Inaugural ramblings

Conversion to Catholicism has brought many things into my life. One thing was the realisation that I was gravely ill-educated. Another, was the vast spaces that Catholicism opens up intellectually and spiritually. Quite simply no amount of life times is enough to explore its rich depths (we have eternity for that).

Chesterton was the first 'great' that I really read and fell in love with. Chesterton's own story of conversion, along with the multitudes of literary figures who found their way into Rome (see J. Pearce for more), was a great influence on my own journey into the Church. Chesterton was certainly proved right when he said that Catholicism does not restrict your thinking, it rather lets you think. No matter where you travel, if you travel with the Church, or specifically with Our Lord, you'll find the vast richness of the Cosmos and become a whole person.

What these rambles are trying to get at is the real possibility of education which is opened up with the Faith. Not that education is the exclusive preserve of the Faith but that Western culture simply is the Faith in one way or another. Every book you pick up that deals with ultimate questions is in dialogue (however imperfectly) with western culture and with Catholicism in some manner or other (although the Greek and Roman classics have a slightly different place).

Now the point of this blog is really to clear my own mind about the Great Tradition. This is the educational tradition of the West going back to Socrates and Plato, through the medieval liberal arts and into the Great Books programmes of today. It is the Great Conversation. The world is divided into two camps (I'm excluding for the moment the great far Eastern traditions), those who follow the Great Tradition, whose master is Truth, Beauty and Goodness, and those who follow their own inclinations and live in the present (presentism). Loosely speaking most modern philosophies, ideologies, programmes for reform, theologies and so on are stuck in the present. In England, the National Curriculum is constantly being modified (and watered down) to meet short term objectives and to get  meaningless results. It does not open up a dialogue with the Great Tradition, but perpetuates an atomised, individualism, "meaninglessness" and radical subjectivism.

So with the help of Chesterton and friends I hope to formulate at least in my own mind the dialogue with the Great Tradition and to get to grips with schooling. Perhaps my ramblings will be of use to others and certainly laying out my thoughts in essay form helps to bring together all the loose ends that float around endlessly in my mind.