Convocation Address, Fall 2013

This is only tangential to the love, study, and practice of Stoicism, especially since it brings Catholic education into the mix, but it fits nicely with the reflections on Seneca's Letter 88, and a few people asked for easy access to this text.

It was given as the Convocation Address at a small Catholic college, back in 2013. It was another wasted effort, and a precious lesson learned.

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Convocation Address, August 2013

First and foremost, I owe all of you an apology. Professor Fabrice Conte rightfully earned the privilege to speak to you today. Unfortunately he can’t be with us, so you’ll have to settle for a second-rate pinch hitter. I can’t possibly match his usual insight, charm and humor, but perhaps, being a befuddled philosopher, I can offer some meandering thoughts on why you are here, where you can choose to go, and why it just might matter.

The opportunity for a college education is, simply put, a big deal. It seems to matter a lot, but a lot of the time we seem to forget why it matters. We’ve had so many years of pundits, technocrats and snake-oil salesmen tell us that higher education will somehow make it all better, but while they may vaguely insist on what we ought to do, they’ve often neglected to tell us why we should even bother doing it.

Many schools, like those pundits, technocrats and snake-oil salesmen, will promise you many things. I couldn’t speak for them. But I can tell you something about the sort of education we can offer you here at our college.

I’d like to offer some further reflections on the central notion of Fr. Wolfe’s spring Commencement Address: there are three things that make our education stand out from the crowd of the usual suspects. Our model is radical. Our model is liberal. And our model is Catholic.

Each of these three principles goes against the grain of our modern, secular consumer society. We proudly offer no apology for this aberration. As GK Chesterton wisely said, “a dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it.”

Each of these principles is also very easily misunderstood in our times. To be radical is not to be an extremist. To be liberal is not necessarily to be on the left side of the political aisle. To be Catholic is not to be superstitious, narrow or old-fashioned.

Rather, to be radical means to get to the heart of things, to dig down to the root, to perceive the very foundations upon which all our human endeavors are built. It means asking “why?” and challenging fleeting opinion, prejudice, and blind assumption until the truth is revealed.

To be liberal means to embrace a life fit for a free person, and not that of a slave. I mean here not just a political freedom, but also a personal one. It is only when we can rule ourselves that we are free, and we can only rule ourselves when we choose with responsibility and wisdom. A choice out of ignorance will always enslave us, and as the philosopher Boethius said, “makes us lower than the beasts.”

To be catholic, with a ‘little c,’ means to see all the problems and questions of life universally, to recognize that, as beings of intellect and will, all persons are at heart the same, and share the same needs, rights and responsibilities. It means that whatever the time, place or circumstance, we live in a common world, and can join together to know the same truths and love the same goods.

To be Catholic, with a ‘big C,’ means even more. It means that when we humbly recognize our own failings and weaknesses, we also recognize that only the loving grace of Almighty God can truly make all things right.

Now this may all seem very abstract and theoretical, but may I boldly suggest that these are most practical issues there ever were? The most practical questions are the most immediate, the most concrete, the most pressing and demanding. They are the things you just need the most. And what could possibly matter more than knowing what you are doing, and why it matters?

This is exactly what a radical, liberal and Catholic education offers you. What matters to you most? Whether you call it happiness, bliss, contentment, fulfillment, enlightenment or salvation, the basic idea is one and the same. It means being complete and whole. Nothing could be more important, or practical, than that.

Teaching you a skill is one thing. Teaching you how to acquire skills for yourself is quite another. Just ‘getting you a job’ alone is a cheap excuse for an education. It gives you only the means, but without the end.

We are striving to teach you to teach yourselves, so you can freely rule yourselves, and by doing so discover your happiness through your own reflection and reason.

When it comes to what is necessary for happiness, Pope Francis, during his recent visit to Brazil for World Youth Day, warned us against the things that so easily distract us from our goal:

"It is true that nowadays, to some extent, everyone including our young people feels attracted by the many idols which take the place of God and appear to offer hope: money, success, power, pleasure. Often a growing sense of loneliness and emptiness in the hearts of many people leads them to seek satisfaction in these ephemeral idols."

Now money, success, power and pleasure can surely be good things, but they can just as well destroy us, as the most common of common sense should make clear. It doesn’t take rocket science to get that. But it does take wisdom to know how to relate money, success, power and pleasure to what really matters.

All the gifts of this world mean nothing, if we don’t know how to make use of them, and what they are good for. This is what a radical, liberal and Catholic education offers you. And I don’t think there’s a more valuable currency than that.

Socrates once told us: “do not take thought for your persons and your properties, but first and chiefly care about the greatest improvement of the soul. Wealth does not make virtue, but virtue makes wealth, and all other good things for man.”

You’ll probably hear me say that far too often in your classes, but that’s because it may be one of the most important things you’ll ever learn. There’s actually a reason professors repeat these sort of things.

John Lennon and Paul McCartney did have it right when they said “all you need is love.” But John Paul II made it all the clearer when he added “there can be no love without the truth.”

To love is not just to feel blindly, but to choose freely to recognize the good and desire it for its own sake. You can’t love something, or someone, if you don’t first understand how and why they are worth loving, and to be conscious of why they are good in themselves.

This is why we need to be wise in order to love, and this is why we need to humbly open our minds and hearts to the true, the good and the beautiful to live well, and to be happy.

A theologian and philosopher as profound and subtle as St. Thomas Aquinas put it quite simply: “Three things are necessary for the salvation of man: to know what he ought to believe, to know what he ought to desire, to know what he ought to do.” I suggest to you that all the rest is just window-dressing. There is no room for the ephemeral idols here. Thinking that there is anything more is just the vanity of vanities.

A great danger of our sadly pigeonholed, compartmentalized world is seeing everything in isolation. In contrast, the cure of a radical, liberal and Catholic education is there to remind us that we must always strive to understand how everything fits together as a whole, to see both the forest and the trees.

Perhaps most demanding is the realization that we can never separate all our thoughts, works and deeds from a deeply moral significance. John Paul II summarized this need beautifully:

"It is essential that we be convinced of the priority of the ethical over the technical, of the primacy of the person over things, of the superiority of the spirit over matter. The cause of the human person will only be served if knowledge is joined to conscience. Men and women of science will truly aid humanity only if they preserve the sense of the transcendence of the human person over the world and of God over the human person. "

These are the values we strive to offer you here at our University. Here, you will find faculty who respect you for your own sake, and will not treat you merely as a customer, number, statistic or commodity. You are a person, a creature given dignity in the image and likeness of God. Your dignity as a person is not negotiable because God, the measure of all things, gave you the gift of your very existence.

Each and every one of you is unique and priceless. You deserve the right to not only live, but to live with excellence. We are here to help you do so, and however much you may stumble, as long as you are willing, you will find our hands there to help you up again. You may not always find those values elsewhere, but you will find them here.