introduction to the Divine Comedy, begins on February 27, the Thursday after Ash Wednesday (next Thursday):

Join us as we travel with Dante on this Lenten journey through Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven as we seek to gain spiritual insights from the sinners and saints encountered along the way.

Written in the fourteenth century by Italian poet and philosopher Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy is arguably the greatest epic poem of all time—presenting Dante’s brilliant vision of the three realms of Christian afterlife: Inferno, Purgatory, and Paradise.

We will be using Professor Anthony Esolen’s translation of the Comedy, and will have copies available for sale.

I'll take my copies Dorothy L. Sayers' translation and see how it goes. 

After a break for Holy Week, Easter and its Octave, I'll be back--Lord willing--at the SLC to attend the Catholic Culture Conference, with another program on Dante:

The Catholic Culture Conference is an opportunity for faithful Christians to come together for formation and fellowship. The program intends to promote Catholic values in personal and family life, as well as in society at large. 
 
The theme for the 2020 Catholic Culture Conference is “Dante and the End of Men”. The title plays off the title of a 2010 article which appeared in The Atlantic magazine. In her article “The End of Men” author Hanna Rosin tells the story of a culture which once gave respect, and even deference, to the role of men. According to Rosin, though, times have changed, and modern culture no longer needs men. Women can now do everything that men used to do, which makes them “equal” to men in most every way, and even preferential to men in most things.

One reason for this shift has been a denigration of all things authentically masculine, and a lowering of expectations for men. A culture which fosters true masculinity will hold men accountable for their behavior, look to them for leadership in faith and morals, and be able to count on them as trustworthy providers and protectors.

Dr. Jason Baxter of Wyoming Catholic College will give three talks on the theme of “Dante and the End of Men”; one focusing on men in each of the three stages of Dante’s pilgrimage: Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven. For additional insights on Catholic masculinity, Bo Bonner of Mercy College will present talks on St. Joseph.

The Culture Conference is open to all. Join us for a weekend of study, discussion, and culture-building.

Professor Baxter was here in December of 2017 and made a presentation at Eighth Day Books before his book was published.

Dante in Advent at Eighth Day Books

Yesterday, a professor from Wyoming Catholic College stopped in at Eighth Day Books on his way home to celebrate Christmas and spoke on Dante and Advent: “Dante and Waiting: The Poet and the Purgatorio for Advent.” Jason M. Baxter is associate professor of fine arts and humanities at WCC. His first book comes out in the spring of 2018 from Baker Academic:

Dante's Divine Comedy is widely considered to be one of the most significant works of literature ever written. It is renowned not only for its ability to make truths known but also for its power to make them loved. It captures centuries of thought on sin, love, community, moral living, God's work in history, and God's ineffable beauty. Like a Gothic cathedral, the beauty of this great poem can be appreciated at first glance, but only with a guide can its complexity and layers of meaning be fully comprehended.

This accessible introduction to Dante, which also serves as a primer to the Divine Comedy, helps readers better appreciate and understand Dante's spiritual masterpiece. Jason Baxter, an expert on Dante, covers all the basic themes of the Divine Comedy, such as sin, redemption, virtue, and vice. The book contains a general introduction to Dante and a specific introduction to each canticle (Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso), making it especially well suited for classroom and homeschool use.

You may read a substantial excerpt from the book here.

There was a nice gathering at Eighth Day yesterday afternoon: I brought a red velvet cake to add some decadence to the event. Professor Baxter spoke about mostly the antechamber to Purgatory where souls wait to enter the Gates of Purgatory. The angel who guards the gate has been told by St. Peter to err on the side of mercy. Baxter said the souls in this ante-Purgatory learn that 1) this is a place of great mercy; 2) the divisions of humanity are healed there; and 3) complacency is overcome and their view of the world is changed. He gave the examples of Manfred, the son of Frederick II (who is in the Inferno), the grandson of Empress Constance; Dante's friend Belacqua; Buonconte of Montefeltro, and others. Manfred and Buonconte are there in spite of their violence and cruelty because of just a moment of repentance before their deaths; Belacqua is too lazy to take advantage of the mercy that will be offered him if he climbs to Purgatory's gates. Sapia of Siena is on her way to Purgatory only because "poor Peter the comb-seller" had prayed for her.

It was a good presentation as we discussed the mysterious balance of free will and God's mercy and grace: one little human gesture of repentance and desire was well matched by God's gifts to help the soul come closer to Him in Paradise, after enduring purification and achieving the virtues necessary to be ready to see God and have God see him or her.

I hope to obtain a review copy.

The Oxford Experience

From the Imaginative Conservative, by Jason Baxter:

And as you walk through these streets and quietly pass into and then out of the shadows, you feel a smallness: these buildings have been here for centuries and have that noble antiquity of an earlier and prouder age that did not ask “how much” but “what should be done.” The buildings don’t look down on you, because they’re too lofty, too concerned with higher dreams. You feel small because you know that, to them, you are nothing. They have heard centuries of idle chatter and adolescent boasting; they have heard the first authentic thoughts of learned men; they have seen trees, older than the New World, grow up and die within their walls. These buildings feel as old as the seasons and the streams that flow constantly among them. Experiencing such august nobility in Oxford is to encounter a solemn, foreboding, and mysterious antiquity.

And it’s not only American tourists who get this strange, melancholic feeling about Oxford. Even those iconic titans, Lewis and Tolkien, whose personalities have blended into the stones of the city, felt it, too. Tolkien, in his wonderful Anglo-Saxon manner, called Oxford that “Many-mansion’d, tower covered” city “in its dreamy robe of grey/… aged in the lives of men,/ Proudly wrapt in mystic mem’ry overpassing human ken.” In Lewis’s short poem “Oxford,” he describes this city as a place of deep serenity, like the perpetual movements of the city’s somnolent rivers: “A clean, sweet city lulled by ancient streams…/ A refuge of the elect, a tower of dreams.” Similarly, Hopkins called Oxford, “Towery city and branches between towers; / Cuckoo-echoing, bell-swarméd, lark charméd, rook-racked, river-rounded.” And if you go inside the Ashmolean Museum, you will see any number of romanticizing paintings of the city that give you an Oxford, bathed in soft light. What the Pre-Raphaelites did for knights and ladies, these painters did for Oxford: they give a painfully nostalgic view of the medieval city. To such astute observers, Oxford is that city that mingles antiquity, the natural, and a keen sense of nostalgia.

Read the rest there. I concur.

Pictures (c) Stephanie A. Mann, from my week at the Oxford Experience in 2010.