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Published: August 21, 2009
An Ecumenical Great Books School
To Open Autumn 2010 in North San Diego County
About San Elijo College
San Elijo College is a classical college in the great books tradition. We are a college committed to three core values. First, we are committed philosophically to the objectivity of knowledge. We believe that we can know truth, goodness and beauty. Second, we are committed theologically to the Nicene Creed. We believe that the Creed is a clear ecumenical statement of Christian faith that is at the core of our commitment to Jesus as our master teacher. Third, we are committed pedagogically to the classical liberal arts. We believe that a well educated person should be well trained in the trivium (grammar, logic, rhetoric) and the quadrivium (mathematics, geometry, music and astronomy).
As an ecumenical Christian college, we welcome faculty who are committed to the Creed and students who desire to learn within a Christian environment. Our recent fundraiser reflected this diversity as we had Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant speakers engage our donors with thoughts on the importance of classical education for preserving Christian culture. One of our Catholic board members has pointed out that there is a call in the Catechism for Catholics to join with other Christians in works of service to mankind. We believe that San Elijo College can be one such way that Christians of a wide variety of backgrounds can join together in a common cause to pursue goodness, truth and beauty to influence our culture for Christ in common commitment to the Nicene Creed.
Curriculum and Degree
The college will offer only one degree program: the Bachelor of Arts in Liberal Arts. The unified degree program will have three main components. First, each student will take full courses in the classical liberal arts culminating in a senior thesis. Second, each student will take two years of classical Latin and two years of modern Spanish. Third, each student will complete a rigorous reading of the classical great books of western culture. The great books seminar component is the heart of the college. These focused tutorials will allow the students to understand the flow of great ideas in theology, philosophy, the humanities, and the sciences from biblical times, through classical Greece and Rome, medieval Europe and the modern West.
History
 San Elijo College was conceived by Tim Mosteller. Tim is a graduate of USC (BA Philosophy and International Relations, Biola University (MA Philosophy of Religion and Ethics) and the University of Miami (Ph.D. Philosophy). Tim has been teaching philosophy for over ten years. He has taught at the University of San Diego, the University of Miami and Biola University. Tim currently teaches full time at California Baptist University and part time at Cal-State San Marcos. He is the author of several books including Relativism: A Guide for the Perplexed (Continuum Press) and multiple scholarly articles in philosophy of religion and bioethics. He lives in San Elijo Hills with his wife Angie and two young children.
With the help of local business and educational leaders, Tim formed the college as a response to the need for classical great books education in higher education options in San Diego County. He completed the business plan in 2006 and incorporated in 2008. He led a fundraiser in November and believes that there is solid community support for the college. He is overseeing the recruiting efforts for the first class of students in the fall of 2010. He is aiming to recruit at least 12 students, and will cap things of at about 35. The college will have a total enrollment of about 150 students.
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Location
The college is located in San Elijo Hills, a community of San Marcos in North County. We chose this location because it is designed as a master planned “live/work” community. The town square, fountain, shopping, dining, parks, playing fields are ideal for a small collegiate environment. The town center has the feel of some of the European cities which have integrated colleges (e.g. Oxford or Cambridge). Also, the proximity to the academic resources of CSUSM played into our decision.
Volunteer Needs
Marketing Director: Publish and coordinate all communications from the college.
Development Officer: Assist with the college’s fundraising campaigns.
Admissions Recruiter: Develop and implement new student recruiting plans.
Accountant: Give oversight to the college’s budget and finances.
Financial Needs
College Founders Scholarship Fund: this fund has been developed to provide merit and need based assistance to our first class of students.
General Operational Fund: this fund will assist us in our operational needs for our first year, including facility leasing costs and recruiting efforts.
Events
Fall Colloquium: Our fall colloquium will be held on September 29th at the San Elijo Hills Community Center.
2nd Annual Donor Symposium will be held in mid November (date and location TBA)
Contact
Website: www.sanelijocollege.org
Phone: (888) 44-ELIJO
E-mail: administration@sanelijocollege.org
Posted Friday, August 21, 2009 11:21 PM By Pax Christi
At first glance, San Elijo College seems more "Catholic" that many other so-called "Catholic" colleges and universities that I can think of that have drowned in the diabolical Land o' Lakes deal brokered by Notre Dame's Fr. Theodore Hesburgh.
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Posted Saturday, August 22, 2009 3:09 PM By John F. Maguire
Caveat emptor! Buyer beware! $8,000 yearly tuition in exhange for a liberal arts/great books college education?
A good deal? On its face, so it seems; but St. Thomas Aquinas -- axiomatically -- is perfectly clear that, as with persons so with institutions, one must "have something" before one can "communicate" it. In regard to San Ejiho College, I've never encountered a college faculty that has one, and only one, faculty member with a Ph.D. I've never encounted a faculty the remainder of which consists of three grad students. I've never encountered a faculty that is as "sociometrically tight" as that of San Ejiho College (specifically: with a four-member faculty, three out of the four faculty members list Biola University on their academic vitae). I've never encountered a great books program offering a four year course in Latin without, however, a Latinist or classicist listed as a faculty member. (The source for my asseverations is: San Elijo College, 2010 - 2011 Catalogue.) In fine, as much as I strongly support classical studies, do we need a Latinist or classicist to know that *Caveat emptor* means *Buyer beware*?
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Posted Saturday, August 22, 2009 8:48 PM By JLS
Maguire, finally I went to the trouble to look up one of your interesting but seldom if ever heard of words, and it is actually a word. Here, all this time I've suspected, and errantly as it turns out, that you have been creating your own anglicized Latin words ... but no, they are actual words according to dictionary.com. Now, this here Latinized word gift that you have would really be great and do wonders if only you had some elementary training in logic. Perhaps a course or two would help, so that we could carry on our arguments without me and others having to win them all the time. Cheers.
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Posted Sunday, August 23, 2009 4:39 PM By John F. Maguire
(I) What is the relationship between the Catholic Christianity and the educational movement known as the
"great books" program? ~ Whether we are talking about small liberal arts colleges or large university/multiversity enterprises, one index of the failure of higher learning in America is its failure to define what kind of ignorance is unacceptable. Given this circumstance, we can appreciate the full force of at least one perennial answer: The kind of ignorance that is unacceptable is ignorance of the great books of world civilization. In England, had not Matthew Arnold, in 1869, recommended that we study "the best thought that has been thought and said"? Had not Frederic Harrison, in 1886, made popular the phrase "Great Books" in his book _The Choice of Books_? Had not Sir John Lubbock, also in 1886, drafted as a useful guide a list of "the hundred best books"? Did not a sociologist (Herbert Spencer) and a Cardinal (John Henry Newman) submit competing lists? In America, had not Charles W. Eliot, the president of Harvard College, join with P. F. Collier and Son to publish Harvard Classics (1909)? Eight years later, in the field of curricular development, had not Columbia University's
John Erskine been the first to propose a Great Books college course? In fact, did not several of Erskine's students -- notably Mortimer Adler, Scott Buchanan, and Clifton Fadiman -- find a home for the Great Books idea in Everett Dean Martin's New York City People's Institute? Later on, at the University of Chicago, had not Robert Huchins, with Adler's assistance, used the Great Books idea to combat (as Tim Lacy puts it) "the evils of the elective system and professionalism" in undergraduate academics?
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Posted Sunday, August 23, 2009 6:14 PM By John F. Maguire
(II) 1937 proved to be a crucial year in the history of the Great Books idea. It was in 1937 that St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland (founded as King William's College in 1696) made the Great Books program the defining feature of its curriculum. Subsequently, a Catholic college -- St. Mary's College in Moraga, California -- modelled its Integrated Liberal Arts program after St. John's program. Pivotal figures in St. Mary's program were Dr. Ronald McArthur, Dr. John Neumayr, Dr. Frank Ellis, Brother Edmund Dolan, F.S.C., and Mr. Marc Berquist. In a conversation with Tom Bethell in 1986, Dr. McArthur recalled that "by the end of the Sixties, Catholic schools were in turmoil. They were becoming secularized, hostile to traditional education, and increasingly hostile to the supernatural life [of grace]. And so we thought we were responsible for trying to start a college which would be concerned with the great books, with the teaching of St. Thomas, and would have an atmosphere both moral and religious which would fit the intellectual life we wanted to live with our students." This Catholic synthesis, as Dr. McArthur conceived it, would however go beyond the program at St. John's in that (1) it would take care to distinguish between great books as regards their excellence, their insights, and their probative power, and (2) it would honor the understanding of these books, which understanding is a good in itself, not as an exclusive good but rather as ordered to an understanding of reality as reality. On the basis, then, of this Catholic synthesis, Thomas Aquinas College was founded in 1971. See _A Brief History of Thomas Aquinas College: Part I - The Early Years; Part II -- Relocation and Transition; Part III - Toward Permanence_, Internet.
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Posted Sunday, August 23, 2009 9:32 PM By John F. Maguire
(III) Thus far: The convergence of the Great Books program with the Catholic tradition as worked out by Dr. Ronald
McArthur at Thomas Aquinas College, Santa Paula, California. ~ But in this thread, given the close connection of the faculty of San Elijo College to Biola University, it would appear that the San Elijo program is, at least in part, modelled after Biola University's Torrey Honors Institute.
"Torrey Honors Institute is a Christian 'great books' program at Biola University in California" (Wikipedia). This information is confirmed in a San Elijo College News report (March 1, 2009) on SEC's Inaugural Donor Symposium:
"Our first speaker was Dr. John Mark Reynolds, founder
of the Torrey Great Books Honor Program at Biola University." Dr. Reynolds is a Ph.D from the University of Rochester, but who is R. A. Torrey? "R. A. Torrey was dean of the Bible Institute of Los Angeles (Biola) from 1912 to 1924. A graduate of Yale divinity school, he combined thoughtful, strongly orthodox theology with practical and global ministry. Inspired by his dedication and courage, the Torrey Honors Institute seeks to raise Christian leaders who will emulate R. A. Torrey in contemporary society" (Torrey Honors Institute Mission Statement). Reuben Archer Torrey, I need to add, was one of the editors of _The Fundamentals: A Testimony of Truths_ (1910 - 1915). In this capacity, Torrey re-published T. W. Medhurst's article "Is Romanism Christianity?" [Medhurst's answer: a resounding No]. Torrey published Medhurst's denial with clear intent, as Torrey had vowed to publish only those articles "in exact keeping with the original purpose of _The Fundamentals_...." Torrey, at all events, never altered his view that Fundamentalism and Catholicity are incompatible, as indeed they are. Still, Catholic students and their parents will find this legacy problematic. How problematic, in its turn, will they find the San Elijo Great Books program?
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Posted Sunday, August 23, 2009 10:32 PM By JLS
Maguire is asking the right questions, and providing solid context for evaluating this upstart college. Here is the answer to how problematic: It is only problematic if you believe whatever your teachers tell you to believe. They will apply pressure. I rummaged through a Univ of Calif regional repository library for three years reading whatever struck my fancy, and not having to deal with any professors. What came of it all? I got a broad look at most of the "great books", but the kernel of the experience was the amazing power of St Augustine's "City of God". When one reads while searching for God, then God will lead: You read; He will lead. It moved me towards the Church in a way that was not entirely intellectual; but, the intellectual power in such a book is more than any antagonist of whatever genius can match. So, what is the point of going to college? To find religion? Or to learn a profession? Which religion? How quickly does one want to learn the religion? Took me a heck of a long time because I had to beg for scraps tossed from the plates on the table of the religiously privileged. One in this situation learns to avoid the pain and misery of lousy scraps, and how to discern the real food in the midst of the garbage. How can that happen with a school which has only solid Catholic teachers? I wonder if such a question can really be answered conclusively.
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Posted Sunday, August 23, 2009 10:47 PM By jayptee1
As seekers of 'truth,' they fail before they even get out the door. The Catholic board member who wants to work with other Christians to service mankind misses the point that his endorsement of a non-Catholic 'truth' curriculum is an implicit slander of his own faith. Simple historical research shows Martin Luther was a thug and protestanism a sham, but hey, let's all be nice.
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Posted Monday, August 24, 2009 9:36 AM By John F. Maguire
(IV) JLS, I appreciate your broad endorsement of my posts I - III even while I remain convinced of the worth of many academic programs -- excepting, I readily concede, the worth of many others. One of the "latent" purposes of college, by the way, is finding a mate. Even here, however, there is something about today's "campus culture" that militates against this purpose. (Finding a mate is called a "latent" purpose because it is not a purpose that is thematized in college brochures.)
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Posted Monday, August 24, 2009 10:32 AM By John F. Maguire
(V) Further, JLS, you raise the question of reader-reception of the great books; indeed, you make special reference to St. Augustine's magnificent _City of God_. Here, by contrast, is Monsignor Ronald Knox's account of his experience with one of those truly indispensable books that the great-book compilers have drawn from the world of ancient Greece: "One of the best days I have spent was that in which, in the space of nine hours, I read [Plato's] _Republic_." Ronald A. Knox, _A Spiritual Aeniad_ (London, New York, Bombay, Calcutta, and Madras: Longmans, Green and Company, 1918), p. 62. As is well-known but should be better known, what Plato accomplishes in _The Republic_, in all actuality, is a brilliant elaboration of the abiding correlation between the proper ordering of the human soul, on the one hand, and the proper ordering of political life, on the other hand.
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Posted Monday, August 24, 2009 12:06 PM By John F. Maguire
(VI) On the one hand, I see on the Internet a San Elijo College catalogue for 2010 - 2011 but no catalogue for 2009 - 2010 (but see the sub-line above: "[San Elijo College:] To Open This Fall in San Diego County"). In any event, it would appear that long after the Fall enrollment season is over, SEC is *recruiting* (SEC's start-up goal: 12 students).
"In order to really survive as a small school, we will need at least twelve students" (SEH / San Elijo Life, March 1, 2009). In the meantime, SEH is conducting "executive seminars" on the great books "designed for working professionals and business leaders." These seminars "will be held once per month in May, June, July, and August." One book will be discussed at each seminar meeting -- total cost to the enrollee: $1,500, with all proceeds earmarked for SEH start-up needs. COMMENT: It was the Thomist Mortimer Adler who first brought the great books program to business men and women. I should add: It was also Adler who included within the canonical list of great books a book-length excerpt from Karl Marx's multivolume _Das Kapital_. Therein, under the name *commodity fetishism*, one finds a critique of the *Tendenz* within the dynamism of Capital to commodify everthing.
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Posted Monday, August 24, 2009 8:55 PM By JLS
Maguire, a bit of concord in the academic and arts!!! I can comment with you on several of the topics. I ran into Plato's Republic as a freshman at Univ of Calif. But I was uneducated in history, philosophy, religion, and art. All I could do was math and mechanical things. But in that philosophy class taught by an incompetant grad student, I managed to boggle him with questions he could not deal with; so what he did was what mean spirited and dishonest men do, he tried to use stupid tactics to gain my respect, and he failed. Then in later years while trying to figure a way to escape the incredible pit I had fallen into, I read not just the Saint's City of God, picked at random off the library shelves, but a Bible. While searching for a Bible in the card catalog, a friend from I think Morgan Hill where the oil execs resided, came over and steered me to a decent version ... this one had an Apocrypha between the OT and the NT. I completed reading it in three days ... even forcing myself to fast totally except for water until I finished it. That text lodged unconsciously but not consciously; there was nobody I could discuss it with. But the power in St Augustine's book was similar to the power I found later in an abridged version of writings of St Thomas. I think in reading these things, their very nature moves one into a state of prayer, and the prayer is answered because God always answers prayer. Before I read St Thomas my thoughts and writing were jumbled; after it, they were clear and organized. It simply was an instant transition. I think I read St Thomas like I'd read a math book, not disputing him but trying to figure out what he was arguing. With St Augustine I read it in the attempt to save my soul ... a kind of desparation, addressed fully by that Saint.
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Posted Monday, August 24, 2009 9:11 PM By JLS
Now, Maguire, as for college being a "mating place", yes that is a big part of it. I found Catholics for the first time in my life (that I was aware of) in college. Half the Catholic girls wanted fantasy and the other half wanted husbands. Those men who strove for the ones who were after husbands would not know about the other half ... but I am here by the grace of God to testify that it was a dismal scene morally then and is vastly worse today. Then the immorality was suppressed, but today it is celebrated. The sooner that society makes the correction the sooner we'll all escape the chastisements that have been increasingly falling on western civilization. I had wondered if Adler was a Catholic, having read only bits and pieces of his material; and, I'll have to look into his work now that you tell me he was a Thomist. I would like to see what psychology is from a non-Freudian tainted Catholic view ... maybe Adler is the man. Back in those first couple of years at UC I read "Das Kapital" (English version) and saw immediately that it was constructed in a bizarre manner ... again I had no one to discuss it with, but it was a piece of junk. I couldn't understand how anyone would find it of value. Later, after learning some Christianity, I realized that many there are who are blinded by the temptations and ruled by the devil ... thus they would be easy prey for such depraved philosophical religion as Marxism. I put up with it on a daily basis; I listen and I try to see why these souls enjoy being duped by it. There is a Christian faith I developed at a young age because of my mother and great (maiden) aunt; they simply focused on the most elemental aspects of faith, and were not well educated in religion, especially compared to what Catholic kids learn so well so often. In college after my intellect was all but decimated, I had no choice but to live on faith for a while. I found it to be as promised -- sufficient, and grows in sunlight when watered.
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Posted Monday, August 24, 2009 9:18 PM By JLS
Maguire ("Das Kapital_. Therein, under the name *commodity fetishism*, one finds a critique of the *Tendenz* within the dynamism of Capital to commodify everthing."): Yes, socialism commodifies everything. It subjects and defines everything to non-life. It would reduce all to nothing if it could. But in contrast, God creates personalities in His own image and likeness that cannot be reduced no matter how much the sinister one tempts creation towards self destruction. Whereas Jesus tells us to deny ourselves, pick up our cross and follow Him, which is how we learn who we are in our unique individual personalities, in contrast Marxism tells us that we have no personalities, and reduces us to nothing. There is a self denial called for by Christ, and a different thing that seems similar called for by the devil. It is critical that we understand the difference.
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Posted Tuesday, August 25, 2009 9:31 AM By John F. Maguire
JLS: I would respond in this way: Marx argued that the dynamism of Capital was to commodify everything, placing well-nigh everything under the regime of the cash nexus. However, Marx -- famously -- made a point of positing socialism (conceived as a transitional stage to communism) as the processual solution to the problem of commodity fetishism -- and so to the problem of "alienation" in general. In short, Marx did not conceive *socialism* as commodifying everything but as a movement against such commodification
-- and as such (proleptically) victorious over that same commodification. However, even from within a Marxian perspective, there is a sense in which "Soviet Marxism" became a form of "state-capitalism" -- and as state-capitalism, Soviet Marxism did indeed commodify *human labor*, in a quite different sense however than the commodification of human labor under the regime of private/corporate Capital. Whereas in the West, today as yesterday, there can be found a strong tendency to reduce human labor to a mere means of corporate profit-making, so in the former Soviet Union we witnessed a strong tendency to reduce human labor to a mere means of state-capitalist development. Both reductions, we can agree, run contrary to Catholic social teaching, see Pope John Paul II's Encyclical Letter _Laborem Exercens_ (1981). ~ Mortimer Adler's decision to include _Capital_ in the Great Books program was a decision to involve students in the major questions raised by this landmark text: Karl Marx's _Das Kapital_.
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Posted Monday, August 31, 2009 11:35 PM By Tim Mosteller
Responses from Tim Mosteller, President San Elijo College Part 1
1) Regarding Caveat emptor! Indeed our "buyers" should beware. We are a small college with humble beginnings. We pray that God's grace would be sufficient for us, and that his power would be made perfect in our weakness. We are looking for students who do not want college as usual, but who will join us in a new venture with some risk involved.
2) Regarding low tuition: We intend to keep our tuition low by leasing commercial space in the San Elijo Hills town center, which is as lovely as many college campuses in the U.S. We intend to focus only on our degree program without having to maintain a large campus or dormitories or food services or sports teams etc…
3) Regarding what we have to offer: First, we offer ourselves to our students to serve them through our teaching and mentoring. Second, we offer them the great ideas of the past. We hope that our remuneration for these things is a (to quote Dorothy Sayers's "Why Work?") "sufficient return in real wealth to enable [us] to carry on the work properly."
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Posted Monday, August 31, 2009 11:40 PM By Tim Mosteller
Responses from Tim Mosteller, President San Elijo College Part 2
4) Regarding our faculty: Our initial faculty are "sociometrically tight" with some connection with Biola University. This need not be a weakness. Two of our initial faculty were undergraduates there, and I a graduate student (MA, Philosophy of Religion and Ethics, 2007). I am the only faculty member (as of today) with my Ph.D. in hand. Two of our faculty currently in graduate school are at the later stages of dissertation writing and should have received their Ph.D.s before the fall of 2010 from USC and UC Irvine. A third is currently completing coursework at Claremont Graduate University.
5) Regarding Latin: We are only offering two years worth of this language. I have been in discussion with a professor here in San Diego (Ph.D. in classics from Cambridge) who would like to teach Latin for us next year, but is currently employed elsewhere, and asked not to be listed on the Catalog.
6) Regarding R.A. Torrey and Catholicism: Mr. Maguire indicates that "Torrey … never altered his view that Fundamentalism and Catholicity are incompatible, as indeed they are. Still, Catholic students and their parents will find this legacy problematic. How problematic, in its turn, will they find the San Elijo Great Books program?" This seems like a kind of genetic fallacy.
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Posted Monday, August 31, 2009 11:48 PM By Tim Mosteller
Responses from Tim Mosteller, President San Elijo College Part 3
7) Regarding Catholic involvement: The Catechism encourages (sections 821-822) the kind of ecumenical interaction that we hope will occur at our College. We hope that our philosophical, pedagogical and theological commitments do not run contrary to Church teaching.
8) Regarding Martin Luther: We believe that an educated man or woman ought to have read at least some of Luther's writings in order to understand history, including Church history. We don't want "niceness" at our college. (CS Lewis reminds us of the evils of the N.I.C.E. in "That Hideous Strength"). We want charity, and we want to be full of grace and truth.
9) Regarding our start date: Our College will open in fall 2010. The original article had the byline of 2009, and has been since corrected.
10) Please feel free to contact me directly through our website. Thanks to California Catholic Daily for featuring our school, and thank you commentators for your thoughts, encouragement and prayers.
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Posted Tuesday, September 01, 2009 4:24 PM By John F. Maguire
In reply to Tim Mosteller: This post is to thank you for your
irenic and gracious response to my posts (among others). I do not want to make too nice a point of it (too "sharp" a point of it), but if I saw a way to qualify my posts in your direction I would do so. ~ My comment on R. A. Torrey's counter-Catholicity belongs in the larger context of the genesis of the Great Books movement, which I sketched all too summarily; I did not intend my Torrey comment reductively.
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Posted Tuesday, September 01, 2009 7:51 PM By JLS
Maguire, you speak as if Marx was a god. No, not so. He developed a way of ruling. And as all men, his ideas exist among others. His work did not create an exclusive realm. You speak in a manner reminiscent of paganism such as the Greeks and Romans and others developed. None of their idols was united with any other, but all were discrete things. Now the difference with Marxism, noting that it came forward in the sway of the Enlightenment, is its claim to a unity or potential unity: This takes paganism and throws it up at God in the same manner as Nimrod shot his arrow from his tower of Babel in an effort to hit God with it. It is the false hope of unity which propels socialism, call it what you want. Arguing with you is like arguing with the homosexuals, transexuals, transvestites, lebians, et al, in that you describe all manner of traits but never reconcile yourself with the essense. The only unification of man with God is through the Eucharist. No political system can even come close, but some of them lie and claim that they can.
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Posted Wednesday, September 02, 2009 12:38 PM By John F. Maguire
Hey there, JLS, I've spoken of Marx as the author of one of the great books Mortimer Adler included in the Great Books program. I've spoken of Marx as having raised "major questions" concerning political economy -- here I will add: questions by no means adequately answered today. I've spoken of Marx's critique of commodity fetishism, which, despite its major deficiencies, is, from a social-scientific point of view, one of the more empirically warrantable features of Marx's thought. ~ I join with Henri de Lubac in rejecting Marx's (novel) form of atheism. See Henri de Lubac, _The Drama of Atheist Humanism_ (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1995). Marx's revolutionary-romantic struggle against "all the gods" jumps over the horse in that it jumps over all the gods so as to barn together with all the gods the one true God -- the God who disclosed Himself as uncreated Being on Mount Sinai. Consequently, Marx's critique of the gods -- I regard this as tragic -- became over-inclusive and by that token unjustly inclusive. ~ But for my part, JLS, no, I do not "speak as if Marx were a god." Nor, by the way, would Marx have spoken in such a way about himself. "Je ne suis Marxiste," he told those who were inclined to elevate him as a kind of god, or anyway, as: premier super-Marxist.
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Posted Wednesday, September 02, 2009 2:50 PM By JLS
Yo, Mac, if Marx is your spiritual director, so be it. As for me I'll follow the Lord, Whose wisdom reveals that there is nothing new under the sun. BTW, Mac, I had to wade through all this jive you bring up on my way to the Church, and am familiar with it all. At some point you read enough and then can see the rest of it even if it has not been written yet. But to do this you have to decide to follow the Lord, and not just talk about His shadow passing by.
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Posted Thursday, September 03, 2009 2:25 PM By John F. Maguire
Is Karl Marx qualified to be a spiritual director in the first place, JLS? Why, on the one hand, do you warn me off Marx, and on the other hand, take pleasure in saying what you know isn't true: that St. Karl is my spiritual director.
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Posted Thursday, September 03, 2009 3:48 PM By JLS
Because, Maguire, anyone who advocates Obama is affiliated with Karl Marx, whether they believe it or not.
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Posted Friday, September 04, 2009 5:05 PM By John F. Maguire
JLS, President Obama is an abortocrat (would that he not be!) -- so no, President Obama can't be advocated in that sad, that grievously unhappy, aspect of his efforts ~ As for Marx, the days of advocacy are over for him -- what remains is a vetting of his writings, especially the _Grundrisse_ and _Kapital_, in the interest of advancing a more developed, a more social-scientic, use of dialectical method though, this time, in the register of dialectical realism rather than in the register of dialectical materialism.
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