Brother Sixtus Roslevich, Abbot Michael Brunner, Bishop James Conley, and Mr. Chris Fisher
A beautiful and mild early summer’s day greeted Bishop James Conley and other guests and participants in this year’s Humanitas Symposium offered by the Portsmouth Institute. In introducing the final panel discussion, John Emmet Clarke, Cluny Media editor-in-chief, lauded the event as, “everything a symposium should be.” It truly blended presentations, discussions, liturgy, fellowship, and recreation into a “symposium experience” enabling participants to fully engage in reflection on the texts and topics at hand. As articulated by Institute director Chris Fisher, the symposium’s “aim is to come away from the weekend with a surer foundation on which we can understand liberty, and consider it across various contexts: in political and economic life, in our families, in the Church, and as a goal of Catholic education.” From its gathering moment at Friday Vespers, at which the monastic choir was filled, singing from the beautiful booklet produced by Br. Joseph Byron, participants established a prayerful and reflective community, and found an opportunity, as framed in the Institute’s mission statement, to “grow in knowledge and grace.”
The keynote address by Bishop Conley laid out much of the terrain to be considered. Grateful for the Benedictine influence in his own life of faith, notably his time at Fontgombault Abbey in France, shortly after his conversion from his Presbyterian upbringing, he “fell in love with Rule of Saint Benedict,” and “almost entered” the Order. He maintains close ties with Clear Creek Abbey in Tulsa, Oklahoma, a community established by Fontgombault. Bishop Conley approached the symposium’s topic, “The Blessings of Liberty,” through three themes: the nature of language, the circumstances of contemporary culture, and the discernment of what it is God asks of us. Drawing on such thinkers as Josef Pieper, C.S. Lewis, and Neil Postman, the bishop addressed the many problems and abuses in the use of language, the bending of truth, the “well-crafted lies” that can distort authentic liberty. Eliciting Lewis Carroll’s Humpy Dumpty, we encounter the problem of words meaning whatever people want them to mean, and the truths to which they allegedly refer more difficult to identify. This deeply embedded problem intensifies the struggles of contemporary culture, heightening the difficulty of “shaping responsible citizens” to act in the public square, which cannot be seen as “morally neutral” nor as absent of God. Trusting that a “deep reserve of good will” remains in this country, the bishop then turned to the proper exercise of freedom, in light of the Christian faith. The clarity of the fundamental faith, that “Jesus Christ is Lord” points to the truth that should have “command our lives in the work we do in the world.” Authentic freedom is linked to obedience, “our willing submission to higher realities worthy of worship.” This leads not to self-assertion, but to “self-gift, self-sacrifice, rooted in a humble self-knowledge.”
The following morning, symposium participants dove straight into three sessions of the close reading of texts and of open discussion and exploration: “Liberty and the Soul,” “Liberty and the City,” and “Liberty and the Church.” These three seminars were rooted in a series of readings collected in a beautiful volume, The Blessings of Liberty, published by Cluny Media. The texts ranged from the Sts. Paul and Augustine, to Thomas More and Benedict, to Madison, Hawthorne, de Tocqueville, C.S. Lewis, Josef Pieper, and Pope St. John Paul II. Seminar discussion leaders included Fr. Paul Clarke, Raymond Hein, and James Keating of Providence College, as well as faculty of the Portsmouth Abbey School Humanities Department, including Kale Zelden, Daniel Caplin, and Daniel McQuillan.
The day’s studies were capped off by a plenary panel discussion entitled “Securing the Blessings of Liberty,” featuring Fr. Paul Clarke, O.P., legal scholar Erika Bachiochi, and author Sohrab Ahmari. The three parsed out the seminar topics, drawing the broad outlines of possible responses and of ongoing difficulties we continue to face. Fr. Clarke discussed a vision of freedom opposed to that of “secularism,” one in which one is “free if subordinated to authority,” a Christian approach to freedom which recognizes that the world is in a condition of suffering from a “darkened intellect” and a “weakened will,” and stands in need of God’s grace. Bachiochi contrasted the pre-modern and modern understandings of the law, favoring the pre-modern as, ultimately, the more rational and the more fruitful in fully addressing the human condition in our contemporary world. Ahmari provided a preview of ideas that will be developed in his upcoming book, addressing such problems as the social injustice in the modern, transnational corporate economy and the growing legal usurpation of rights of individual workers.
The symposium reached its “Grand Finale” in the Vigil Mass of the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity, a celebration enhanced by the music of the St. Paul’s Choir School. Bishop Conley served as the principal celebrant and the homilist, speaking of the symposium as appropriately finding its fulfillment in “the pinnacle of prayer, in the liturgy.” His sermon echoed the symposium’s theme, addressing religious life and worship as “the highest expression of our freedom.” We are blessed in this country to have the “freedom to live according to what we believe.” He again referred to the impact of Our Lady of the Assumption Abbey at Fontgombault, in whose liturgical and spiritual life “a whole new world opened up to me.” Notably, he was able to move past his earlier and more Calvinist resistance to the effectiveness of human works, to a belief that “we can please the Lord in liturgy.” Indeed, he said, we are at a “beautiful place in the liturgical year,” having passed through the Easter season and now blessed with the readings of the feast of the Trinity. The day’s readings, while reflecting the great mystery that is the Trinitarian nature of God, show us that God takes delight in us, his children. They point to the gratuitous love, the relational love of God, and of God’s life “poured out into our hearts.” We find here grace, a grace that is trinitarian and communal, reflected notably in marriage, in the fruitful self-donation of spouses to each other. The beauty of liturgy spoken of by Bishop Conley was demonstrably highlighted in the presence of the St. Paul’s Choir School, situated in the monastic choir and supported by the church’s pipe organ.
A closing reception provided a final opportunity for fellowship and farewells, with hopes of renewed reflection at next summer’s symposium. The Portsmouth Institute, meanwhile, remains active, and even as this issue goes to publication is hosting the summer Pietas retreat for teachers (more on this in our next issue).