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...

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...

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 writ...

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 Techn...

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 exercis...

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...

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 literatur...

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....

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 m...

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...

“We know,” St. Paul wrote to the Christians in Rome, “that in everything God works for good with those who love him, who are called according to his purpose.” Those words from St. Paul can and should comfort us. Nothing happens in our lives or our world that God does not intend to bring about good for His children. His providential care surrounds us. On the other hand, terrible things happen in ou...

In almost every walk of life and vocation, the ability to express yourself orally with clarity, precision, and persuasiveness are vital. That’s obvious for priests, teachers, salespeople, politicians, and lawyers, but consider that engineers, managers, administrators, builders, doctors, at-home moms, and…well, you name it… make presentations and proposals to individuals and groups. This semester D...

Fr. Gerard Manley Hopkins, S.J. (1844-1889) is considered to be one of the greatest poets of the Victorian Era though, oddly, the Victorian Era never read Hopkins. While, imitating his father, he wrote poetry while growing up, he burned his early poems when he decided to become—of all things—a Roman Catholic priest, having been raised High Church Anglican and he wrote no poetry for years. His late...

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.

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 Guardi...

This week the Wyoming Catholic College campus is deserted. Our dorms are empty. The kitchen and dining hall are silent. It’s Spring Outdoor week. A Wyoming Catholic College education begins with three weeks backpacking in the mountains of Wyoming. After that, they spend an additional seven weeks in the backcountry, a week at a time during our fall and spring Outdoor Weeks. Why? Dr. Tom Zimmer, Ass...

Whether it’s fermions and bosoms or air, earth, fire, and water or nothing but water, the question “What is the world?” has a long history and there have been many answers. Wyoming Catholic College freshmen discover the many answers in Philosophy 102, going on this semester. Dr. Henry Zepeda has been teaching them the philosophy of nature and the material world and I asked him why student’s journe...

Defeated in the attempt to war against God, fallen from Heaven, chained in the fiery muck of Hell, Milton’s Satan nonetheless declares:                    What though the field be lost? All is not lost; the unconquerable Will, And study of revenge, immortal hate, And courage never to submit or yield: And what is else not to be overcome? (I.1-5-109) The Romantics in the nineteenth century saw Satan...

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 stor...

Exactly 13 years ago today, Pope Benedict XVI noted in his Angelus address, “Lent is like a long ‘retreat’ in which to re-enter oneself and listen to God's voice in order to overcome the temptations of the Evil One and to find the truth of our existence. It is a time, we may say, of spiritual ‘training’ in order to live alongside Jesus not with pride and presumption but rather by using the weapons...

“As a modern man,” wrote Wyoming Catholic College senior, Aidan Wood,” the paths to happiness are seemingly endless, and endlessly confusing. However, there is one simple path that guarantees man’s mission: the path of discipline.” We all know the feeling: While trying to lose some weight, you pass the donuts someone put in the break room. Just one won’t hurt. Reading St. Thomas Aquinas is a great...

Last week was orations week at Wyoming Catholic College, a highlight of our life together as a college. In the fall, our seniors write a thesis. Then in the spring semester, each senior presents his or her thesis in a half-hour oration before fielding a half hour of questions. Senior Abigail O’Brien’s thesis title was: “The Age of Gnosticism: Transgenderism, Transhumanism, and Human Identity in th...

St. Augustine was a prominent teacher of rhetoric in Roman North Africa and in Italy. Despite his success, he was restless, constantly casting about for what was true until he found his rest through faith in Christ. A great sinner, we learn in his Confessions who became a great saint. Dr. Daniel Shields is attending sophomore humanities this semester and has been reading through Confessions with o...

Lola Shub and a group of her friends at Essex Street Academy in Manhattan read Into the Wild about an adventurer who died while trying to live off the land in the Alaskan wilderness. As a result, she told The New York Times, “We’ve all got this theory that we’re not just meant to be confined to buildings and work. And that guy was experiencing life. Real life. Social media and phones are not real...

“Usually when I debate on this topic,” said pro-life advocate Helen Alvare, “I feel like I’m behind a podium speaking French and the other person is behind a podium speaking Finnish. There’s no common ground.” Part of the reason there is no common ground in the abortion debate is that our pro-abortion family and friends don’t understand our arguments and we don’t understand theirs. Wyoming Catholi...