The Professor Who Knows Our Names

The Professor Who Knows Our Names | Brian Jones | Catholic World Report



A tribute to the man who is Schall

“Father Schall cares
about where you’re from and how you’re doing. He doesn’t need to do that, but
he does. The greatest professor I’ll ever
have knows my name.”

— Victoria Edel, former
student of Father James Schall

“What, in the end, does a
professor most want his students to remember? Not himself but what is true and
the search for it. Above all, he wants them to remember the Socratic
foundations of our culture, that ‘it is never right to do wrong,’ that death is
not the worst evil, that ultimately our lives are about eternal life, as
Benedict XVI writes in his great encyclical on modernity, Spe Salvi. The university is a place where truth, all truth, can be
spoken, ought to be spoken. Often it is not. It is imperative, as Schumacher
said, that a student knows where to turn when it is not.”

— Father James V. Schall, SJ,
“The Final Gladness,” December 7, 2012.

I once took a philosophy
course in which, at the end of the semester, the professor told us a story about
whether or not there was such a thing as a “stupid question.” He said that
toward the close of a recent semester at a university in Bulgaria, a young and
tepid student raised her hand and asked, “Professor, is there such a thing as a
stupid question?” Hoping to relieve the young student of her fear and worry, he
quickly shot back, “Of course not. If you have any questions in this class, I
want you to come right out and ask them with no worry of rebuke or concern that
your question is not worth asking.” The girl breathed a sigh of relief, and
then proceeded to ask her question: “Professor, how come you don’t know any of
our names?” The professor, with his smile turning to stone, simply responded,
“I guess I was wrong: that is a stupid question.”

The point of my telling
this story as the introduction for a tribute to Father James Schall will hopefully become apparent.
To even attempt to write something in honor of such a man, who the Georgetown
University student newspaper calls a “living legend,” will surely fall
enormously short of the true pietas that
we, as his students, owe to him. Last month, Father Schall gave his last public lecture at
Georgetown University, a place that he has been able to call home for the last
34 years. Of course, Father Schall would be quick to remind us, along with
Chesterton, that even at home, he still has a sense of being “homesick.” Even
in the greatest of places, surrounded with the joy of family and friendship,
this life nevertheless leaves us unsettled. We are still restless, since even
the good things of this life are simply a prelude to what is to come, whereby
the fulfillment of all our desires and pursuits will come to rest in Him who is
our end. It is all the more poignant, then, that Father Schall titled his last lecture, “The Final
Gladness.” And what precisely is this “final gladness”? Schall tells us that it
will ultimately consist “in a meeting in which we, in friendship, at last find
ourselves seeing God as we would have it, face-to-face.”

Schall has bequeathed to
us a plethora of writings wherein he has explored practically every topic in
human affairs.