The Educated Leader

Session 8: Friendship, Community, and the Social Nature of the Person Aristotle's account of friendship (philia) and Aquinas's Christianisation of it provide resources for thinking about the bonds beyond family; friendship, civic life, and the Church as fellowship. Charity (caritas) is, for Aquinas, a kind of friendship with God. This session asks what genuine community requires, and wha...

Session 7: The Family as Domestic Church The family is not merely a social unit but a theological reality; the primordial community in which persons are formed and love is learned. This session examines the Church's account of marriage and family as a school of the virtues, and honestly addresses the wounds that distort family life and the tradition's account of healing, mercy, and accom...

Session 6: The Body as Gift: Incarnation, Vulnerability, and Human Dignity The person is not a soul that happens to inhabit a body but a bodily being whose flesh is constitutive of who they are. This session explores what it means theologically that God became incarnate, and what the Incarnation reveals about the dignity of the body. It also addresses human vulnerability and dependence as positive...

ession 5: The Relational Person: Made for Love Against any purely individualist anthropology, the Catholic tradition insists that the person is constituted in relation . In relation to God, to others, and to creation. This session draws on Trinitarian theology as the ground of human sociality: we are made in the image of a God who is himself a communion of persons. What follows for how we understa...

Session 4: Freedom, Sin, and the Wounded Will Human freedom is real but not unlimited, and the doctrine of Original Sin explains why our freedom is structurally damaged. Drawing on Augustine and Aquinas, this session explores the will's orientation toward the good and its tendency toward disordered loves. The session asks: what does it mean to be free, and how does grace restore what sin has...

Session 3: The Imago Dei: Reason, Freedom, and Moral Agency What does it mean to be made in God's image? The tradition identifies intellect, will, and the capacity for relationship with God as constitutive of the imago. This session explores the philosophical significance of this claim and why human dignity cannot be grounded in capacity or achievement alone; a point with urgent implications...

Session 2: Body and Soul: Against Dualism and Reductionism The Catholic tradition holds that the human person is a substantial unity of body and soul — neither a ghost in a machine (Cartesian dualism) nor a sophisticated animal (reductive materialism). This session introduces Thomistic hylomorphism as the tradition's answer: what it means, why it was developed, and why it matters for how we t...

Session 1: The Question of the Human Person What is a human being, and why does the answer matter? This opening session poses the question freshly and introduces the distinctively Christian claim that the person is made in the imago Dei, showing why this is philosophically load-bearing, not merely pious decoration. We survey the landscape of competing answers and establish what is at stake in Chri...

Understanding the 2025 National Security Strategy of the United States: a conversation with Joe Grogan, former White House Director of the Domestic Policy Council In this episode, Christiaan Alting von Geusau speaks with his special guest Joe Grogan, former Director of the Domestic Policy Council at the White House during the first Trump administration, also having served in the G.W. Bush administ...

Description: This series for (aspiring) legislators, government leaders, and others in public office seeks to provide timeless insights and share enduring wisdom needed in the execution of one’s daily duties and responsibilities, always aiming at justice and the advancement of the common good. Christian leadership for those holding high office is above all a fundamental way of life, consistently l...

Description: This series for (aspiring) legislators, government leaders, and others in public office seeks to provide timeless insights and share enduring wisdom needed in the execution of one’s daily duties and responsibilities, always aiming at justice and the advancement of the common good. Christian leadership for those holding high office is above all a fundamental way of life, consistently l...

Description: This series for (aspiring) legislators, government leaders, and others in public office seeks to provide timeless insights and share enduring wisdom needed in the execution of one’s daily duties and responsibilities, always aiming at justice and the advancement of the common good. Christian leadership for those holding high office is above all a fundamental way of life, consistently l...

Description: This series for (aspiring) legislators, government leaders, and others in public office seeks to provide timeless insights and share enduring wisdom needed in the execution of one’s daily duties and responsibilities, always aiming at justice and the advancement of the common good. Christian leadership for those holding high office is above all a fundamental way of life, consistently l...

Description: This series for (aspiring) legislators, government leaders, and others in public office seeks to provide timeless insights and share enduring wisdom needed in the execution of one’s daily duties and responsibilities, always aiming at justice and the advancement of the common good. Christian leadership for those holding high office is above all a fundamental way of life, consistently l...

Description: This series for (aspiring) legislators, government leaders, and others in public office seeks to provide timeless insights and share enduring wisdom needed in the execution of one’s daily duties and responsibilities, always aiming at justice and the advancement of the common good. Christian leadership for those holding high office is above all a fundamental way of life, consistently l...

Episode 6: Human Work and Economic Life. Resources: 1. Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace: Compendium of the Social Teaching of the Catholic Church: https://www.vatican.va/archive/compendium_ccc/documents/archive_2005_compendium-ccc_en.html 2. Leo XIII: Rerum Novarum: https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_15051891_rerum-novarum.html See for our previo...

Episode 7: Christian Responsibility in the Political Community Resources: 1. Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace: Compendium of the Social Teaching of the Catholic Church: https://www.vatican.va/archive/compendium_ccc/documents/archive_2005_compendium-ccc_en.html 2. Leo XIII: Rerum Novarum: https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_15051891_rerum-novarum.h...

Episode 8: Taking Care of Creation in all its Dimensions: What is the Proper Attitude? Resources: 1. Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace: Compendium of the Social Teaching of the Catholic Church: https://www.vatican.va/archive/compendium_ccc/documents/archive_2005_compendium-ccc_en.html 2. Leo XIII: Rerum Novarum: https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_...

Episode 5: Marriage and Family in Society. Resources: 1. Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace: Compendium of the Social Teaching of the Catholic Church: https://www.vatican.va/archive/compendium_ccc/documents/archive_2005_compendium-ccc_en.html 2. Leo XIII: Rerum Novarum: https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_15051891_rerum-novarum.html 3. Pope Francis:...

Episode 4: Basic Principles of Catholic Social Doctrine: Subsidiarity and Solidarity. Resources: 1. Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace: Compendium of the Social Teaching of the Catholic Church: https://www.vatican.va/archive/compendium_ccc/documents/archive_2005_compendium-ccc_en.html 2. Leo XIII: Rerum Novarum: https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_1...

Episode 3: Basic Principles of Catholic Social Doctrine: The Common Good. Resources: 1. Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace: Compendium of the Social Teaching of the Catholic Church: https://www.vatican.va/archive/compendium_ccc/documents/archive_2005_compendium-ccc_en.html 2. Leo XIII: Rerum Novarum: https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_15051891_reru...

Episode 2: Basic Principles of Catholic Social Doctrine: Human freedom. Resources: 1. Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace: Compendium of the Social Teaching of the Catholic Church: https://www.vatican.va/archive/compendium_ccc/documents/archive_2005_compendium-ccc_en.html 2. Leo XIII: Rerum Novarum: https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_15051891_rerum-...

Episode 1: Reason and Origins of Catholic Social Doctrine. Resources: 1. Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace: Compendium of the Social Teaching of the Catholic Church: https://www.vatican.va/archive/compendium_ccc/documents/archive_2005_compendium-ccc_en.html 2. Leo XIII: Rerum Novarum: https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_15051891_rerum-novarum.html

Edith Eger, in her book (The Choice), writes: “We can't choose to vanish the dark, but we can choose to kindle the light – (..) Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.”

“The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either – but right through every human heart – and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained.”  -              The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956 by Aleksandr Sol...