Capstone Pilgrimage to Chicago - January, 2013

The slide show below contains images from the Capstone Seminar Pilgrimage to Chicago (Jan., 2013).  Captions describing each image can be viewed by clicking on the text icon in the lower left corner of every image.

The purpose of this annual Pilgrimage to Chicago is to engage in an integrated, Catholic experience in the big city – an amalgamation of culture, faith, politics, art, food, architecture, history etc.!

The students’ experiences include:

• riding the Amtrak train to Chicago
• walking around Windy City during rush-hour
• eating deep-dish pizza at the restaurant where it was invented
• chanting Vespers with Benedictine monks downtown
• viewing the city from atop the John Hancock skyscraper
• meeting with His Excellency, Bishop Joseph N. Perry
• attending a lecture by renowned Jesuit, Fr. Paul Mankowski
• visiting the Chicago Institute of Art
• enjoying Greek food in Chicago's Greektown

The images below are a window into the life of the group's four day pilgrimage to the Windy City.

Graduation 2012 (Pt. II)

Fr. Robert J. Araujo, S.J., the fine gentleman we met in Chicago who gave our Capstone students a superb primer on the Natural Law, delivered the commencement address at Saint Agnes School on Friday, June 1st. He is a regular contributor to "The Mirror of Justice" a Catholic legal blog. In a recent post, he wrote the following of his address at Saint Agnes:

Commencement and the Road not Taken On Friday night I had the honor to be the graduation speaker at a coeducational Catholic high school in the Archdiocese of Minneapolis/St. Paul. I had many weeks to think about what I ought to say to the young men and women, most of whom will be attending college later this summer. As I prepared my words, I thought it prudent to relate the lives of these young and energetic people to those who have preceded them in faith and wisdom. Although the students have accomplished much, they really are just beginning to learn about life, its meaning, and who and what they are. The same questions are suited for law students as they graduate. The same can issues apply to the rest of us as well. As I mentioned in the address, these questions form a part of who the human person is, for they never go away. For those who might be interested in the full address, here it is: Download Graduation Address at St Agnes. A blessed Trinity Sunday to one and all. RJA sj

Download the commencement address here.

Rommen and Ratzinger on Metaphysics: Its Importance for the Law and Society

In Fr. Robert J. Araujo, S.J.'s remarks on the natural law, he referenced a brilliant German lawyer and thinker, Heinrich Rommen. (If you haven't read Rommen, shame on you!) He was imprisoned by and later fled the Nazis for his defense of law as an "ordinance of reason for the common good, made by him who has care of the community, and promulgated" (Summa Theologiae I-II, 90, art. 4). The Nazi regime--as well as any totalitarian regime--in its embracing of the Modernist position (which is nothing other than the embrace of the Enlightenment project, specifically that of Descartes), perverted law from an "ordinance of reason" to be rather an "ordinance of will."

In our example in class the other day, we saw how an arbitrary exercise of the will can result in an unjust law. In the example given, we looked at the "reasonableness" aspect of the definition of law. But what is the foundation for a law's reasonableness? The answer lies in the Chesterton quote below. There we saw that one cannot escape the essential question of being or existence; and even more, the Ultimate Being or Existence Himself, God. In philosophy, this area of inquiry is called metaphysics. Rommen expands upon this in his magisterial tome The Natural Law. He looks historically at the times when natural law was esteemed:

The idea of natural law obtains general acceptance only in the periods when metaphysics, queen of the sciences, is dominant. It recedes or suffers an eclipse, on the other hand, when being and oughtness, morality and law, are separated, when the essences of things and their ontological order are viewed as unknowable. The natural law, consequently, depends on the science of being, on metaphysics (The Natural Law, 141).

I cannot emphasize enough, dear students, the importance of considering this fundamental question. Then-Cardinal Ratzinger in an article entitled, "Faith, Philosophy, and Theology," [11 Communio 351, 357 (1984)] stated: "The true philosopher, if he wishes to reach the ultimate questions, cannot free himself from the question of God, the foundation and end of being itself." The implications of this for the society are profound. It is the difference between the gulag and freedom.