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American and Catholic Syllabus

Monthly meetings’ (so we can make time to read) provisional reading list (subject to change)—participants are asked to purchase or borrow books read in their entirety, and a reader containing excerpted material will be available:

[History: We begin with the lived experience of the United States over generations—seeking neither to retell nor to debunk myths or poetic narrative, but to take a look as objective as possible.]

List of Required Texts

  1. We examine unique foundational principles: unimpeded happiness, happiness defined by Washington as unimpeded acquisition of wealth and reputation (47 pp. reading).

    Opening prayer and meditation: excerpts from then Josef Cardinal Ratzinger’s address to catechists and religion teachers on the Jubilee of Catechists, 12 December 2000, The New Evangelization: Building the civilization of love. (Full Text)
    • President George Washington’s Farewell Address, 1796.
    • British Catholic historian Paul Johnson on Andrew Jackson and Jacksonian democracy in The Birth of the Modern: World society from 1815 to 1830, New York, Harper Collins Publisher, 1991, excerpts from chapter 1, “A special relationship,” and chapter 12, “The coming of the demos.”
    • 1 paragraph excerpt from Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, vol. 1, trans. Henry Reeve, ed. Phillips Bradley, New York, Random House/Vintage Books, 1945, p. 316.
    • Excerpt from Brownson, Orestes; The American Republic in Collected Works, vol. XVIII; chapter XV, “Destiny, political and religious”; pp. 208-220; 1866. Also available gratis on-line as e-text, or from Intercollegiate Studies Institute Books, Wilmington, 2003.
    • Cullen, Jim; “The Anti-Catholic Origins of the American Dream” published as chapter two in Restless in the Promised Land: Catholics and the American dream; Sheed and Ward; Franklin, WI; 2001; 24 pp. [+errata]
    • Suggestion for further reading: from de Tocqueville, Alexis, Democracy in America, vol. I 1835, vol. II 1840. Suggested film: The New World, dir. Terrence Malick, 2005.

  2. We look at the transformation of America begun around the Civil War and continued until the post Second World War period (510 pp. reading).

    Opening prayer and meditation: The parable of the Mustard Seed, and other excerpts from then Josef Cardinal Ratzinger’s address to catechists and religion teachers on the Jubilee of Catechists, 12 December 2000, The New Evangelization: Building the civilization of love.
    • Excerpts from David Evan’s essay “The Very Peculiar Inns of Court,” published in The Inns of Court, ed. Duncan McCorquodale, London, Black Dog Publishing Limited, 1996. Evans explains the difference between Common Law and Civil Law, and the roots of the Common Law—a good introduction to Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. and the Common Law treated in the next reading.
    • Menand, Louis; The Metaphysical Club: A story of ideas in America; New York; Farrar, Straus, and Giroux; 2001. Pulitzer Prize winner. Menand looks at pragmatism in American law, labor & capital, universities.
    • Excerpt from Micklethwait, John and Adrian Wooldridge, The Company: A short history of a revolutionary idea, New York, Modern Library, 2003, chapter 4, “The rise of big business in America, 1862-1913,” pp. 57-78.
    • Fabro, Rev. Cornelio; excerpt from God in Exile: Modern atheism; ch. 5 “Truth as Action and the Vanishing of God in Dewey”; trans. Arthur Gibson; Newman Press; Westminster MD; 1968; pp. 836-63.
    • Excerpt from Vidal, Gore, Empire, New York, Random House, 1987, of fictional portrayal of actual but undocumented meeting between William Randolph Hearst and President Theodore Roosevelt.
    • Great German intellectual historian Ernst Robert Curtius’ lecture, “The Medieval Bases of Western Thought” delivered on 3 July 1949 at the Goethe Bicentennial Convocation at Aspen CO (that inaugurated the Aspen Institute), and published as an appendix in his European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, trans. Willard R. Trask, Princeton University Press (Bollingen series), Princeton, 1953, pp. 587-598. [+ Cautionary Note]
    • Suggestion for further reading: Adams, Henry, The Education of Henry Adams, and Mont Saint Michel and Chartres. Suggested film: The Golden Bowl, dir. James Ivory, 2000, adapted from William James novel.

  3. Continue to look at the later development of the same period through recent years (350 pp. reading).

    Opening prayer and meditation: the Prayer of Saint Francis.
    • Lemann, Nicholas; The Big Test: The secret history of the American meritocracy; New York; Farrar, Straus, and Giroux; 1999.
    • Excerpt from Drucker, Peter; The New Realities; New York; Harper & Row, Publishers; 1989; chapter 3, “The end of FDR’s America,” pp. 18-26.

  4. Examine local development circ. 1845 through 1960 (325 pp. reading).

    Opening prayer and meditation: the Canticle of the Creatures.
    • Brechin, Gray, Imperial San Francisco: Urban power, earthly ruin, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1999.

  5. Examine development of material technology and its impacts on American culture (510 pp. reading).

    Opening prayer and meditation: the Magnificat.
    • Conant, Jennet, Tuxedo Park, New York, Simon & Schuster, 2002.
    • Jonas, Hans, “Cybernetics and purpose: a critique,” published in The Phenomenon of Life: Toward a philosophical biology, Evanston IL, Northwestern University Press, 2001.
    • Cameron, Nigel S.; The New Medicine: Life and death after Hippocrates; Bioethics Press; Chicago and London; 2001 new ed.; 184 pp.
    • Suggested film: The Quiet American, dir. Phillip Noyce, 2002, adapted from Graham Greene novel.

    [education]
  6. Examine Catholic education in America (54 pp. reading).

    Opening prayer and meditation: Anima Christi.
    • Excerpts from Dawson, Christopher, The Crisis of Western Education, 1961, reprinted Steubenville, Franciscan University Press, 1989, chapter VI, “The development of the American educational tradition,” and chapter VII, “Catholic Education and Culture in America,” pp. 71-99.
    • McInerney, Ralph, “A civilizing force,” published in Notre Dame Magazine, Summer 1991, and republished in The Latin Mass, 1995. McInerney describes pre-conciliar Notre Dame as a humble community of learning full of promise.
    • Aldrich, Nelson W. IV, “The upper class up for grabs,” published in The Wilson Quarterly, Summer 1993. Aldrich examines the decadence of a community of faith and reason in the US, the WASP ascendancy.
    • MacIntyre, Alisdair, “Aquinas’ critique of education: against his own age, against ours,” published in Philosophers on Education: Historical perspectives, ed. Amelie Oksenberg Rorty, London and New York, Routledge, 1998.
    • Suggestion for further reading: Auchincloss, Louis, The Rector of Justin, New York, Modern Library, 2001.

  7. Further examine Catholic education in America (500 pp. reading).

    Opening prayer and meditation: excerpts from then Josef Cardinal Ratzinger’s Good Friday meditations on the Stations of the Cross, 2004. (Full Text)
    • Carlin, David, The Decline and Fall of the Catholic Church in America, Manchester NH, Sophia Institute Press, 2003. Carlin, a Catholic layman, professor of sociology and of philosophy, and experienced politician, looks at the Catholic Church in the United States around mid-century from a sociological perspective.
    • Excerpts from Burtchaell, Fr. James Tunstead CSC, The Dying of the Light: The disengagement of colleges and universities from their Christian churches, Grand Rapids MI and Cambridge UK, William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1998, chapter 6, “The Catholics,” pp. 557-742. Readings to be divided up as follows:
      1. On Boston College, a Jesuit university.
      2. On the College of New Rochelle, an Ursuline college.
      3. On Saint Mary’s College of California, a Christian Brothers college.

  8. What is education, what can and ought it to be? What choices and priorities would that entail on our part? (198 pp. reading)

    Opening prayer and meditation: excerpts from Pope John Paul II’s Veritatis Splendor.
    • Erskine, John, “The moral obligation to be intelligent,” New York, 1915.
    • Pieper, Josef; Leisure the Basis of Culture; trans. from the German by Alexander Dru, with T. S. Eliot intro; 1952; Indianapolis; Liberty Fund, 1999 reprint; 137 pp .
    • Excerpt from Berlin, Isaiah, The Crooked Timber of Humanity: Chapters in the history of ideas, New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1991, “The decline of utopian ideals in the West.”
    • Lilla, Mark; “G. B. Vico: The antimodernist,” published in The Wilson Quarterly, Summer 1993.
    • Suggestions for further reading: Lilla, Mark; G. B. Vico: The making of an anti-modern; Cambridge, MA and London; Harvard University Press; 1993; 255 pp. Vico, Giambattista; The New Science; trans. Thomas Goddard Bergin and Max Harold Fisch; Ithica and London; Cornell University Press; 1984; 445 pp. Dorothy Sayer’s “The lost tools of learning” available gratis on-line as e-text. Mortimer Adler’s “The order of learning ”available gratis on-line as e-text. C. S. Lewis’ The Abolition of Man. An examination essay on Romano Guardini’s ideas of Catholic education. O’Malley, Frank and Joseph Lanigan, et al., “untitled statement of Christ College outline” from Frank O’Malley Papers in the University of Notre Dame Archives and published in Meaney, John W., O’Malley of Notre Dame, Notre Dame and London, University of Notre Dame Press, 1991, pp. 146-169.


    [law and professions, also touching on philosophy]
  9. Professions, and law (262 pp. reading).

    Opening prayer and meditation: St. Thomas Aquinas' Prayer Before Study
    • Plato, Apology, trans. Thomas G. West, in Four Texts on Socrates, Ithica and London, Cornell University Press, 1984, pp.63-97.
    • Kendall, Willmoore, “The people versus Socrates revisited” in Willmoore Kendall Contra Mundum; Ed. Nellie D. Kendall; 1971; reprinted Lanham, MD; University Press of America, 1994; pp. 149-167.
    • Buchanan, Scott, The Doctrine of Signatures: A defense of theory in medicine, Urbana and Chicago, University of Illinois Press, 1991. Buchanan argues that the liberal arts are embedded in medicine and the other great learned professions, even though we may have lost consciousness of this fact.
    • Strauss, Leo, “On Natural Law,” published in the International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, ed. David L. Sills, Crowell Collier and MacMillan, 1968, vol. 11, pp. 80-5, and republished in Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy, Chicago and London, University of Chicago Press, 1983, pp. 137-146.

  10. The last end, a reconsideration.

    Opening prayer and meditation: St. Thomas Aquinas' Prayer at the Moment of Death
    • Saint Thomas Aquinas, from Summa Theologia, First Part of the Second Part, QQ. 1-5, Treatise on the last end/Treatise on happiness. Available gratis on-line as e-text, and from University of Notre Dame Press (Series in the Great Books)—reissued 1983.
    • Suggestion for further reading: Saint Thomas, from Summa Theologia, Treatise on Law.

  11. A continuing examination of happiness.

    Opening prayer and meditation: St. Thomas Aquinas' Prayer to Acquire the Virtues
    • Bellah, Robert N.; “Is there a Common American Culture?”published in The Journal for the American Academy of Religion, vol. 66, no. 3, Fall 1998, pp. 613-625.
    • Excerpts from Bellah, Robert N., et al; Habits of the Heart: Individualism and commitment in American life; New York; Harper & Row, Publishers; 1985.
    • Wolter, Fr. Allan B OFM, and Blane O’Neill, OFM; John Duns Scotus: Mary’s architect; Franciscan Press; Quincy IL; 1993; 90 pp.
    • Cortright, Steven; “Postscript: Quis dives salvetur?” from forthcoming Rediscovering Abundance; Notre Dame, IN; University of Notre Dame Press.
    • Kendall, Willmoore, “The True Sage of Woodstock” on John Courtney Murray, published in Willmoore Kendall contra mundum, ed. Nellie D. Kendall, Arlington House, New Rochelle, NY, 1971, pp. 74-89.

  12. What can we do?—Intro. to the Saint Anthony of Padua Institute.

    Opening prayer and meditation: Prayer to St. Anthony of Padua
    Divine Office, chant, mass.
    Reception.