10 July, 2023
Dear Reader,
We held our eighth annual Colloquium last Saturday 8 July. We doubled our numbers from last year: 70 this time, 35 last. Being cancelled appears to have done us no harm, and may even have given us a boost! But the excellence of the speakers and the urgency of the topic are surely the main reasons for the heightened interest.
Most readers of this newsletter live in other states of Australia or overseas, so may have felt a little neglected by our recent concentration on conference matters, but as usual all our sessions were recorded and will shortly be uploaded to our YouTube channel so that everyone in this global village of ours will have access to them.
Photos and links will appear in our next issue. I warm;y thank all who spoke and all who came.
Most of our readers share some anxiety about the tightening constraints on free speech in our and in similar western democracies. We have had material pulled by Facebook. Most recently we posted an interview with Patrick Moore, a founder of Greenpeace, in which he spoke critically of prevailing views on global warming. Facebook had withdrawn it within an hour! It is simply incredible that faceless entitles can silence opinions they disagree with, and that there is no possibility of appeal. I think it fair to compliment YouTube on thus far being free from this kind of censorship. The Patrick Moore interview is still there. It must be deeply upsetting to many.
WESTERN CIVILISATION SUMMER SCHOOL
‘We are like dwarves sitting on the shoulders of giants, for we see more and farther than they, not by the sharpness of our own eyesight or the loftiness of our bodies, but because we are raised up and lifted on high by their colossal greatness.’
(John of Salisbury)
In January 2022 we trialled a new kind of summer school – an overview of the most notable achievements of Western Civilisation across the arts and sciences. We had 10 participants and got universally favourable feedback. So we decided to run a second one in January this year. Interest had increased, as had numbers – 16 people came that time.
It seems we’ve met a need. A third school is now scheduled from Monday 8 to Friday 12 January 2024. The structure is intensive, classes running from 9am to 3pm on each of the five days.
What’s so good about it? Well, we identify five core fields in which the Christian Culture of the West has achieved particular greatness and we assign one day to each: those key areas are: Literature, History, Theology, Philosophy and Art.
There’s a legend about St Augustine watching a boy on a beach pouring water into a hole in the sand. ‘What are you doing?’ he asked. ‘I want to pour the whole ocean in,’ he replied. ‘But,’ said Augustine, ‘you’ll never fit all that water into such a tiny hole.’ ‘And you won’t be able to fit an understanding of the Trinity into your tiny head,’ returned that clever little know-all!
We must sound almost as naive. A few lectures over a week are hardly enough to sketch the great deeds of Plato and Aristotle, Homer and Euripides, Thucydides and Tacitus, Michelangelo and Raphael, Dante and Galileo, as well as all the moderns who’ve followed in their wake. But we can offer a kind of ‘taster’, hopefully drawing the threads together and showing some of the connections. Let’s remember, though, that much of the greatness of the Christian West has always lain in its inclusivity: Christopher Dawson reminds us that‘Christianity is not bound up with any particular race or culture. It is neither of the East or of the West, but has a universal mission to the human race as a whole…’
With best wishes to all,
David Daintree
Our Latin and New Testament Greek schools will again be held in January 2024. See below under COMING EVENTS for dates and further details.
IN THE NEWS
DANGERS TO FREE SPEECH
The Australian Government is considering the establishment of an ‘Australian Media Communications and Media Authority’ to make decisions on truth and falsehood, genuine information and misinformation (or disinformation). Are we on course for a regime of tighter censorship? Please watch this short video and decide.
PARENTAL DYSPHORIA
This anonymous article from Quillette movingly describes the condition of a parent whose young child chooses to be transgender or non-binary: ‘Parental dysphoria involves the extended state of having to stay silent about something that you know will lead to tragedy, because you don’t want to lose your child, your friends, your extended family, and your marriage—everything you’ve worked to build.’
THE MEANING OF WOKE
In this interview with Damian Coory (ADH-TV), Kevin Donnelly traces the slow maturation of ‘Woke’ thinking right back to Marx, Nietzsche and beyond.
THE VALUE OF POETRY
Barry Spurr laments the declining importance of poetry in the high school curriculum.
COMING EVENTS
(Venues for all of the following are yet to be finalised)
HOBART SUNDAY 3 SEPTEMBER – 6.00 PM
LAUNCH OF RABBI DR SHIMON COWEN’S NEW BOOK,
A Populism of the Spirit – Further Essays in Politics and Universal Ethics.
HOBART WED 13 SEPTEMBER – 6.00 PM
DR RALPH MARTIN
Dr Ralph Martin is President of Renewal Ministries and Director of Graduate Theology Programs in Evangelization, Sacred Heart Major Seminary, Archdiocese of Detroit, USA. He holds a doctorate in theology from the Angelicum University in Rome.
Topic: Living as Catholics in Challenging Times
SUMMER SCHOOL ON WESTERN CULTURE 2024
Monday 8 to Friday 12 January 2024 inclusive.
Further information will shortly be released. We’re grateful to Lynda Heise for recording part of this lecture on Epic Poetry from the last school, in January this year.
SUMMER SCHOOL – LATE AND ECCLESIASTICAL LATIN
Monday 15 to Friday 19 January 2024
The Latin school assumes some prior knowledge of the language and leads participants through a selection of important readings in poetry and prose, sacred and secular, from authors such as Augustine, Jerome, Bede, Peter Abelard, Aquinas, the Carmina Burana, and even Dante. In date our selections range from the poet Virgil to the abdication speech of Pope Benedict!
SUMMER SCHOOL – BIBLICAL GREEK FOR BEGINNERS
Monday 22 to Friday 26 January 2024
The New Testament and Koine Greek school is for beginners who want to experience the excitement of reading parts of the Bible in the original language. We read extracts from the Gospel and Epistles, as well as some important passages from the Septuagint (ancient Greek version) of the Old Testament, as well as some pieces from the early Fathers of the Church and the Liturgy of St John Chrysostom.