The first After-Dinner Scholar podcast on February 1, 2017 began: The 16th century English philosopher, statesman and scientist Francis Bacon famously stated, “Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested: that is,” he went on to explain, “some books are to be read only in parts, others to be read, but not curiously, and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.”  Much to my surprise, that first podcast was seven and a half years, 390 episodes, and more than 205,000 downloads ago. And as of this episode, I’m hanging up my headphones and (for the most part) my mortarboard. Links: The Eucharist Podcast with Wyoming Catholic College Mars Hill Audio Journal Dr. Jim Tonkowich at The Stream  

Last week Dr. Tiffany Schubert discussed Inferno, the first book of Dante’s Comedy. Our friend and former colleague Jason Baxter remarked that in Inferno, “Dante’s poetic violence is meant to melt down the hard heart so that it can be reforged into something new.” Purgatorio is the place where that melted down and malleable heart finds the forge, the place where the hammer of suffering purges all impurities and fashions our hard hearts into hearts perfected. And finally Paradiso shows us the path of choosing the good, true, and beautiful habitually as we gaze on the Face of God eternally “lost,” as the hymnwriter put it, “in wonder, love, and praise.”

Midway in the journey of our life I came to myself in a dark wood, for the straight way was lost. Ah, how hard it is to tell the nature of that wood, savage, dense and harsh— the very thought of it renews my fear! It is so bitter death is hardly more so. (Inferno 1.1-7) During Lent and now during Easter, our sophomores, under the guidance of Dr. Tiffany Schubert, have been reading Dante's Divine Comedy in their humanities class. And while that reading is academic, no one can avoid Dante’s emphasis throughout the poem on our spiritual lives.

Pope Benedict XVI wrote, "At Easter we rejoice because Christ did not remain in the tomb, his body did not see corruption; he belongs to the world of the living, not to the world of the dead; we rejoice because he is the Alpha and also the Omega, as we proclaim in the rite of the Paschal Candle; he lives not only yesterday, but today and for eternity." Theologian Dr. Jeremy Holmes shares his insights about the risen Christ as we celebrate the Octave of Easter.

Saint Ephrem the Syrian said, “We give glory to you, Lord, who raised up your cross to span the jaws of death like a bridge by which souls might pass from the region of the dead to the land of the living.” The cross is the bridge from death to life, from Hell to Heaven, from the judgment we deserve to the grace we can never deserve, from eternal captivity to the self to eternal freedom in God. With that in mind, during this Holy Week, it seemed appropriate to rebroadcast a conversation with theologian Dr. Kent Lasnoski about the four last things.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church (159) declares Though faith is above reason, there can never be any real discrepancy between faith and reason. Since the same God who reveals mysteries and infuses faith has bestowed the light of reason on the human mind, God cannot deny himself, nor can truth ever contradict truth. During their final spring semester in their science course, Wyoming Catholic College seniors consider the theory of evolution. Their professor, Dr. Daniel Shields guides them towards, as the college catalog puts it, “the ultimate goal of achieving a coherent synthesis of faith and reason.”

Observing the French Revolution, British Member of Parliament, Edmund Burke, noted, “But what is liberty without wisdom and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint.” Over the past few weeks, our Wyoming Catholic College juniors have been considering the French Revolution with their professor Dr. Pavlos Papadopoulos.

It’s been a strange winter here in Lander, Wyoming beginning with nearly two feet of snow on Thanksgiving—of which about fourteen inches fell between four and eight PM. Another foot or so just before Christmas and nothing but dribs and drabs after that. And now—a bit early—what’s left of that snow is melting in warm, early spring weather. Not that we don’t think about getting outside and enjoying nature even in the depths of January, but as the days warm, fishing, gardening, hiking, and all the joys of the warm seasons become topics of conversation. Nature. Nature is a fundamental part of a Wyoming Catholic College education because—well, nature is fundamental. Dr. Stanley Grove shares about the place of nature in the college's curriculum and in our lives.

The new Apple Vision Pro headset, we’re told, “delivers fun and rewarding gameplay for players of all skill levels. Players can dive into games on the App Store that transform the space around them, use an Environment for a more immersive experience, or play compatible games on a screen as large as they want.” What do we make of video games whether on phones, computers, TVs, or inside the Vision Pro? Are they sinful or perhaps as one pastor-theologian remarked, not sinful, but definitely dumb? Or… Wyoming Catholic College senior, Greg Bowman, entitled his senior oration, “Are Video Games Fine Art?”

January 31 to February 2 the Wyoming Catholic College community enjoyed days packed with senior orations. Each senior, having written a thesis in the fall, presents his or her findings in a 30-minute lecture followed by questions from a faculty panel and the audience. It is a wonderful celebration of all our students accomplish in their years at Wyoming Catholic and it’s always a privilege to have students as guests on the podcast. Moira Milligan’s oration was entitled “No Pain, No Gain: The Radical Nature of Sacrificial Love.” And she began with how she chose her topic.

This podcasts is "about the Great Books and the liberal arts," something that sets The After-Dinner Scholar apart from other audio blogs from Wyoming Catholic Collage. Case in point, the college has launched a new podcast entitled “The Eucharist with Wyoming Catholic College” inspired by conversations about the National Eucharistic Revival. The podcast features Wyoming Catholic College President Kyle Washut and, our guest, theology professor and academic dean, Dr. Jeremy Holmes.

The number of integers (1, 2, 3, 4, and so on) is infinite. And oddly enough so is the number of even integers (2, 4, 6, 8, 10, and beyond). Meaning that the number of even integers is equal to the number of all integers, both odd and even. Welcome to infinity. While it’s still winter, it’s not too early to think about Wyoming Catholic College’s summer PEAK program for high school juniors and seniors. In it we give them a taste of life at the college including backpacking, horseback riding, Catholic worship and devotion, and classes complete with homework and tests. Not only do high school students enjoy the two weeks of PEAK, but they walk away with a pretty good idea of what it would be like to come to college here at Wyoming Catholic. Many decide that it would be wonderful and join us as freshmen. Mathematician Dr. Scott Olsson has taught a course at PEAK on infinity. And I asked Dr. Olsson to give us a finite preview of infinity. (To learn more about PEAK 2024, click here.)

“I hate to hear you talk about all women as if they were fine ladies instead of rational creatures,” remarks Anne Eliot in Jane Austen’s Persuasion. “None of us want to be in calm waters all our lives.” It is always a great pleasure on the After-Dinner Scholar to introduce you to books written by our faculty and Dr. Tiffany Schubert’s book, Jane Austen’s Romantic Medievalism: Courtly Love and Happy Endings, has just been released.

While you and I sit by a delightful fire—or at least (assuming you live in a cool climate)—delightful central heating, our Wyoming Catholic College freshmen are spending a few nights in their Quinzees: giant mounds of snow, hollowed out to form shelters. That seems an odd way to prepare for a rigorous second semester of Latin, theology, philosophy, humanities, math, and science. Yet we consider snow camping a vital part of a Wyoming Catholic College education. Karl Eby, Wyoming Catholic College class of 2013 is the Assistant Director of our Outdoor Leadership Program sheds a little light on the Freshman Winter Trip.

“Social connection,” wrote U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy in  his May 2023 “Advisory on our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation,” “is a fundamental human need, as essential to survival as food, water, and shelter. Throughout history, our ability to rely on one another has been crucial to survival.” That may come as news to many modern Americans, but back in the fourth century BC Aristotle would have told you the same things. Friendship, he wrote in his Nichomachean Ethics, “is not only a necessary thing but a splendid one. We praise those who love their friends, and the possession of many friends is held to be one of the fine things of life.” Dr. Pavlos Papadopoulos recently taught The Nichomachean Ethics with our Wyoming Catholic College juniors and looking at, among other things, friendship.

This podcast was posted on December 26, the day after Christmas. It was the commemoration of St. Stephen’s martyrdom described in Acts chapter 7. On the 27th, we remember St. John, the only apostle who was not martyred. The 28th is the memorial of the Holy Innocents who were murdered by King Herod in his attempt to kill Jesus. And finally on Friday, we remember the martyrdom of St. Thomas a Becket. Why do we do that during Christmas week? Wyoming Catholic College President Kyle Washut clarifies it for us.

During the first weeks of Advent, the Church directs our attention to the second advent of Christ, that day when he will come again in glory to gather his people into his resurrection, remake this tired, sinful world, and set all wrongs right. When he “will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain" (Revelation 21:4). In this last week, we focus on his first coming as the babe of Bethlehem, his coming into our world of tears, death, morning, and crying. Theologian Dr. Jeremy Holmes in his personal spiritual life, in his scholarship, in the classroom, and in his book Cur Deus Verba: Why the Word Became Word has spend a great deal of time considering the mystery of the Incarnation, of God become flesh. Morten Lawridsen's "O magnum mysterium," which Dr. Holmes mentioned, can be found here.

The music coming over the air—for those who still listen to the radio—and in various Christmas mixes from Pandora, Apple Music, Spotify, and so on tends to be a wild and wooly mix including everything from “O Holy Night” to “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer.” It’s a mishmash of worship, good theology, horrible theology, family, home, childhood, greed, and, of course, romance. As we try to sort it all out, here are some thoughts from Wyoming Catholic College’s choir director and composer-in-residence, Paul Jernberg.

Virgil's Aeneid tells us about the founding of Rome and begins with the destruction of Troy at the end of the Trojan War, the war recounted in The Iliad. As the Greeks burn and sack Troy, Aeneas escapes with his father, his son, his household gods, and a small band of fellow refugees to found a new Troy—greater, more powerful, and more magnificent than the old Troy—in Italy. Dr. Tiffany Schubert has been teaching The Aeneid to our Wyoming Catholic College sophomores.

Last Sunday was the Solemnity of Jesus Christ, King of the Universe which was instituted by Pope Pius XI with his 1925 encyclical Quas Primas (In the First) as a response to “those bitter enmities and rivalries between nations, which still hinder much the cause of peace; that insatiable greed which is so often hidden under a pretense of public spirit and patriotism, and gives rise to so many private quarrels; a blind and immoderate selfishness, making men seek nothing but their own comfort and advantage, and measure everything by these; no peace in the home, because men have forgotten or neglect their duty; the unity and stability of the family undermined; society, in a word, shaken to its foundations and on the way to ruin.”  Rather than sounding nearly 100 years old, Pius’ words sound as though they were written yesterday. Theologian Dr. Kent Lasnoski discusses why we need to pay a bit more attention to this last Sunday in the Church year as we prepare for Advent.