The Mind’s Ascent

It’s easy to be agitated over what’s happening these days in the Church and the world. Much harder to see what might be promising, especially when secular leaders and bishops not only appear incapable of addressing looming challenges, but actually contribute to our sense of an age spinning out of control.

In such circumstances, there are two possible reactions. The first is to cry Woe. And again Woe. And to wring your hands in despair that no one is doing anything. The second is to find motivation in the very challenges we face and put your efforts into the multiple tasks at hand. The potential harvest is great, and the workers too few.

I wrote here recently about some initiatives we’ve undertaken internationally that have had palpable success. But at the risk of appearing naïvely optimistic – believe me, I often wake up perplexed myself – there are things going on in this country as well that offer real hope.

I was involved with one of them this weekend: the Thomistic Institutes (TI) that have been created by the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, D.C. The Dominicans have set up student chapters on college campuses all over the country and help them to run programs with distinguished speakers – real Catholics – who lecture on philosophy, theology, literature, and more.

There are about forty-five such chapters now and at a dinner in Washington Saturday night I met student leaders of chapters at Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Yale, the University of Texas, Brown, Trinity College, Columbia, the University of Utah, Toronto, Oxford, to name just a few. The Dominicans have been drawing numerous vocations from such institutions for some time now and, as befits the Order of Preachers, are quite able to operate at as high an intellectual level as any institution you can name.

Click here to read the rest of Dr. Royal’s column at The Catholic Thing . . .