A Prologue:
For the Reader who would like to understand more about me before reading about what I have been doing and thinking.
Divine Providence is a mystery which we cannot hope to grasp fully. But I think that sometimes God winks at us, dropping a hint to let us know that we are on the right path.
I knew that I very, very much wanted to study in Rome. But I have had trouble putting into words why this is the case. A few things are simple to state. Heritage: My mother was born in Naples and I hope to discover my roots. Growth: The timing is right for me to try something different, like living in a foreign country. Tradition: I am in love with the past (there are times when I am convinced I was born 700 years too late), but am also a proud member of the "JPII Generation" which, thanks to its firm footing in the Faith, is striding confidently into the future. But these sorts of things, while helpful, are only parts of the whole.
Yesterday afternoon, which was my second day in Rome, I was waiting to meet with my building supervisor. To pass the time, I picked up a journal off the shelf at random. It happened to contain an essay written by Professor Alfred Freddoso. Prof. Freddoso is my academic advisor, the man who told me about the program at the Angelicum and made it possible for me to study here. Impressed by the seeming coincidence, I read his article. It was quite good. And then I reached the last sentence, which floored me: "For philosophy, much like art, is in the end a matter of the heart as much as of the intellect."
That sentence encapsulates perfectly why I had to come to Rome. Intellectually, I have been richly satisfied by philosophy in the Catholic tradition since I first encountered St. Thomas as a freshman in high school. But it is not enough to think about philosophy; one has to live it - and for philosophy which leads to faith, this is all the more the case. A cradle Catholic, I have always been committed to my Church, to the point of having entered the seminary. (I left, but I left with an honorable discharge and a clean conscience.) Nevertheless, there is a difference between accepting one's tradition and being immersed in it. To be fully in love with something, one must know it intimately, not abstractly. And, as far as I know, Rome more than anywhere else on Earth not only contains our past but also retains its vibrancy: The churches and artwork may be centuries old, but the liturgies which take place in them are often full of life. Rome is the Eternal City, and eternity does not mean one second after another after another for an infinitely long time. Rather, God's eternity is the possession of every moment all at once, unceasingly. Catching a glimpse of St. Peter's from our rooftop terrace, taking classes at the Angelicum from vibrant Dominican priests and nuns, living with dedicated but fun-loving seminarians - it is clear to me that the present contains both the fruits of the past and the seeds of the future. This is a living tradition; this is what I want to be part of.
In future entries, I will try to be less abstract and more descriptive. But since you are taking the time to read about what I am doing, I thought you might want to know a bit more about why I am doing it. Thanks for reading - and I hope you enjoy it!
This is catching up on a whole lot of things I was far too overwhelmed with to write about during the first week, so I'll split it into three
parts: Home Life, the Angelicum, and The Living Church.
Home Life
By "home" I mean the Bernardi Campus in Northwest Rome, a gorgeous 70-year-old mini-villa with an enclosed garden, rooftop terrace, and view directly overlooking the Tiber. (The picture of me on the homepage is from our terrace; and yes, that's St. Peter's in the background.) I'm living there with 27 other students, mostly from the University of St. Thomas, about half of whom are seminarians. We are living in an "intentional faith community," not reserving the Faith as something we do in private but allowing it to shape our entire lives. Above and beyond communal dinners and the like, the seminarians start each day with Eucharistic Adoration at 6 and Mass at 7; the rest of the house frequently joins in as well. The "sems," as the girls in our group call them, have taken to wearing their cassocks whenever we visit a church. It's pretty cool.
I want to stress this: The "faith community" stuff above in no way excludes normal human life; it is a resounding response to the excesses of our popular culture, but by being **more** appealing than it. The whole group is a response to the caricature of "good Catholic kids" being afraid of life. Our group of college "kids" contains an Iraqi war veteran, a former professional skateboarder, a certified pastry chef, the President of the Minnesota College Republicans, a journalist who has written for multiple nation-wide publications, a National Evangelization Team (NET) volunteer who led over 500 retreats across the country over the span of two years, and the former Minnesota Dairy Princess. This doesn't mean that we're all intense type-A personalities, though, and even those with impressive résumés know how to enjoy themselves. One of the best evenings I've had thus far was a peaceful dinner at La Griglietta, near the corner of Via Germanico and Via Fabio Massimo. Four of us just happened to stumble upon the quaint little restaurant, which had frescoes on the walls and was run by an elderly Italian couple who didn't have the slightest clue how to speak English. The arrival of a group of twenty local Italians – a large extended family from grandparents to two little boys who first stuck their tongues out at each other before kissing on the cheek in greeting – made us realize we had discovered a gold mine.
We ate amazing, if unpronounceable, food (my primo piatto was "paglia e tieno capriciosso"). We drank a liter of the house red, which was better than most wine I have had in the states. And we talked for three hours, letting the evening slip by without the slightest worry. And then we had the best gelato I've had in years .. there's nothing more I can say.
The Angelicum
I am studying at The Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas, called "the Angelicum" (because he is "The Angelic Doctor"), which we refer to as "the Ang." A Dominican institution, its roots go back to the Studium Generale that was founded by St. Thomas himself about 700 years ago, although it has been at its current location on the Esquiline Hill "only" since the 1930s. The main entrance, which is flanked by larger-than-life statues of Sts. Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas, is seriously impressive and imposing, putting Notre Dame's recent construction project on Edison Road in perspective. Pope John Paul the Great studied here. There is a cloister (enclosed garden) which was the only glimpse of the outside world had by the Dominican sisters who lived in the building from the 17th century to the 20th. The former refectory (dining room), which has seven 2,000-year-old columns supporting the ceiling which contains 400-year-old frescoes, is our study room. I am pretty enamored with the history of the place, as I hope you can tell.
My classes are mostly in tandem with my fellow Americans', who are Catholic Studies majors studying a range of disciplines under the unifying principle of the Catholic tradition. Hence I will be taking classes like "Art and Architecture II," which meets every other time on-site in a different Roman church to learn very much firsthand.
Others include Italian, Divine Providence and a Theology of History, Political Philosophy, and Medieval Philosophy. I'm most excited about a post-WWII European politics class taught by Sr. Helen Alford, a very friendly Dominican sister – and a Dean of the Pontifical University. The course is on the Christian Democratic movement in the past half-century, which was dominated by Catholics. Learning in depth about a different model for Catholic democratic politics than the JFK et all "I'm personally opposed, but …" approach should be very much worthwhile.
The Living Church
And now, my attempt to reflect upon the very many incredibly beautiful and amazing things I have seen in the past week.
I closed my 'preface' entry by making a passing reference to "living tradition." Something tells me that this is going to be a theme of the entire semester – but it definitely is what has dominated my first week here. In After Virtue, Alasdair MacIntyre points out the inadequacy of the concept of tradition which we currently have: Traditions are static, some would say stagnant, images of the past. (Think of Tevye's intro to the song 'Tradition' in Fiddler on the Roof: 'why do we always cover our heads? It's tradition! Why did the tradition start? I'll tell you: I don't know!'). By contrast, a tradition in the full sense is something that is alive and breathing; the past is treated with honor, but it is handed on to the future critically and consciously, not blindly. A tradition must be full of conversation about what the tradition is and means for it to be alive. One small example which made me smile: Minutes after walking into the Ang for the first time, I overheard two graduate students speaking in Italian. The first sentence I caught was "Si, After Virtue di Alasdair MacIntyre!" I have come across too many others this past week to list.
Two of the most important, though, are worth putting down.
Members of my program are encouraged to volunteer with the Missionaries of Charity. And so we were taken a few days ago to their house just south of the Coliseum, the central home in Europe for the sisters. The few dozen sisters house about eighty homeless men there and serve an additional forty in the Termini train station. Where they get their strength and resolve from was quite obvious: We were shown the three chapels they have where someone is praying almost constantly; besides the large crucifixes in each were written the words "Ho sete" or "I thirst" as a reminder of Christ's yearning from the Cross for His Redemptive Sacrifice to be accepted and embraced by all. The convent was also where Mother Teresa stayed every time she came to Rome. Inside her room, which has been preserved as it was the last time she stayed in it, we were given the chance to pray before a reliquary containing a piece of her heart. Before receiving Communion each day, she prayed "O Mary, Mother of Jesus, give me your heart, that I might receive Jesus"; but she gave her own heart to the whole world.
That was profoundly moving. But what sunk in to me far deeper was the private tour of the Vatican "Scavi" – excavations – which we received this morning. The backstory to why there were excavations underneath the Vatican itself is utterly fascinating. Tradition had held for centuries that St. Peter was buried in the original Vatican Hill below the main altar of St. Peter's Basilica, but no one had any proof of the sort that the post-Enlightenment world demands. Then, Pope Pius XI, as his one deathbed request, asked that he be buried underneath the altar. The minor excavations that began in 1939 to create more room for him led to a remarkable discovery that was kept very quiet at first: Dozens of feet below the current surface of the church, an entire Roman burial site was found. In it is the oldest known Christian mosaic along with the sarcophagi of dozens of Romans, both pagan and Christian. Infinitely more importantly: Beneath Michaelangelo's dome and Bernini's 17th-century baldacchino is a 14th-century altar which is on top of a 4th-century monument which we know to have been built by Emperor Constantine to protect the tomb underneath. Hidden slightly to the side (to protect from robbers) but underneath an inscription that names St. Peter were found the 2,000-year-old bones of a 60-to-70 year old man.
This morning I prayed before the remains of the man who is the Rock upon which Christ built his Church: not just figuratively, but literally as well.
Immediately afterwards, we walked up from the excavations and down a hallway a few dozen yards. There, I fell to my knees with tears in my eyes: for the 264th successor of Peter, Pope John Paul the Great, was entombed before me. I am a member of the JPII generation; he more than any single other person has inspired me to seek to be a "witness to hope" in the modern world. The closing words to his main address at World Youth Day 2002 have forever burned themselves into my ears and heart: "you are our hope: do not let the hope die."
The torch has been passed on for two thousand years. JPII and Mother Teresa are unquestionably the two greatest exemplars in the past few decades, signs of contradiction for having offered every last ounce of their spirits in self-giving Love. They have attained their goal; they fought the good fight and finished magnificently. They hoped in us: we the living, and especially we the young, who might continue to bring light to a darkened world.
It is so obvious here in Rome, if only one has eyes to see it. In the Vatican Museums, the greatest works of art our civilization has ever produced. At the Angelicum, the most profound truths we have ever sought to express. With the Dominicans and Missionaries of Charity, a path to a life more filled with peace and love than any other. This is what the living tradition of the Church of Rome offers to the youth of the world. This is what I came to Rome to discover more fully.
