From June 21-24, leading Catholic educators will converge on Pasadena, California, for the first Adeodatus Conference on Catholic Education and Culture, organized by Dr. Alex Lessard and his wife, Angela, and co-sponsored by Thomas Aquinas College. “The vision that Angela and I have for this conference — and the two that will follow in 2024 and 2025 — is that it will broaden the conversation about the renewal of Catholic education beyond the circle of those already convinced of its importance and engaged in it,” says Dr. Lessard.
Given the propensity of Thomas Aquinas College alumni to devote themselves to education, it is no surprise that more than a quarter of the conference speakers are graduates of the college. Their number includes scholarly authors Dr. Michael Waldstein , who translated St. John Paul II’s Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body, and Dr. Arthur Hippler, author of Citizens of the Heavenly City: A Catechism of Catholic Social Teaching. There are also several, such as Dr. Josef Froula, Rev. Sebastian Walshe, and Pater Edmund Waldstein, O. Cist., who teach in colleges and seminaries. Speaking from a vast trove of experience in elementary, high school, and college education, meanwhile, is Dr. Andrew Seeley, a veteran tutor on the California campus who co-founded the Institute for Catholic Liberal Education and is the executive director of the Arts of Liberty Project.
Alongside numerous College alumni, other speakers include theologian Rev. Robert Spitzer, S.J.; celebrated poet and critic Dr. James Matthew Wilson; Chesterton Academies founder Dale Ahlquist; and many more.
“We hold the ambitious hope that the Adeodatus Conferences will echo the educational efforts of the U.S. Bishops’ Baltimore Plenary Conferences, which were so successful in growing and transforming Catholic education in the 19th and 20th centuries,” says Dr. Lessard. “It’s appropriate, in the long wake of Vatican II, that laity are contributing to the renewal of what the bishops began then.”
Comments from the clergy affirm the Lessards’ high hopes. “Our world is in urgent need of the transformative light of the truth, which illuminates the mind and satisfies the heart,” says Pater Edmund. “We therefore need a renewal of Catholic education, from its deepest sources, so that that light can pierce the shadows that encompass us and reach the hearts and minds of our young people. As its name implies, Adeodatus is a godsend for such renewal.”
Full story from Thomas Aquinas College release.
The church doesn’t need more conferences. The church needs more vital parishes. The church needs more reverent celebrations of Mass. The church needs parish staff and volunteers who do an excellent job. Over forty years of experience in many states and dioceses, I’ve seen Catholic parish life stagnate and deteriorate. All the while there have been numerous annual conferences — such as the RECongress — that purported to equip parish catechists and musicians and pastors to do a better job. Nothing has worked. The church in the United States and parish life in the United States are in the worst shape they have ever been. I’m convinced that conferences are for the Catholic elite professional class to pat themselves on the back and enjoy a weekend away as a deductible or subsidized business trip expense. They don’t actually help parishes.
Some are good; some are mediocre. It kind of depends on who is in the parish.
And the pastor.
Sometimes people come back from conference with lots of ideas but find no support for them in the parish.
But, we do need truly Catholic education. That’s what this is about.
The LA Religious Education Congress is not Catholic, this Adeodatus Conference will be – big difference. To have strong parishes, you need an educated laity and inspiring leaders. Better to light a candle than curse the darkness.
You’re right TAC is no REC.
Let’s start with the root cause. Seminaries teach men to be priests. They don’t teach them to be pastors! Those few who learn to be pastors have thriving parishes.
Here is my Catholic education for the week:
The person who comments here about Paglia’s fresco always complains about the nudes etc.
I was praying a rosary online and there was a painting with Jesus and nudes that looked like an old classical painting. I thought “Boy, that commenter should see this one.”. I tried to google old religious art with nudes but got a porn warning so I did not search it.
Then I was watching a video about the principal in Florida who lost her job because of an art class showing Michelangelo’s David and some other art with nudes and right there is the painting on the MSNBC story.
It was Michelangelo’s Last Judgement.
Not only is it over an altar but it is in the room where the Papal conclave retreats. I first heard of it when John Paul II told his upcoming conclave Cardinals to study that picture well before they voted for the new Pope.
LOL
I am Team Fig Leaf but everyone else in my family is Team Twigs and Berries. They say it is art.
I wouldn’t get involved in the art vs. pornography controversy. Michaelangelo’s religious work was controversial, in his day, too– but his artwork was not erotic. Abp. Paglia’s homoerotic fresco definitely is out-of-line, depicting pro-gay Paglia himself, nearly-nude, wearing just his zucchetto, and a robe slipping off his lower body– in a strikingly unnatural, erotic embrace with a nearly-nude man, scantily covered by just a falling-off loincloth around his genital area, in the homosexual section of the fresco– which is all in clear view, from the altar of the Cathedral. Want to be a lector or altar boy for Paglia, and view this embarrassing and inappropriate fresco, as he says Mass? The model for Christ in this fresco, was a local gay barber, and Christ was depicted in a sheer robe, in a manner undignified and mocking of Christ and His religion. However, a nude painting or sculpture is not necessarily erotic, designed for sexual enticement. Just as scientific pictures for anatomy classes are not sexual in nature, at all. Unfortunately, artists down through the ages, have used nude and semi-nude subjects to sit as models, for hours, for their paintings and sculptures. I knew of college kids in the university, long ago, who were paid for this, at university art schools. What if the model was your girlfriend, or even your wife, earning some extra money, for college? And what if her face (and all the rest) was in the student’s final artwork project— for all to see? The artist might get a good grade for his project, and might earn lots of money, with that work of art– with your loved one in it. Does that upset you? High school art teachers really need to be careful with this kind of thing. You cannot have nude or semi-nude models, for art projects– and should not get into much discussions and intimate details, of the subject of the human body, in nude paintings and sculptures, in high school art classes. Just give a general historical talk when necessary, and don’t do any more than that. I have not yet read all the details of the recent controversy, of the Florida high school principal that got fired, regarding the incident of the lesson on Michaelangelo’s famous statue of David. In another case, a Florida art teacher got fired because she discussed sexuality in gross detail with students, stating that she was “pansexual”– using art as a means of discussing sex.
I found out, the students in the “David” incident were only 6th graders, eleven-year-olds, at a Florida school. Nudes are inappropriate for children. Better to discuss Renaissance art in a simple, introductory manner, no nudes. Then move on to other periods of art history. And the incident with the “pansexual” art teacher was at a Florida middle school. She had the middle-schoolers discussing sex and sexual feelings, and asked them to draw pictures depicting their personal sexual feelings– and then displayed their artwork at the school– that’s a horrible thing! Totally wrong, immoral, pornographic in nature, totally inappropriate! Glad she got fired! Teaching children is a big responsibility. A schoolteacher should never be allowed to discuss sex and sexual topics, with children. I know they have always had paid, live nude models, for figure drawing art classes, at university art departments and art schools– and the figure drawing classes are not sexual in nature at all. I just never liked that idea.
Glad I never took art. My kids did not either.
the distinguished, bearded gentleman in the photo
appears to have a vested interest in the success of
this conference
I may be confused by gender assignments these days, but I think the the caption of the photo should read: “Angela and Alex Lessard, second and third from right, …” rather than “Alex and Angela Lessard, second and third from right, …”
Just saying
one can never be too careful these daze.
Notice how that stuff is getting into everybody’s head. Read the Bible more than the internet. Need to take my own advice.
You are not “gender confused”. You are right as Angela is second from the right and Alex is third. Good thinking!