Scala Foundation - Playing a Crucial Role in the Evangelization of the Culture and Breaking the Mould of Education

Attend the spring conference, Art, the Sacred, and the Common Good, at Princeton, NJ, April 30th, 2022. Free to register and attend.

I want to highlight the work of the SCALA Foundation. The Scala Foundation’s mission is to renew American culture by restoring beauty and wisdom to the liberal arts. Scala’s seminars, reading groups, conferences, summer programs and online resources help educators and culture creators engage the millennia-old tradition of liberal arts education and its power to form virtuous, purpose-driven citizens, form young leaders who are pivotal agents of cultural renewal, and build communities of like-minded cultural entrepreneurs and magnify their impact.

Some may remember that I recently spoke on the Scala webinar, listen here. or here. She has also invited me to be on a panel for the SCALA 2022 conference - Art, the Sacred, and the Common Good - in Princeton NJ this April, which is free to attend.

The focus of SCALA is in creating creative communities at a local level that are able to contribute to Catholic education locally and to the culture through the creation of art, music, literature etc (eg she organizes writers' workshops).

It occurs to me that SCALA is offering programs that complement formal online education, such as that offered by www.Pontifex.University, where I work, and when the two approaches to student formation are combined offer a genuine opportunity. The zoom revolution that has happened as a result of Covid has opened up people’s minds to the idea of online education.

The advantages of this are that high-quality and standardized educational material can be delivered at a fraction of the cost of the traditional on-campus experience. However, I am conscious that providing community of learning - so important in education - is the weakness of online education and while things are improving, it is clear that Facebook pages and chatrooms don't fill the gap. This is where SCALA comes in. They are guiding educators and artistic creatives who can contribute to a culture of beauty to form communities locally.

I am encouraging Pontifex students to attend and participate in the conferences and events and meet each other, (and me if they are interested!) so that they might start to form communities with each other locally under Scala's guidance. It is these local communities, it occurs to me, which might be portals for grace and love that can transform the culture.

Why Do Scholars Dismiss Accounts of Miracles Performed By Saints as 'Mere Hagiography'?

Here are two images of St Nicholas, whose Feast is December 6th. He was Archbishop of Myra, in Lycia (in modern-day Turkey). He has been venerated throughout the Church and tradition has passed onto us many different stories from his life. For example, because of his help to the poor, he is the saint of pawnbrokers, whose insignia of three golden balls represent three purses of gold he gave secretly to a poor man who could not afford dowries for his three daughters. 

Paolo Veneziano, 15th-century Italian

He is known also as one of the Fathers of the Council of Nicea, where, he was temporarily barred from attendance for losing his temper and striking and Arian heretic.

Another story, depicted below, tells how raised three young men from the dead who had been killed by a butcher several years earlier. St Nicholas is a saint of whom more and more was written as devotion to him increased, especially after the 10th century. The story of three boys only appears in later accounts of the life, the most well known being a book called The Golden Legend, which is a series of lives of saints which was compiled in Italy in the 13th-century by Jacobus de Voragine, in which he pulls together the popular accounts of the saints. The relatively late appearance of this story in writing in the historical record means that it will often be dismissed as mere ‘hagiography’ today. This is meant to indicate that is part of a growing mythology surrounding the person and that it is probably not historically true. However, we do not need to accept this argument which rests on an assumption, born of lack of faith, that accounts of miracles should be viewed with skepticism; and that word of mouth and oral tradition are not reliable mechanisms for the preservation of truth.

The fact that this particular story only appears in writing relatively late doesn’t mean automatically that this story was an invention of the writer, which is what seems to be assumed. It is possible, alternatively, that it did happen and was preserved faithfully by oral tradition up until this point.

While we must acknowledge the possibility that details can be added in the repeated telling of a story, without evidence that the author of the book composed the story, it is as reasonable to assume that it is true, it seems to me. The question that I ask myself first is, does this narrative portray a picture of a saint that is consistent with our beliefs as Catholics and about what is generally known of him as a person, and which can reasonably inspire us to greater virtue? The answer to this question, in this case, is for me unequivocally yes. As one who believes that through faith miracles happen today, I do not wonder that they happened in the past too. Given this, I see no reason to doubt the truth of the story.

A south Nederlandish carving in wood dating from about 1500AD.