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The Restoration of Christian Culture
Restoration of Christian Culture
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Here is an article on the influence that John Senior has had on the Catholic culture in the United States.https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2...
I love that image of the sparrow and remember it well from college days having to translate that passage from Bede's original Anglo-Saxon Ecclesiastical History into modern English. For a time, during the 80's when Texas public schools still had textbooks based on a classical curriculum that included this passage as "The Conversion of Edwin." Edwin was King of Northumberland , a pagan, entertaining the missionary Paulinus attempting to bring the Gospel to the Anglo Saxons. King Edwin listened to Paulinus, then consulted with his advisers, one of whom used that flight of the sparrow image to describe the bleak life and dark future of their existence, and expressed a willingness to listen to anyone who offered something more hopeful. Thus began the Christianization of England. In our current culture it is now difficult to imagine a textbook including this significant milestone in Christian culture. What a perfect way to begin this book!
This article talks about how the Humanities program was ended at KU.https://www.crisismagazine.com/1995/w...
The Catholic Thing website has an article on John Senior and John Henry Newman's Legacy today. Link below:The Catholic Thing
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The Catholic Thing "
https://www.thecatholicthing.org/
(You had given an email address :-)
Great! It didn't show up on my post box!
This article has a guide that I am using to purchase as much of Senior’s list of good books as possible. This list alluded to many more (for instance, there are 25 books in the Lang series). Many of tgem I am finding are copies over 100 years old. I got a set of some of the books listed that the listing said published in 1912, but it was actually a set of 3 books published in 1812. Our girls are aged almost 1, almost 2, and just turned 3. We plan on homeschooling and using Senior and Adler’s ideas. We will be using Angelicum homeschool curriculum. https://www.crisismagazine.com/2012/n...
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The problem I find with the list of books in this link is the same as I found with the book by Senior we are reading and commenting here: he wants to go back to the nineteenth century, as though the twentieth had produced nothing worthy. I think the latest dated books in the list are Laura Ingalls's Little House books, whose subject matter also goes back to the nineteenth century, although they were published in the nineteen thirties.
Do you really think that the following books should not be included in the readings of our children and youths?
The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings by Tolkien
The Narnian Chronicles by C.S.Lewis
Watership Down by Richard Adams
I would also add the following:
The Dancing Bear and others by Peter Dickinson
The Little Bookroom by Eleanor Farjeon
Godhanger and other books by Dick King-Smith
Tom's Midnight Garden by Philippa Pearce
Mary Norton's books
Rosemary Sutcliff's books
P.C.Wren's Gestes books
Madeleine L'Engle's books
In the previous I have just considered twentieth century books written in English, and not even all of them, by far.
Yes! I agree that the great books of the last century such as J R R Tolkein and C S Lewis are very much important! As well as many lives of the saints. I have found the Chronicles of Narnia with the best artwotk for this reason. Without doubt, we must utilize those great authors of the 20th century. I find that many authors from the late 19th through mid 20th century have such a beautiful and artistic way with words that it is a pleasure to read. It is hard for me to find a modern author of tales that could go blow for blow with Robert Louis Stevenson in artistic style, for instance. So, I think there is a bit of give and take.
One thing I do believe we should do with our children is to allow them to play in fairyland. For instance, after my girls read Tolkein, and know of the Ents, I wish to take them to the ancient redwood forest of northern California and to some caves so that we can look for dwarves and gnomes and fairies and such, as we hide from the goblins that I think I hear!
So, as I agree with you that these old lists should not be used exclusively, I am of the opinion that they should be used extensively.
And, I am going to be adding your short list to my list to acquire.
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Of course!
Christopher wrote: "And, I am going to be adding your short list to my list to acquire."This is my friend Hunt i think that he Will be a good addition to our group :-).
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Another source of free books online, many of them long out of print, can be found on archive.org.
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The problem with the Internet Archive is that most books are in very bad state, having just been passed through an OCR to translate printed text into computer text, which means there are many typos and page numbers appear in between the text in strange places.
The Gutenberg Project books, although they also have typos, have been subjected at least to a human revision.
The books in Senior's list, as they are most of them nineteenth or early twentieth century, have no author rights and can usually be found in Gutenberg.
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Anyway, I have finally downloaded the book and started it. I will try to catch up.
I Hope that your travel of Spain were pleasent for you and your wife. I regret not have been able being with you. I wait if you decided to come back to Spain again.
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It was a great time. I also regret not being able to meet. But we will eventually finish our pilgrimage, so we will have future opportunities.
I Will be waiting to you and my friend Alfonseca.
John wrote: "I am back from our most recent segment on the Camino - what a change there is walking in Spain compared to walking in France."What is the difference?
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What is the difference?"
People. In France we might see twenty pilgrims in a day, and it was almost never a problem to reserve, one or two days in advance, a room for two in a gite. In St. Jean Pied de Port there were a couple hundred people leaving each day. Not only were there no private rooms to be had on the Way (on short notice) but having left it too late, we weren't even able to reserve two beds in the large religious albergue in Roncesvalles - 183 beds. And when we got there, the beds reserved for pilgrims without reservations were all taken. They sent us by taxi 5 kilometers away, which was the nearest albergue with space. In France we could walk for hours without seeing anyone else, In Spain we were rarely out of sight of other pilgrims. Finally, in three years of walking in France we met one other American (most were French, then German, Australian and a smattering of other Europeans). Walking in Spain it felt like you couldn't turn around without bumping into another American and in just three days in Spain we met walkers from Italy, Croatia, Poland. And Korea - almost as many Koreans as Americans. I enjoyed the reaction when I would greet the Koreans in Korean.
John wrote: "Mariangel wrote: "John wrote: "I am back from our most recent segment on the Camino - what a change there is walking in Spain compared to walking in France."What is the difference?"
People. In F..."
I cheer up that in Spain the variety of the citizenship of the pilgrims.
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What is the difference?"
..."
There is another difference too - For almost two weeks walking in France we were unable to attend mass on the busiest pilgrimage trail in France. The area is fairly remote and lightly populated, but the masses are few and far apart and we weren't able to have our walk coincide with any of them. In fact most of the churches we entered did not have a sanctuary light light, signifying that Jesus was not reserved in the host in the tabernacle. But the altars were in almost all cases properly dressed. I suspect this is a reflection of the wave of vandalization of French churches that no one wants to talk about. In one church I noticed that the tabernacle door looked like it had been pried open, and roughly beaten back into shape. In Spain, there seem to be many more masses, though we weren't able to attend mass in Roncesvalles, having been taxi'd 5 kilometers away for our bed.
That's sad about the empty churches in France. Then next year you will need to reserve lodging in advance, or is it hard to know how much walking you will manage each day till you are actually walking?
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Then next year you will need to reserve lodging in advance, or is it hard to know how much walking you will manage each day till you are actually wa..."
We will book the first week, then try to book two or three days in advance. We have a good idea how much we can walk and are learning how long it takes to get used to walking every trip. An ideal distance for the first week is about 12 miles a day. As much as 15, but no more and not twice in a row. After that first week our feet are able to do about 15 miles or more every day. Of course, all of that depends on the spacing of the towns and facilities.
For anyone who reads the US Edition of the Magnificat, in the August edition Anthony Esolen in his monthly essay How the Church has Changed the World writes about John Senior. I tried to find a link, but unfortunately there is none.
Connie wrote: "Here is an article on the influence that John Senior has had on the Catholic culture in the United States.https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2......"
I tried to find a write-up in the Lawrence paper of the reunion. Nichts, nothing, nada...
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