Belmont Abbey College - Crossroads Spring 2011 by Belmont Abbey College

Fostering Entrepreneurship Could An Abbey Student Create The Next Google?

Reclaiming The Natural Law Dr. Hadley Arkes Shows How It Can Be Done

Dick Enbergâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Play Sparkles Broadcaster Brings Al McGuire Back To Life

CROSSROADS The Magazine Of Belmont Abbey College

spring 2011

Back to the future

A new core curriculum better prepares Abbey students for the future by drawing from the classical past.

From the Editor

A new core curriculum built on unshakeable core truths Sometimes the best way forward is to go back. Back to first principles. To objective moral truths. To classic curricula, texts, and methods that have been proven over centuries and across cultures to actually work. That is the basic (and these days, courageous) thinking behind Belmont Abbey College’s new core curriculum. And in this edition of Crossroads, it is our privilege to introduce you to just a few of the courses that comprise the new core, and to several of the gifted professors who will be teaching them. We begin on page 8 with a fascinating overview of the new core from a person uniquely qualified to act as our guide:

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the Abbey’s Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean of the Faculty, Dr. Carson Daly. Next, in a luminous essay beginning on page 11, Assistant Professor of English Angela Miss describes how the core’s new “Rhetoric, Logic, Grammar, and Writing I & II” courses are designed not just to arm students with the communications skills necessary to succeed in the 21st century, but to inculcate “the habits of reading and writing necessary to understand and communicate the Truth.” Then, Dr. Joseph Pizza, Assistant Professor of English, takes us on a guided tour of “Literary Classics of the Western Tradition I & II,” outlining the ways in which these courses will help Abbey students improve their analytical thinking and argumentative skills, while encountering literary excellence from a distinctively Catholic perspective (pp 13-14). On pp 15-16, Assistant Professor of Biology Jennifer Ellington describes how math and science are gracefully woven into the fabric of the core. Finally, Dr. Travis Cook, Chairman of the Department of Government and Political Philosophy, shares the clear-minded philosophy that undergirds the teaching of “Classic Texts in Political Philosophy I & II” and “The U.S. Constitution” (pp 17-18).

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“SOMETIMES THE BEST WAY FORWARD IS TO GO BACK TO FIRST PRINCIPLES.” Of course, our opening section on the new core is just one of the treats that await you in this issue of Crossroads. For thought-provoking reading, we highly recommend our interview with Dr. Hadley Arkes, one of America’s leading advocates of bringing natural law reasoning back to the courts, the public square and the academy (pp 20-29). On pp 30-33, we invite you to see how Harvard Law grad and teaching dynamo Jeff Thomas is “Fostering the Entrepreneurial Vision” here at the Abbey, and bringing in people like the Emmy Award-winning inventor Louis Foreman to help him do it. And don’t miss our story on the two evenings Al McGuire came back to life here at the Abbey, thanks to Hall of Fame broadcaster Dick Enberg, who wrote an acclaimed play about his late friend, and hosted it here on campus in The Haid (pp 34-37). The Spring 2011 edition of Crossroads: like the Abbey’s new core curriculum, it can be thought of as an “intellectual feast.” Bon appetit!

Ed Jones

Spring 2011

Features

THE MAGAZINE OF BELMONT ABBEY COLLEGE

8 B ACK TO THE FUTURE

A new core curriculum better prepares Abbey students for the future by drawing from the classical past.

34 D ICK ENBERG’S PLAY ABOUT AL MCGUIRE sparkles The Hall of Fame broadcaster hosts his acclaimed play at The Haid.

20 R ECLAIMING THE NATURAL LAW

Dr. Hadley Arkes delivers a stirring lecture and then a thought-provoking interview.

30 F OSTERING THE

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l ing The Natura Reclaim Shows Dr. Hadley Arkes

Law

’s Play Sparkles Dick Enberg Broadcaster Brings Al McGuire Back

To Life

CROSSROATUDRES reneurship ing Entrep FosterCould An Abbey Student Create The Next

Google?

How It Can Be

Done

EGE ABBEY COLL E OF BELMONT THE MAGAZIN

E FU BACK TO TH

ENTREPRENEURIAL VISION Could an Abbey student create the next Amazon, Starbucks or Google?

ey students prepares Abb iculum better t. A new core curr the classical pas by drawing from for the future

Spring 2011

Cover Visual:

SPRING 2011

Crossroads

Ancient coin featuring Janus-like image. Janus was the Roman god of beginnings, transitions, and doorways. His two heads look simultaneously into the future and the past.

The Magazine of Belmont Abbey College

Departments

President’s Column . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 In The Abbot’s Words. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6-7

Monastic News The Weather Monk. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38-39 The Benevolent Monks Of Belmont Abbey. . . . . . . . . . . . . 39

Campus News First Things Names Abbey America’s #1 “School On The Rise”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 Dr. Thierfelder Inducted Into Sports Faith Hall Of Fame . . . 41 Ann Visintainer ’10 Wins First-Place Poetry Prize . . . . . . 42 Christine Basil ’11 Wins Prestigious Scholarship. . . . . . . 43 Former Ambassador To Estonia Speaks At Abbey. . . . . . . . 44 Rwandan Genocide Survivor Named Envoy Of The Year . . 45

Faculty & Staff News New Additions To Faculty, Staff Add To Academic Excellence. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46-57

Sports News John Keating Named Head Men’s Soccer Coach. . . . . . . . . 58

Crossroads Crossroads is the official publication of Belmont Abbey College.   Vice President of College Relations Ken Davison Editor Ed Jones Contributors Dr. Hadley Arkes Morgan Castillo ‘12 Dr. Travis Cook Dr. Carson Daly Gayle Dobbs Dr. Jennifer Ellington Dick Enberg Gireesh Gupta Renae Heustess SueAnn Howell Christopher Lux ‘11 Jillian Maisano Dr. Angela Miss Dr. Rebecca Munro Dr. Joseph Pizza Chris Poore Susan Shackelford Abbot Placid Solari Dr. Bill Thierfelder Richard Walker Photography

Richard Barbee, Kyle Phillips Earn All-Conference Honors. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58-59

Patrick Schneider Photography

Shayla Jackson Named Conference Carolinas Scholar-Athlete Of The Year. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59

Design and Production: SPARK Publications www.SPARKpublications.com

Alumni News Abbey Inducts Six New Members Of Wall Of Fame. . . . . 60-61 “Operation 1200” Needs You . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 Brooks, McGlohon, Dobbs Named Honorary Alumnae. . . . 62 Class Notes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63-65 In Loving Memory. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66

Mission Statement of Belmont Abbey College: Our mission is to educate students in the liberal arts and sciences so that in all things God may be glorified. In this endeavor, we are guided by the Catholic intellectual tradition and the Benedictine spirit of prayer and learning. Exemplifying Benedictine hospitality, we welcome a diverse body of students and provide them with an education that will enable them to lead lives of integrity, to succeed professionally, to become responsible citizens, and to be a blessing to themselves and to others.

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Printing: Publishers Press 1.800.627.5801

Abbey Mailbag To submit comments about Crossroads, email crossroads@bac.edu or send letters to “Crossroads” Belmont Abbey College, Belmont, NC  28012   Class Notes and Change of Address info should be sent to alumnioff@bac.edu or Office of Alumni and Parent Relations Belmont Abbey College, Belmont, NC  28012    All photos submitted must be high resolution at 300 dpi or higher to be used in Crossroads.   Copyright © 2011 Belmont Abbey College

Spring 2011

THE ABBEY: A SPECIAL PLACE YOU CAN ALWAYS CALL HOME By Dr. Bill Thierfelder

hile considering the meaning and purpose of a liberal arts education here at the Abbey, I came across a wonderful book written by Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman entitled Historical Sketches. In chapter eighteen, on Colleges, the Corrective of Universities, he captures the special feeling everyone expresses who visits or attends Belmont Abbey College. Although the Cardinal was writing in 1873, and describes an all-male college, I believe that what he wrote applies equally well to a co-ed college

shelter of the weak and inexperienced, who have still to learn how to cope with temptations which lie outside of it. It is the place of training for those who are not only ignorant, but have not yet learned how to learn, and who have to be taught, by careful individual trial, how to set about profiting by the lessons of the teacher. And it is the school of elementary studies, not of advanced; for such studies alone can boys at best apprehend and master. Moreover, it is the shrine of our best affections, the bosom of our fondest recollections, a spell

“As Cardinal Newman writes, a college is ‘the shrine of our best affections, the bosom of our fondest recollections, a spell upon our after life, a stay for world-weary mind and soul, wherever we are cast…’” like ours. The following excerpt beautifully describes a college, our college, as a home: “It is then a household, and offers an abode to its members, and requires or involves the same virtuous and paternal discipline, which is proper to a family and home. Moreover, as no family can subsist without maintenance, and as children are dependent on their homes, so it is not unnatural that an endowment, which is, as I have said, suggested by the very idea of the college, should ordinarily be necessary for its actual carrying out. Still more necessary are buildings, and buildings of prominent character; for, whereas every family must have its dwelling, a family which has a recognized and official existence, must live in a sort of public building, which satisfies the eye, and is the enduring habitation of an enduring body.” Spring 2011

This portrait of a college captures much that is implied in the word “home.” As Cardinal Newman writes, “This view of a college, which I have not been attempting to prove but to delineate, suggests to us the objects which a college is adapted to fulfill in a University. It is all, and does all, which is implied in the name of home. Youths, who have left the paternal roof, and traveled some hundred miles for the acquisition of knowledge, find an ‘altera Troja’ and ‘simulata Pergama’ at the end of their journey and in their place of temporary sojourn. Home is for the young, who know nothing of the world, and who would be forlorn and sad, if thrown upon it. It is the refuge of the helpless boyhood, which would be famished and pine away, if it were not maintained by others. It is the providential

upon our after life, a stay for world-weary mind and soul, wherever we are cast, till the end comes. Such are the attributes or offices of home, and like these, in one or other sense and measure, are the attributes and offices of a college in a University.” It is in a home such as this, that a student can fully experience the blessing of a liberal arts education. I am most grateful to you for your continuing support in providing our students with endowed scholarships, beautiful buildings, and a faculty and staff that loves and mentors them like no other. You and your families remain in my daily thoughts and prayers and I look forward to welcoming you back “home” soon. God bless, Bill

Crossroads

The Magazine of Belmont Abbey College

What it means to follow ex corde ecclesiae By Abbot Placid Solari, O.S.B.

rom its very inception, Belmont Abbey College has always identified itself as a Catholic college and has sought to conduct itself as such. In earlier times, such an identity was simply taken for granted. In more recent times, however, it has become necessary to be more intentional concerning the College’s identity. At times, the discussion has become contentious, as various factions argued over whether the college was an orthodox, faithful, traditional,

mandate she received from her divine founder to announce the mystery of salvation to all people and to renew all things in Christ…has therefore a part to play in the development and extension of education.” It was in continuity with this teaching of the Council that Pope John Paul sought to provide guidance and direction for Catholic institutions of higher education. The Church in the United States has the most highly developed system of Catholic higher education in the

“If someone asks what kind of catholic college the abbey is, please let them know that we follow the apostolic constitution ex corde ecclesiae.” progressive or some other type of Catholic college. The problem with all such definitions is that they are imprecise, and capable of meaning different things to different people. Since the College’s mission and identity are the special purview of the Chancellor, it is my judgment, shared with the College community several years ago, that the proper response to the question, “What kind of Catholic college is Belmont Abbey?”, is that we are a Catholic college which seeks faithfully to implement the Apostolic Constitution Ex Corde Ecclesiae [Out of the Church’s Heart], issued by Pope John Paul II in 1990. An Apostolic Constitution is a document, issued by a pope on his own authority, dealing with an issue or concern applicable to the entire 6 Crossroads

Catholic Church. In this case, the issue is the nature and mission of Catholic colleges and universities throughout the world. This document then is a public and authoritative exercise of the Church’s ordinary mission of teaching, and is binding on institutions of higher education throughout the Church which wish to be, and publicly identify themselves to be, Catholic. It articulates clearly the criteria which determine the identity of a college which claims to be Catholic, and offers a compelling vision of the mission of such an institution. An impetus for Ex Corde Ecclesiae was provided by the Second Vatican Council. In the Declaration on Christian Education, the bishops of the Council stated: “For her part, Holy Mother Church, in order to fulfill the

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world. Beginning with the establishment of Georgetown University in 1789, the number of Catholic colleges and universities has grown to well over two hundred institutions today. Founded for the most part by religious orders, these schools have made an immense contribution over the years to the Church and to the larger civic community. This system is unique in the Church, too, with regard to the variety of systems of institutional governance and the relationship with the larger civil society, where these schools have been granted charters by state governments as selfgoverning institutions with the right to grant recognized academic degrees, and where they are subject to standards set for all institutions of higher learning by outside, independent accrediting Spring 2011

agencies. Over the past half-century, almost all these colleges and universities have undergone significant changes in their governance. A variety of influences have guided these changes, such as the decline in the size and influence of the sponsoring religious communities, a desire to acknowledge the proper role and expertise of lay Christians in the Church’s life, the necessity to broaden the base of support, and, in some cases, a wish to fit more comfortably into the higher education establishment. It was precisely because Pope John Paul II considered Catholic colleges and universities to be such a vital treasure for the Church that he wished to make clear how it is precisely through their identity and communion with the Church, essential to their identity, that Catholic colleges and universities offer their proper service to the broader human community. After an introductory section, Ex Corde Ecclesiae is divided into two principal parts, which treat, respectively, of the identity of a Catholic university, and of the mission of service of a Catholic university. The Constitution gives four “essential characteristics” of a Catholic university: “1. A Christian inspiration not only of individuals but of the university community as such; 2. A continuing reflection in the light of the Catholic faith upon the growing treasury of human knowledge, to which it seeks to contribute by its own research; 3. Fidelity to the Christian message as it comes to us through the Church; 4. An institutional commitment to the service of the people of God and of the human family in their pilgrimage to the transcendent goal which gives meaning to life.” Interestingly enough for us at Belmont Abbey, these four essential characteristics, drawn by the pope from an earlier document issued in the 1970s, were incorporated verbatim by the monks of Belmont Abbey into the by-laws of Belmont Abbey College, Inc., when the monks incorporated the College separately from the monastic community in 1976. The monks at that time used these characteristics, now authoritatively proclaimed by papal teaching, in order to proclaim publicly that the College was founded Spring 2011

and intended to continue as a Catholic institution, and to protect this right as strongly as possible in civil law. In treating of the intellectual life of the academic community, the pope’s document affirms that distinctive character of the Catholic intellectual tradition, which is a search for truth through the mutual interaction of faith and reason. The text of Ex Corde Ecclesiae states: “In a Catholic University, research necessarily includes (a) the search for an integration of knowledge, (b) a dialogue between faith and reason, (c) an ethical concern, and (d) a theological perspective [emphasis in the original].” Furthermore, tying the work of academic institutions to the fundamental principles of Catholic social teaching, the document explicitly affirms: “The Church, accepting ‘the legitimate autonomy of human culture and especially of the sciences’, recognizes the academic freedom of scholars in each discipline in accordance with its own principles and proper methods, and within the confines of the truth and the common good.” The second part of Ex Corde Ecclesiae presents the obligation of Catholic colleges to be of service to the larger human community precisely through their essential connection with the Church. It is this identity which enables them to make a unique contribution to the world of higher education through their ability to “communicate to society those ethical and religious principles which give full meaning to human life.” Some of the many particular contributions in this regard are the promotion of social justice and the “dialogue between Christian thought and the modern sciences.” A closing section of the Constitution sets out the norms for the implementation of Ex Corde Ecclesiae and how Catholic colleges and universities are to safeguard their identity, how such universities are established, and certain norms governing the life and work of Catholic colleges. This section received the most publicity, as Article 4, section 5 of these norms requires that Catholics teaching theological disciplines receive a mandatum from the local ordinary of the place where the college or university is located. This provision Crossroads

was actually application of Canon 812 of the revised Code of Canon Law, promulgated in 1983. Although some expressed concern that such a mandatum would limit the academic freedom of theologians teaching in Catholic colleges, the mandatum recognizes, on the part of the Church, that the theologian “is a teacher in the full communion of the Catholic Church.” On the part of the theologian, the mandatum “recognizes the professor’s commitment and responsibility to teach authentic Catholic doctrine and to refrain from putting forth as Catholic teaching anything contrary to the Church’s magisterium.” If, therefore, a theologian is exercising a critical function, based on his or her own learning and research, in questioning and critiquing the Church’s teaching, the requirement is that the professor make it clear that, in such an instance, what is being proposed is the theologian’s own ideas and not the official doctrine of the Church. Such a service of questioning and critique should properly be proposed to Church authorities and fellow professional theologians for their examination and response, and not given as instruction to undergraduates who are receiving only an initial introduction to the discipline. The mandatum is requested from the diocesan bishop when a Catholic theologian first receives an appointment in a Catholic college. The mandatum is personal, and remains valid as long as the theologian teaches, even if the theologian takes a position at a college or university in another diocese. It cannot be withdrawn except by competent ecclesiastical authority, for cause, with due process. Belmont Abbey College follows the prescription of Ex Corde Ecclesiae also with regard to the mandatum. If, therefore, someone asks what kind of Catholic college Belmont Abbey College is, please let them know that we follow the Apostolic Constitution Ex Corde Ecclesiae. In this, as in all matters, Belmont Abbey College strives to carry out its mission and public identity as a Catholic college in accord with the public and authoritative teaching of the Catholic Church. The Magazine of Belmont Abbey College

The Abbey’s New Core Curriculum: An Overview Dr. Carson Daly shares some of the inspired thinking that went into the Abbey’s new core curriculum, and outlines how it will better prepare Abbey students for the challenges of the 21st century.

hy did the College decide to change its core curriculum?

n n n n

Dr. Daly: After the economic

downturn in the fall of 2008, the College’s Board of Trustees asked that we review how we were using all of our resources. That included finding ways to make our core curriculum more effective and more representative of Belmont Abbey College’s identity, mission, and goals. The Board gave us three criteria

athematics M Two Science Courses with Labs An introductory course in Psychology, Sociology, or Economics Fine Arts

How do you think students will benefit from the new core? Dr. Daly: I hope that our students

will benefit from the new core in several ways. I hope that they will receive a more focused, integrated education in the Theology, Philosophy,

“I’m excited at the intellectual feast to which our students are being invited. What a terrific opportunity they will have to get the kind of classical education that is rarely offered today.” to guide our revision of the core curriculum. First, any changes we recommended should be consistent with and supportive of our identity as a Catholic, Benedictine college. Second, our recommendations should enhance the liberal arts. Third, all suggested improvements should make effective use of our resources, helping to meet the College’s enrollment goal and long-term, strategic objectives.

What does the new core require? 8 Crossroads

Dr. Daly: The new core

curriculum (53 credits) requires that all new students take: n First-Year Symposium n Rhetoric, Logic, Grammar, and Writing I & II n Introduction to Scripture n Introduction to Theology n Classic Texts in Political Philosophy I & II n Western Civilization I & II n Literary Classics of the Western Tradition I & II n The U. S. Constitution

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History, and the Literature of the West. I also hope that the new core’s focus on Political Philosophy will help our students to realize very clearly, in the words of the well-known thinker Richard Weaver, that “Ideas have consequences.” In addition, I hope that the new core will help our students integrate the principles of logic with their reading, writing, and speaking, and that the study of rhetoric will help our students to realize how best to express themselves to different audiences, in various Spring 2011

venues, and on diverse occasions, as well as to become more sensitive to the proper language for different circumstances. In Rhetoric I and II, students will also have the opportunity to focus intensively on grammar and on avoiding logical fallacies in their writing. Since many high schools have abdicated their responsibility in teaching how to write and speak, such an approach is not only sorely needed, but will also make our students better candidates for employment after they graduate. In survey after survey, employers say that the top two abilities they are looking for in job candidates —and not finding—are the ability to speak and write clearly. In the current, tough job market, I believe that our focus on helping our students to speak and write well will help prepare our students for employment, for further study, and for life after college.

The College has replaced Composition and Argumentative Prose with Rhetoric, Grammar, Logic, and Writing I and II. Why Do you think that those courses will benefit our students?

Analyzing material that grows out of the 2,000-year-old Catholic intellectual tradition; n Focusing on logic in speaking and writing; n Learning what the basic fallacies are and how to avoid them; n Improving their use of grammar in speaking and writing; n Learning how to select the appropriate genre, tone, and voice for various occasions. Studying Rhetoric I and II will also give students another advantage. It will help them to focus not only on expressing themselves, but also to think first always of the audience to whom they are speaking or writing. This will help our students become more thoughtful writers and speakers. It will also enable them to grow as human beings by helping them to understand others better and be able to communicate with them more effectively and compassionately. An added advantage is that the individual who habitually thinks of the person or people with whom he or she is communicating becomes less selfn

Dr. Daly: I think that the study

of Rhetoric usually offers a more comprehensive, more intellectually challenging way to approach the teaching of language, literature, and writing. Studying Rhetoric I and II will give our students the advantages of: n S tudying classic literary texts rather than modern essays on non-literary topics; n E ngaging with works that ask the “great questions;” Spring 2011

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absorbed and more focused on the other. This is a vital step if our students are to become young men and women of integrity who, in the words of the College’s mission statement, will be “a blessing to themselves and to others.” Composition can sometimes be taught almost exclusively as “self-expression,” but the beauty of Rhetoric is that it requires the speaker or writer always to be, in a sense, a man or woman for others.

Our new core requires all students to take two courses in Political Philosophy. How does that fit with the College’s mission? Dr. Daly: The College’s mission

statement says that we aim to give our students the kind of education “that will enable them to lead lives of integrity, to succeed professionally, to become responsible citizens, and to be a blessing to themselves and to others.” Clearly, studying Political Philosophy will help our students prepare to be responsible citizens. Beyond that, however, studying Political Philosophy requires students to answer such fundamental questions as “What is a good life?” “What is a good city, state, or nation?” “What are the forms of government most conducive to helping the human person lead a good life?” These are questions that are always in season—ones with which each of us needs to grapple. Today, when so many fundamental issues concerning life, conscience, and freedom are being debated across America, our students can particularly benefit from studying first principles, as well as what happens when various political theories are applied in practice. The Magazine of Belmont Abbey College

“We aim to give our students a strong, integrated background in the history, literature, theology, and political philosophy of the West, as well as an appreciation for their inheritance: the spiritual and academic patrimony of the Catholic intellectual tradition.” How is our new core different from those of many other small, liberal arts colleges today? Dr. Daly: Many other

small, liberal arts colleges offer what I think of as the smorgasbord model—a little of this and a little of that—or a lot of this and not so much of that. Our new core aims to give our students an all-youcan-eat buffet—courtesy of the great intellectual tradition of the West. We aim to give our students a strong, integrated background in the history, literature, theology, and political philosophy of the West, as well as an appreciation for their inheritance: the spiritual and academic patrimony of the Catholic intellectual tradition. Consequently, our core curriculum highlights these riches and will give our students the opportunity to grow in age and grace while coming to a fuller understanding of these treasures. This understanding will, in turn, provide an excellent basis for branching out into the study of other cultures.

What excites you most about our new core? 10 Crossroads

Dr. Daly: I’m excited at the intellectual feast to which our students are being invited. What a terrific opportunity they will have to get the kind of classical education that is rarely offered today. Our new core curriculum recognizes the wisdom of Plato’s injunction, “Know thyself.” It will help our students to understand who they are, to comprehend man’s nature in its fullness, and to understand the glory and the pathos of the human condition. Through studying history, literature, theology, and political philosophy, our students will be able to

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understand themselves temporally and spatially as citizens of Western culture. They will have the opportunity to cultivate their intellectual gifts through studying the liberal arts and to nurture their hearts and souls through studying what the poet Matthew Arnold called “the best which has been thought and said.” To commune with the great minds of the present and the past is an extraordinary privilege. To have the leisure and tranquility to reflect on the nature of life and of man’s destiny in the company of one’s peers is a great joy. To undertake these happy tasks in the company of a teacher whose learning and virtue has made him or her an exemplar of wisdom and holiness is one of the greatest gifts life has to offer. No wonder millions of people the world over yearn to get an education. In its truest sense, our education does not simply prepare us for a job, or a vocation, or a salary, but enables each of us to deepen and enrich our humanity so that we realize our full potential spiritually and intellectually. If we do that, we have the possibility of becoming, what C. S. Lewis describes in his sermon, “The Weight of Glory,” as “an everlasting splendor.” What could be more exciting than that?

Dr. Carson Daly is Vice-President for Academic Affairs and Dean of the Faculty.

Spring 2011

REDISCOVERING THE POWER OF WORDS By Dr. Angela Miss

ext fall, students at Belmont Abbey will begin a two-course sequence built upon the foundation of classical rhetoric, one of the seven liberal arts. Developed by Greeks and Romans of the classical period, rhetoric formed the center of liberal education for two and a half millennia, and through the nineteenth century, it was regarded as one of the most important disciplines taught in college. With the advent of the twentieth century, however, the emphasis placed on rhetorical study diminished, and so, accordingly, did our ability to communicate well in both spoken and written discourse. Perhaps the most

that we reason logically, that we value human character and goodness, and that we understand the spectrum of human emotions. Rhetorical training in ancient Greece and Rome taught students to generate their own appeals and to recognize them in the language of others. Classical rhetoric generally signifies the practice of the orator, but it has always outgrown its original concern with persuasive public speaking and also lent itself to written communication and literary analysis. For centuries, some of the world’s greatest writers, such as Virgil, Augustine, Dante, and Shakespeare, were trained in the arts of

“As we introduce Belmont Abbey students to the rhetorical paideia, they will learn the habits of reading and writing necessary to understand and communicate the Truth.” troubling consequence resulting from the neglect of rhetorical study can be seen in the way contemporary speakers and writers so often refuse the ethical obligations that accompany language use. As we introduce Belmont Abbey students to the rhetorical paideia, they will learn the habits of reading and writing necessary to understand and communicate the Truth. Although three distinct types of rhetoric (Technical, Sophistic, and Philosophical) were clearly evident in ancient Greece, when we refer to

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classical rhetoric, we generally mean Aristotle’s system and its elaboration by Cicero and Quintilian. In The Rhetoric, Aristotle defines rhetoric as the “faculty of observing in a given case the available means of persuasion.” According to Aristotle and the many authorities who would echo him, persuasion is brought about through three kinds of proofs or appeals: logos (the appeal to reason), pathos (the appeal to emotion), and ethos (the persuasive appeal of one’s character). Thus, rhetoric requires

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language with wide-ranging rhetorical curricula. Indeed, the discipline of rhetoric includes many approaches to reading and writing instruction, such as the proper applications of inductive and deductive reasoning, the productive ways of arranging material, and the eloquent use of tropes and figures. Concerns of style, audience, genre, and purpose, as well as the grammatical and logical study inherent in the discipline of rhetoric, provide students with a foundational curriculum in the arts of language.

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At the heart of any valuable rhetorical study lies a concern with ethics. In the Encomium of Helen, Gorgias reveals that rhetoric can be used for good or for ill because “Speech is a powerful lord, which by means of the finest and most invisible body effects the divinest works: it can stop fear and banish grief and create joy and nurture pity.” During ancient times, many philosophers and rhetoricians engaged in serious debate about the ethics of rhetoric. Perhaps most significantly, in Book XII of the Institutes of Oratory, Quintilian confronts the crucial question: must the orator (or for our purposes, the writer or student) be virtuous? According to Quintilian, “it is of importance that an orator should be good because, should the power of speaking be a support to 12 Crossroads

evil, nothing would be more pernicious.” In the years since Quintilian proposed his perfect orator “as a good man, speaking well,” we have heard many different responses to the idea that rhetoric is inseparable from virtue. One of the most important responses to Quintilian’s question in recent history comes from Richard Weaver, who argues at the end of his essay “Language is Sermonic” that since “rhetoric confronts us with choices involving values, the rhetorician is a preacher to us, noble if he tries to direct our passion toward noble ends and base if he uses our passion to confuse and degrade us. Since all utterance influences us in one or the other of these directions, it is important that

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the direction be the right one, and it is better if this lay preacher is a master of his art.” According to Weaver, language has great power to influence, and we are obligated to choose our words wisely, in the pursuit of the Good. Moreover, history shows us that in most cases when there is an abuse of power, there is also, concomitantly, an abuse of words. Certainly, we cannot escape the impact that language has on our lives. Words matter. Although we are involved in rhetorical activities every day (whether we study rhetoric or not), rhetorical training teaches us to be sensitive to the consequences of words and what they do. This heightened sensitivity to the consequences of language requires that we recognize the essential ethical nature of rhetoric. A classical approach to rhetorical study means that, like the ancients before us, we constantly judge the values expressed, either directly or indirectly, in the language used by us and others. College students learn quite quickly during their first semester that to read and write well about complex subjects requires more than simply knowing how to read and write. Rhetorical study allows for the judgment necessary for the true understanding of a text, and, as a discipline, it leads us to the essential questions. Since these essential questions lie at the heart of what it means to be human, rhetoric, as part of the liberal arts tradition, allows students to pursue a curriculum which encourages them to better understand themselves and the world around them. With the advent of these new courses at the Abbey, students will have the opportunity to learn to read and write in a rhetorical curriculum that challenges them to discover not simply the available means of persuasion, but the Beauty, Love, Truth, and Goodness inherent in some of the most eloquent words ever written. Dr. Angela Miss is Assistant Professor of English.

Spring 2011

CLASSIC TEXTS IN THE LITERARY TRADITION By Dr. Joseph Pizza

e do not have to go far today to encounter “Classics.” Whether tuned to “Classic Rock” or geared for “Classic Cars,” we are familiar with the notion that what seemed novel to our parents can, thanks to quaint charm and sleek advertising, continue to interest us. Classic books, however, continue to charm for very different reasons. T.S. Eliot felt that they displayed a ripeness or “maturity” of culture and language rarely found. Similarly, Blessed John Henry Newman believed that “Classic” Literature appeared only when an author’s language and culture had developed into its fullness. Evidence

Building upon this, the course then turns to the literature of the Medieval Christian culture that emerged after the fall of Rome. Chief among such works is Dante’s epic poem, The Divine Comedy. Following his pilgrimage through Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise, students encounter a Christian presentation of the afterlife shaped by intensely emotional personal encounters. Indeed, Dante’s ability to present virtue and vice in the example of friends and enemies, of people caught in webs of emotion not unfamiliar to readers of any era, is a large part of what makes his work the central poem of our tradition. In Renaissance Literature, Western

“By encountering literary excellence from a distinctively Catholic perspective, students will be guided toward a perception of the ways in which imaginative writing has the potential to participate in the larger work of Belmont Abbey, that of glorifying God in all things.” of such fullness for both consisted in the mastery of what Newman would have called “style.” Teaching students to recognize such style was among Newman’s central aims in recommending Literature as a course of study in the then newly founded Catholic University of Ireland. Today it remains an important part of the Catholic intellectual tradition. Rooted in this, the Abbey’s “Classic Texts in the Literary Tradition I and II” aims to provide our students with the opportunity Spring 2011

to engage with such literary excellence from a Catholic perspective as part of their overall grounding in the traditional Liberal Arts. The first part of the course begins with the authors of “Classical” Greece and Rome. In Greek drama and in selections from the epics of Homer and Virgil, students are introduced to the genres and major themes that have exercised an enduring attraction throughout Western history. Crossroads

writers explored increasingly modern vistas with unsurpassed energy and variety. In this period, Classic Texts gives pride of place to major works by William Shakespeare and John Milton. Through reading Shakespeare’s tragedy Hamlet and selections from Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost, students conclude the first part of the course with an unparalleled opportunity to observe the intellectual depth and stylistic power of the English language at its most inventive. The Magazine of Belmont Abbey College

The second half of Classic Texts begins with a section on the imaginative writing of the Enlightenment. A mix of Neo-classical principals and Modern irony distinguishes the literature of this period. In English, for instance, the art of satire provided writers such as Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift with the ability to critique the superficiality and injustices of their time. While on the continent, works like Jean Racine’s tragedy Phaedra display an equally passionate critique. By contrast, Romantic Literature presents students with an opposing set of concerns. Favoring imagination over reason and originality over Classical principle, English writers such as William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge explored the expressive potential of a more subjective art. Comparing their works with the parallel achievements of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and of Victor Hugo, students gain a thorough understanding of this pivotal moment in modern literature.

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The course then follows the evolution of the literary tradition through the later nineteenth and early twentieth century. From the violent remapping of Europe after the two world wars to the cultural shift from Christian to largely secular societies, writers in this period struggled to make sense of a world that seemed to be leaving Western culture behind. In the writings of authors like Gerard Manley Hopkins, Leo Tolstoy, and T.S. Eliot, students trace the historical conflicts, stylistic innovations, and turns of thought that have shaped the present moment in literary history. Lastly, the course takes a brief look at Contemporary Literature. Comparing the Post-Modern attempt to dismantle the Western tradition with the opposing struggle to revitalize it, students engage with current conflicts through the works of writers like Samuel Beckett and Geoffrey Hill. The latter has been cited by the late Fr. Richard John

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Neuhaus, former editor of First Things, as “the greatest living poet.” A challenging and deeply Christian poetry, Hill’s writing makes for an open-ended conclusion to the course, connecting as it does with the core of the Western tradition by reshaping it, imagining it in a style fit for our own slowing maturing century. By engaging in this year-long study of Classic Literature students gain not only an appreciation for challenging texts, but they also develop invaluable writing, close-reading, analytical thinking, and argumentative skills. Indeed, the course is designed to foster the practice of communication skills that will be essential to their studies and future careers. Most importantly, by encountering literary excellence from a distinctively Catholic perspective, students will be guided toward a perception of the ways in which imaginative writing has the potential to participate in the larger work of Belmont Abbey, that of glorifying God in all things. Dr. Joseph Pizza is Assistant Professor of English.

Spring 2011

Math and Science in the Liberal Arts Core By Dr. Jennifer Ellington

he contemporary liberal arts have expanded to include the humanities, the social sciences and the physical and biological sciences. Collectively, these disciplines allow for the development of the student who can reason, analyze, evaluate and reach an informed opinion. Intermingled with the Catholic and Benedictine tradition, the liberal arts education received at Belmont Abbey College seeks to mold the entire person where not only is the mind cultivated but the spirit is nurtured to form individuals of integrity and good citizenship. Currently, the core curriculum for both traditional and adult

focus on the natural living world, where they are exposed to basic chemistry, atomic structure, organic macromolecules, the diversity of living organisms, genetics, evolution and ecology. Material within this course is continuously updated to reflect the most current biology topics such as biotechnology applications, cancer biology and environmental effects of population growth. Both of these courses involve a laboratory component where the student can apply in a practical sense what has been taught in lecture. The laboratory experience is essential to the overall course because the material from

â&#x20AC;&#x153;[These courses allow Abbey students] to experience the hallmark stewardship of the Benedictine tradition, as they develop a heightened respect and appreciation for the natural world.â&#x20AC;? degree program students requires that students take three credits of quantitative thinking (mathematics) and eight credits of the natural sciences. Students select their course for quantitative thinking based on what is appropriate to their major. The natural science requirement is typically fulfilled by taking one semester of the Physical World course and one semester of the General Biology course. Through the Physical Spring 2011

World course students are introduced to basic concepts in physics, earth science and astronomy. The course has been updated to further include discussion on current topics including global warming, nuclear power, the search for life on other planets and major earthquakes. General Biology is a course that complements the Physical World course as it completes the survey of the natural sciences. In General Biology, students Crossroads

lecture is reinforced and the student can engage in physically applying the scientific method. Our modern lives are greatly influenced by science and thus, we live during what has been described as the scientific age. We are bombarded daily by information concerning science from environmental issues to genetics to computer technology. Sadly, however, most of our population does not qualify as being The Magazine of Belmont Abbey College

scientifically literate, in that most do not have a basic understanding of scientific principles. The United States Center for Education Statistics provided data in 2010 showing that U.S. public school students ranked 21st in the world in science literacy. In our complex world where science is such a large component of daily life, this sense of scientific literacy is a necessity. The core curriculum components of math and science reflect this need for scientific literacy in our population. In addition, mathematics as a major has been reintroduced so that students can acquire the fundamentals of various branches of higher mathematics. This change particularly demonstrates that the College appreciates that our population has an increased need for more professionals with developed mathematical skills to cope with the technological advances of our society. We hope to generate students who can understand, utilize and communicate the truth surrounding scientific issues. In addition, these courses expose students to scientific knowledge that deepens their awareness of the natural and physical world that surrounds them. This in turn allows them to experience the hallmark stewardship of the Benedictine tradition, as they develop a heightened respect and appreciation for the natural world. As a biology professor, I appreciate the depth of the material that is required within the core curriculum math and science courses. At other institutions, for example, the laboratory component is not required to fulfill the science core component of the liberal arts curriculum. At the Abbey, the students are given the unique opportunity to fully explore the process of science through experimentation within the laboratory setting. This added experience of science strengthens the validity for requiring these science 16 Crossroads

courses for the core curriculum. The fact that the core curriculum for the sciences did not change with the current revision, in my opinion, demonstrates the indisputable value of the sciences within the liberal arts education. We value the opportunity to discuss with the students current scientific topics, as they are increasingly met with ethical questions surrounding science. Finally,

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teaching the science core curriculum at the Abbey provides us with one final opportunity to remedy the deficit of scientific literacy in our population, and this is perhaps the greatest challenge as well as the most critical role of the sciences in the core curriculum of the Abbey. Dr. Jennifer Ellington is Assistant Professor of Biology.

Spring 2011

Careering Life’s Course By Dr. Travis Cook

ast fall, Belmont Abbey College instituted a new curriculum for the philosophic study of politics under the aegis of the Department of Government and Political Philosophy. Honesty requires that I tell you from the outset that this “new curriculum” is neither innovative nor progressive. To the contrary, the curriculum expresses a commitment on the part of our faculty to traditional collegiate education, that is, liberal education as it was once understood. I believe that we live at a time when liberal education is often praised, but more often neglected. This is a troubling thought, for liberal education

write and speak clearly, think critically, and judge fairly? The curriculum in Government and Political Philosophy hopes to assist students in becoming more thoughtful human beings and more enlightened citizens. At the Abbey, this goal is pursued primarily through the careful reading and analysis of the great books of political philosophers, as well as the study of important documents of the American tradition. The program offers students an opportunity to concentrate in either American Government or Political Philosophy, although our majors receive extensive exposure to both areas. Our students

“Liberal education aims at the perfection of the whole person, and it is a failure when the whole person is neglected for the sake of a part, however important.” offers what are certainly among the most important human goods. When successful, a liberal education provides a solid foundation for leading a good life, both as a human being and as a citizen. Once upon a time, higher education centered on the study of Greek and Latin languages; it taught great literature, mathematics, science, biblical studies, and moral philosophy. Such an education was by its very design general rather than specialized. The goal was not professional Spring 2011

training per se. Liberal education was considered to be formative of excellent character and judgment. For this reason it was also regarded as a useful prelude to whatever work a person might undertake in life. Small liberal arts colleges once served as the custodians of a great tradition of liberal learning, and they sought to bring this tradition to life in the souls of their students. The fruit of liberal education was widely recognized to be both good and practical, for what could be more useful than cultivating the ability to Crossroads

should expect to be challenged to develop their abilities to express themselves in speech and writing. Of course such skills are essential for future professional success. What is more— and truly more important—they are necessary companions if students are to sustain a life of thoughtful reflection. One might well rejoice that colleges seldom see “classical education” as their task today. Is it not true that we live in an increasingly competitive world? Shouldn’t colleges offer special training so that their students can enter The Magazine of Belmont Abbey College

a career upon graduation? Isn’t it selfindulgent and naïve to recommend a classical education? It is not. We get our English word “career” from the French word for “racecourse.” In an extended sense, career could refer to a person’s progress through life. Here the goal would be happiness, and for this a liberal education is invaluable. But the common sense of career is revealing when it refers to future employment. To be sure, students inevitably enter the world and must make their way in it. This is as it should be. The work of a college, however, is

18 Crossroads

not to transform a young person into an employee. Liberal education aims at the perfection of the whole person, and it is a failure when the whole person is neglected for the sake of a part, however important. I hope that the curriculum in Government and Political Philosophy reflects this concern even as it hones the skills of the student. It is often said that a liberal education does not so much teach a student what to think as it teaches him how to think. This is true enough (although there is much to be said about content as well). We learn to think by thinking. We learn to write well

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by reading good authors and by writing a lot ourselves. So too, I suspect that we learn our vocations and our professions only by living them. I’d like to propose that a person’s sustained journey through life, seen from the vantage point of human dignity, is the proper measure of a successful education. This is of course difficult to list on one’s résumé, but I believe it becomes apparent over time to anyone who takes the trouble to look. Dr. Cook is Assistant Professor of Political Science and Chairman of the Abbey’s Department of Government and Political Philosophy.

Spring 2011

Schematic of the liberal arts, circa 12th century

n classical antiquity, the liberal arts denoted the education worthy of a free person (Latin: liber, “free”). Contrary to popular opinion, freeborn girls were as likely to receive formal education as boys, especially during the Roman Empire. The subjects that would become the standard “Liberal Arts” in Roman and Medieval times already comprised the basic curriculum in the enkuklios paideia or “education in a circle” of late Classical and Hellenistic Greece. In the 5th century AD, Martianus Capella defined the seven Liberal Arts as: grammar, dialectic, rhetoric, geometry, arithmetic, astronomy, and music. In the medieval Western university, the seven liberal arts were: The Trivium: grammar, logic and rhetoric. The Quadrivium: arithmetic, astronomy, music and geometry.

Spring 2011

Crossroads

The Magazine of Belmont Abbey College

Dr. Hadley Arkes

LaysThe Down Natural Law

20 Crossroads

The Magazine of Belmont Abbey College

Spring 2011

r. Hadley Arkes, Edward N. Ney Professor of Jurisprudence and American Institutions at Amherst College, and one of Americaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s leading political philosophers, delivers a riveting lecture to a standing room only audience in the Abbey Basilica. Then, in an exclusive interview, he discusses how confronting moral relativism in the academy led him toward teaching the natural law, how natural law reasoning led him into the Catholic Church, and much more.

Spring 2011

Crossroads

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Looking at the arc of your career, you seem to have had a Grand Project virtually from day one: bringing classical natural law reasoning back to the classroom, the courtroom, and the public square. Did you consciously choose such a path from the beginning, or did you sort of “naturally” evolve toward it? It was more of an evolutionary process versus having a “Grand Project from day one.” When I began teaching at Amherst College, I didn’t see myself as teaching natural law. I was leaning against relativism. And of course, I was affirming, then, truth. Truth grounded in nature and the tradition of natural rights. I wasn’t putting out the banner “Natural law taught here.” But it is all a matter of truth, truth as the ground of moral judgment. I arrived at Amherst in 1966 a kind of Kennedy/Johnson liberal. The year before, I had been an inmate at the Brookings Institution on a doctoral grant and there I was nestled in with the liberal establishment. We had just beaten Goldwater in a decisive landslide. We were enacting the Voting Rights Act, the Civil Rights Act of 1964. There was not a tinge of moral relativism about this stuff ! We thought we were doing justice. And we were winning our war in Vietnam. It was a liberal’s war. We were vindicating the right of these Asian people not to have a totalitarian regime imposed on them. We were vindicating the right of these people to “government by the consent of the governed.” The hallmark was the line that came down to us from the Second World War, drawing on John Donne: “Don’t ask for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for thee.” The loss of freedom anywhere is the loss of freedom everywhere. We had emerged from the war with that saying, marking a truth we had absorbed at grave cost. And we thought it gave us guidance in the cases before us. Then I landed at Amherst, and the opposition to the war was a kind of religious passion. I had studied with Leo Strauss, and I came out of a graduate program at the 22 Crossroads

University of Chicago. Strauss stood against the currents of relativism, and of course the graduate program was pervaded with the sense that we were grounded in truths, in every part of the field. What struck me at Amherst was the wave of relativism. For example, a persistent question people at Amherst were asking was: Who are we to say what form of government is better or worse for people in another place? And, of course, this was a dogmatic relativism—people were absolutely adamant that it is true that there is no truth. To dissent from the opposition to the war was a kind of heresy—as we’d see later, in the same way, if people expressed any reservations about affirmative action. What was happening with the Democratic Party, and was so evident at Amherst, was that the liberal side had now switched over to Stephen Douglas’s side in the argument with Lincoln. Lincoln stood for the axiom that “all men are created equal” is a moral truth. That was the central proposition, as he said, on which the American regime was founded. Everything else radiated from that point. There were certain rights that flowed from the very nature of human beings, rights that would be the same in all places wherever that nature remained the same. So wherever we were in the world, it would be wrong to rule human beings the way human beings were

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compelled to rule horses and dogs. As I point out to people, even in this age of animal liberation, we don’t find people signing labor contracts with their horses, or seeking the informed consent of their household pets before they authorize surgery on them. But we continue to think that beings who can give and understand reasons deserve to be ruled with a rendering of reasons in a regime that seeks to elicit their consent—their consent to the policies that are imposed on them through the law. Well, as I say, what happened was that I tilted against the relativism of that time. And I began to teach more in the vein of Lincoln and moral truths. All of my courses were arranged in the form of a continuing argument. We were building the argument step by step as we moved along in the course. And so, I would arrange a course in Urban Politics, to get commitments from people on some critical issues, and then arrange it so that those earlier commitments kept exploding on them as they went on later in the course. That course later became a book, The Philosopher in the City (Princeton, 1981). From that point forward every book of mine would begin with the arguments and material I had worked through in my courses as I sought to make the arguments disarming and compelling even to students who were tilted politically to the other side. Spring 2011

And, of course, what students have to keep confronting are certain moral truths. They will keep getting themselves into trouble when they start affirming the premises of relativism, for that would cut the ground out from under everything else they want to defend. If you’re teaching about politics, the central question in the study of politics is the question in political philosophy: What is the nature of the good regime? What are the principles on which the good regime is constituted? And of course other questions spring from that core: What are those policies that we are justified in imposing on people with the force of law? What is the nature of those regimes out there in the rest of the world that it is in our interest to promote or discourage? To support or remove? But the center of the problem, of course, is the question of whether you have principles of moral judgment that allow you to tell the difference between a good regime and a bad one; whether the laws that are enforced on everyone are justified or unjustified. So that central question, the moral question, is at the center of political philosophy, political science. And of course it’s virtually impossible to find coherent answers without using that moral reasoning that is so natural to human beings and at the ground of what we call “natural law.” So, to make a long story short—or to bring a long account to a close—it was a gradual process that led me into teaching and writing about the natural law. Do you have a favorite example or model of natural law reasoning that you like to share with students, colleagues, and others? I use as a model of natural law reasoning, as I did in my talk at Belmont Abbey, the fragment that Lincoln wrote in which he imagined himself to be engaged in an argument with an owner of slaves, and putting the question to him: “Why do you think you are justified in making a slave of the black man? Is it because he is less intelligent than you? Ah, beware. The next white man who comes along more intelligent than you may rightly enslave you. Is it because he is darker than you? Spring 2011

Ah, beware again. The next white man with a complexion even lighter than yours may enslave you.” The upshot is that there is nothing one can cite to justify the enslavement of black people that would not apply to many whites as well. It’s simply the model of a principled argument. It can be understood across the religious divide. It can be understood by Catholics, Baptists, atheists. You don’t need a college education in order to understand it. And when Lincoln would argue in this vein to audiences in downstate Illinois, people had no trouble understanding it.

Some of us use the same model in the argument about abortion. “Why is the child in the womb less than human? Is it because it doesn’t speak yet? Ah, beware. Neither do deaf mutes. Is it because that offspring in the womb doesn’t have arms and legs? Ah, beware again. Other people lose arms and legs in the course of their lives without losing anything necessary to their standing as human beings to receive the protections of the law.” The upshot here is that there is nothing you can cite to justify removing children in the womb from the class of humans protected by the law that wouldn’t apply to many people walking around well outside the womb. Then, we point out: nowhere in this chain of reasoning is there an appeal to revelation or faith. In other words, you Crossroads

don’t have to be Catholic to understand this argument—and that has precisely been the teaching of the Church – that you don’t have to be Catholic to understand this argument. It’s a matter of natural law reasoning. So when you find the Joe Bidens and John Kerrys who say “We don’t want to impose our faith on other people on the matter of abortion,” it’s quite clear that they don’t even understand the teaching of their own Church on this question. What you were just saying calls to mind the irony of the situation you’ve said you found yourself in at Amherst prior to your conversion to Catholicism: that you, who were raised as an Orthodox Jew, found yourself having to explain the orthodox Catholic position on issues like abortion and marriage to Catholics! Almost inadvertently, you were helping them and others discover the elegant reasoning of the Catholic Church. Yes, I suppose one example of that would be a letter I received from Ned Desmond, Class of 1980 at Amherst. He was working for Time magazine, and he was stationed in Tokyo, I believe, at the time. He had taken my course in Political Obligations, the course that became the book, First Things. Ned’s letter said in effect, “You know, it was the work we did together at Amherst in that course on natural law that eventually led me back to the Church.” Also, when I was there at Belmont Abbey, there was a wonderful young man named Travis Cook [Assistant Professor & Chair of the Abbey’s Department of Government & Political Philosophy] who told me that when he was a graduate student at Boston College, he had gotten hold of my book First Things, and saw there a passage that had an effect I never would have anticipated. It was a passage in which I just explained the rudiments of a justification. The matter could be conveyed simply in the different answers to the question, “Why did you hit him?”: “To get his wallet.” “To keep him from jumping out the window.” In one case the hurt was inflicted by intention for the The Magazine of Belmont Abbey College

benefit of the assailant. In the other, the hurt was inflicted, probably with regret, and for a reason that encompassed the safety or well-being of the person who was being hurt. The “good” of the action did not involve the self-interest of the one who was administering the hurt. And that “good” could apply to anyone, to everyone, who found himself in the same circumstances. For some reason, Travis Cook, as he told me, found that simple explanation rather illuminating. He said that it brought him to natural law, and that, in turn, brought him back to the Church. Robert George is fond of saying, “Hadley brought other people into the Church before he entered himself.” Well, as Midge Decter used to say, at a certain point, you have to take the side you’re on! So natural law reasoning was obviously essential in leading you into the Catholic Church. It was part of my rationale [for becoming Catholic] that the Church has become the main enclave to sustain natural law reasoning in our own age, at a time when the currents of relativism are corroding many other institutions, including many of the churches. That became the thing that really drew me. A fine priest and teacher I know, who converted when he was at Oxford, told me that one of the telling lines stirring him in that direction came from my friend, Dermot Quinn. Dermot had said something to the effect that “You can believe everything the Church tells you and not be a good Catholic. The question is. ‘Do you believe in the Church as a truth-telling institution?’” And I thought: “I do. I really do.” When the Church stands contra mundum, against the currents at work in the world, my tendency is to think that the Church has it right, for the Church has had a couple of thousand years to look things over. It’s not surprised by anything. As Father Burtchaell at Notre Dame used to say, “The Church holds up a mirror to you and shows you: ‘This is what you’re going to look like if you persist on this path.’” So I was brought in through the 24 Crossroads

Church, through the teachings of the Church, and of course you can’t be in the Church without being led to the One who founded the Church. My friend Robert Wilkins says, “Nothing to apologize for there. The Church is part of the Creed.” We do affirm the Church when we say the Creed. Right?

Once upon a time, there seems to have been a sensus communus—a moral common sense that was shared across time by all civilizations. In The Abolition of Man, C.S. Lewis called this sensus communus (another name for the natural law) the Tao. Lewis said that for centuries, the primary function of rabbis, teachers… educators of all sorts and in all fields…was to instruct their students in the Tao, teaching them how to make reasoned judgments between good and evil; between that which is truly excellent and that which is mediocre or poor. And he warned that educators who don’t instruct their students in the natural law/Tao will produce aberrant creatures he called “Men without Chests,” or “trousered apes.” Given all of this, why do you think so many of today’s educators

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and institutions seem to have abandoned the sensus communus? In education, we used to speak about moral truths. Then it turned into “value judgments.” “Values,” that is, things that have value because we impute the value to them. Some date this shift with Nietzsche. We stopped speaking of moral truths and started speaking instead of “values.” But as Harry Jaffa remarked, for Lincoln, the question of whether the black man was a man, a human being, with a claim to natural rights, was not a “value judgment.” It was not a matter of whether we valued him or those rights, or whether we were inclined to regard the black man as a human being. There’s an objective truth to it. Value judgments came along when there was an erosion of confidence in objective moral truths. I recall, in one of my books, being at the Holocaust Museum working on a piece I was commissioned to write. As I was walking through the museum, I took that turn that many other people have taken, and I came across this vast vat of shoes: just things that the Nazis had salvaged so that they could sell them or use them again. What came flashing back were those lines from Justice McLean in his dissenting opinion in the Dred Scott case, where he leaned in and said, “You may think that the black man is chattel, but he is a creature made in the impress of his Maker. He is amenable to the laws of God and man, and he is destined to an endless existence.” He has a soul that will not decompose when his material existence will come to an end. I thought: you get the whole sense of the matter when you look at this scene and realize that the Nazis thought the shoes were the durables. As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, I have these colleagues at Amherst and at other places who take as their signature the line from Nietzsche, amplified by Dostoevsky, that “God is dead, and thus everything is permitted.” The irony is, they talk about that character in the gutter who has broken his own life, and they think even so, there’s something “sacred” about him. Sacred? Sacrosanct? That’s rather redolent of you-know-who! So they have the language [of the natural law] but they Spring 2011

can’t quite give an account of exactly where it came from. My friends in the academy are people with large liberal sympathies. But they realize that they can’t really give the same account of the wrongness of slavery or the wrongness of genocide that someone like McLean was in the position to give. Somewhere along the way, something was lost. Leo Strauss was once speaking about the remarkable influence of German philosophy— of German skepticism, positivism, relativism; the influence of Nietzsche and Heidegger— and he said, “It will not be the first time that a nation defeated on the battlefield imposes on the victor the yoke of its own thought.” One has this sense of things eroding…Part of the problem also is historicism, the sense that is so dominant among today’s historians, that we don’t know moral truths that hold in all places, at all times…that we can know moral truths only within the historical epoch in which they are held—apart, of course, from the doctrine of historical relativism, they say, because that will hold true across the historical epochs. When I was visiting Princeton several years ago, I encountered a young woman who was doing graduate work in history, and I asked her what period, in what field, and she said, “America, 19th century.” I said, “Ah, already we are at odds.” She said, “What’s the problem?” I said, “I think the proposition, as Lincoln called it, that all men are created equal, really did have the qualities or properties he thought it had—that it’s an axiom or moral truth. He said it was an abstract truth applicable to all men at all times. That is, wherever human nature remains the same, those rights will still be there.” She remarked, “Well, he thought it was true at the time.” She’s not alone. Across the valley from us at Amherst, Joe Ellis, the professor at Mount Holyoke, thinks it utterly remarkable that anyone should think that this proposition “all men are created equal,” articulated at the end of the 18th century, should sort of plunk down at the beginning of the 21st century and be thought to be true! Jim McPherson Spring 2011

at Princeton in his book on the Civil War soldiers writes about these Union soldiers who were actually reflecting in their letters Lincoln’s understanding. They were explaining to their wives why they were risking their lives when they had children and a farm back home. They said this is our last, best hope—that our fathers died to confirm our right to govern ourselves. These people [in the Confederate Army] want to take it away, and we will lose for our children what our fathers gained for us [if we don’t defeat them]. And Jim McPherson writes that if we heard these sentiments today—which these soldiers thought were true—they would be justly mocked. Justly mocked??!!!! Why would they be justly mocked? It’s because he doesn’t take seriously the premises, the principles on which they are acting. All men are created equal, natural rights, couldn’t possibly be true across the epochs, he is saying. So you begin by not taking seriously the people you study. You don’t understand them as they understood themselves. You don’t credit their understanding. You say they’re willing to die and take the life of people on the other side on the basis simply of some idea that elicited their passions, but which we could not claim in all strictness to be true, and therefore we could not claim in all strictness to be justified. So what are we saying about these people? I remember, at Amherst, one Crossroads

president, Bill Ward. He was a South American historian, and one day, Bill, in the middle of a faculty meeting, was referring to the problem of South Africa. He was speaking about apartheid, and he said, “I would not hesitate in condemning a regime…”—silence, I was waiting for the last words to come into play— “…which has been condemned by all thoughtful people.” What I thought he was going to say was “a regime that is in point of principle despicable—that is based on a racist principle.” But no, he wouldn’t say that. He didn’t want to claim that there are these truths that allow us to tell the difference between good and bad regimes. It’s all historically relative. He doesn’t want to claim that there are moral truths, as a member of the academy, as a leading figure in the academy. You also have these courses in English that are about breaking down your sense of surety about the real world…it is all about the manipulation of words, and how clever you are with language…You value people who can give reasons and write complex sentences, as opposed to people who can express themselves simply. Could part of the problem be that today’s educators are in love with complexity? Isn’t the The Magazine of Belmont Abbey College

truth almost invariably simple, crystalline…commonsensical? As Stephen Hayward writes in his book The Age of Reagan, people are always criticizing Reagan for being “simplistic.” They prefer many complex schemes in foreign affairs, in arms control, in health care. Remember that elaborate scheme that Hillary Clinton and Ira Magaziner once worked out to organize the health care of the country? At that point, it was 14% of the Gross National Product of the country. It took real wit to know how all of those deductibles and copayments mesh, how this whole intricate construction fitted together.

Reagan would probably take one look at this, shake his head, and say, “This just doesn’t make contact with the world that the rest of us inhabit.” Reagan just had a different way of understanding. For example, if it’s a matter of arms control, then he understood that the advantage goes to the regime that is very good at cheating and concealing. If it’s a matter of an arms race, the advantage goes to the country that is technologically innovative and with a more vibrant culture. That’s our side. Why do so many “educated” people profess to be so puzzled on the question of whether the child in the womb is 26 Crossroads

really a human being at all stages? We are living a time of embryology quite advanced, and yet these people profess not to know what the slightest acquaintance with biology would readily tell them? Why do so many people with pricey educations affect not to know when human life begins? As James Wilson would say from the time of the Founding, if we have natural rights, when do they begin? The answer: as we begin to be. Which is why, as he said, the common law casts its protection over human life from its first stirrings in the womb. So do we know less about embryology now? The intellectuals tell us that life is complex. And when it comes to the matter of stem cells, they insist that we should respect the domain of “science” and avoid the intrusion of these political/moral judgments. But when it comes to abortion, or the nature of those stem cells, these people have a curious tendency either to profess their ignorance of what science tells us, or insist on the need to screen out the inconvenient truths of science. Would it be accurate to say that it is a long-held American tradition to be selective about the application of the natural law? One thinks of Thomas Jefferson appealing to “self-evident” truths in the Declaration of Independence, then creating his own Bible by excising all of the miracle stories contained in the Gospel; or characterizing slavery as a great evil, then fathering several children with one of his own slaves. Could one cause of this selective use of the natural law in America be that America is at bottom a Protestant creation - a core belief of which is that “every man is his own priest”? I.e. that the “freedom” to be one’s own arbiter of morals is encoded in the American DNA? That’s an interesting angle, but I’m not quite sure it’s right or that I’d come down on that side. Jefferson was not a moral relativist. He didn’t accept the notion of Christ as God,

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but he thought there was that first cause “up there.” He thought there was God. “I tremble for my nation when I think that God must be just,” he said. Lincoln would say all honor to Jefferson. He articulated an “abstract truth applicable to all men and all times.” That truth becomes the heart of the matter— and, as Lincoln said, it’s the nut that anyone has to crack who wants to impose despotism and justify slavery. Jefferson didn’t fully live up to that central truth he had the gift to state in a way that made its way around the world. But he did us the inestimable service of articulating that truth—a truth that other people could absorb and come to understand, and come to honor more fully than he did. Kenneth Stampp in his book The Peculiar Institution cites a letter written by an owner of slaves that said: “If slavery were right, then I should be willing to apply it to my own family. And since I am not, therefore it cannot be right. I cannot keep these people in slavery.” So other people understood the lessons that were imparted. But then I think something else is at work: a curious tendency just to filter out the people who don’t happen to count when we estimate the injuries that may be done to “others.” It is not a rare, but a rather common vice: People just may not be disposed to raise questions in a demanding way about the grounds of principle on which certain “human persons” are simply omitted from the class of beings whose injuries somehow “count.” I think the paradigm here is that great scene in Huckleberry Finn. Aunt Sally asks why Huck was delayed. “Well the steamboat blowed a cylinder.” “Goodness, was anybody hurt?” “No, just a nigger killed.” “That’s a relief. Sometimes PEOPLE are killed in these things.” In this vein, Bill Clinton vetoes the bill on partial birth abortion when it’s first passed, and he says that he’s doing this for the sake of protecting the health of the women who have chosen these surgeries. But that other person at the scene, whose head was being punctured and brains sucked out, that person somehow didn’t Spring 2011

register at all. That baby did not come within his sight or even stir his imagination. And in New York, during the litigation over the federal bill on partial birth abortion, Judge Richard Conway Casey asked one of the doctors, “Did you ever think of applying anesthesia to this child who is being killed with his legs dangling out of the birth canal? Did you ever think of applying anesthetics?” “Well no, why would we do that?” It’s just that the child did not count. The grisly things done to the child, with excruciating pain, just didn’t register. Or, to take another example: Zoe Lofgren in California [Democratic congresswoman from California’s 16th district] with that famous case of Laci Peterson: There were two bodies that washed on shore, that of Laci and the unborn son she had been carrying in her womb. Zoe Lofgren of California would not concede that two bodies washed on shore. It was only the murder of the mother that counted. And so now we have the Unborn Victims of Violence Act which recognizes “a child in utero” as a victim… The screen of ideology comes down, and Zoe Lofgren cannot acknowledge that there was a real child in the womb whose killing mattered. She couldn’t do that without calling into question her fundamental position as a deep advocate of the right to abortion. So I think what you’re seeing here is endemic; it is a vice quite widespread among our species. It’s going to be with us enduringly, and on all religious sides. Christians could have a certain kind of aid here if they take seriously the notion that there’s something touched with sanctity about any human life. It’s not a matter of how tall or short, how articulate or inarticulate that life is—that there is something about that life that is unique and irreplaceable. Ironically, some prominent Catholic judges seem to be resisting the application of natural law reasoning in various cases - your elegant and powerful arguments notwithstanding. Why do you think this is so? What seems to be the sticking point for them? Spring 2011

Well, they’re working within a constitution and a scheme of jurisprudence, and they have a jurisprudential theory that may have diverted them. I think that Justice Scalia, for example, understands the question of abortion quite rightly, because he sees the core of the problem. Though even he and other conservative judges have this curious position that they don’t think they can do anything more, on the matter of recognizing the human standing of the child in the womb other than overturning Roe vs. Wade and returning the matter of abortion to the states. Yet, one may ask, what if the states decide to withdraw the current protections of the law from these unborn children? Even the conservative judges seem to be saying in effect they don’t know when human life begins, that we’ll simply put that matter back into the politics of the State, with people free to deliberate anew on that question and possibly use the laws again to protect the lives of those offspring in the womb. What if the states decide to use—just for the sake of argument—a color wheel that says people are human as they become lighter in skin, or with better reading scores. Well, you know what the courts would do with that. They’d say these are just arbitrary criteria. They could not possibly carry the moral weight of determining just which human beings are put outside the protections of the law. Why would the lightness of skin make a difference as to whether a human being is protected? Why, then, would it be any more of an inscrutable question if New York removed protections from the law from infants in the womb less than 24 weeks old? Why would that make any more sense in establishing that this class of beings is less human and less subject to the protections of the law? What if they said: because the embryo doesn’t have arms and legs yet. As I stated earlier, people lose arms and legs in the course of their lives without losing anything necessary to their standing as human beings to receive the protections of the law. Let’s take, as another example, the recent awful case of Snyder v. Phelps. Here

you have this scurrilous bunch led by Reverend Phelps of Westboro Baptist Church carrying signs at a soldier’s funeral that say, “Thank God for Dead Soldiers,” “God Hates Fags,” “Priests Rape Boys,” and “Pope in Hell.” In deciding the case in favor of Reverend Phelps, the conservative judges, most of whom are Catholic, of course, wanted to stay with the precedents handed down. The problem is that in 1971, the court took a critical turn toward relativism in this matter of speech with Justice Harlan’s signature line in a case called Cohen v. California: “One man’s vulgarity is another’s lyric.” Translation: language, and especially heated language, is all so subjective that we don’t have any principled grounds for making distinctions between speech that is assaulting or innocent, offensive or inoffensive. And of course that’s quite an incoherent position. Our language works at any time by having words that have the moral function of commending and condemning…and also words that have an assaulting function, in terms of insult and defamation. And in order for the language to work, you’ve got to know

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at any given moment what words are carrying that function. There is no private language. I mean language is, as they say, system-dominant. None of us has the freedom to go into town and reinvent words for corn beef sandwiches or shirts. I used to tell people that ordinary folk and juries could make these decisions very easily. There are clearly words that we, along with everyone else, would understand as terms of derision and contempt. Take, for example, this list of words: “Nigger.” “Kike bastard.” “Meter maid.” “Urologist.” “Saint.” Most people have no trouble discriminating here within this list—though “meter maid” could be one of those touchy words in Washington! One doesn’t need a college education to do this. Truck drivers and construction workers may have the most finely tuned understanding of when they are being spoken to in a way that’s dismissive or insulting. They know how words are used in our ordinary language. But you raise a very interesting question about the Catholic judges. They seem to have an aversion to natural law for a number of reasons. The problem may be that when the Catholics think of the natural law, they think instantly of 28 Crossroads

the source of the moral law, which is the Lawgiver. On the other hand, they seem to rule out the other part of natural law brought to us by Aquinas and others. Part of the long tradition of Christianity and Judaism is reflected in Aquinas’s line that the divine law we know through revelation, but the natural law we know from that reasoning that is natural, accessible to human beings as human beings. So with the case of some Catholic judges, there’s been a curious failure to notice that by natural law, we don’t mean something that is soaring off into the sky, but instead, we are referring to the laws of reason, to the grounds of principled judgments. I told my friend Scalia, a friend of many years and one of our great jurists, that he offers a model of how natural law reasoning can be done in a crisp, persuasive way, while professing up and down that it can’t be done. I have a good many friends who are Catholic lawyers and judges who find it hard to believe or to understand that they are doing natural law when they are really applying the canons of reason. After all, what is distinctive to that “nature” of human beings, as Aristotle told us, is that they are creatures of reason who

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can reason about matters of right and wrong. Among the American founders, James Wilson leaned importantly on the commentator Jean Jacques Burlamaqui in his treatises on natural law, and at one point in his book, Burlamaqui makes this point: there can be two sources of understanding the moral truth and the natural law. One is that the law emanates from the Lawgiver. That’s the external source of the law. The internal source of the law is that it is in accord with the canons of reason. Then he observed that we are more persuaded that these laws emanate from the Lawgiver when they are in fact in accord with the canons of reason. And that becomes a critical guide to theology in America at the time of the Revolution and the founding. In a nutshell, they said look about you—look at the evidence of a world that was hardly accidental, and look to reason as the guide in understanding what God would teach. The Reverend Samuel Cooper, during his homily at the inauguration of the new Constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in October 1780 said, “We need no special revelation vouchsafed from heaven to tell us the difference between men and animals. It’s the plain truth that the Father of mankind has put into the human bosom.” So this was quite in accord with religion at the time of the founding. And, of course, it is supported by Catholicism even more strongly now, even as many sections of Protestantism have kind of drifted away. But it is a remarkable problem about the Catholic judges… It reminds me of that old line, “Half the Church is in heresy, and the other half doesn’t seem to notice.” In a way, like you, Belmont Abbey College is involved in a Grand Reclamation Project, turning back to classic texts that can nurture students in the natural law in our core curriculum and elsewhere. What else can a Catholic college like Belmont Abbey do to inculcate more natural law wisdom in our own community and in the wider American culture? Spring 2011

Oh, well…If you ask a dentist what’s the problem, he may order up a root canal. If you ask me how do you deal with this, I’ll tell you the natural law means moral reasoning about the questions before us. Aristotle taught this from the very beginning, that any act we do, whether we act to seek change or resist change, our acts must imply some awareness of a states of things that is better or worse, good or bad. We are talking about moral truths. We are talking about the grounds for irreducibly practical judgments, the grounds on which we decide to do one thing or the other: Are we going to go to school or go to work? Are we going to go to work at a legitimate or an illegitimate occupation? The old saying was that Socrates brought political philosophy down out of the heavens and brought it into bear on the moral questions before us, questions of justice. He turned philosophy into political philosophy. Well natural law is a matter of making judgments, moral judgments about the cases before us. It means reasoning in a principled way about the things that are right or wrong, just or unjust. Then you need practice in that. Any curriculum that does this seriously is one that will have constitutional law and moral reasoning and moral philosophy, but one also that will bring out the fuller dimensions of that question, touching all parts of our lives, even the most prosaic—how do we make a living? How do we raise these children? As we’ve long known, education is moral education. This has been my complaint about the historians. The historians may be studying, say, the Civil War while holding back in a state of moral relativism, historical relativism. They discuss the Civil War while they think they cannot make judgments about whether Lincoln had it right. Were those men going off to defend the Union just beguiled by their own passions ? Were they taking themselves from their families, risking their lives, taking the lives of others, because they were animated by these sentiments about human equality and the right of people to govern themselves—sentiments that might be stirring, but could hardly be regarded by urbane academics as true? Spring 2011

People who study history will talk about revolutions without any standards of judgment as to what are good or bad revolutions, good or bad moments in history. They certainly have their judgments, but they never test the validity of the standards they are using in making those judgments. Who are the admirable or the despicable characters in the stories they are unfolding? In studying novels, does that fiction at hand have a tendency to point up and make attractive what is becomingly human or does it mock and degrade the things that are decent, the things we’ve thought to be enduringly good?

The moral question pervades everything else. It’s a matter of how attentive you are to the fact that these questions will be raised in every sphere. When it comes to the sciences—the natural sciences do not profess the competence to pronounce on moral truths or the validity then of moral judgments. And yet many scientists seek to fend off, as so many intrusions into the domain of science, of the moral judgments that must ever guide and

restrain research. We discovered years ago that the Nazis did these experiments—they wanted to find out for many practical reasons what kinds of temperatures the bodies of pilots could withstand when the pilots were downed in the frozen waters of the Atlantic. The best way of doing it, of course, was just to dunk some bodies, and they had these Jewish prisoners who, as the saying goes, were “going to die anyway.” I thought that, years ago, we had settled the judgment that there may be certain moral limits on what we can do, even in acquiring the knowledge that scientists devoutly wish to know. We encounter the same problem with research involving stem cells. We find some people complaining that we’re introducing political or religious criteria to interfere with science. Well, no, you have to be clear in the first place that science will always proceed within a moral framework, which provides some limits to what we try to know. And of course we should never hold back from pointing out that there’s nothing in science—nothing in knowledge itself—that is at war with the teachings of Catholicism. The fallacy is to assume that anything that is done, using the findings of science, must be bound up with the claims of science itself. You may make the center of the problem then in bringing the natural law to bear on things of the law and matters of moral judgment, whether it’s constitutional law, moral philosophy, the policies we pursue with the force of law. But as I say, the question pervades every other sphere. I think of that line of Samuel Johnson’s, when he remarked that you can be with a man for years without knowing how good he is at hydrostatics. You can’t be with him for a matter of minutes without forming some estimate of his character. As Johnson said, “We are geometers by chance; we are moralists by necessity.” As one of the popes said, “The soul of education is the education of the soul.” That’s right. What else could it be?

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Fostering Entrepreneurial Vision C the

By Susan Shackelford

ould the Abbeyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Entrepreneurship Program spawn the next Jeff Bezos or Bill Gates?

Thanks to the visionary leadership of teaching dynamo and Harvard Law grad Jeff Thomas, the skyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s the limit.

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Spring 2011

Crossroads

The Magazine of Belmont Abbey College

ill Christa Phillips or another Abbey student create the next YouTube, Amazon or Starbucks? Will an Abbey student become the next Steve Jobs? When Phillips enrolled at Belmont Abbey in the Adult Degree Program, she had more immediate concerns. “Does my brain still work? Will I be able to train myself to study?” recalls the Mount Holly resident. Phillips, who had been out of college for almost a decade, plunged into the College’s new Entrepreneur Program, named “Abbey Ventures.” She took three entrepreneurship (or “ET”) courses in spring 2010 during her first semester as an ADP student. “I’m stoked,” she says. “I want to be an entrepreneur, and it’s exactly what I wanted to learn.” Belmont Abbey is among the approximately one-third of colleges and universities in the United States that offer at least one course in entrepreneurism, says the Kaufman Foundation, whose focus is entrepreneurship. That represents a little over 2,000 schools, and a growing number are offering sequences, minors and master’s degrees, the foundation says on its website.

Jeff Thomas

Realizing that a large number of students are interested in one day having their own business, Belmont Abbey set the wheels in motion for the Abbey Ventures program about three years ago. In the 32 Crossroads

spring of 2008, the college hired Harvard Law School graduate and entrepreneur Jeff Thomas to be the program’s director. During his first term, Thomas laid groundwork for Abbey Ventures while teaching other courses at the Abbey. He then taught the first ET class in the spring of 2009. Business majors in the traditional and Adult Degree Program can now earn an entrepreneurship concentration (and traditional students who are not business majors can earn an entrepreneurship minor). The program is offering its fifth ET course this fall. “It’s off to a good start,” says Phil Bayster, who chairs the Abbey’s business administration program. Thomas, 41, is a big reason. His high energy, entrepreneurial knowledge and commitment to education are evident. A former Silicon Valley lawyer who represented high-tech start-up companies, Thomas had his own Web start-up company for three years. He later worked with law schools in the Chicago area (Northwestern and Chicago-Kent), teaching courses and helping law students assist entrepreneurs with forming and growing their organizations. He observed something among the law students that spurred him to think seriously about college teaching. “I noticed that many students assisting entrepreneurs by providing legal help through the law school clinics were more interested in becoming entrepreneurs (themselves),” Thomas remembers. He was on a year-to-year contract at Chicago-Kent when he read about the opportunity to help build the new Abbey program. “A high school buddy who lives in Charlotte said good things about Belmont Abbey, and I became real excited about the possibility,” Thomas says. He and his wife liked the idea of buying their first home in the Charlotte area. Housing was much more expensive in Chicago, and they already had one child. “We needed more area, more space, and a new home for our new family,” Thomas says. They wound up buying a house in Belmont, and he’s been focusing on launching the program. “Jeff is a real blessing to the school and program,” Bayster says. “I think what

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Louis Foreman

drew us to Jeff is that he has a real passion for entrepreneurship. He believes in it. He understands the value of it.” Louis Foreman, an entrepreneur known for his PBS, Emmy Awardwinning series, “Everyday Edisons,” taught the ET course on “Product Innovation and Development” in the spring of 2010 and 2011, and has spoken to other ET classes. He’s been impressed with Thomas’s leadership. “Belmont Abbey is fortunate to have someone with his kind of enthusiasm leading the program,” Foreman says. “To start something from scratch, that’s what you need. You need someone who is going to put in the time and effort and have the vision to create something. There are certain people who are great at managing and certain people who are great at creating. Jeff is a guy who creates.” Involving someone of Foreman’s stature is a feather in Belmont Abbey’s cap. Foreman has more than 10 patents, and his “Everyday Edisons” show scours the country for inventors and their ideas. He and his staff pick ones they will develop. “We show viewers the process of innovation and then reunite the inventor with the invention,” he says. Students in his Abbey class got a bird’s-eye view of product innovation at Foreman’s Charlotte-based company, Enventys. “It’s a 23,000-square-foot innovation lab, where the students could see rapid prototyping equipment, industrial designers and engineers and Spring 2011

branding,” he says. “They could see all of this integrated.” Foreman’s class made a big impact on Christa Phillips. “My brother is an inventor and has done a couple of patents on his own. I told him, ‘Brother, you’re not doing this right.’” “I learned things from Louis I had never thought of,” she continues. “Sometimes you can get down the road (with the patent process) and something you should have known will cost you tens of thousands of dollars.’ Phillips plans to apply what she’s learning in ET courses to owning or franchising a national chain of preschool child-care centers with a Christian emphasis. Abbey Ventures is helping her figure out financing, how to structure the business and other matters. “It has really opened my window of understanding,” she says. Jake Ciccarelli, a student from Harrisburg, Pa., has taken several of the entrepreneurship courses and plans to obtain the entrepreneurship minor. “Jeff came into a business management class I was taking and talked about the ET program, and it sparked my interest, Ciccarelli says. “I thought I (would) go out on a limb and take one of his classes, then I decided to take another one in the same semester. He is a great teacher.” “I hope it (Abbey Ventures) will broaden my career options,” Ciccarelli notes. For example, instead of working in a bioresearch lab for someone else, he might one day own his own lab. “I will look at entrepreneurship,” he says. Thomas stresses that entrepreneurs are also needed outside of the startup world. “Yes, our program aims to instill an ‘entrepreneurial vision’ that will benefit founders of new ventures. But, this vision is also important for leaders of large for-profit and nonprofit organizations, investors, and other professionals. Founders and others need to be outward-looking, identify problems, and develop and evaluate innovative solutions to those problems.” Some schools offer programs that focus on counseling (nonstudent) business owners in their local communities and perhaps offering them workshops. Abbey Ventures focuses on Spring 2011

giving its traditional and Adult Degree Program students better entrepreneurial vision through a mix of academic courses and learn-by-doing opportunities. Bayster, the business department chair, notes that Gaston College, a community college, addresses the needs of small business owners. “We didn’t want to impinge on our partners like Gaston,” he says. “This is a student-focused program to help them with their ambitions, and maybe their dreams.” Some years back, Bayster sensed entrepreneurism was gaining interest among students. “It would be in casual conversations,” he recalls. “I’d say, ‘What do you want to do with your life?’ and a number said, ‘I would like to start my own business.’ “They didn’t always know what business that would be—some did— but they all said they didn’t have much background or knowledge on how to go about it. That got me starting to think. “I spent many years in corporate America,” Bayster says. “That avenue for college graduates has diminished greatly.” Nonetheless, Louis Foreman notes, some people in academia have questioned two things about teaching entrepreneurism: can it really be taught, and is academia a good setting for entrepreneurs? While many business skills can be taught, Foreman says a trait separates entrepreneurs from others. “It’s the ability to process risk and reward quickly, not necessarily in a spreadsheet but in the gut,” he says. “Entrepreneurs are able to look at a situation and decide if the upside, the rewards, are worth the risks; whereas, those content to work for someone else take a long to time to process that.” As for academia as a setting for entrepreneurism, Foreman is a strong advocate. “School is a great time to experiment,” he says. “I started my first business when I was a sophomore in college (at the University of Illinois), and the reason why starting a business while in school makes so much sense is you have a natural safety net. If it didn’t work out, I would graduate and get a real job like my classmates. Crossroads

“On the flip side, if I succeeded, I was able to incubate this business during a time when risk was low,” he continues. “I didn’t have car payments, a mortgage or a family. I didn’t have the same obligations someone often has a few years out of college. I think college is actually the best time to test ideas.” No doubt students in the Abbey’s new Abbey Ventures program are thinking the same thing.

Franchising Classes

Since the first entrepreneur class in the spring of 2009, Belmont Abbey has expanded the Abbey Ventures program to five classes. The newest—ET 403, “Franchising”—is being taught for the first time in the fall of 2011. Here are the five courses: n ET 300: The Entrepreneur. Introduces students to entrepreneurship. n ET302: Launching New Ventures. Teaches students about planning and organizing new businesses. n ET303: Financing New Ventures. Teaches students how new businesses raise capital. n ET402: Product Innovation & Development. Acquaints students with the process of product innovation and development. n ET403: Franchising. Acquaints students with the end-to-end process of franchising.

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Al McGuire Comes Back to Life at Belmont Abbey

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Spring 2011

By Richard Walker

or two nights in October at the Haid Theatre, Al McGuire came back to life. And his portrayal by acclaimed Broadway actor Cotter Smith in “Coach: The Untold Story of College Basketball Legend Al McGuire” drew rave reviews from McGuire’s Belmont Abbey players. “That actor did a heckuva job,” Hank Steincke said of Cotter Smith, who portrayed McGuire in the play written by Hall of Fame TV broadcaster Dick Enberg. “There’s so many Al-isms and I like the way that they portray him as a real person.” McGuire, who coached at the Abbey from 1957 to 1964, died at 72 in January 2001. But Enberg, who was once a broadcasting partner with McGuire, said after Saturday’s showing that he’d begun taking notes and interviews with the legendary coach and broadcaster before McGuire died in order to write a play about McGuire’s life. “The guy did a phenomenal job,” Danny Doyle said of Smith’s portrayal of McGuire. “I think we all enjoyed watching it.” Steincke and Doyle were joined by former Abbey players Joe Butts, Chuck Sullivan and Bob Kopf for Saturday’s showing. Earlier in the day, the five players were interviewed by Enberg for a future project that will be used to enhance the play in future showings. Enberg said the October 9th showing was the 40th time the play had been presented and admitted that he was extremely nervous at the first showing five years ago. The play debuted in Milwaukee, Wis.—or the home of the school (Marquette University) McGuire left the Abbey for in 1964. “I didn’t write it,” Enberg told the crowd of about 150 at The Haid. “I just wrote what Al told me.” Enberg, who signed autographs and posed for photographs after Saturday’s presentation, said he was delighted to present the play at the site of McGuire’s first head coaching job; The Haid was the Abbey’s basketball court from 1931 until the Wheeler Center opened in 1970 before being turned into a theatre. The play begins with McGuire crying on the bench in the final seconds of Marquette’s 67-59 victory over North Carolina in the 1977 NCAA title game. It was McGuire’s last game as a basketball coach. “How eerie is it that we’re in this theatre at the old gym where Al used to coach,” Enberg said. “But somehow it’s so fitting that we’re here. It’s like he’s with us.” [Don’t miss our interview with Mr. Enberg on pages 36-37.] Read more of Richard Walker’s work at www.gastongazette.com Spring 2011

Crossroads

The Magazine of Belmont Abbey College

fter the last performance of the play, Crossroads had the privilege of interviewing Mr. Enberg about his unforgettable friend, Al McGuire.

Crossroads: Something rather “unworldly” occurred during the first performance of your play here at the Abbey. Can you capture what happened for those who weren’t there, and the history behind the occurrence? Enberg: When we premiered the play at Marquette in 2005, I nervously occupied my seat in the back of the theater, hoping, but not knowing if it would be any good. I’m not a playwright. Would the audience embrace the play’s poignancy and humor? 36 Crossroads

Had I successfully brought the character to life? After all, this was no ordinary Joe. This was the most incredible character I had EVER met...no one in second place. In the midst of that initial performance, a well-fed Wisconsin moth found its way into the theater and began flying recklessly around the stage, its size accentuated by the stage lights. From my seat, it looked as large as a seagull. For minutes, the moth was a total distraction. Was it purposely ruining my debut? You could not help but notice its aerial showoff maneuvering. How to get rid of this intruder? Finally, the moth left, exiting stage left...only to reappear. This time with millions of spots to land, it chose not to fly, but to come to rest on the front of

The Magazine of Belmont Abbey College

actor Cotter Smith’s sweater, exactly on top of his heart...staying there for nearly a minute. It then flew away, never to reappear. In my post-show comments, I reflected on the fact that I knew that Al was coming back, but NOT as a moth. We’ve done nearly 40 shows since that first night in Milwaukee, all free of any flying objects. Until Belmont Abbey. Midway through the first performance, a moth briefly danced lightly in the lights and departed without return, barely any distraction. Al’s two head coaching jobs: Belmont Abbey and Marquette, the only times a moth shared the stage. Spring 2011

Coincidence? You connect the dots.

Crosswords: Al McGuire obviously

meant a lot to the Abbey and to the players he recruited to play for him here. Did he ever share with you what Belmont Abbey College meant to him?

Enberg: Al gave great credit to the Abbey for his development as a coach. He loved the combination of the strict discipline of the monks with the soft, easy-going nature of the South. We added the line just for our performances at the Abbey, his line, that “Belmont Abbey put a stain glass window in my heart.” We most likely will include it in future performances. Not only is it a highly sensitive acknowledgement of his times on campus, but it ties in later in the play when he collects stain glass windows, while at Marquette. Crossroads: Do you remember any other anecdotes about the Abbey McGuire may have told you that you couldn’t put in the play? Enberg: We didn’t have time to include the fact that the “Fox,” as he was called by his players, sent his New York and New Jersey recruits photos of Davidson and Duke to entice them to come to Belmont. At the time, the Abbey featured only three or four buildings.

successful career. Now, more than 50 years later, they all agree that their love for the old Coach was absolutely 100%.

Crossroads: What’s the key life lesson you learned from him?

Crossroads: The play is suffused

is the right-hand turn. For each of us to consciously take the time to get off the well beaten path, to let life, the unexpected, come to us. For college kids today, they too can take a right turn by blocking off at least one hour every weekend to leave their studies, their Facebooks, I-Pods, texting, and check out the world around them...a friend’s eyes, a rainbow, a sunset, the wind through the trees, the giggle of a child, etc. Take a right turn.

with McGuire’s sometimes irreverent, sometimes VERY respectful, and oftentimes hilarious “brand” of Catholicism. (Who can forget his classic line about one of his star guards at Marquette: “He was quicker than an 11 a.m. Mass at a golf resort.”) Was he more religious than he let on? In the play, he talks about how much he likes the beneath-the-surface “ripples” of kindness (e.g. feeding four less fortunate families at an all-you-can-eat buffet) vs. the “tidal waves.”

Enberg: Al’s Catholicism was obviously

a big part of him. I think it’s an important undercurrent in the play that when he’s dying, he reflects on his guilt...that he didn’t always do things right, that he wasn’t always good. Human like all the rest of us. He finally was able to strip away his tough veneer and confess his weaknesses and errors. So, here is this remarkable, unforgettable, one-of-a-kind character at life’s end, admitting he is a common man, just one of us, concerned, afraid of higher judgment, recognizing his sins and hoping “that a deaf priest will hear my confession!”

Enberg: The key life lesson to me

Crossroads: Try to sum Al up in a

sentence, if you can— as you asked his ex-players to do in your interviews with them. “Al McGuire was____.”

Enberg: As the poster for the play

says, “Al is the most unforgettable character I’ve ever met. No one is in second place.” He was a New York street genius who saw and understood humanness far better than anyone I’ve ever encountered. He identified with the ripple below the water, and his life appropriately reflected its quiver and shake.

Crossroads: You had a chance to interview some of Al’s former Abbey players on camera while you were here. Did you learn anything new about him from those interviews or other conversations you had during your visit here? Enberg: In interviewing his Abbey

players who attended the performances, it was unanimous that there was a “lovehate” relationship with Al. The consensus was that it was 80% hate and 20% love. However, to a man, these players reflected on their time with Al at the Abbey and recognized the positive influence on their future lives. Each has enjoyed a very

Spring 2011

Crossroads

The Magazine of Belmont Abbey College

MONASTIC NEWS

The Weather Monk By Christopher Lux, Class of 2011

erhaps it’s human nature to talk about yourself and your own experiences. My problem is that Brother Elias seems to provoke this sort of selfcentered behavior in me. Whenever I sit down with him, he creates a welcoming and tranquil atmosphere that says he’s ready to listen. This past summer, before Br. Elias left to study in Minnesota, he spent many mornings practicing Spanish with me. That is, I learned to speak better Spanish and he listened to me learn to speak better Spanish. He’d been away from the monastery for the past few months, so I had a lot to talk about with him when we met over Thanksgiving. For me, his willingness to be an understanding listener makes him a good friend, Spanish teacher, and confidant (but, also, a lessthan-ideal interviewee, as my temptation to yap always sneaks in). For the Church’s sake, however, his willingness truly to listen to somebody may be exactly why he has ended up at Belmont Abbey; it also may be exactly why he is preparing for ordination at the St. John’s School of Theology in Collegeville, MN. Br. Elias ended up at Belmont Abbey by means of a series of events that date back to when he was in middle school. It took a powerful act of nature to make Br. Elias aware of his initial calling. And that act was Hurricane Diana. This massive storm system impressed him and opened his eyes not to priesthood, but to meteorology. “I tracked hurricanes through high school,” he says, “and drove my parents crazy watching the Weather Channel all the time.” He knew then that he wanted to earn a doctorate in meteorology, because that was the only way to fulfill his dream of working for the Hurricane Center. While studying for ten years at Florida

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State University, Br. Elias recognized that there was a wider world of meteorology that amazed him. So, when he completed his studies, he accepted an opportunity to be one of the four co-founders of a weather forecast service, Weather Predict. Instead of working for the Hurricane Center, he worked with this company that originated in Florida and relocated to Raleigh, North Carolina. It was not until Br. Elias was in Raleigh that he began considering the religious life. After working with Weather Predict for eight years, Br. Elias decided to enter the monastery of Belmont Abbey. In the summer of 2009, he made his first profession of vows. Since he was living in Raleigh, it may seem that Br. Elias just picked a nearby monastery in North Carolina and moved in. But he’s sure to say that he did not come to Belmont Abbey simply because it was close by; whether he was in North Carolina or not, he would have ended up in Belmont: “God wants me at Belmont Abbey, at least for now. I think I still would have ended up here if my company didn’t relocate to Raleigh; it just may have taken longer.” Br. Elias is now at St. John’s School of Theology in Minnesota, where winters can be bitterly cold. His parents are from Puerto Rico and they currently live in both Florida and Puerto Rico. However, he is not only accustomed to living in the cold as well as the hot (he has lived in South Dakota, Germany, Japan, and Florida), but he also appreciates environmental differences and the wonders of creation: “You can live in South Dakota and complain about it, or you can enjoy all the good things the cold brings, like sledding or going for walks and seeing nothing but natural beauty for miles.”

Spring 2011

MONASTIC NEWS

Br. Elias is a very intelligent and understanding person. He understands people, he appreciates wherever he may be living, he cultivates a strong faith, he speaks two languages, and he knows a great deal about science. In fact, he has taught courses at Belmont Abbey College, including Introduction to Meteorology. However, Br. Elias is able to balance these talents with true humility. He does not put himself above anyone; he is modest and polite to everyone,

and, he told me, “I try not to let people know I’m ‘Dr.’ unless I’m teaching or at a conference.” As a Benedictine monk, Br. Elias stays in line with the Rule, which endorses this humble personality: “we descend by exaltation and ascend by humility” (RB 7.7). May God bless “Dr.” Elias as he studies for the priesthood. This story first appeared in the Abbey’s student newspaper, The Crusader.

The Benevolent Monks of Belmont Abbey April 21, 1876 was the momentous and historical day. It was the day of the beginning of Belmont Abbey the day of the beginning of daily prayers and meditation the day of the commencement of daily service to God and the day of the undertaking of daily fostering of education by the inspiring monks of Belmont Abbey.

fill the hearts with worship and devotion and bring us closer to the true love of God. The daily sweet sounds of the prayers fill the Basilica with God’s praises and resonate His Name in all directions, filling the air with accent on divine beauty.

For 134 years, the kind, gentle, and benevolent monks have been the paragon of virtue. They lead exemplary, pious, and celibate lives and selflessly sacrifice their time, energy and resources for the welfare of the College and the community.

The complacent and contented monks immerse themselves into the campus life. They serve the campus community in various capacities including the campus ministry and administrative offices, and educate young minds in the classroom. Their earnest dedication to God and education has imbued and motivated countless students and molded them into responsible and altruistic citizens.

The humble and hospitable monks of Belmont Abbey take the unyielding vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. They live by the ten Benedictine Hallmarks of Love of Christ and Neighbor, Prayer, Stability, Conversatio, Obedience, Humility, Stewardship, Discipline, Hospitality, and Community and constantly remind us of the everlasting presence of the Divine power in our hearts and on our campus. The daily sounds of the bells in the Basilica for Lauds, Midday prayers, Vespers, and Mass fill the ears with sweet melodies. The prayers sung by the monks and the congregation

Spring 2011

We are fortunate to be part of Belmont Abbey and to have the monks as our spiritual guides. They are the foundation and the pillars of Belmont Abbey and are the guiding lights of our spiritual lives. The affable monks of Belmont Abbey radiate selfless energy and inspire excellence and virtue in all we do. Their motto is Ut in Omnibus Glorificetur Deus. Gireesh Gupta That in All Things God May be Glorified. December 31, 2010

Crossroads

The Magazine of Belmont Abbey College

Campus news

Abbey Named America’s #1 “School On The Rise, Filled With Excitement” By First Things

irst Things has named Belmont Abbey College America’s pre-eminent “School On The Rise, Filled With Excitement” in the magazine’s first-ever survey of the nation’s colleges and universities. Over 100 leading colleges and universities are profiled in First Things’ November issue. The magazine also ranked Belmont Abbey College #6 among America’s top 12 “Most Catholic Catholic Schools.” In its review of the College, First Things writes: “Once only local, Belmont Abbey is increasingly attracting a national set of Catholic students drawn to the college’s ‘vibrant community life and the rich Catholic intellectual tradition.’” The rankings in the aforementioned categories are as follows:

To arrive at its various rankings, which also include categories such as “Least Unfriendly To Faith In The Top Secular Schools,” “Best Seriously Protestant Schools,” and “First Things’ Top 25 Schools In America,” First Things began collecting publicly available data on 2063 institutions of higher learning two years ago. Over the last year, it followed up with polling of students and recent graduates on the religious, academic, and social atmosphere of their schools. The magazine’s editors then followed up further with queries among their extensive network of contacts in higher education. The list of schools to be profiled in written form by the magazine was then narrowed down to 105 top colleges and universities. Each school was given a numerical score based on its strengths or weaknesses in three categories: academic, which took into account factors such as academic reputation, graduation rates, the caliber of the incoming class, and more; social, which deducted points for promiscuous sexual activity, drugs, drinking, etc. and rewarded points for wholesomeness, sobriety, etc.; and religious, which rewarded friendliness to religious belief (whether that religious belief be Catholic, Protestant, Jewish or Mormon), vibrancy of campus ministry, student faith, and, where appropriate, the school’s faithfulness to the religious mission of the school. First Things is published by The Institute on Religion and Public Life, “an interreligious, nonpartisan research and education institute whose purpose is to advance a religiously informed public philosophy for the ordering of society.” (Source: First Things’ website.) The magazine is considered by many to be one of America’s most influential intellectual journals. 40 Crossroads

The Magazine of Belmont Abbey College

Spring 2011

Campus news

Abbey President Bill Thierfelder Inducted Into Sports Faith Hall Of Fame

elmont Abbey College President, Dr. William K. Thierfelder, was inducted into the Sports Faith International Hall of Fame on February 27 in Lake Forest, Illinois as a member. The annual awards ceremony honors world-class athletes known for outstanding dedication to both sports and their faith. Past inductees have included such luminaries as George “Papa Bear” Halas, Wellington Mara, Brian Piccolo, Danny Abramowicz, Chris Godfrey, William Bidwell, Sr., Tom Monaghan, and John Gagliardi. Dr. Thierfelder, Belmont Abbey’s President since 2004, was inducted into the Sports Faith College Hall of Fame, where he was honored alongside Father Joe Freedy, the former University of Buffalo quarterback who now serves as a Catholic priest and vocations director for the archdiocese of Pittsburgh. During the same awards ceremony, three other prominent sportsmen were inducted into the Sports Faith Hall of Fame for Professionals: the late Art Rooney, patriarch of the Pittsburgh Steelers; Jamie Moyer, a veteran of 24 seasons in professional baseball and founder of the Moyer Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to helping children in severe distress; and

Spring 2011

Rich Donnelly, former major league baseball coach for the Texas Rangers, the Florida Marlins, the Milwaukee Brewers, the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Pittsburgh Pirates. Patrick McCaskey, the grandson of George “Papa Bear” Halas and co-owner of the Chicago Bears, received the Light of Christ Award and was also inducted into the Hall. Dr. Thierfelder is a former NCAA Division I Coach, Olympian, National Champion high jumper, and a two-time All-American. An accomplished speaker on the subjects of Catholicism, Sports and Faith, Sports Science, and Psychology, he is the driving force behind www.reclaimthegame.com, a website dedicated to using sport as a means for developing virtue. Thierfelder’s mission is to “reclaim the game” from trash talk, vice, and godlessness, and to help athletes perform to their full potential: physically, mentally and spiritually. The Sports Faith Hall of Fame was created in 2008 by Sports Faith International in order to recognize and encourage excellence in sports and in the Catholic Faith. By providing a forum for the inductees to share their personal stories and accomplishments, the organization aims to encourage excellence in both sports and virtue.

Crossroads

The Magazine of Belmont Abbey College

Campus news

Recent Abbey Grad Ann Visintainer Wins First Place Poetry Prize

By Rebecca Munro, Assistant Professor of English

ast semester, as faculty advisor of Belmont Abbey’s literary journal Agora, I sent off our publication to a state-wide college media contest sponsored by The North Carolina College Media Association. Created in 2007 to support and encourage college media, the association invites and is made up of North Carolina college media staff and advisors from public and private university and college campuses state-wide. A one-day conference is held yearly by the Association at a North Carolina university or college, and at this time contest winners are announced in all categories of student media: paper and online news, and news design and content; design and content of literary journals, with categories in literature, art, and photography. Because Belmont Abbey’s Agora has attracted so many interested students who have joined the editorial staff and more submissions from talented students across the entire college community, I thought, well, we might have a chance! The contest also gave me the opportunity to submit student works we had published in the last edition of the Agora. Although our publication did not win Best of Show in the literary journal contest, we nevertheless came in first in the poetry category. Out of all the entries from

40 participating “media outlets,” the poem “Frost’s ‘Night,’ Revisited,” by Belmont Abbey College’s own alum, English major Ann Visintainer, took first prize. This poem has its own story. Ann wrote it as a creative assignment generated for WIT (Writers in Training), Belmont Abbey’s creative writing club. In her first year as an Agora editor (2007), Ann and two other Belmont Abbey Alums, Mitchell Button and Christy Healy, answered the call to establish a creative writing group at the College. They also gave WIT its witty name. We were seeking to bring the poets and fiction writers out of the woodwork, create a space for productive and informal sharing and feedback, and encourage growth in the literary arts at Belmont Abbey College. WIT includes both students and faculty. Ann’s poem, written in 2009 and published in the 2010 Agora, was in response to a WIT challenge to write a poem based on another poem by a well-known poet. Not only did Ann do so with her poem, but she also went further: to comment ironically on the nihilistic modern sentiment of the original poem. No, Ann’s poem suggests, choosing acquaintance with the night, accepting the darkness and meaninglessness of modernity, is not something to be admired or emulated.

Acquainted with the Night

Frost’s “Night,” Revisited

I have been one acquainted with the night. I have walked out in rain—and back in rain. I have outwalked the furthest city light.

I am no stranger to those long dark places, where the faces even of the dearest are pushed distant in the widened spaces

Robert Frost 1928

I have looked down the saddest city lane. I have passed by the watchman on his beat And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain. I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet When far away an interrupted cry Came over houses from another street, But not to call me back or say good-bye; And further still at an unearthly height, One luminary clock against the sky Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right. I have been one acquainted with the night.

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Ann Visintainer 2009

I too have hunkered in the mouldy dim-lit ditches all surfeit on self, and felt the creeping blight… “I have been one acquainted with the night.” I sense the nighttime fall upon me, heavy curtain-rent, and blent with all the shades of bruises long-past healed but not forgotten; tombs unsealed As I pass through these narrow halls, the walls are mine; I claim them for my own, though dull, and small, and tight— Alone. My liberty, my bitterness, my right. Spring 2011

Campus news

Christine Basil ’11 Wins Scholarship For Prestigious Hertog Program

bbey senior Christine Basil recently won a full scholarship to participate in the extremely selective Hertog Political Studies Program. The Hertog Program enables college students to spend six weeks in Washington, D.C. studying classic political texts, and learning from some of America’s top teachers, and from prominent figures in politics and the media. Past faculty members and speakers in the Hertog Program have included such luminaries as Henry Kissinger, Leon and Amy Kass, Antonin Scalia, William Kristol, Robert Kagan, Charles Krauthammer and Juan Williams. Only 40 students from top colleges and universities across America are selected for the program each year. “I think it’s going to be a wonderfully broadening experience, both intellectually and otherwise,” says Basil. “We’ll be studying texts ranging from Exodus to Aristotle to Machiavelli and beyond, and we’ll be taking the journey with some of the top political gurus and commentators in the country. And, of course, we’ll be doing all of that in Washington, D.C. You can’t be much more at the heart of politics than by being in Washington.” Basil first found out about the Hertog Program when she received an email from Dr. Carson Daly, V.P. for Academic Affairs and Dean of the Faculty, during the Christmas break, notifying Basil that Daly had nominated her for the program. The Dean had earlier asked professors from the Abbey’s Government and Political Philosophy Department to send her a list of recommended students, and Basil’s name was obviously high on that list. Basil says, bemusedly, that when she first arrived at the Abbey as a first-year student, political science wasn’t at the top of her list as a possible major. “Actually, I was thinking about being a math major,” she says. But she credits the courses she’s taken in the Honors Institute with opening her eyes to the wonders of politics. “As Honors Institute students, we are required to take courses in political philosophy, and thanks to those courses, I began to see politics as ‘all things human,’ rather than just what we see coming out of Washington, or the media. We have outstanding Political Science professors at the Abbey, and through their teaching, my interests were broadened, deepened and refined.” She is particularly thankful to two Abbey professors for their inspiration: Dr. Gene Thuot, Director of the Honors Institute, and Dr. Travis Cook, Assistant Professor and Chair of the Government and Political Philosophy Department. Spring 2011

Of Dr. Thuot, Basil says, “He’s such a wonderfully thoughtful and nurturing teacher, and the curriculum of the Honors Institute is such a beautifully structured guide. That curriculum and my professors are what changed everything for me.” Dr. Thuot modestly shifts any credit back to Basil. “Christine came to Belmont Abbey with sterling qualities and a rare openness—as well as having been firmly and healthily rooted in the Catholic faith before she arrived here. I have no doubt she will represent the Abbey well at the Hertog Program, and everywhere else she goes.” Basil also recently learned that she has won a full scholarship in Baylor University’s Ph.D. program in Political Science. Crossroads

The Magazine of Belmont Abbey College

Campus news

Former Ambassador To Estonia Speaks About The Polish Christian Experience Of World War II by Morgan Castillo, Class of 2012

r. Aldona Wos—former ambassador to Estonia, daughter of Holocaust survivors and member of St. Pius X Church in Greensboro—spoke to a packed theater of students, faculty and others at Belmont Abbey College February 7 about the experience of the Polish people during World War II. Born in Warsaw, Wos earned her medical degree at the Warsaw Medical Academy, and completed her internship and residency in internal medicine and a fellowship in Pulmonary Medicine in New York. She served as U.S. ambassador to the Republic of Estonia from 2004 to 2006. There she concentrated on HIV/AIDS prevention in Estonia and the preservation of Estonian culture in the wake of its newfound independence from the former Soviet Union. Wos is the daughter of Paul Wos, a survivor of Flossenburg concentration camp and a recipient of the “Righteous Among the Nations” medal from Yad Vashem. This award is given to “a righteous gentile—a nonJew—who risks their life to save Jews during the Holocaust,” Wos said. About 22,000 people around the world have been awarded this medal, with the highest percentage coming from Poland. In German-occupied Poland during the war, there was a law imposed that inflicted instant death upon any person found to be helping Jews. “Only in Poland was this law enforced, so it’s important to know that anyone from Poland who tried to save Jews had an immediate death sentence on them,” Wos noted in her lecture, entitled “The Polish Christian Experience of World War II.” Wos frequently lectures around the country, and she remains passionate about teaching others the full story of Poland and its people during World War II. “I truly hope that by remembering the terrors that the Polish nation faced, together we will be able to influence our

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communities and our governments to seek peace in trying times. And yet, if needed, to be prepared to engage and defend a principled foreign policy,” she said. Wos reviewed the tragic history of the Polish people’s involvement and sufferings during the war, Jews and Christians alike. “All of you are very aware that six million Jews lost their lives during the Holocaust, but I am sure that most of you are not familiar with the tragic fate of the Polish nation, and the millions of Polish Christians during that same time period,” she said. According to Wos, approximately five million Polish citizens were killed, of which three million were Jews, and two million were Christians. Additionally, some 1.7 million Polish citizens were deported to Siberia, and two million Polish citizens transported for slave labor, including Wos’ mother at the age of 14. Of her family, many of whom were sent to concentration camps, Wos said, “By the grace of God, they all survived.” The heart of her lecture at Belmont Abbey College was the importance of historical education and truth. “If you do not know history, how can you possibly interpret the present correctly?” she asked. “And how can you possibly make the right decisions in the future?” Wos also stressed to the audience that “freedom and democracy are gifts, bestowed by sacrifices of previous generations. We must cherish and preserve these gifts for the next generations.” At St. Pius X Church, Wos assists with the refugee community in Greensboro, which is serving a large community of refugees from war-torn regions of Africa. She also organizes and coordinates events such as parish dinners and volunteers at the senior living center. Last year, she was also invested as a dame in the Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of St. John of Jerusalem of Rhodes and of Malta, better known as the Knights of Malta. This story first appeared in the Catholic News Herald.

Spring 2011

Campus news

Rwandan Genocide Survivor And Author Immaculée Ilibagiza Named 2010 Envoy Of The Year Ilibagiza Also Spoke On Campus To Abbey Students About Her Best-Selling Book By SueAnn Howell

t takes peace that goes beyond human understanding to forgive your family’s murderers. It also requires an unshakable faith in God. Immaculée Ilibagiza knows that peace and has that faith. On Sept. 9, Ilibagiza, a survivor of the 1994 Rwandan genocide and author of the best-selling book, Left to Tell; Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust, received the 2010 Envoy of the Year Award from the Envoy Institute of Belmont Abbey College for her tireless efforts to promote the Gospel message of unconditional love, forgiveness and hope around the world. [Editor’s note: On the previous evening, Ms. Ilibagiza spoke to the Abbey’s First-Year Symposium students, who were assigned her book as summer reading.] Ilibagiza’s entire family, with the exception of one brother who was studying out of the country at the time, was brutally murdered in 1994 during those tragic three months when the Hutu tribe, incited by the government, slaughtered more than one million men, women and children of the Tutsi tribe in her homeland of Rwanda. A college student at the time, Ilibagiza obeyed her father’s order to leave her family and seek refuge at a pastor’s house, where she endured 91 grueling days hidden in a cramped bathroom with seven other women while the world around them was being utterly destroyed.

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She credits her miraculous survival and her ability to forgive to her prayer—in particular, the rosary and the Chaplet of Divine Mercy, which she prayed repeatedly each day. Her devotion to prayer and the Blessed Mother continues to give her strength in her mission. Patrick Madrid, director of the Envoy Institute at Belmont Abbey College, presented the 2010 Envoy of the Year Award to Ilibagiza. “I know that I will never forget the beautiful simplicity of the message that Immaculée brings to us. It is a message of reconciliation and love,” Madrid said. “It is because she has dedicated her life to being an apostle of love and reconciliation that the Envoy Institute of Belmont Abbey College is so grateful to honor her.” This is the second annual presentation of the award to an outstanding Catholic making a profound impact on the lives of others. Archbishop Charles J. Chaput of the Archdiocese of Denver was the inaugural recipient in 2009. “If this award can encourage people to care for what I care for, especially for our faith, for God’s mercy, God’s love…if they can look at Our Lord and say, ‘He is real,’ and not look at me…but look to His Word, that is what I hope happens,” Ilibagiza said. “That is what saved me.” This story first appeared in the Catholic News Herald. We are indebted to writer SueAnn Howell and editor Patricia Guilfoyle for their permission to reprint it here.

Crossroads

The Magazine of Belmont Abbey College

Faculty & Staff

MEET OUR “FRESHMEN FACULTY” MEMBERS FOR 2010-2011

hen Dr. Carson Daly, V.P. of Academic Affairs and Dean of the Faculty, introduced the seven “freshmen faculty” members you’re about to meet, she had this (among many other good things) to say about them: “They are a diverse, talented

and energetic group.” As you’ll see, they do indeed come from different backgrounds, but they all share one trait: a passionate love of teaching. We couldn’t be more delighted to introduce them to you.

Patrick Cain

Assistant Professor of Political Science Ph.D. (Political Science), Baylor University M.A. (Political Science), Brock University B.A. (Political Science), Lakehead University

What drew you to joining the Abbey learning community? (What did you find most attractive about the place?)

While the Abbey is impressive in many ways, its commitment to liberal education, in the old sense of that phrase, was what initially drew me to the community.

What are your areas of intellectual interest and expertise?

I have a broad interest in the history of political philosophy and in American politics. Within the field of political philosophy, I especially focus my attention on the work of Arisotle, particularly his presentation of the relationship between individual virtue and the political community. My work in the field of American politics concentrates on the American Constitution: how it is used in the field of constitutional law, and how it was understood by the American founders. 46 Crossroads

What do you most wish to impart to the students who come to you?

By having students read foundational texts, and explore the American experience in light of the western tradition, I hope to cultivate men and women who seriously engage the fundamental questions of their lives. I believe that such an engagement develops their potential to act as responsible citizens, and helps to provide the foundation necessary to their living happy, thoughtful lives.

What are your passions outside of work? I enjoy watching good films, reading novels, and managing batrachology.

Who are your favorite writers/thinkers?

My favorite writers include (to name a few): Plato, Aristotle, William Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Alexander Hamilton, Sigrid Undset.

The Magazine of Belmont Abbey College

Family info:

My wife Courtney and I have four children: Isaac (5), Elizabeth (4), Lucy (2), and Catherine (10 months).

What have you discovered about the Abbey that surprises or pleases you most?

What has surprised me most are the Belmont Abbey Players. When I agreed to come to the Abbey, I had no idea that it Spring 2011

Faculty & Staff

was home to such a wonderful theater company. But after we saw their superb production of 1776, my wife and I have become committed patrons—we intend to never miss a show.

Quirky Facts:

What was the most recent book you read?

With four children, the answer changes every day. My son Isaac and I just finished Tom Sawyer, but I believe I most

recently read Beatrix Potter’s Benjamin Bunny to my daughters Elizabeth and Lucy. They especially enjoy the passage that begins: “The cat looked up and saw old Mr. Benjamin Bunny prancing along the top of the wall of the upper terrace. He was smoking a pipe of rabbit-tobacco, and had a little switch in his hand. He was looking for his son.”

Who would you consider an inspiration to you?

I consider myself fortunate to have had several superb teachers, whose commitment to educational excellence continues to profoundly influence my own pedagogy.

If you could be in any profession, what would it be and why?

I simply cannot imagine doing anything but teaching.

Laura Campbell

Director of Teacher Education at the Charlotte Campus Ph.D. (Educational Leadership), Barry University Ed.S., Barry University School of Education M.Ed. (Administration and Supervision), University of South Florida B.S. (Education), St. Thomas Aquinas College

What drew you to joining the Abbey learning community? (What did you find most attractive about the place?

I have always attended Catholic schools. My undergraduate degree was at St. Thomas Aquinas College, a small Catholic college in New York. I have always taught in Catholic schools, and wanted to continue to be a part of a Catholic environment. When I was a high school principal, I knew students who attended Belmont Abbey. They always had such wonderful things to say about their alma mater. I was traveling to South Carolina to visit my sister and her family and decided to take a side trip to visit Spring 2011

Belmont Abbey College. When I arrived at the campus, I was enthralled by the peaceful atmosphere and the beauty of the grounds and buildings, particularly the Basilica! I ventured down the road to Sacred Heart to see the Department of Education. When I arrived in the parking lot, I saw a group of people carrying what looked like school supplies and posters. They were laughing and seemed to be enjoying the camaraderie of the moment. I immediately knew that I wanted to be a part of whatever it was that made these people so happy! I later discovered that the Department of Education had just participated in a Teacher Cadet day to bring the great news about Belmont Abbey College to future teachers from area high schools! I walked away knowing that I was going to do everything I could to become a member of this great team. I am honored to continue my lifelong commitment to Catholic education as a member of the Belmont Abbey College community.

What are your areas of intellectual interest and expertise?

Since the beginning of my teaching career, I have been interested in the

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innovation and dedication of combining the religious and academic aspects of a Catholic education. My intellectual interests include literature, music, and educational leadership. I have a strong interest in promoting a vision of Catholic education that welcomes and serves cultural, economic and intellectual diversity in serving students with varying exceptionalities. I earned a B.A. in Education from St. Thomas Aquinas College in N.Y., an M. Ed. in Administration and Supervision from the University of South Florida, and an Ed. S. from Barry University’s School of Education. My dissertation research is mainly focused on Catholic schools as learning organizations and teacher commitment to Catholic education.

What do you most wish to impart to the students who come to you?

It truly takes one teacher who connects with a child to make a difference in that child’s life! Teachers possess incredible gifts! They have the ability to inspire the lives of their students, lead them to the The Magazine of Belmont Abbey College

Faculty & Staff

threshold of their minds, open doors of possibilities, and instill in children a desire to learn. As teachers, they will have all the ability to become magnificent contributors to our community in making a difference in the lives of children.

What are your passions outside of work?

I enjoy gardening, raising African Violets, walking the beach, particularly the beaches in Florida along the Gulf of Mexico, reading, and listening to music.

Who are your favorite writers/thinkers?

Thomas Merton, Thomas Aquinas, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens.

Family info:

My mother is a retired nursing administrator, living in Charlotte. I have one sister who lives in South

Carolina, and a very dedicated, little fur-friend, a Shih Tzu named Suzi!

and re-read them whenever I get time to read for pleasure!

What have you discovered about the Abbey that surprises or pleases you most?

Who would you consider an inspiration to you?

I am so pleased to be a part of the Department of Education. As a department, they are the most dedicated, generous educators I have ever met.

Quirky Facts:

What was the most recent book you read?

Dr. Sara Davis Powell, Chair of the Abbey’s Education Department, has published a new book. Truthfully, I have read everything I can to stay current in education, and her new book is a must read for all educators! My grandmother had a wonderful collection of Charles Dickens novels. I have decided to read

My family! I continue to learn from them every day and am comforted by their support of me. I am also inspired by many students I have known through the years. So many have overcome obstacles in their lives and still continued to pursue their goals.

If you could be in any profession, what would it be and why?

I have often thought about this question and can honestly say that I would be a teacher! I have enjoyed the progression of my vocation. I have taught in and been an administrator of an elementary school, a middle school, and a high school. I tell everyone that my current position at BAC is my “dream job”!

Diana Elliott

Associate Professor of Psychology (as of August 1, 2011) Ph.D. (Psychology), Biola University M.A. (Psychology), Biola University M.Ed. (Educational Psychology), University of Houston B.S. (Child Development / Home Economics), University of New Hampshire

What drew you to joining the Abbey learning community? (What did you find most attractive about the place?)

My first draw to the Abbey was the beauty of the campus. I received the first 12 years of my education on a beautiful Catholic campus in New England. The Abbey exemplifies the characteristics that were so important in my early education. After high school, I chose to go to a rather large state university for my undergraduate work, and was lost in the large mass of students there. As a result, I did not have a positive experience as I worked on my Bachelor’s degree. My desire to remain at the Abbey is two-fold. First, I desire to teach on a campus where students and faculty are encouraged to integrate faith and reason in all of their pursuits. 48 Crossroads

Second, I desire to be a part of a campus in which every student is known, is met in personal ways by the faculty, and is challenged to be their best in intellect and spirit.

What are your areas of intellectual interest and expertise?

My strongest area of intellectual expertise is in the areas of developmental psychology and the impact of adverse events on the developmental process. My primary research endeavors have focused in the area of interpersonal trauma— its precursors, consequences, and mediating effects. While working on my doctoral studies, I took several classes on the integration of psychology and Christianity. Of all intellectual pursuits, it is the one of greatest interest to me.

The Magazine of Belmont Abbey College

What are your passions outside of work?

I’m quite involved in church activities and have a passion for all things equestrian. I mess around on the piano, and have a pretty good eye when it comes to photography. Spring 2011

Faculty & Staff

Who are your favorite writers/thinkers?

C. S. Lewis would be very high on my list. I appreciate the depth and simplicity of his writing, his struggle with deep theological issues, and his apparent understanding of both the rational and nonrational aspects of human life.

Family info:

My family recently moved from California to the Carolinas to have a more wholesome environment in which to raise my children. I have two teenagers, Matthew and Katrina. Both share my love of horses and my commitment to helping the impoverished.

What have you discovered about the Abbey that surprises or pleases you most?

Many things have surprised me, actually. One of the most pleasing is the spiritual openness of the student body. Perhaps I should not have been surprised, but the stark contrast from the large secular school from whence I came has been a delight. I’ve also been surprised by the performing arts on campus, the grilled chicken sandwiches at Holy Grounds, and the quiet places of tranquility on campus.

Quirky Facts:

I am the middle of 11 children, and have 132 cousins…just on my mother’s side of the family. I live at a zoo with 4 dogs, 3 horses, and 2 cats.

What was the most recent book you read?

The Book Thief by Zusak—a touching story of a young foster girl in Nazi Germany who is exposed to the

depths of pain caused by humanity, as well as its capacity for goodness and love.

Who would you consider an inspiration to you?

This will sound a bit odd, but my children inspire me—They inspire me to pursue all that is good and right and sound and holy.

If you could be in any profession, what would it be and why? That is a trick question, right? Let me be clear—this is the profession I would choose. However, if for some reason I could not be a professor, I would likely be involved in an equestrian ministry to handicapped children here in the States or return to Mexico where I have spent time working at an orphanage.

Julie Kohlbrenner Lecturer in Education M.Ed. (Elementary Education), University of Florida B.A. (Elementary Education), University of Florida

time. I was always so intrigued by the campus and the amazing architecture of the buildings. When I found out that the Abbey had a program for Elementary Education, I almost immediately got my resume together. After meeting Dr. Powell and some of the other faculty members, it felt as though I had met a new family. I was making connections with each person I met. It was an incredible and amazing feeling. To me the most attractive thing about the Abbey is the people—good, genuine people.

What drew you to joining the Abbey learning community? (What did you find most attractive about the place?) Some close friends live near the Abbey and I would drive past it all the

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What are your areas of intellectual interest and expertise?

My background is in Elementary Education. While in graduate school I focused on Reading and Literacy. I am very passionate about teaching children Crossroads

to read. I feel it is the best gift a child can get from school. Reading opens up a whole new world. I also feel extremely passionate about teaching second language learners. While teaching at an ESL magnet school in Florida I became certified in ESL education. Eventually I got my certification in North Carolina as well.

What do you most wish to impart to the students who come to you? I want them to understand and believe in each and every child they teach. I feel teaching is the most rewarding profession. Each and every day teachers can impact and inspire a child. I want my students to find out what makes each child tick, find out what makes each child special, understand them, cherish

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them, care for them, and love them. If they are able to do all of these things then teaching and reaching children becomes more achievable. After all, children know when we are sincere and genuine. They know when we truly believe. Hopefully my students will find a way to understand each child so learning will be a success.

What are your passions outside of work? Nature. I love to be outside. I enjoy sitting in my yard, gardening, hiking, kayaking, biking, running, swimming, or playing with my son. I have to be outside.

Who are your favorite writers/thinkers?

My favorites seem to constantly change based on what I am thinking about at any given time. Based on my love for children’s literature I would say Lewis Carroll, Aesop, Beatrix Potter, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, Mark Twain, and Hans Christian Anderson. We all know their books and stories. Their stories continue to be treasured today.

Family info:

I met my husband, TJ, while attending the University of Florida. He was an education major as well. We were married a few years after graduate school. We have a 3 year-old son named Bryson. I would have to say they are both the best!

What have you discovered about the Abbey that surprises or pleases you most?

The people. I love each and every person I have met thus far. The faculty is amazing. What a wonderful group of passionate, intelligent, genuine, caring, hard-working people. I feel very fortunate to be part of such an incredible community.

Quirky Facts:

What was the most recent book you read?

Aside from reading many wonderful children’s books to my son each day, Dr. Andrew Weil’s Eight Weeks to Optimum Health is the book that I am currently reading. It is fabulous and

life-changing. Surprisingly, I got my husband to read it and he now wants to buy it for everyone in his family. I have since checked out a few more of Dr. Weil’s books from the library. I am anxious to get started.

Who would you consider an inspiration to you?

I find so many people inspirational. On a daily basis, it would have to be my husband. He is a teacher at school with impoverished students. His daily stories and ideas inspire me to be a better educator. His enthusiasm for coming up with new innovative ideas are contagious. His passion for his job and undying love of teaching is incredible. He comes home every day, good or bad, and tells me how much he loves his job. That is truly inspiring.

If you could be in any profession, what would it be and why?

Teaching, of course! I cannot imagine being in any other profession. It is my passion.

Joseph Pizza

Assistant Professor of English DPhil. (English Language and Literature), Oxford University MSt. (Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture), Oxford University M.A. (English Literature), Ohio University B.A. (English Literature), Rider University

What drew you to Joining the Abbey learning community? (What did you find most attractive about the place?)

I was drawn to the Abbey by the community’s sincere commitment to teaching the Liberal Arts in their fullness and in an authentically Catholic way. To find both supported on the same campus is something very special and rare.

What are your areas of intellectual interest 50 Crossroads

and expertise?

My interests span a range of authors in English, Italian, French, and Latin Literature, from Virgil and Dante to the present. What connects them for me is T.S. Eliot’s notion of a ‘tradition’, of a large family of authors interacting with each other in a variety of ways from generation to generation. Like a family, of course, they don’t always get along, and some of the differences are insuperable. Still, all are rooted in the ongoing conversation that is the Western tradition, and I find, to

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borrow another phrase from Eliot, their ‘visions and revisions’ of that tradition fascinating. As to my expertise, I spent my time in graduate school focusing on the ways in which authors like John Henry Newman, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Alice Meynell, Evelyn Waugh, and David Jones attempted to found a Catholic vein within this tradition by resisting the influence of major Protestant writers like Edmund Spenser and John Milton.

Even in England I followed it late at night via radio and would call up my father or one of my three brothers to debate anything from a pitching change to a late-inning sacrifice!

In the most general terms, I would say that I hope to impart to my students a genuine love for learning. This might manifest itself in a number of ways depending upon the subject and course, but, for those who have it, the specific subject matter or set of skills to be transmitted are almost always approached with joy and wonder. Without it, studying quickly becomes a bore and the college experience often devolves into the attainment of a piece of paper as a prerequisite for a job. This is always sad and frustrating, especially for a teacher, because, as even a little experience shows, it makes for a life of drudgery. For this reason, I hope to impart the opposite attitude to the students I encounter. Though it is the most difficult thing to teach, I have found that this love for learning is among the most formative experiences that students can have in college, one that is essential to their happiness and success in the life that they choose to pursue after school.

son, Thomas, and are expecting a second daughter in May.

Who are your favorite writers/thinkers? Fortunately, the writers that I teach and study are far and away my favorites!

Family info: What do you most wish to My wife Alexandrea and I have impart to the students been blessed with a three-year-old who come to you? daughter, Seraphina, a one-year-old

What are your passions outside of work?

My family. With young children there’s not time for much else! When I do find time, though, it is often for music and sports. With music, I enjoy ‘early music’ and jazz, though I had the good fortune of being taught to appreciate aspects of everything from Bach to Bob Dylan and rap. As to sports, though I follow all of the major sports, I am drawn mostly to baseball.

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What have you discovered about the Abbey that surprises or pleases you most?

Happily, I can say that the Abbey has proven to be all of the wonderful things that I had hoped during my first visit. If there is one thing that pleases me most, it would have to be the overarching sense of fellowship and community, from the students to the faculty and staff. To me it seems that this is the direct result of the influence of the monks of Belmont Abbey, whose spirit of hospitality permeates the life of the College. Quirky Facts:

What was the most recent book you read?

I have been re-reading Dante’s Commedia to my wife’s belly for the past seven months! We are expecting a third child in May, and, as with the others, I’ve been reading to her before bed at night. Strange as it may sound, the tripartite structure of the poem fits perfectly with the nine months of pregnancy. My wife is usually asleep by the second line, but somehow I am sure that my daughter is dancing along to the Italian vowel-music with me!

Who would you consider an inspiration to you? While I could list many, in recent

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years I have been drawn especially to Julia Verhaeghe. She was born in Geluwe, a village in Belgium, in 1910 and died about fifteen years ago. She was the foundress of the Spiritual Family The Work of Christ, a Family of consecrated Life of Pontifical Right. I encountered Sisters of the Work first in Oxford, where they keep Newman’s ‘College’ in the nearby village of Littlemore, and then extended the relationship when I returned to the US to Sisters working as part of the Vatican’s envoy to the United Nations. What inspires me most about Mother Julia is her sincere desire to abandon herself completely to God’s will, coupled with her keen perception of and appreciation for what Newman would have called ‘development’ in the Church, a kind of active listening, a watching and waiting. Of course, all Catholics should aspire to such things, but her achievement marks for me a particularly vivid and moving witness.

If you could be in any profession, what would it be and why?

I wouldn’t want to imagine myself working anywhere else.

Pied Beauty By Gerard Manley Hopkins

GLORY be to God for dappled things— For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow; For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim; Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings; Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough; And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim. All things counter, original, spare, strange; Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?) With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim; He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change: Praise him. The Magazine of Belmont Abbey College

Faculty & Staff

William Woody

Lecturer in Accounting M.B.A. (Accounting), UNC-Charlotte B.S. (Accounting), UNC-Charlotte B.S. (Management), Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University

What drew you to joining the Abbey learning community? (What did you find most attractive about the place?)

Small traditional college with excellent values and the opportunity to engage in lifelong learning.

What are your areas of intellectual interest and expertise? Finance, business, accounting.

What do you most wish to impart to the students who come to you?

Learn how to identify, analyze, and solve problems. These skills will take you far in meeting personal and career goals.

What are your passions outside of work? College sports (especially baseball).

Who are your favorite writers/thinkers?

Hans Selye (The Stress of Life), Shannon P. Pratt (valuation theory and practice),

Michael E. Porter (Competitive Advantage), Aswath Damodaran (valuation theory), Joseph Juran (based on the work of economist, Vilfredo Pareto, formulated the 80/20 rule known as the Pareto Principle).

Family info:

Married 36 years, two grown children.

What have you discovered about the Abbey that surprises or pleases you most?

For me it is the history and tradition here at the Abbey that pleases me the most. Quirky Facts: I enjoy visiting, via television, the fantasy worlds found in the Twilight Zone, Star Trek, and The Outer Limits TV series.

What was the most recent book you read?

The Winning Attitude, John C. Maxwell.

Who would you consider an inspiration to you? Mother Teresa.

If you could be in any profession, what would it be and why?

I would have enjoyed being a part of the Apollo mission to the moon program in the 1960s and 1970s. So, I would have to say the profession of “space flight” from control room to astronaut. I am fascinated by the ability of the people of NASA to have created, with precision, a system of successful space flight while having to deal with all of the unknowns, risks, and next frontier uncertainties they faced.

Joseph Wysocki

Assistant Professor of Political Science Ph.D. (Political Science and Economics), Baylor University M.A. (Political Science and Economics), Baylor University B.A. (Political Science and Economics), Belmont Abbey College

What drew you to joining the Abbey learning community? (What did you find most attractive about the place?) 52 Crossroads

Well, I suppose it would be best to start by saying that I was a student here from 2000-2004. My decision to come to the Abbey as a student was not as deliberate as perhaps it ought

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to have been. I visited the campus my senior year of college and thought it was beautiful. It was also a Catholic school close to where my family lived at the time in High Point, NC. However, once I arrived to the Abbey it became, and I do not say this lightly, a second home for me. It was here that I met some of most influential people in my life, including Abbot Placid Solari, Dr. Thuot, Simon Donoghue and the best man at my wedding, Matthew Tortorich. If not for these people, and the Monastery, Honors Program, and Abbey Players associated with them, it is unlikely I would have pursued my doctorate. Thus, when a job opened up to teach American Politics at the Abbey, it looked like the dream job for me. While the debt I owe to the school and the people I met here cannot be repaid, I hope that I can contribute a fraction of what I received to a new generation of students.

What are your areas of intellectual interest and expertise? My main area of expertise is American Politics, specifically the Congress, the Presidency and the Supreme Court. I am also interested in the American Founding and American Political Thought. Additionally, I am interested in early modern and contemporary political philosophy.

What do you most wish to impart to the students who come to you?

As far as my discipline is concerned, my basic goal is to get students to reflect on what it means to be good citizens and good human beings. In a time when respect for political institutions is low and political polarization is high, there is a (somewhat understandable) temptation for students to abandon politics as meaningless or even evil. I hope to show students that while engaging in politics may be difficult, it is an important part of what it means to be fully human.

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What are your passions outside of work?

Of course my first passion outside of work is my family. First my wife Jeanne and our son we are expecting in May. Then my parents and five siblings in New York. My leisure is always best spent with them. Besides spending time with my family, I enjoy reading novels, playing tennis, hosting guests at our new townhome in Mt. Holly, and watching/discussing movies.

Who are your favorite writers/thinkers?

The thinker who most informs my thinking would be Aristotle. His writings on politics and ethics are so penetrating that there is always something to learn from re-reading his works. I also am very interested in the modern political thought of Machiavelli and Hobbes. Additionally, I am fascinated by the works of G.K. Chesterton, although I make no claim to fully understand them. In American Politics, I enjoy reading The Federalist Papers and assign many of these papers to my students. I tell my students if they wish to learn how to structure a good argumentative paper, read Federalist #10 by James Madison. Just for fun I will throw in my favorite “airport book” author, Clive Cussler. Almost every time I fly I buy a new Cussler book in the airport. Cussler mass produces adventure books that make the New York Times best-seller list almost every year. His main character, Dirk Pitt, is a James Bond/Indiana Jones/Deep-water diver. How can you not love that?

Family Info:

My parents, Joseph and Mary Wysocki live in NY. I am the oldest of 6 children. My siblings are: Peter 25, Mary 22, Katleen 20, Andrew 17, and Thomas 14.

What have you discovered about the Abbey that surprises or pleases you most? Well, I have to say that in many

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ways the school is a better place today than when I was a student here. To start with, the facilities are nicer. Holy Grounds, St. Joseph’s Adoration Chapel, and the new lobby in the Haid Theatre stand out for me. None of these were here when I was a student. They all add much to the campus, albeit in different ways. The students also seem in some ways to be better since I was here. There seems to be growing here a more “serious” culture. By this I do not mean that students are without wit and a sense of fun. I see these often. Rather, I believe that students are coming to understand the importance of important things including faith, academics, campus life, and athletics.

What was the most recent book you read?

The most recent book I read was The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. Du Bois, for my course in American Political Thought.

Who would you consider an inspiration to you?

There are of course many people who inspire me, some of whom are mentioned above. However, I would have to choose my parents as my primary inspiration. They were always the concrete example of how one can live his or her life for others. My parents did little for themselves and everything for my siblings and me. While they might, if asked, point to mistakes they made as parents, I would certainly consider myself a success if I could be as unselfish with my wife and children as they were.

If you could be in any profession, what would it be and why?

Well, since about sophomore year of college, I really could not shake this idea that I would be a professor. However, my dream “get-awayfrom-it-all” job would be to be a Park Ranger in a National Park, preferably Yosemite, Glacier, or Yellowstone.

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NOTEWORTHY NEWS r. Kevin Bezner, Adjunct Instructor in the English D Department, presented his paper “Experiencing the Mystery of God: A Christian Reading of James Wright’s Poem ‘Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota’” at the Southeast Regional Conference on Christianity and Literature at Regent University on April 7-9. His essay, “The Pope and the Laborer,” will be published in the May, 2011 issue of The New Oxford Review. The May issue of the journal will coincide with the beatification of Pope John Paul II. s. Jill Bloede, Assistant Professor of Theatre, M coordinated, staged and acted in The Benedictine Monologues Project on December 1, 2010, bringing to fruition a yearlong process in which local authors (including students) wrote, staged and performed several monologues depicting Benedictine saints. r. Grattan Brown, Assistant Professor of Theology, D presented “Not Refusing, But Caring for You: The Value of Conscientious Objection in Health Care” at a conference at Baylor University this fall. He has also given various presentations at St. Michael’s Church in Gastonia, and participates in the ethics committee at Carolinas Medical Center. r. Patrick Cain, Assistant Professor of Government D and Political Philosophy, delivered “George Grant and Pope Benedict XVI on Technology and Human Freedom” at a Stuck with Virtue Conference held at Berry College in November. r. Travis Cook, Chair and Assistant Professor of the D Government and Political Philosophy Department, served as a discussant on a panel entitled “Being More Cartesian than Descartes” at the same conference. He chaired a panel entitled “Platonism: Ancient and Modern” at the annual meeting of the Southern Political Science Association in New Orleans during the first week of January. At the same conference, Dr. Cook also served as Chair and Discussant on a panel entitled “A New Look at Conservatism.” On January 14, 2011, Dr. Cook gave a Brown Bag Lunch Lecture at Baylor University on “God, Pride, and Thomas Hobbes” in Waco, Texas. And, Dr. Cook has also been invited to contribute two articles (on, respectively, Graham Greene and David Hume) to The Encyclopedia of Catholic Social Thought, Social Science, and Social Policy (Volume III). r. Theodore Cooke, Associate Professor of D Philosophy, won second prize for his sculpture Golgotha

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in the Pease Gallery’s Annual Juried Recycled Art Exhibition. The exhibit honored Romare Bearden (1911-1988), the African-American, Charlotte native famous for his paintings depicting the Passion of Christ. The competition was judged by British artist Shaun Cassidy of Winthrop University, one of Charlotte’s premier sculptors, who is famous for his public art commissions for the Arts and Science Council of Charlotte and CATS (Charlotte Area Transit System). r. Svetlana Corwin, Assistant Professor of English, D delivered a paper entitled, “‘Dom bez Krom’: Boris Pasternak’s Adoption of the Rilkean Uncanny Poetics,” at the Annual Conference of the AATSEEL (American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages) in Pasadena, California on January 8, 2011. This event was held in conjunction with the yearly conference of the Modern Language Association. r. Nathalie Coté, Chair of the Department of D Psychology and Associate Professor of Psychology, presented “Dealing with challenging tasks that shouldn’t be challenging: Department data” at the Association for Heads of Departments of Psychology in November in Atlanta, Georgia. r. Simon Donoghue, Director of the Abbey Players M and Coordinator of the Theatre minor, appeared in The Benedictine Monologues Project. He also coordinated the first major reunion of the Abbey Players during Homecoming Weekend; over 140 Abbey Players from the past 50 years returned to campus for a cabaret performance and reception in the Haid. Donoghue also worked with the production of Coach: Al McGuire that was performed in the theatre on October 9/10. r. Travis Feezell, Associate Professor of Sport D Management, presented “Faculty Attitudes Revisited: A New Look at Division II” at the FAR (Faculty Athletic Representatives) Leadership Institute: NCAA in Indianapolis, Indiana in October of 2010 and in Baltimore, Maryland in November of 2010. Dr. Feezell was also invited to serve on the ACPA (American College Personnel Association) Commission for Recreation and Athletics and tapped to serve as Vice Chair of Administration for the Commission. And, recently, Dr. Feezell was the recipient of the 2010-2011 Adrian Award for Excellence in Teaching. The Adrian Award, established in 1984 by Mr. and Mrs. Herbert M. Adrian, Jr., was created to recognize and reward outstanding performance by faculty members at the Abbey. The intent of the award is to recognize those teachers who have greatly benefited their students—teachers who inspire their students to reach their full potential.

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r. Michael Hood, Associate Professor of English, has D had several essays about the enthymeme translated into Spanish by Professor Jorge Juan Vega Y Vega of Spain’s Universidad de las Palmas. Dr. Hood has also completed a preface to the collection Trends in Recent Enthymeme Scholarship, scheduled to appear in 2012.

r. Rebecca Munro, Assistant Professor of English, D has been chosen to serve as one of the three jurists who will select the winning works for this year’s Lilly Fellows Book Award. Dr. Munro also attended the Lilly Fellows Program in Valparaiso, Indiana last October as the Abbey’s Lilly representative.

r. Peter Larkin, Adjunct Instructor of English, D published his review of Catherine Clarke’s Literary Landscapes and the Idea of England 700-1400 in the February, 2011 issue of Modern Philology.

r. John Plecnik, Professor of Philosophy, presented D a paper on the Catholic understanding of care for creation at a symposium held at Belmont Abbey College on October 12, sponsored by the Sisters of Mercy. Other presenters included Richard Kaglic of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond and Erin Culbert of Duke Energy.

r. Peter Lodge, Professor of Sociology and Chair of D the Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice, has had “The Keynesian Revolution” (with Steven Arxer and William Van Lear) accepted for publication in A Postmarket World, edited by J. W. Murphy. s. Lisa Marzano, Lecturer in English, gave M presentations at three different conferences during the spring, 2011 semester: – “Rolling Down the River: Place and Location in Lee Smith’s The Last Girl,” at the Southern Studies Conference at Auburn University in Montgomery, Alabama; – “You Are What You Pack: Barbara Kingsolver’s Price Family and What They Brought on Their Travels” at the College English Association Conference in St. Petersburg, Florida; and – “Developing a Culture of Care: Barbara Kingsolver and Edward Abbey” at the Christianity and Literature Conference (Western Region) in Costa Mesa, California. r. Judith McDonald, Assistant Professor of D Education, arranged for Tanya Poole from Project WILD (a Wildlife-focused program for K-12 students and teachers) to present two workshops for Belmont Abbey College teacher candidates on September 23 and 30, 2010. Dr. McDonald presented a two-day workshop on October 8 and 9, 2010, for 25 Charlotte-Mecklenburg 3rd-, 4th-, and 5th-grade science teachers on science that is related to weather (the workshop was sponsored by the University of North Carolina at Charlotte). She also made two presentations at two sessions at the annual conference of the North Carolina Science Teachers’ Association in Greensboro on November 11-12. Nine BAC teacher candidates attended the conference with Dr. McDonald. r. Angela Miss, Associate Professor of English, D presented a paper, “Public and Private Ethos in Breast Cancer Forums,” at the National Council for Teachers of English’s Conference on College Composition and Communication in Atlanta, Georgia in April.

Spring 2011

r. Sara Powell, Chair of the Education Department D and Professor of Education, published the second edition of An Introduction to Education: Choosing Your Teaching Path, (under the title Your Introduction to Education: Explorations in Teaching) on January 3, 2011. She presented another one of her books, Wayside Teaching: A Middle Grades Imperative, at the National Middle School Association (NMSA) annual conference in Baltimore, Maryland in November. In addition, she actively participated in the National Professors of Middle Level Education one-day symposium at the NMSA conference. r. Tracy Rishel presented “The Science of D Motorsports Meets the Business of NASA” (with James E. Niemes) at the SEINFORMS (Decision Science) conference in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina in October (also published in the conference proceedings). She also presented (with Hubert D. Glover and James E. Niemes) two lectures: “Giving the Customer a Voice in the Business of Government” and “Transformation or Extinction—IT’s Decision” at the 2011 Southeast Decision Sciences Institute conference in Savannah, Georgia in February of 2011. r. Jane Russell, Associate Professor of Theology, D spoke at Temple Beth-El’s 14th Annual Comparative Religion Series on “Sex, Women and Religion,” giving a Catholic perspective. She also presented “The Catholic Peacebuilding Network” at the Lander Peace Studies Conference, which was held at Lander University in Greenwood, South Carolina on March 18, 2011. Dr. Russell’s introduction to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ statement on Global Climate Change: A Plea for Dialogue, Prudence and the Common Good has been selected for inclusion in an anthology of theological reflections on climate change (to be published by Marquette University Press). Her calligraphy piece of Romans 8:23 will also be included as artwork in the book.

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Faculty & Staff

Mr. Gary Sivak, Technical Director of Theatre and Lecturer in Theatre Arts, provided critical assistance to the production of Coach, in addition to managing the technical work on 1776, Christmas at the Abbey, and The Benedictine Monologues Project, as well as for the Abbey Players’ Reunion. r. Robert Tompkins’ essay, “Big Bluestem M (Andropogon gerardii) communities in the Carolinas: Composition and ecological factors,” co-authored by W.C. Stringer, K.H. Richardson, E.A. Mikhailova and W.C. Bridges, Jr., was published in Rhodora. His manuscript entitled “A microhabitat study of eastern Big Bluestem (Andropogon gerardii; Poaceae) in the Carolinas,” also co-authored by W.C. Stringer, K.H. Richardson, E.A. Mikhailova and W.C. Bridges, Jr., has been accepted by Southeastern Naturalist. r. William Van Lear, Associate Professor D of Economics, spoke last fall at the Sun City Retirement Center in South Charlotte (to an audience of 100) concerning the current economic environment. r. David Williams, Chair of the Theology D Department, and Dr. Ronald Thomas, Assistant Professor of Theology, taught an adult formation program (Growing in Faith and Theology) sponsored by the parishes of the Charlotte Vicariate that began in February.

Staff Accomplishments Mr. Don Beagle, Director of the Library, has published

two articles on the Information Commons—one in The Journal of Library Administration and one in Library Philosophy & Practice. s. Stephanie Miles became the Director of M Career Services and Internships on December 6, 2010. Previously an Admissions Counselor for the College’s Adult Degree Program, Ms. Miles brings a wealth of experience to her new position. A summa cum laude graduate of Pfeiffer University’s MBA Program, Ms. Miles has worked for the Charlotte area Council for Children’s Rights and the Blumenthal Performing Arts Center. r. Mark Newcomb, Assistant Dean for Academic D Affairs, inaugurated a specially designed seminar for our ten Thomas More scholars: Explorations in Theology: Courage, Conscience, Church, and Crown from Thomas Becket to Thomas More.

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New Additions

J oey Denton has joined the Athletics Department as the Head Men’s and Women’s Golf Coach. A native of Gastonia, Joey has over 15 years experience as a professional golf teacher and has served as the swing coach for 11 members of the Abbey Golf team. He has been the Owner/Director of Golf at the Resurrection Golf Center & Denton Golf Academy since 2009. He is also an ordained Baptist Minister, and has been a Student Pastor at two Gaston County churches for the past ten years. Joey holds a B.S. in retailing from the University of South Carolina and an MDIV in Christian Ministry and Biblical languages from Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. He and his wife, Jamie, a 1998 Belmont Abbey College graduate, have two sons. regory Clark has joined the Information Technology G Department as an Applications Programmer. He has over 12 years of experience developing and supporting client server applications programmed specifically with Microsoft Visual Basic. Gregory brings additional experience to the Abbey’s IT Department in other areas, including electrical utilities and financial services. He received his Associates Degree in Applied Science from Durham Technical Community College and has completed additional coursework at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. hris Egan has joined the Office of the President C as the Special Assistant to the President. He will work closely with Dr. Thierfelder on strategic planning and major gifts development for the College. Prior to coming to the Abbey, Chris worked in the financial services industry with Citigroup, building and developing strong relationships from scratch with key executives and individuals in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions. He received his B.A. in Psychology with a double-minor in Theology and Sociology from Duquesne University. Chris, his wife Beth, and their three sons have been active members in St. Gabriel Parish since they moved to Charlotte in 1995. rian Hoop has joined the Athletics Department as B the Assistant Baseball Coach. Brian will oversee the pitching staff and the infielders. He will also have a hand in team defense, as well as in coordinating the J.V. program. Before coming to the Abbey, Brian was an Assistant Coach at Florida State University. In his last year there, the Seminoles finished the season with a 48-20 record (ranked 5th in the country), and Brian coached in the 2010 College World Series in Omaha, Nebraska. He holds a B.A. in General Studies from Missouri Valley College and an M.S. in Kinesiology from Fresno State University.

Spring 2011

Faculty & Staff

J ohn Keating has joined the Athletics Department as the Head Men’s Soccer Coach. A native of South Africa, John joins the Abbey from the Omaha Nebraska Football Club (OFC), where he spent the past two years serving as the Director of Coaching. He oversaw 3,000 athletes, as well as the development program, which last year generated more than one million dollars in revenue. In 2010, John led the Omaha Football Club to its ninth State Cup title and was named the Regional Coach of the Year at the United States Youth Soccer Associated Convention. He has also held several collegiate coaching positions, including Head Coach at Kirkwood College in Iowa, Head Coach at Warren Wilson College, Assistant Coach at the State University of New York-Fredonia, and at his alma mater, West Virginia University, where he received a degree in Finance. John and his wife, Toni, have four children, who are all looking forward to living in North Carolina.

J on Piper has joined the Information Technology Department as a new Systems Programmer/Analyst. Before coming to the Abbey, Jon was a Systems Analyst at Hella North America, Inc. He holds a B.A. in Biology from the University of North Carolina-Charlotte and serves as an Elder in the Presbyterian Church, USA.

K atie Lambeth has joined the Athletics Department as an Assistant Athletic Trainer.

ave Targonski has joined the Office of College Relations D as the Director of Development and Stewardship. Dave, a Certified Fundraising Executive (CFRE), was most recently the Director of Advancement for the Cardinal Newman Society. Prior to that, he provided fundraising management for the Diocese of Harrisburg, as well as for several Catholic colleges and religious congregations. He was also the Director of Sales at EWTN (Eternal Word Television Network), the world’s largest religious broadcast network. During his tenure there, he helped launch EWTN into over 1.5 million homes. In the late 1980s, Dave served in the Office of Personnel Management in the Reagan Administration and the first Bush Administration. He is an alumnus of the University of Connecticut, where he received a B.A. in Political Science and an M.A. in Public Affairs.

ike Lynch was recently named the Head Women’s Soccer M Coach. Lynch joins the Abbey after spending the last two seasons as the Head Men’s and Women’s Soccer Coach at Nebraska Wesleyan University. A graduate of the United States Air Force Academy with a degree in history, Lynch was a four-time All-Conference player, a two-time MVP and team captain. His college coaching career began when he returned to his alma mater in 1989 as assistant varsity soccer coach. After his stint at USAFA, Lynch coached Truman State University to a No. 11 national ranking and was named the Great Lakes Region Coach of the Year. The following year, the Bulldogs won the MIAA conference, earning him MIAA Coach of the Year recognition. Lynch has also served on the ODP staffs of Ohio, Missouri, and Nebraska. He has coached club soccer teams in Ohio, Colorado, and Nebraska, including the 1997 Colorado U-18 girls and 2010 Nebraska U-13 boys state championships. Lynch received his MS in Administration from Central Michigan University and served eight years on active duty as an Officer in the United States Air Force. obert Marchetti has joined the Athletics Department as R the Assistant Track and Field and Cross Country Coach. nnie Michaud has joined the Office of Residence Life as A the new Assistant Director of Housing. She holds a B.A. in Communications from Fairfield University in Connecticut and an MED in Education from Chaminade University in Honolulu, Hawaii. As an undergraduate at Fairfield, Anne was involved in campus ministry as an Extraordinary Minister of Holy Communion, volunteered her hours working with afterschool recreation programs in Bridgeport, Connecticut, and was an RA both her junior and senior years. Anne looks forward to making housing here a very inviting place on campus.

Spring 2011

avid Sanchez joins the Abbey as a full-time counselor D for the Wellness Center. Prior to joining the Abbey, David was a Program Manager for the McLeod Addictive Disease Center in Monroe, NC, a Substance Abuse Counselor II at McLeod Addictive Disease Center in Charlotte, NC, and an Intensive in-home family counselor with Youth Villages in Concord, NC. He holds a B.S. in Liberal Arts with a focus on Science Education and Psychology, an M.S. in Counseling and Psychology from Troy University, and is licensed in Professional Counseling and Clinical Addictions.

ichael Thomas has joined Campus Police as a M Patrol Officer. elly Williams ’10 has joined the Office of Admissions K as an Admissions Counselor. As a recent graduate of the Abbey, she is excited that she can share her Abbey experience with prospective students. As an Abbey student, Kelly was the recipient of the Father John Oetgen Excellence in Theatre scholarship and was active in the Abbey Players, Student Government, Greek Life, and Campus Ministry. She holds a B.A. in Theology and a minor in Theatre. ary B. Worthington has joined the Office of the M President as the Special Projects Coordinator. Before coming to the Abbey, Mary wrote for the Catholic News Herald and the Philadelphia Bulletin newspapers. She was also a High School Outreach Coordinator at Generation Life and a Correspondence Associate at Priests for Life. She holds a B.A. in Theology with a minor in Human Life Studies from Franciscan University of Steubenville.

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Sports News

John Keating Named Head Men’s Soccer Coach By Chris Poore

John Keating, a highly experienced director and head coach in college and club coaching circles, has been appointed Head Men’s Soccer Coach at Belmont Abbey College. “I believe John is an exceptional hire for Belmont Abbey Athletics and I am thrilled he will be joining our staff,” Belmont Abbey Director of Athletics Quin Monahan said. “He possesses the experience, skills and personality necessary to move our Men’s Soccer program forward. I am excited for our young men and the leadership he will provide them. John has a clear understanding of the Abbey’s mission and vision and will be a great asset to the College.” A native of South Africa, Keating joins the Abbey from the Omaha Nebraska Football Club (OFC), where, for the last two years, he served as the Director of Coaching. In that role, he oversaw 3,000 athletes as well as the development program—including capital campaigns, grant writing, annual giving, and corporate sponsorship outreach. Last year, under Keating’s direction, OFC generated more than a million dollars in revenue.

On the field, Keating led Omaha Football Club to his ninth State Cup title in 2010, was recognized as the Regional Coach of the Year at the United States Youth Soccer Association Convention, and was a finalist for the National Coach of the Year award. From 2004-09, Keating was the Director of Coaching for the Gladiator Soccer Club, and previously, he served as Director of Coaching for the Cedar River (Iowa) Soccer Association and as Head Coach for the Highland (Tennessee) Football Club. At the collegiate level, Keating has held several head coaching positions. At Kirkwood College in Iowa, he was head coach from 2000-02. At Warren Wilson College, he served as head coach and Assistant Athletic Director, as well as the chair of the Physical Education Department, from 1995-97. Keating also served as an assistant coach at the State University of New York-Fredonia from 1993-94, and as a graduate assistant at his alma mater, West Virginia University, in 1992. While a student there, Keating played soccer from 1988-92, was a team captain, and became an all-conference selection.

When he graduated in 1993 with a degree in finance, he ended his undergraduate soccer career as the Mountaineers’ fifth all-time leading goal scorer. Before coming to the United States, Keating had been a member of the South African under-17 national soccer team (1987). Keating said that he is delighted to come to the Abbey and that he and his wife are looking forward to living in North Carolina again. He explains, “I took this job for three reasons: Providence, Virtue, and the state of North Carolina. Providentially, I have been a Benedictine all of my life. I went to a Benedictine school as a youngster and my family are lay Benedictines. What sets Belmont Abbey apart is its focus on virtue through athletics. That was the biggest draw for me. I have observed moral decline in youth sports through the years and this position will give me the opportunity to help reverse that decline. I also once lived in North Carolina and my wife and I dreamed of moving back.” Keating and his wife, Toni, have four children: Jack (7), Dublin (5), Finn (2) and Savannah (9 months).

Men’s Basketball’s Richard Barbee & Kyle Phillips Earn All-Conference Honors Barbee Becomes First Four-Time All-Conference Selection In School History

Belmont Abbey senior guard Richard Barbee and junior forward Kyle Phillips were recently named AllConference Carolinas, with Barbee earning a spot on the first team and Phillips the third team.

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Barbee becomes the school’s first four-time all-conference selection, as he earned first-team honors for the second time. He was a first-team selection in 2009 and garnered secondteam honors in 2008 and 2010. He was the Conference Freshman of the Year in 2008. Only two other players in school history have been named all-conference three times. Spring 2011

Sports News

Shayla Jackson Named Conference Carolinas Scholar Athlete Of The Year By Chris Poore

Belmont Abbey College senior women’s basketball forward Shayla Jackson has been named the recipient of the Conference Carolinas ScholarAthlete of the Year award for women’s basketball. This prestigious award is presented annually to a student-athlete in each sport for recognition of his or her outstanding academic and athletic achievements, and is voted on by the student-athlete affairs committee. The qualifications include being a junior or senior student-athlete with a cumulative grade point average of 3.25 or higher on a 4.0 scale. Additionally, in order to qualify for the award, the student-athlete must be a current member of the All-Conference Carolinas First, Second, or Third Team.

Jackson ended her career as the school’s fifth all-time leading scorer with 1,419 career points. During her playing tenure, she surpassed the 1000-point mark, led the team in scoring her junior and senior seasons, and played a pivotal role as a senior, when she led a starting five which included four freshmen starters. Jackson participated in all 114 games of her career, starting in 85 of the 114 games played. The Knoxville, Tennessee native was a three-time second-team all-conference performer. As a student-athlete at Belmont Abbey, Jackson has been a strong achiever in the classroom as well as on the court. During her junior and senior years, she has participated in a mentoring program at North

One of the most prolific scorers in school history, Barbee became just the fourth player in school history to score 2,000 career points in the Abbey’s 84-81 upset win at top-seeded Queens in the opening round of the Conference Carolinas Tournament. He needed 15 points to reach 2,000 and finished with 19. His 2,004 career points are fourth, needing 40 to move into third. Phillips earns his first all-conference honor after averaging 16.1 points per game, and 15.1 in conference games. He has scored 997 career points, needing just three more to become the 35th player in school history to log 1,000 career points. Spring 2011

Richard Barbee

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Belmont Elementary School, where she voluntarily works with an underprivileged student once a week. Jackson will graduate from the Abbey in May 2011 with a degree in Business and a minor in Sports Management. She is the recipient of the NCAA Ethnic Minority & Women Enhancement Scholarship for Careers in Athletics which she plans to use toward post graduate work.

Kyle Phillips

The Magazine of Belmont Abbey College

ALUMNI News

Abbey Inducts Six New Members of Wall of Fame Maximo Alvarez

At the age of 13, Maximo Alvarez was one of 14,000 children to leave Cuba as part of Operation “Pedro Pan.” These unaccompanied children came to attend school in the US. Helped by the Diocese of Miami, he finished high school and came to the Abbey for two years. Transferring to Florida State University, he received his BA and his MBA. Soon after graduation, Maximo began his career in the oil business. In 1987 Max purchased four underperforming gas stations and established his own company, Sunshine Gasoline Distributors, Inc., growing from barely 200,000 gallons a month to over 450 million gallons a year, in a little over twenty years. Sunshine owns over 120 locations and supplies another 250 branded retail facilities, the largest branded independent supplier in Florida. Maximo is devoted to strengthening his corporate and philanthropic communities. Involved in the Florida Petroleum Marketers Association, he was Chairman of the Board in 2000 and inducted into its Hall of Fame in 2005. He has also received awards for his work in Hope for Vision, the Transplant Foundation, and Pedro Pan Group. Maximo has also been a driving force behind The Centro Hispano Catolico, a day care center for over 300 underprivileged children.

Bob Gallagher

Bob Gallagher earned his B.A. degree in Economics and Business at Belmont Abbey in 1972, his J.D. at Samford University, and his LL.M in Tax Law at Georgetown University. Most of his focus in business and community service is related to enhancing individuals’ understanding of and love for the teachings of the Catholic Church through the creation of new channels of distribution for Catholic products. As CEO of Good Will Publishers, Dr. Gallagher has overseen its growth into

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one of the largest publisher-distributors of religious and value-oriented books in the country. He was a co-founder of Trinity Road, an internet marketing firm and a co-founder and CEO of St. Benedict Press, which has become one of the major Catholic Publishers of Bibles and Catholic Classics in the US. Dr. Gallagher is a Co-Founder of Seton Media House, a non-profit corporation distributing free catechetical material to Catholic children and their parents. Dr. Gallagher received an Honorary Doctorate of Law from Belmont Abbey College in 1995 and in 2000 he was honored as Alumnus of the Year. He has served as a Trustee of the College, Chairman of the Board of Trustees, a member of the Knights of Malta, and on the boards of church, community, cultural and children’s organizations.

Jeanne-Margaret McNally

Jeanne-Margaret McNally, RSM, entered the Sisters of Mercy in 1949 and graduated from Sacred Heart Junior College in 1956. She is a graduate of Mercy School of Nursing and earned a BSN and MS from Catholic University. She was Director of Nursing Education at Mercy School of Nursing 1963 to 1970. In 1969, she received a Ph.D. in Psychology from Catholic University and then worked for the American Nurses’ Association for two years. From 1973-1980 she served as Associate Vice President, General Administration at the University of North Carolina. From 1969, she served in leadership in the Sisters of Mercy, and as President of the Sisters of Mercy, North Carolina from 1980-1988. She received her JCL from the School of Canon Law, Catholic University in 1990 and serves as Defender of the Bond and Collegiate Judge in the Archdiocese of Miami and the Diocese of Charlotte. While in Miami, she was a Professor of Bioethics at Barry University. In addition, she has lectured in several universities, published articles, and continues as a canonical and psychological consultant. With three distinct careers in healthcare, education and the law, each one unfolded to even greater areas of service. Sr. Jeanne-Margaret’s influence has been most significant to the people served. Spring 2011

ALUMNI News

William L. Esser, IV ’95

2010 Brother Gregory Corcoran Distinguished Alumnus Of The Year A 1995 summa cum laude graduate of Belmont Abbey College, Will Esser went on to receive his JD, magna cum laude, from the University of Notre Dame Law School. He is admitted to the state bars of North Carolina and Florida, as well as to numerous federal circuit and district courts throughout the country. Will is a partner with Parker Poe Adams & Bernstein in Charlotte, NC and his practice includes commercial litigation, bankruptcies and foreclosures. He has participated on numerous committees of the Bar at the local, regional and state levels. Will’s most valued mentor is his grandfather, a quiet man who taught more with his example of faithfulness, joy and love than with words. This life-lesson has served Will in one of his most cherished civic accomplishments, working with Room at the Inn, a safe haven for pregnant women and their children. As a member of the board since 2004 and president in 2008 and 2009, he helped develop their capital campaign in building the nation’s first college-based maternity and after-care residential facility. Will has served as a member of the Board of Visitors of the Ave Maria Law School, a singer with Carolina Voices and the Mecklenburg Bar Revue, and the co-chair of the Impact Fund for the Foundation for the Carolinas. He is an active member of St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Will is a co-founder and past president of the St. Thomas More Society, an association of Catholic lawyers dedicated to the advancement of the principles of the patron saint of lawyers and politicians. He has been a member of the National Alumni Board of Belmont Abbey College since 2004 and served as an adjunct professor at the College in 2006. Will is a supporter of the St. Joseph Adoration Chapel, the Bradley Institute, the Envoy Institute, the Abbey Theatre, the Tennis Team and numerous other Abbey activities. He and his wife Katie reside in Charlotte with their three young children, Abby, Quinn and Matthew. In 2009, Will was featured in the 2009 Charlotte Business Journal, “40 under 40”—a list that highlights those making a difference in business and in the community. His full participation at the Abbey has indeed enhanced our community.

John F. Gettemans

John F. Gettemans came to Belmont Abbey after arriving in the United States from his native Brussels, Belgium. His primary language was French with little English fluency. John graduated in 1934 with a degree in pre-medical studies, having actively participated in theatre, choir, football, baseball and Spring 2011

other extra-curricular activities. He attended Johns Hopkins and shaped a career as a research biochemist with the Rockefeller Research Institute, Princeton, NJ. He engaged in research at Woods Hole, Chicago Metallurgical Laboratory (for the Manhattan Project), Armour Research Foundation and Ethicon, Inc. Notable in his career is his position as Dr. John Howard Northrop’s assistant during his work on protein enzyme research, for which Northrop received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Gettemans developed many patents ranging from pre-filled sutures to modified ‘catgut’ for tennis rackets. He chaired the American Society for Quality Control, earning the Joe Lisy Award for outstanding service. In addition to serving on the Board of Johnson & Johnson’s Ethicon, Inc., Gettemans received the prestigious Johnson & Johnson Phillip B. Hoffman award for outstanding achievement in research and development. John Gettemans devoted his life and his skills to improving the lives of others; he accomplished much because he saw a need and wanted to help.

Gene Santos

Gene Santos entered Belmont Abbey Preparatory School as a 14-year-old boy, continuing in the Junior College and graduating in 1949. He credits his scholastic accomplishment to the guiding love and extraordinary efforts of the monks. After four years in the Navy, he enrolled in The Citadel Military College and graduated in 1958 with a B.S. in Electrical Engineering. He worked as a field engineer for RCA Corporation, focusing on the Atlas Missile Program and later on the Inertial Guidance Missile System. His next position took him back to his beloved Charleston, SC as an electrical engineer in the Design Engineering division for the Charleston Naval Shipyard. While working in this position, he also bought or invested in other companies. Gene’s energy, exuberance and love for the Abbey resulted in many years of organizing and supporting alumni activities. In 1997, he was presented with the Brother Gregory Corcoran Distinguished Alumnus of the Year award. The expression of gratitude in Gene’s life is demonstrated by numerous charitable activities and one of special importance to him, his weekly vigil for Perpetual Adoration at Blessed Sacrament Church in Charleston stemming, as he says, “from the monks and his school years at Belmont Abbey.” Crossroads

The Magazine of Belmont Abbey College

ALUMNI News

WE NEED YOU! OPERATION 1200 report as of March 28, 2011 A Message from Charlie Martin, President, Alumni Association Board of Directors This winter, the new Alumni Association Board faced its first big challenge—a challenge made by a very generous donor to acquire 1200 participating alumni by May 31st. The challenge was called OPERATION 1200. The Board and our donor realized that Belmont Abbey College’s alumni participation rate was unacceptably low. Last year, only 856 alumni out of 9,000 participated. We were falling short. The bottom line of OPERATION 1200—If we reach our goal of 1200 alumni donors, the donor will contribute $50,000 to the Abbey Family Fund! With 1200 active alumni, our participation rate would jump from 9% - 15%. The national average for alumni participation is 15%. All gifts from alumni, regardless of size, whether $5 or $5,000 or more are to be counted toward this goal of increasing the participation rate to 15%. In order to reach our goal we must retain our current alumni donors and acquire at least 450 more by May 31st. As alumni family, we must pull together to support our College and to ensure that this unique education, steeped in Benedictine tradition, can continue for future generations. The quality of a college is measured in part by the number

of graduates who financially support it. The importance of this worthwhile challenge is the increased potential for the Abbey to receive grant money and other private sources of funding in these challenging economic times. Alumni participation rates often serve as the decisive factor for foundations and corporations making funding awards. In addition, several national publications rank colleges and universities by the overall satisfaction of the alumni in their alma mater. May 31st is quickly approaching. Please be one of our additional 450 donors by May 31st. You will help to secure the financial future of your college. Thank you to all who have so generously given to OPERATION 1200. We have always appreciated you and what you do for the College. Remember, $5 or $5,000 or more will help us attain our participation goal! If you have questions or would like more information about OPERATION 1200, please call Christine Goff Peeler, Alumni and Community Relations Director at 704-461-6663. Footnote: Thanks to our many generous donors, we met our overall fundraising goals last fiscal year. This year, after 10 months, the Office of College Relations is on track to meet our goals again, but we need your help to finish out the year. Please make your donations by May 31st so that we can continue to offer scholarships to the many deserving students who will be deciding if they can attend Belmont Abbey College next fall.

Carol Brooks, Peggy McGlohon and Gayle Dobbs Named Honorary Alumnae On February 11, 2011, the Office of Alumni Relations and the Alumni Association Board of Directors presented the first “Honorary Alumnus” award to three women of distinction from the Abbey Family. Carol Brooks, Peggy McGlohon and Gayle Dobbs received the award upon their retirements for years of service (59 years combined) and dedication to the College. Given in recognition of the profound and positive impact the women had on the College and the lives of those the College serves, the Alumni Association proudly bestowed the award to Carol, Peggy and Gayle in a

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celebration at the College. This prestigious award is given to recognize a member of the Abbey Family or an alum who demonstrates commendable professional accomplishments, as well as strength of character, humility, and wisdom. We welcome and salute Carol, Peggy and Gayle as the first recipients of the “Honorary Alumnus” Award. Gayle joined the Abbey in 1985 and retired in 2011—25 years of service. Peggy joined the Abbey in 1991 and retired in 2010—19 years of service. Carol joined the Abbey in 1995 and retired in 2010—15 years of service.

Spring 2011

Class Notes By Gayle Dobbs

These notes are based on information gathered from November, 2010 through April, 2011. They reflect information from alums and friends of Belmont Abbey.

In 2010, Philip DeTurk ‘52 was awarded Emeritus status with the Washington State Bar Association.

In 2010, J.E.B. “Jeb” Ladouceur ’59 published his fifth novel, Sparrowbush, wherein a young widow struggles to raise three small daughters in a rowdy, upstate New York prison town. Ladouceur is also the author of four other thrillers: The Palindrome Plot, Calamity Hook, Frisco, and The Banana Belt, and his next suspense novel, The Oba Project, will be released in June 2011. Ladouceur is a charter member of former-Governor Mario Cuomo’s N.Y. State Arson Task Force, and is a popular public speaker on the Long Island book circuit. He has been the keynote speaker for a number of New York literary events, including the 2009 Smithtown Library Foundation Awards Banquet. In 1968, he was a State Senate candidate in New York’s 1st Senate District. While attending the Abbey, Ladouceur held positions with the school newspaper and the radio station, and was an active member of The Abbey Players, having played Iago in a highly successful production of Othello under the direction of Father John Oetgen. Jeb can be reached via email at JebLadouceur@aol.com.

Chester Zukowski ’70 and his wife, Barb, spent some of this past summer visiting with Bill Seffers ’70 at his home, “High Forest Ranch,” in Colorado Springs, CO. Their days were spent catching up on the past 20

Spring 2011

years: “While there may have been some of the aging process that took place since we last shared a PBR at the river, we both could easily fit into our 40-plus yearold collector item TKE apparel. The great times, fond memories, solid education and love of the teachers we experienced will be Abbey memories that travel with us always. Here is to you Mr. H.” (Pictured in the photograph, from left to right: Zukowski and Seffers.) Dr. Thomas Nolan ’73 writes: “Over the past 9 years, I have been the Chair of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the Louisiana State University Health Science Center in New Orleans. Since 2007, I have been the Associate Dean for Clinical Affairs at LSU, the Chief Medical Officer of the LSU Health Care Network and the Hospital Director of Surgical Services at the Interim LSU Hospital. In 2008-9, I was president of The Society of Gynecologic Surgeons, a national academic group dedicated to Gynecologic Surgery and Education. In 2010-11, I was president of the Orleans Parish Medical Association. And, finally, I have been nominated as the Alumnus Member of the year for the Alpha Omega Alpha (AOA) Medical Society at the Medical College of Virginia. I will be retiring and returning to Davidson, NC on July 1, 2011.”

Fr. Joseph Pearce ’81 is the Parochial Vicar at St. Philip Neri Parish in Fort Mill, SC and is the Director of the Oratory Spirituality Center at the Congregation of the Oratory of St. Philip Neri in Rock Hill, SC.

Gaston County Police Chief William “Bill” Farley ’82, of Gastonia, NC, has been involved in law enforcement since he graduated from the Abbey. After almost 30 years of public service, he has decided to retire from the police force. While he has no immediate plans since announcing his retirement, one thing’s for sure, he won’t be heading for the nearest rocking chair!

Margaret Staton ’83 is the CEO of Consultants Unlimited, LLC and has co-authored a second book, Life is an Attitude: The Power of Positive Thinking. Visit www.motivationalbookstore.com for more information.

Crossroads

The Magazine of Belmont Abbey College

Class Notes By Gayle Dobbs

Tricia (Mullis ’87) and Brian O’Neill ’89 had the pleasure of listening to Dr. Thierfelder speak at their parish, St. Peter Chanel in Roswell, GA in October. Pictured with the O’Neills are fellow alums Patty (Brennan ’86) and Russell Patmore ’87, Julie (FitzGerald ’89) Pack, and Dr. William K. Thierfelder.

Neal and Kate (Zachow ’95) Thivierge, of Charlotte, NC, announce the birth of their second child, Reese Katherine, on September 13, 2010.

Patrick McHenry ’99 was recognized by Time Magazine as one of the magazine’s first “40 Under 40: The New Civic Leaders.” This is the first year the magazine has compiled this list, which recognizes “a new generation of civic leaders trying to fix a broken system and restore faith in the political process.” McHenry was first elected to Congress at the age of 29, after serving a term in the N.C. House of Representatives.

Selena (DuQuesnay ’98) and Christopher Abraham ’97 announce the birth of their daughter, Isabella Pearl, on October 27, 2010. She weighed in at 7 pounds, 13 ounces and was 19.25 inches long. Isabella joins big brother, Michael (4), and the family lives in Charlotte, NC.

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The Magazine of Belmont Abbey College

On January 1, 2011, Aaron J. Condon ’99 married Mary E. Shaw at St. Pius X Catholic Church in Greensboro, NC. Abbey Alum John McCune ’02 was a groomsman. Other Abbey Alumni in attendance were Jay Condon ’69 (father of the Groom), Darrel Doré ’69, Al Ehrich ’69, Matt Ritter ’97 and Kate (Matthews ’03) McCune. Aaron and Mary reside in Gastonia, NC, and Aaron continues to work for the Office of College Relations at the College.

Spring 2011

Class Notes By Gayle Dobbs

Joseph Jackson ’99 and his wife, Lynette, announce the birth of their first child, Marguerite Grypp, on February 8, 2011. Marguerite weighed in at 7 pounds and was 19 inches long.

On December 20, 2010, Tiffany (Whaley ’01) and John Murph ’01 welcomed Peter James into their family. He weighed in at 9 pounds, 5 ounces and was 22 inches long. Peter joins big brother Samuel, and John is very excited about having two boys.

Greetings from Master Sergeant (MSgt) Tom Purucker ’00 and Staff Sergeant (SSgt) Tyler Loftis ’08 from the 145th LRS/SAT Air National Guard in Charlotte, NC. This photo was taken at Camp Speicher, Al Sahra army airfield, which is near Tikrit, Iraq.

Ben Safranski ’06 and his wife, Chrissy, announce the birth of their daughter, Susanna Marie, on Friday, December 10, 2010. The Safranskis live in New Derry, Pennsylvania.

Jennifer Brown ’08 has written a workbook entitled Grieving: A New Normal, which provides people with the tools to cope with the death of a loved one. It offers a positive look at the life you and your loved one led together.

Spencer Harke ’10 is working towards his M.A. in Marriage & Family Therapy at Pfeiffer University, while working at Holy Angels parttime.

Kristie Hammer ’10 is married to Jonathan Marr and is working toward her M.A. in Social Work (MSW) at Winthrop University.

On November 20, 2010, April (Sigmon ’02) and James “Jimmy” Harte ’01 welcomed Bella Caroline into their family. She weighed in at 8 pounds, 7 ounces and was 21 inches long.

Spring 2011

10 10

Morgan Heyel-Hansen ’10 is working at Holy Angels full-time.

Elaina (Blake ’10) Jones, of Gastonia, NC, was married to Wesley Jones on October 2, 2010 in Mount Pleasant, NC.

Crossroads

The Magazine of Belmont Abbey College

Class Notes By Gayle Dobbs

In Loving Memory

1963 – John Robinson, Kings Mountain, NC – February 23, 2011

1934 – Vance B. Lippard, Sr., Charlotte, NC – October 13, 2010

1963 – McAlpin Thornton, Gastonia, NC – March 1, 2011

1939 – Dan F. Rice, Charlotte, NC – August 26, 2010

1965 – Donald Dufaux, Middletown, MO – January 4, 2011

1941 – Howard Buren Yancey, Jr., Gastonia, NC – August 28, 2010 1941 – Robert W. Owen, Jr., Gastonia, NC – August 29, 2010

1967 – Thomas “Tom” Joseph Brennan, Atlanta, GA – November 24, 2010 1967 – Markey McKellar, Vinton, VA – January 28, 2011

1942 – Ralph Armstrong, Asheville, NC – September 1, 2010

1971 – Anthony J. Borda, Haymarket, VA – October 22, 2010

1946 – Margaret Kearney, Bellmawr, NJ – January 2, 2010

1972 – Paul H. Wilson, Hampton, VA – October 16, 2010

1947 – Robert Eugene Jenkins, Florence, SC – November 20, 2010

1975 – William Henry “Bill” Clarkson, Raleigh, NC – November 18, 2009

1948 – Griff Lynch, Chandler, AZ – November 7, 2010

1979 – Jean Ann (Hamilton) Ganter, Yorktown, IN – October 14, 2010

1949 – Martin Winbauer, Bradenton, FL – January 12, 2011 1949 – S. Dare Fitzpatrick, Sherman, CT – February 4, 2011 1949– William Rankin, Jacksonville, FL – February 19, 2011 1953 – Michael Walsh, Southern Pines, NC – January 24, 2011 1957 – Bill Lee Fletcher, Charlotte, NC – September 7, 2010 1958 – Charles Blanchard, Charleston, SC – February 1, 2011

1981 – Johnnie M. Lowry, Belmont, NC – January 23, 2011 1982 – Earl “Pete” Ray Swayney ’82, Gastonia, NC – August 20, 2010 1988 – Donald Lee McGinnis, Gastonia, NC – October 20, 2010 1997 – Margaret Mary Lauzon, Belmont, NC – August 26, 2010 2007 – Scott Allen, Mooresville, NC- January 14, 2011

Have You Pr ovided For Your Lov ed Ones? Consider a W ill

Planning a

or Trust

hea

If you are interested in learning more about giving to the College through Bequests, please visit www.BACLegacy.org. Contact Information: DavidTargonski@bac.edu 66 Crossroads

The Magazine of Belmont Abbey College

Spring 2011

Want to read more current news about the abbey on a regular basis? Sign up for our free e-newsletter BACRoads and receive updates via email! To sign up, visit www.bacroads.com, then click on the link labeled “Email,” which you’ll see on the far right side of the page underneath the aerial photo of the campus. Then, simply enter your email address in the box and you are on your way. You will need to activate the account. An activation email will be sent to the email address you provide. If you have any questions, please contact Jillian Maisano at JillianMaisano@bac.edu or (704) 461-6869.

PRAYER SUPPORT MINISTRY The Belmont Abbey Community has a team of volunteer alumni and friends all over the country who are committed to regular prayer. Prayer requests are circulated weekly by email. If you would like to volunteer to become part of our Abbey prayer circle or if you have a prayer request, please contact us at: PrayerSupportMinistry@bac.edu Also, if you are interested in our Prayer Warrior project, matching you with our troops on active duty, please inquire at the above email address. Spring 2011

Crossroads

The Magazine of Belmont Abbey College

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