The Road Ahead – Our Annual Fall Appeal
This year we again are asking visitors to our website to help in continuing the work of The Cornerstone Forum in maintaining resources available here for another year. Our ability to provide the means to support our efforts in the material world depends as it always has on the kindness and generosity of those who find our efforts worthwhile.
The road ahead for us all is likely not as clear as pictured in the image above. Whatever the coming challenges will be, they will require resources to meet them, intellectual, moral, and spiritual most importantly. We highlight below initiatives we are currently pursuing:
- Gil Bailie’s reflections on his work in progress
- Alex Lessard’s introduction to the second book in the Adeodatus Series on Catholic Education & Culture forthcoming from Catholic University of America Press. (The first in the series is Words Made Flesh: The Sacramental Mission of Catholic Education by Jared Stout)
We hope you find them worthy of your support.
Please look favorably on our appeal and follow the link below to make your tax-deductible donation today!
With thanksgiving for your continued interest,
by Gil Bailie
The mission of the Cornerstone Forum has always been to underscore the Judeo-Christian roots of our civilization, and to argue for the importance of René Girard’s legacy for awakening us to the preciousness and precariousness of that heritage. For that reason, our work has a dialogical character, determined in part by the state of cultural life at any given moment. One of the things that makes a cultural drift in a deeply troubling direction so difficult to engage is the incremental feature of that drift. Very large and profound shifts in our culture typically overtake us so slowly that we are tardy in recognizing their pernicious nature.
The issues our nation faced in the recent election, however, were quite stark. A party that had enshrined in its platform a palpable contempt for the moral and ethical principles essential to Western civilization was repudiated quite decisively. That hardly means that the angels are all on the other side, but it does represent what may in retrospect be seen as a decisive turning point. Of course, the results of one election can hardly resolve the long-standing tension between the Christian anthropology upon which our civilization ultimately depends and those forces, within us and within our culture, that remain deeply antithetical to it. So, our work in the months and years ahead will be to continue to explore the riches of our cultural patrimony and to repropose this heritage to those who remain ignorant of or indifferent and hostile to it.
Long before the rather surprising election results, I have been at work on what will likely be my last book. (I celebrated my 80th birthday this year and, healthy though I am, the actuarial table cannot be discounted.) More to the point, the scope of my current project, and the snail’s pace at which I am able to work on it, are daunting. I mention these matters because, though I think of myself, seated at my computer keyboard, as contributing daily to the Cornerstone Form mission, I am haunted by the fact that the fruits of my efforts will require a great deal of patience on my part and on the part of those for whom I am writing this book. I pray that what comes of my efforts will one day be of use to others.
An Excerpt from the Introduction to the
Adeodatus Series on Catholic Education & Culture
By Alex E. Lessard
“Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all.” These words are often falsely attributed to Aristotle, they nonetheless truly encapsulate a profound and enduring insight about the nature and purpose of learning. In his prescient work The Abolition of Man, C. S. Lewis diagnoses the central malady of modern education with a vivid analogy: “The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles but to irrigate deserts.” For Lewis, the defining feature of the deserted soul is not an excess of rational thought but a dearth of rightly ordered loves. Our students suffer not because they think too much but because they desire too little; the disease is not atrophy of intellect but a withering of the chest, the seat of magnanimity and courage: “We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst.”
The Adeodatus Series on Catholic Education & Culture takes its name from Augustine’s beloved son – a figure whose life illuminates the intimate connection between learning and love that lies at the heart of authentic education. Born out of sin but transformed by grace, Adeodatus became not only Augustine’s student but his interlocutor in De Magistro (On the Teacher), a philosophical dialogue that explores the deepest mysteries of teaching and learning. The boy’s remarkable intellectual gifts “filled [Augustine] with awe,” yet it was the formation of his heart through the witness of his father’s own conversion that proved most significant for him. When both were baptized by Ambrose in Milan, their relationship was transfigured from a merely natural bond into a spiritual fellowship oriented toward eternal wisdom. Like that intimate conversation between father and son, this series seeks to foster the integration of mind and heart, wisdom and love, that characterizes authentic Catholic education.
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At the heart of this educational vision stands Christ himself, the Logos through whom all things were made and in whom all things hold together. He is the master Teacher who continues to draw all people to himself, the living Water that alone can quench our deepest thirst. To encounter Him in the pursuit of learning is to discover both the source and end of all our intellectual striving. In his light, we see light; in his truth, we find freedom; in his love, we discover the meaning and purpose of our existence.
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This is the great adventure and high calling of Catholic education: to form a new generation who will be poets and prophets of a world transfigured by grace, with minds and hearts expanded by encounter with divine wisdom. In this noble mission lies our deepest joy and surest hope, for we know that the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.