Why Ecce Veritas

      - by John Gallagher

In this short talk, I would like to address two basic questions. First, what really constitutes our current educational crisis? Second, what does Ecce Veritas offer to fill the void?

Before beginning to answer the first question concerning the current crisis of education, I feel it necessary to cite two great intellects of our Western Civilization, one infamous and one famous. Friedrich Nietzsche (the infamous one) once wrote, “He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you” (Beyond Good and Evil). We must be cautious in criticizing our current darkness, because it is quite possible that focusing on this darkness may end up poisoning our minds and weakening our wills to the point of cynicism and despair. Dante Alighieri, however, begins his journey through the Inferno, with these more hopeful words: “Death could scarce be more bitter than that place! / But since it came to good, I will recount / All that I found revealed there by God’s grace.” As long as we recognize that the abyss we are gazing into is the one God’s grace has called us to for the sake of understanding and pursuing His will, the abyss will not gaze into us. Instead, we will find his loving plan working through us to transform it into light.

So, what is happening to our children and to the society that they will inevitably shape? In short, death (physical and spiritual) has consumed a once vibrant and loving culture. The hand of death has taken hold of the very root and begun to weaken the soil around it in the hopes of pulling out the whole plant. Education is the root. It is the handing on of the great nourishing truths: our laws, our history, our Faith, and (not insignificantly) the mental capacity that is able grasp them, articulate them, and pass them on to the next generation. Whether in the Church, the family, or in the school, education has always been the source of our future civilization, so if it has begun to die, then the beautiful flower of human civilization itself is withering.

It is, of course, not unheard of today to find such unmentionable acts of cruelty and inhumanity as abortion and the murder of the elderly and the disabled casually asserted to be rights, even virtues! Homosexuality, bisexuality, and extreme promiscuity are frequently portrayed as the norm and encouraged by student unions, while groups that wish to pray on campus or say the pledge of allegiance are told to leave their religion at home. Those who stand up for the truth in moral discussions in school classrooms are told that their views display an intolerance that can no longer be allowed in a pluralistic and liberated society. They are branded as extremists, who at best simply need to catch up with the times to be relevant and avoid ostracism or worse must change their views to avoid the force of law. How many state (or even private schools) would now welcome a pro-life speaker on to their campus? How many would publicly condemn the depraved acts that our larger society now holds to be equivalent to the sacred bond of marriage? This, even while their students, whom they are responsible for in loco parentis, are able to cross the street to have an abortion, oftentimes with the referral of a school nurse or at the advise of a school counselor! A few years ago, when I was called by one of my local representatives for political support, I asked her what her stand was on abortion. She told me that, although she was not completely comfortable with abortion, she herself as an administrator at our local middle school had counseled young girls to have abortions.

But where has this decay come from? How is it that our schools can have fallen so far from the truth? At the most basic level, education as a whole has turned from teaching students how to think to teaching them what to think. These destroyers of morality have been generated from the deconstruction of language and the disorder of thought common at all levels of the intellectual life in our current times. The very notion that truth exists, that it can be grasped, and that it can be taught through language has long been considered a near absurdity in universities. Every branch of learning from physics to literature, mathematics to philosophy, history to economics, has been compartmentalized from every other discipline to the degree that the knowledge gained in school is merely practical, helping a graduate to specialize and find a job in his market of choice. Any importance outside of this limited practical goal is a personal (and ironically enough an irrelevant) part of the student’s learning. Education, thus, is no longer concerned with the great ordering of the mind toward truth, goodness, and beauty, regardless of the subject being taught. Since there is no real claim to objective truth in teaching, learning has become a game of memorization, skill, and assimilation. As long as the student knows the tricks of his trade and voices no objection to the dominant opinions of the larger group, he has been educated. If he disagrees vocally with the dominant opinions of the society at large, then he remains ignorant and uneducated. A radical battle of wills has begun where what is said matters less than who has said it and how many times. When students are taught in today’s schools they are told what to think not how to think.

At the heart of what we are frequently told all must accept as true is the concept of complete freedom from restraints. A tyranny of license prevails, where anyone daring to question the assumption that pleasure and material prosperity are the end of human existence is silenced as uneducated or worse intolerant and religiously bigoted. We have an uphill battle to say the least. Radical skepticism prevails. Why? For one thing, it is far easier to tear apart the cherished whole of religious and philosophical convictions than it is to maintain them bravely in the face of opposition. William Wordsworth once made the interesting claim that “we murder to dissect.” In our current age, however,  many in the educational field would rather dissect in order to murder. Whether because of an honest (albeit misguided) distaste for the great truths of the Ancient World and the glory of Christendom, because of a personal hatred of the moral law, or simply because they do not realize what they are doing, they would have the carefully planted garden of learning torn up and destroyed. And these same individuals have assumed the seats of wisdom and learning where young minds are formed for good or for evil! In the guise of asking the students to explain their own personal thoughts and feelings on a subject, they instead encourage a type of Jerry Springer classroom, where passions and easily held opinions drive a mob of uprooted individuals whichever direction the wind happens to blow them, or (worse) whichever direction a potentially totalitarian leader would like them to go.

An essential aspect of this radical individualism and destructive skepticism is our excessive dependence on the pleasures and the ease of the technological world we have created. Most of us now live in a kind of abstracted imitation of experience itself, a digital dream-world, where the beauty and goodness of God’s creation seem foreign to us because not easily translated into the overwhelming electronic stimuli of sight and sound. Many of our young people now find more comfort in their alternate persona created on an internet website than in conversations with friends and family. At the very time when children are beginning to define themselves as persons, hopefully with the sure guidance of their parents and their Faith, many are led to believe that they can simply destroy and recreate themselves indefinitely. In the digital world they are the sole arbiters of their connection with reality as they know it, an alternate reality, and nothing can stop their wills from reshaping what they don’t like about that reality and themselves. Frederick Wilhelmsen, a Catholic man of letters and co-founder of Christendom College, wrote of this trend long before the internet existed: “Technical mastery follows on a dialectic of estrangement from existence, and this dialectic exacts its own price: alienation from things as they are, the suppression of nature, the removal of man from the springs of piety, the destruction of reverence.”

So. That said, what can we do to change things for the better? I believe that Ecce Veritas offers an answer to these problems. The very name of our school, “Behold the Truth,” flies defiantly in the face of the current-day barbarism I have just attempted to describe. It says, “Look. There is truth and it can be recognized!” In fact, it must be recognized. The very nature of man, a rational being with an immortal soul created to love and serve God, the source of all truth, demands that we acknowledge, that we witness, the truth. At Ecce Veritas, we try to return our students to “things as they are,” to the “springs of piety” and reverence. And we do this in four central ways. Firstly, our school is vibrantly pro-life. Secondly, it is rooted in the agrarian arts. Thirdly, our curriculum strives to recapture “the lost tools of learning” in a classical education. And, lastly, as the capstone and mortar of our edifice, we immerse our students in the treasure house of Catholic teaching, tradition, and liturgy.

As I mentioned earlier, at the root of our cultural crisis is a death. We at Ecce Veritas are firmly stationed against “the culture of death.” Many of our students volunteer their weekends to work at BirthRite. We have regularly stood up for life to protest at the corner of MLK and Beech Street, where Planned Parenthood is expected to build yet another site in a poor minority community.  In fact, there is no aspect of our education here where the central concern for the dignity of human life is ignored or downplayed. We attend the annual January rally in Salem, and many of our students went up to Olympia this past month to march there. Earlier this past fall, our school made a field trip to the Lloyd Center to see the pro-life movie Bella. And most recently, we were fortunate enough to have Bobby Schindler (brother of Terri Schiavo) come to our school and talk to the students about the terrible injustice that Terri and her family underwent at the hands of those who were supposed to protect her right to life and care for her in a time of great need.

I would like to focus for a moment on Mr. Schindler’s visit, because I think that it shows what a pro-life environment can do for teenagers, in spite of the many pressures they face daily to turn their backs to the most vulnerable in their midst. Mr. Schindler arrived at about one o’clock here to give his talk. Now, I’ll be honest with you. When I tell the students that I want them to assemble for a talk that shortens their lunch time by ten or fifteen minutes, they may be a bit reluctant and may drag their feet a little. However, when they were told who this speaker was and what he was here to speak about, they eagerly assembled to hear him. Every single student, without exception, listened to Mr. Schinlder with rapt attention and the greatest display of respect for him and for his story. As their Dean and teacher I was quite happy with this, but when they began to ask questions, I was truly humbled and inspired by them. One student asked about the legal situations that could allow for this terrible tragedy to happen, another asked Mr. Schindler about the painful struggle to forgive his sister’s killers, and yet another asked why there was not more support for his sister’s cause from the bishops and priests of our Nation. Excellent questions, excellent answers. This was a truly moving experience for me personally. What a powerful witness to the integrity and commitment of our students to the cause of life! The talk ended, but the conversation continued the rest of the afternoon. Our teachers gladly sacrificed their lesson plans to explore further the issues of abortion, end of life care, eugenics, the pro-life movement in general, and what our culture’s artistic and political responsibilities are in fighting this most essential battle.

Closely linked to our pro-life commitment as a school, the agrarian component at Ecce Veritas encourages our students to consider the God-given beauty and order of creation. An average Monday will find either the boys or the girls at our farm campus down in St. Paul, where teachers and students alike work the land to plant and harvest vegetables and even have a hand in tending to sheep, pigs, and turkeys. In fact this past fall our students helped to slaughter and pluck turkeys, many of them seeing for the first time where their Thanksgiving dinner comes from. With the help of two able farm hands, our students and teachers are nearly finished constructing a large greenhouse that will provide us with shelter and heat in the winter, a place to plant starters, paint, work wood and prepare and eat meals together. Ultimately, our purpose for the agrarian campus is to introduce the students to the unique and life-changing experience of a community dedicated to St. Benedict’s famous maxim, ora et labora [pray and work]. In this natural setting of work, prayer, and conversation, our students are unplugged from personal music devices, cell phones, computers, video games and televisions. Although conversations will sometimes turn to favorite movies and games, they frequently fall hollow before the integral beauty of the natural setting and the concrete experience of digging dirt, planting seeds, pulling weeds, cutting wood, hammering nails, and starting fires. God willing, time spent at the farm will teach our students the true environmental perspective, that healthy balance of human community, work, and praise for natural beauty so well expressed by Gerard Manley Hopkins, when he wrote,

    Glory be to God for dappled things—

    For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;

    For rose-moles in all stipple upon trout that swim;

    Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;

    Landscape plotted and pieced – fold, fallow, and plow;

    And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.

Our classical education at Ecce Veritas springs naturally from the same source and toward the same end as our agrarian component. All of our formal classes are designed to lead our students to the True, through the Beautiful, for the sake of the Good. The use of the classical model of education, the Trivium, (especially in light of Dorothy Sayers’ essay “The Lost Tools of Learning”) helps to accomplish this goal. Students begin their education with Grammar as a central component of their work. By learning Latin prayers and hymns (as well as conjugations, declensions, and vocabulary) students exercise the fundamental faculty of learning: the memory. Reading of a wide range of primary texts in History and Literature, they begin to develop a love of learning that inspires an inquisitive mind and a growing imagination. Through the study of Biology and Chemistry, they learn classification and the languages of scientific inquiry. Students also acquire the skill of Logic. They are encouraged to focus on the relation of parts to the whole, to detect fallacies, and to reason toward sound conclusions. Latin, again, plays an essential role in the growth of this faculty, for it requires the reader to parse and understand each word’s morphology before he can comprehend its relation to the other words in the sentence and translate it accurately. Intensive writing in Literature and History classes also contributes to the logical abilities of the students. They are taught to read well, to connect concepts and historical events, and to understand the significance of these events in the light of Revealed Truth and philosophical thought. The study of Geometry also perfects Logic, demanding that the students prove the existence of familiar forms through the language of mathematical proofs. Lastly, students learn Rhetoric. Their writing skills are perfected such that they can argue strongly with ample support of a thesis in a well-written style that disposes the reader to the truth. Students begin a lifelong journey at Ecce Veritas, where they learn to appreciate and respond to the great tradition of beautiful art, literature, and music that we have inherited in our Western Civilization. They present their work in class presentations and must defend their statements under the critical (albeit usually charitable) eyes of their peers. They learn apologetics and stand up for the Faith publicly at pro-life rallies. They use their talents for the good of others in acts of charity both as a group and as individuals.

By the end of their time here our students will have read, among others, Homer, Virgil, Dante, and Dostoevsky. Some of our students are now working through Caesar’s Gallic Wars and Cicero in the original Latin. Many of them are getting their first taste of Euclidean Geometry. Pope Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum, Pope Benedict’s Deus Caritas Est, Shakespeare’s King Lear, The Book of Isaiah, Flannery O’Connor, The Venerable Bede, Melville’s “Billy Bud” and “Bartleby the Scrivener,” St. Benedict’s Rule. These are just a few of the primary texts from our rich heritage that our students have read here, all within classroom settings that demand close reading and intelligent discussion. It is our hope here at Ecce Veritas that by exposing our students to some of the best of all that has been said and thought, they themselves will learn to think more deeply and speak more eloquently about those things that matter the most to human existence. To the truth, through the beautiful, for the sake of the good.

The last central component of our education here truly is the most important. It is, as I have already mentioned, the single piece that holds all of the other stones in their proper place. Our teaching of the Catholic Faith here at Ecce Veritas is uncompromised in its doctrine and fully committed to the evangelization of our world. I believe that our students will be able to discuss the difficult moral issues of our time faithfully and charitably. Our frequent use of the Catechism, Sacred Scripture, papal encyclicals, and sound Catholic textbooks, as well as the numerous primary texts from our Catholic heritage equip our students with essential tools for deepening their personal commitment to the Faith and sharing it with others. The other day, one of my students came up to me after class and asked, “Mr. Gallagher, who made time? God or man?” Now, our students are teenagers with the usual teenager concerns and questions, but just think of that. Here is a teenager honestly trying to understand a question that deals with the very essence of Man’s place in a universe created by God. I, of course, responded, “it depends, we’ll just have to wait and see.” However, it is not only in their knowledge of the Faith that our students are expected to excel. They are all required to pray together at the beginning of each class and at daily Mass. For most of our students, this vital habit of prayer is already well established by their excellent prayer lives at home. Our school then is an extension of that beautiful domestic church wherein vocations flourish and souls are prepared for their ultimate destination. In fact, not a week goes by without at least a few of our students asking to be able to go to Confession during their break before the noon Mass. They do this of their own accord and because they know the infinite worth of the Sacraments and the importance of their Faith. In addition to our classes in Scripture, Church History, and Theology, our students sing Gregorian chant. By keeping this beautiful flame alive in the living, breathing members of the Body of Christ, Ecce Veritas is following the direction of our Holy Father, Pope Benedict, who has stated time and again that the beauty of the liturgy, especially through Gregorian chant, is a key method of bringing the soul more deeply into the presence of God. Thanks to the gracious permission of Fr. Patalano our students are able to sing various parts of the Mass on Fridays at noon. I encourage everyone to attend if they are able to do so.

“Quid est veritas?” In this single question that Pilate asks Jesus, the entire history of man’s search for meaning in the universe reaches its apex. The question finds the answer. However, after centuries of Greek philosophy and Roman law asking this very question, many had grown weary and skeptical of ever finding an answer. As St. John states at the beginning of his Gospel, “in mundo erat et mundus per ipsum factus est et mundus eum non cognovit.” [He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not.] Here, before the very source of truth itself, a Roman ruler chooses to place rhetoric and public perception above integrity, the rule of the mob above the rule of law. In our own time, a time that seems to have lost the courage and even the desire to pursue and live the truth, this critical moment in the life of Christ proves to be especially significant. To a society blinded by moral relativism and indifferentism, a society that asks cynically with Pilate, “quid est veritas,” we say joyfully and unhesitatingly, “Ecce Veritas!” “Behold the Truth!” The Roman poet Ennius once wrote, “amicus certus in re incerta cernitur.” [A certain friend is found in an uncertain time.] We are clearly living in uncertain times, and by God’s grace Ecce Veritas will be found a true friend to Christ and His Church through the living witness and integrity of its students.