Ep 91 - Revitalizing A Dying Breed: How Dr. Alex Lassard is Breathing New Life Into Catholic Education

Alright, hello, all welcome to another episode of the Manly Catholic. I'm James, your host, and with me we have a very special guest. We have Dr Alex Lassard. Alex, welcome to the Manly Catholic podcast.

Thank you very much. Thanks so much for having me.

Absolutely, it is my pleasure. So, alex, obviously you guys put on a huge conference, adeodotus. I asked you this before we went live to make sure I did not butcher it. But why don't you give our audience a brief background of you, for those of you who have not heard of you, and then dive into Adeodotus and the conference that just happened in late June and kind of the meaning behind that as well? Very, good.

I grew up in Minneapolis, went to the college, then the College of St Thomas, which is now the University of St Thomas in St Paul, minnesota, and has a great good fortune of meeting Don Breel within the first year of being there. It was his first year, my freshman year, and I followed his courses on Cardinal Newman, on general theology and on the church and just changed the path of my life towards theology first and Catholic education second. Outside the class he introduced me to the great tradition of Catholic literature across the centuries, especially the British and American revivals of the last 70, 80 years, the great authors like Waugh and Elkhonor and Sigrid Anseth and Moriak and Lampadusa. Basically, he re-pipiculated what he had gotten from the great Professor O'Malley at Michael O'Malley at Notre Dame. I went on to graduate school at Boston College in systematic theology and studied with Father Matt Lam, who was a wonderful therapist out of the Kisemini Abbey. He later founded the graduate programs in theology at Ave Maria and taught another generation of students who are now excellent tutors and professors, and the influence of Don and Matt and other great teachers that I had is really the reason for this nonprofit at Deodottis. I had been in the community for 40 days at the beginning of 2018. Don, father Matt and another friend who had helped us financially to start an independent Catholic school here in Pasadena all died. This was a tremendous blow personally, but also a massive contribution in legacy. It struck me that I had to do something to remember that legacy and to find a way, if I was called, to carry on their work in some smaller way. Don had founded the Catholic Studies Movement, which is going very strong, and now is, I believe, the 30th year this year. So in 2018, I began to think about this and, you know, prayed, reflected, tried to discern a path, began speaking and writing more, and by 2021, we incorporated this religious nonprofit for the ongoing support of the supporting the ongoing renewal of Catholic education. Our first major event was this past month in Pasadena, at our beautiful St Andrew's Church in Old Town, pasadena, as well as the West End, in just a couple blocks away, and the range of speakers, the path of the conference, which was highlighting the major figures of the tradition and its renewal, the wonderful people who came and the wonderful literities that we had at St Andrew's all contributed to make it an extraordinarily memorable period of time and I believe it will step. It's a kind of watershed for gathering the best that has been thought and written instead about this, about Catholic education in its renewal, and I hope we can work with every other great organization. We already have partnerships with the Cardinal Newman Society, with ICLE, the Institute for Catholic Studies, who mostly served an Orthodox and Protestant Christian school market but are very friendly to Catholics as well, and so we hope this is a moment where we can be that bond of connection that Newman spoke of among people and organizations to accelerate the 50 plus years of renewal further into what is a still much reduced Catholic pro-Kiel school system.

Now, Alex, forgive me if this is too much of a personal question, but you mentioned 2018, there are three or four individuals that passed away within about 40 days. Do you feel like that kind of spurred you or maybe gave you a kick in a direction either to? I know the Cs were obviously planted already, but do you feel like that was just like an extra motivated and, if nothing else, like in their honor? I want to absolutely pursue this to the full extent of what all of your guys' dream were yes, absolutely no question.

It was a stock and a catalyst and since then it's only been reinforced by the loss of additional friends Father Paul Mankowski, who was just one of the great, one of the greatest priests I've ever known. Jack Neumeier, one of the founders of Thomas Aquinas College. Father James Saul, who I didn't know personally but who was a friend, who even students of my colleagues, of my kids who went to Santa Clara knew him well, even up to his last days. So there are connections to all of these great Catholic leaders in education and there are a lot of them that are no longer here. So, yes, it was both personal and, I hope, a broader. You know, we just have to do this work no matter what, and that generation is passing.

Yeah, I mean obviously very tragic and, I'm sure, a very tough time of grieving for you as well, but obviously it has borne much fruit, which includes this conference that was put on late June of last month and kind of a deodatus, Okay. So maybe let's dive into the name the meaning behind the name, which is fascinating to me because I've heard a couple of your other interviews when you dove into that, so I'd love to tell our listeners that and then kind of recap the conference as well, because then we're talking about what a great success it was.

Yes, thank you. Well, a deodatus was the son born out of wedlock to St Augustine. He was conceived when Augustine was about 17 years old. He was born to a woman that Augustine loved deeply but was not his wife and due to the influence of St Monica, that mother went into a convent and Augustine continued on the path towards the bishopric and the elevation in the church and his theological and philosophical work and his literary work in the Confessum and a deodatus was with him throughout the process. Throughout the next decade or more was still a decade of searching and it was only about, you know, within his teens, when Augustine finally heard, had that final moment of conversion which had been building from the inflexible conversion by Cicero Fertensius and a moral conversion which had kind of a catharsis a little earlier. But he finally had the religious and moral and intellectual all come together under that free in the garden. So a deodatus was a bit like the mirror image of. They were the same in the level of intellectual achievement. So Augustine says something about a deodatus, even kind of scaring him as how smart he was. I don't think that's the right, it's not the best translation. But he was brilliant, like Augustine. But he was faith and holy throughout his life, and so, in a sense, this is the Augustine that he would have wanted to be had he not gone down the paths that he did. But yet, at the same time, two things you've got Augustine learning from all those things. And then, secondly, god bringing good out of evil. And so a deodatus is baptized with Augustine and he's there when St Monica dies. He's not part of the Ossia Hierophany, at least as far as Augustine related in the Confessions, but he too dies within another year or so, so he's about 16 when he dies. So Augustine was 17 when he became a father, and a deodatus is with him for 16 years and dies, and it's just one more of the many losses that St Augustine loved.

What a great story. So why, I guess, was that the inspiration for the name behind the?

conference.

I mean, obviously it's an amazing story and I love that, but I'm just curious why you adopted that.

Well, it is personal too. My best friend in grad school was Mike Foley, who you probably know from the drinking with the saints. Oh yes, what do we call it? An enterprise? He's a mogul, I don't know he's. You say he dominates the drinking, the cocktail market for Catholics. So we are both adopted children, so we were both like a deodatus, conceived out of weblock, and so he has always been something of an inspiration to us, and so I personally locked up the domain, like 20 years ago, and I didn't use it for a very long time. But I've had a deodatus as a placeholder, if you will, until we finally created the nonprofit to carry the name.

I love that. Yeah, that's amazing. There's always a great story behind the naming of things, and this is no exception, for sure. So thank you for sharing that. So let's talk about the conference a little bit before we dive into Catholic education in general, Because I know again we were talking off the air and it was I mean, it's from what I could hear and see our resounding success I know you mentioned it went about as perfectly as you could have imagined, so just give our audience a little bit of a background of what went on during those few days.

Sure, and I do, I do, I really do feel that this was providentially guided from start to finish. I've had some ideas, but I and I have some friends and I wanted to bring them together and over time it took shape. It took over a year to plan, to get everything in place, to raise some money et cetera. But what I wanted to do first off, and we'll we can talk about the bigger plan over a three conference cycle later. But to start off with I wanted to get back to, to give a an understanding of the tradition in a more or less in an ordered way that would be practical for the teacher in the classroom. So, in other words, what's the importance of Jesus the teacher in the, in the classroom and in the and in the office, so to speak. So it is so the leaders of the school, the teachers, and then for the, for the students. And so we started with Jesus the teacher, who is at the heart of the beginning and the end of all of the education, of all education generally. So we acknowledge it and that that was a talk, and to a Roman, homer and Virgil, to talk about epic literature, and it's important to to epic, epic in general, but Homer and Virgil still to in in the particular to education, and that was a talk with them by Andrew Kern, the head of Cersei, the organization I mentioned a little while ago. Then James Matthew Wilson, the great poet, was our Plato speaker. Ed Phaesar spoke on Aristotle, excellent as always. Jared Stout, who was both a student of Don Brio's later in the Catholic studies era and also a father Matt Lam at Pavi Maria and a board member of a deodotus, and I will also say Mike Poe, editor on the volume of essays that will come out of this conference. Jared spoke on education in the Bible as a follow up in Jesus the teacher. And we then went on to St Augustine with Mike Foley, st Benedict, francis, dominic, father Spitzer spoke on St Ignatius and the Rappio Studiorum, arthur Kippler on the Catholic education on application as such. Then we covered new, then we got into the, to the I would mark the renewal, basically from Newman forward, and so Paul Princeton came from Oxford to speak on Newman. We had Joe Hesmeyer speak on De La Salle and John Bosco and that's that's a, you know, almost contemporary there. Father Sebastian Walts, our chaplain, the great Norbertine, spoke on Charles De Connick, who was the teacher of the teachers at St Mary's Marraga as well as Thomas Aquinas College that came after they were at St Mary's Marraga. Margarita Mooney Clayton spoke on South Maritain and Luigi Gittani Dale Alquist when you can guess who Dale Alquist talked on, I wouldn't ask him to stray from sex with an enemy and he was wonderful as always. David Whalen from Hillsdale, with our John senior speaker, and that was excellent. Arjun Snell of the Witherspoon Institute spoke on Lonergan, who is lesser known but very important, and that was part of what I hope to bring forward. We'll make more of that along the way and I'm feeling a terrific job on Christopher Dawson, also a critical figure in the renewal of Catholic legislation. And then Neil Hudson on Mortimer Adler and Dr Barsund, who were friends of his. Mike Notten came from Catholic Studies at St Thomas to speak on Don Brille and the Catholic Studies movement, and that was beautiful and moving. And then the conference ended in this series with Potter, edmund Volstein speaking on the Burke with Brothers, as well as Jack Neumeyer and Ron MacArthur, and so we tried. There are many more figures that will be part of our conference handbook on Catholic education and culture, but those were our lives, major figures of the tradition and its renewal.

Alex, do folks have access to these talks? I know you mentioned the handbook obviously is going to be coming out. Can people still go to the website and get access to these talks or is it going to be transitioned to that handbook that you mentioned?

It will be both and we are in the process of our media team is about a quarter to a third of the way through the post-production. They are professionally produced. We captured all talks, all sermons and the full mass of the Americans which are concluding literacy with a brief talk, a brief and beautiful talk by the composer Frank Laracca ahead of time, and that was just a stunning way to finish the conference. And we also have additional materials, such as a conversation between Andrew Sealy and Andrew Kern on epic literature that carries forward what Andrew spoke of in his Homer and Virgil, and Andrew Sealy is our most articulate representative for Colson as the modern epic writer. So there are some very interesting things there and we'll add more and more resources. And we will do two other things. So, first off, that library will be accessible in the same way you could have dreamed it you could, for the very same price, though. There will be many more resources. Everyone will get access to that who attended or who purchased and stuff through the conference library, and we will make that very rich indeed. We will also have a free library of resources on, basically a library of Catholic education texts that are in the public domain that we will be putting together. So there'll always be something of interest that you might not be able to find anywhere else that we'll put together on a free basis. But we will take these talks and these sermons and we will be creating courses out of them that have been requested by a number of dioceses already. So the archdiocese we have nine dioceses involved. This was not an area where I recruited that or solicited that. It was most gratifying that the archdiocese of Los Angeles contacted me and made us a catechetical program immediately, that the archdiocese of Boston reached out to have us create a learning path for their 100 schools, and we had the superintendent of the archdiocese of Denver, elias Moe, here, as well as representatives from a couple of Denver high schools and many other schools from around the country. But I just wanted to emphasize that this was a most welcome and most gratifying and unanticipated immediate response from dioceses who are looking for these kinds of resources as fundamental for their Catholic schools. So we'll create learning paths that are specific to the needs of a particular diocese, and we will also. I'm sorry, are you still there?

I am. Yes, you're fine. Is it kind of on your own? I'm?

very sorry, I had a phone call that interrupted the video and so I'm not actually seeing, but so, anyway, I'll just wrap up on that that we have the basic resources, we will create a number of five courses that help individual schools and dioceses move through the fundamentals of the tradition in a very practical way, and then we will have these, not only the handbooks. We have a brand new contract with Catholic University Press of America and we will be publishing both Jared Stoud's. Our first book under the Audeodotus in Catholic View imprint will be a book on the sacramental dimensions of Catholic education, and then our second book will be the first handbook, the first volume of the handbook on Catholic education and culture.

So just a few projects that you guys are undertaking right now.

Yeah, Well, there's a lot to do and there are so many great people working on these things. That was the most part of the joy of doing this was to meet so many other people. I mean I knew Andrew and Mike VanHackie and Beth Sullivan and Andrew Kern and others who are working so, so fruitfully in this area, the vineyard of the Lord. But there are so many others that I met people from the John Paul the great institute in Lafayette, louisiana, people who came from Long Island, dom Eliasar who runs the schools of St Mary's, and from Seattle to Long Island, from Canada to Costa Rica. We had a Colombian and a Costa Rican contingent who are reviewing Catholic education in central and Latin America. Really exciting things happening throughout, really throughout the world, and we're very happy to be a little gathering, a little source of connection and a resource for people.

Well, you guys might be a little gathered, but you clearly are making huge waves, especially in the Catholic education world, and you touched on a few things I wanted to kind of dive a little bit deeper on. So you mentioned revitalizing Catholic education or renewing it, and you mentioned the epic literature, and I always find that so fascinating that when you talk about renewing education, time and timing, you always go back to the classics. So there's something about this epic literature. You mentioned Homer, you mentioned Virgil, you mentioned Plato, aristotle, chesterton, you mentioned Tolkien. So why is it, alex, do we keep coming back to these timeless classics? I mean, clearly there's something about how these individuals wrote that impacts humans, no matter what age and life that they are, no matter how technologically advanced we become, no matter how more sophisticated we become, we always come back to these classics. So why is it, alex, that, in your perspective, is, when we talk about this revitalization, it usually comes back to kind of the basics, really, of education and the foundations of education.

Well, I'll take a couple stabs at it. One is simply that if we look at Jesus' titheater, jesus doesn't teach anything that the Father didn't tell him to teach. So he is a representative of the Father and our teachers are representatives of him, and his story is the story that we all. Every great story, every great epic, is in some way tied into the one great epic of the Bible. So the Lord of the Rings. You could not imagine that being written without a deep knowledge of the biblical story, of the whole arc of biblical history from Genesis to Apocalypse, and our stories just go into that story. When we read of our origins and our ends, there's a space between the Acts of the Apostles and the Book of Revelation, which is the space in which our stories are written into that in a living way. So there's that. And as made in the image and likeness of God, but as fallen, this great drama of a good garden and a perfect creation falling, act I, act II and Act III is redemption and sanctification and everything that plays out from there forward. That's the great drama and every other story is in. You know, jordan Peterson has gotten onto this, except for getting to the point I think he's kind of like where CS Lewis was before Tolkien made him realize that the or brought it to, you know, brought him to the point where he could realize that that it's the myth that's through. And so every true story, as ambitious or as big or as small as it is, if it's true, it is in some way a mirror or a part of, or a retelling or reformulation of some aspect of that great story of human, of the creation of the world, the creation of man, the fall of man and the redemption of man.

Yeah, it really is. It really is. Fascinating to me, though, too and I know we talked about off the air too is that, you know, sadly and this is where you guys are stepping into the kind of the trenches as you know, sadly there are a lot of Catholic schools that, as we say, you know they're kind of Catholic and name only, so to speak, and obviously there's amazing Catholic institutions out there, and so it sounds like you guys are reinvigorating that curriculum where not only you're going back to the basics, but you're also going back to, you know, the basics of our Catholic faith. You know, because that's like you mentioned with. You know Jesus he never taught anything that the Father didn't tell him, you know. And same thing that you know he taught the apostles who then led the church, and now we have this amazing Catechism. So I guess kind of dive into that a little bit more too, obviously the vigorous curriculum with the epic literature and things that you're talking about, but also the foundations of our Catholic faith as well.

Yeah, and let me just do a brief follow-up on your last question. How did Jesus teach? Jesus taught in parables. Jesus taught in a way that literature and epic and good history, and even you know, when we get far enough along, every good work, every good conversation is a logo of the, our logo, of the logo. And I mean to say that the beauty of literature that draws us in we see increasingly in subjects that we might not initially. When we follow a path of education towards our flourishing and towards the fulfillment of the circle of knowledge that Newman spoke of, we will come to see that in everything. So we'll come to see the beauty of mathematics and of physics and of psychology, deeply and fully understood, as well as every other aspect of creation that we can turn our attention to. So there is another aspect of the importance of story and of not just epic but any narrative. But then in terms of Catholic schools, yes, we hit a high point in about 1965 with over 13,000 Catholic schools out of the Third Plenary Council. In the late 1800s the church had mandated a school in every parish and every Catholic child in one of those schools. It never happened but it got really, it happened to a great degree. And that was the peak over five million students in that period for a year. We're now just over two million and the population is much bigger. So that's a much bigger drop than five to two. And then, secondly, fewer than half of those schools are still open and that will keep going down. And in LA it's happening, you know, two to three schools a year, for sometimes our closing hate schools. So that's so. Yes, there's been a, there was a. The schools were not in good shape. It wasn't a function of the sixties only, it was a function of the 20s, 30s, 40s where, and 50s where they where the, where the instruction obviously wasn't robust enough or adequate enough to have students and faculty and the orders of nuns and the priests and the bishops be able to handle the challenges that came in the sixties and seventies and beyond. And so in a sense the whole thing had been. You know, for various reasons the whole thing was already kind of hollowed out and and it was not hard to to so decimate it at first and then it kept going. So it's really like 80% down from those years and we're just turning the corner. But what's, what's important about the last 50 years is that all along the way, there have been people who have been trying to think it through, retrieve all the good that maybe had been lost or forgotten or made into rote instead of understood and and and strongly held and and and zest, if you will, you know, in terms of self appropriation, where you make something your own and you and you've taken away from you. People have been working towards that in in various formats and various platforms in colleges, independent schools, homeschool, charter schools, hybrids, and and that is now the, the ballast, or the, or the critical mass. I would say at this point to have a rapid acceleration of the renewal. And, of course, there have been cultural things that have have poured fuel on this. Parents have been shown things that they may not have known during the, during the lockdown, they saw classrooms that they they didn't fully understand before. They saw the ideology has become a it's, it's accelerating in a hypertrophic way, and so parents are awakening, the school choice movement is strengthening. The Supreme Court has really helped with the the MAKEN versus MADE case settled last year. So this is a moment where we can reprieve, reformulate and renew all the good and make it our own again in a way that can be robust out in, in centered in in clarity and the love of the, love of the word, who loved us into creation and and and passed along to the next generation.

Yeah, I mean, one of the blessings, alex, that you mentioned and I think we'd speak to the church as a whole is that obviously there's a lot of negativity, a lot of scandal that's come out in the last several years, but at the same time it brings to light the things that needed to come out, because you can't change, you can't reinvigorate, you can't renew something that, if you think it's going fine, so it is. I mean, obviously a tragedy with, like you said, during COVID, parents are like what are they teaching you? And without that, without the pandemic, then that a lot of this probably may not have happened or at least taken several more years for it to kind of come to light. So what you guys are doing, like I said, you guys are kind of just stepping in and saying, hey, we've identified a problem and let's figure out a way to do that. And I did want to kind of get your perspective too, alex, on the changes in technology. Obviously with education, has my gosh, it's completely changing. Even when I was in grade school and high school it just says skyrocketed. So how have you noticed? Maybe, as you dive deep, because you kind of get into the, you know the back burner and the blueprints of education. How have you noticed talking with them I'm sure a bunch of teachers and in academia as well? How have you seen and heard that technology has changed the way education needs to be taught and presented to to young students?

Well, I think the the awareness is already strong and growing that the temptations of, of technology as a, as a as bringing efficiency or or you know, a new, a new form of learning to students. I think so. I think that's been exploded. I think it's been increasingly clear that it not only isn't a good in the classroom but that it also has significant harms, that now schools such as Wyoming Catholic have gone the farthest in removing technology from from higher education, and that is a very positive thing for for the students who who go through it Most. Even things like law schools don't let you know. Most many law schools don't let you take notes electronically anymore, because it's not, it's not a component of learning in the same way that writing it. But so we have. We have a couple different different aspects. One is that I should say the positive thing If you already have a good habit, you're fairly well formed, you're not a slave to technology but you control your technology, then there are great blessings. So we we have been able to do a friend top two friends do a communion call every month at where we did for a long time, and we were able to bring people together. That would never. It would never have happened if it was only live meetings. So it can extend the reach in a positive way, just as families can see their loved ones on a more frequent basis. But that's none of that substitutes for them meeting. I'll give you a great example. I had a DC similar onto one of those calls last year, and I said it was a great call. He's a wonderful thinker, wonderful guy, and I had invited him to my conference but he, he, couldn't travel at that, at that point. But we happened to be in Denver together last month and or not last week, and that and that, four days spending, you know, a significant amount of time over a number of days, you know, there's nothing like that, there's nothing like that to the presence of a, of an emerging friendship. It's an extraordinary thing and so so even the positive things are only shadows of the real thing. But but then, on the other, you know, in the much more sinister side, the race to the bottom of the brain cell, brain stem, the, the substitute of dopamine, hits for real achievements, you know. So, in other words, the, the, the, the rewards given for no real achievement, which is essentially what all social media is and all gaining is. That is just a horrific thing for, for young, young people, who, who, who think they can get the reward because they're told they can, without having, without actually making, without actually learning something, doing something or becoming something better. That's, that's just a? A that's a horrible thing. And it and that, combined with envy and and and the nastiness, the, the, the mimetic, the mimetic contagion of social media, which is due pressure on steroids, all of those things are are utterly damaging and contribute directly to depression, anxiety and suicidal ideation, which is the, you know, a crime. Beyond that's a crime that will cry out to heaven for vengeance.

Hmm, yeah, I mean, alex, even just what you're talking about. You know the what you call the race for the brainstem.

With the bottom of the brain down to the bottom of the brainstem.

Yeah, so I because I mean, when I was growing up, I I mean I was basically addicted to video games and I Remember, even just hearing you talk, I remember I would. You know, you, you have the, the gaming achievements right, you know you reach the next level or you win the championship, you know, and and you're like, oh, yeah, like that would be so cool. And then you get to it and you're like, oh, that was kind of that's kind of stupid. Like now I want more, you know, and like you don't even like celebrate. It's not like an exciting thing, but you think it's gonna be. And then it's like more, more, more, and then it just keeps feigning you. And same thing with the Social media, obviously, like you said, like we won't be able to do this interview without technology. So there is great positives, like you said, having those habits, having those parameters set in place. Technology can be a fantastic thing for the majority of us. But yeah, I mean social media especially, just that it's designed To make you addicted. That's what they're to keep scrolling, swipe up, you know the reels and YouTube shorts and everything that's coming out now it's, it's such a gosh, it's such a, like I said, it can be a positive thing, but also an extremely negative thing as well, if not use one.

One more point about that is that, even what? Even if you're on the right path, you're, you're growing an intellectual, intellectual virtue. You're, you're, you're understanding more about the human condition and you want to take, you want to, you want to defend the truth that you you have a few, you've discovered you. If you go online to do that, you're becoming part of a game that's your own Game, that you're a play Europe on is not a controller of. So the technology and the monetization of attention there is no care for what you actually think. You can be on either side and you're part of the monetization because you keep the, you keep the fight going. You're actually part of the problem in fighting in that way, which is not something a lot of people want to hear. But you have to find a way to transcend the, the medium itself, because the medium is a, is a demonic medium. It's a medium that is is meant to scatter people, and Fights on the internet are part of that, and the and the ability to, to create State-building moments on the on the internet, especially Twitter, I mean that is. That is straight out of Leviticus. It's the old state-built mechanism being worked into Lee and on him on at scale. And it is, it is. It is literally demonic scattering of the day of the demon.

So anyway, I'm a we can have you back on just talking about that, but I'm just thinking about it too, hey, alex it's. You know the things that people say to each other on social media that you would not say to somebody's face, I mean it just like even just having a conversation with you, like I'm. I don't. You know, we're not in person, but there's things that I might say to you on Twitter I would not say to you right now, just even via, you know, a zoom, you know. Yeah so it's it. Just it divides people, like you said. And then it makes them, you know, have a courage behind a keyboard, so to speak.

Yeah, yeah, anonymity, and anonymity and unaccountability are two New York cases of sin. Yeah, and and malice, I mean it. This is coveted covetousness, envy and malice and pride are. Are the are the core. There was somebody who did a nice Social media companies as connecting, connecting each one to a, to a dead, one of the seven deadly sins, a while back. It was very funny and it was, and it had a lot of it had. It rang pretty through if you went down the line. But anyway, but that's, that's probably enough. On that I'll have to look that up yeah. That's something.

I'm very passing connected to the seven deadly sins perfect. Yeah yeah, all right, alex. Well, I know you. You have to get going to an anniversary dinner and the next, you know, 20 minutes or so, so I want you to be able to get ready, but I do want to ask you. Yeah, how can folks find out more about you and a do dot this and then I'll have one more question for you. Then we'll wrap it up Great Thank you.

So everything we're doing right now is on our, is on our main web page, a day, odotiscom, and you can look up Augustin Sun. If you don't know how to spell that, or maybe you can, you can put up the, the spelling on, on a, on a, on a on a page or something, but it's a, do you know? It's gift of God or given by God. That's the, the meaning of a day of God, and the Gus who did did see this on as as given by God. So a, do you know, the a to uscom. And we will be. We have some. We're planning out the next, the next conference, which is going to. It's going to focus on the theme of integration across curricula, pedagogy, culture and principles and axiom. So it's going to be a day on each of those, each of those things, and and it will have a. It will be a very practical understanding of the sacramentality of Catholic education, of the integration of knowledge in what Newman called the circle, what he has always referred to as the power of knowledge and others have had. You know, there are some very, very interesting images for this. But and then the path will be a day on the curriculum, or path, or the or the race, really, that you run like Paul ran, ran the race. That's what. That's what a curriculum is, not a, it's not a reified assessment tool. It's a, it's a path of learning and and then a school culture and and the big questions of how you, how you learn in friendship and love and charity. So we're working through all of that and we'll announce those things on the on the website. We do have major Eucharistic projects with the Cardinal Newman Society that will be part of this next conference. We're not quite sure where it'll be yet or when it will be. I suspect it will be in 2025, not 2024, because of the amount of planning that it takes to make this a really great a gathering of people. So I'll just put that out there, that I think you'll have time. But but we would and we also need to do a lot of work with what we already gathered, which is some of the material on education. I mean, I put this together to keep learning and I learned a lot.

So we're going to bring that, to bring that to everyone else well, grand Rapids, michigan, would love to have the conference here in 2025. Alex, I'm just going to throw our name in the hat there very.

That's very interesting because father's to Rico and I have been talking, he has, he's got a new project call on the Newman, the Newman Institute for Catholic Education and Lutheran and Reverend literacy, and he sent a couple. A couple representatives were at the conference from from his group and of course, james Matthew Wilson lives in Grand Rapids and yeah, there's some good connections we. That would be very interesting. There are a few other possibilities but I do like the idea of doing something in the heart of the country, the Midwest somewhere, and then on the East Coast and bring it, bring it to the whole country over time. Basically, you know, bring, be able to bring more people who may not want to travel to California or whatever sure well, wonderful, well, yeah, I just said that was a joke.

I'm like, oh right, he might be serious here alright, I love that. I'd love to go to this conference but, so I forgot to ask you this in the beginning, so we'll wrap up with the question. Is that, if you could be the patron saint of anything, alex, what would it be and why?

I have never thought of that. I do want to be a saint and I'm trying to, I'm working on that. That was one of the one of the things my, my great mentor, don Briel, if he was ever asked, and this was through a Renaissance art as well personal sanctity is what this is about. There, you know, to become a saint is the is the only really worthy goal of any of this. So I would say there's already a patron saint of what I, of what I would like to be, and that's John Henry Newman, and that's being a bond of connection among people, a link in it. So so that that's beautiful prayer that he that he wrote on on on having a mission that may not be known in this life but will be so to him by God to be that way, to be that bond, to bring people together in love and fair, in love of the love of the good and through in the beautiful. That that's what I want to be the patron saint of but I can, but again, newman did that and no one. I don't think I can't do that in any, in any shadow of Newman, and I doubt anybody.

I doubt there's a better thing for that what you know as a lot of my guess is like, if I just become a saint, that's all I really care about.

I, don't need to be a patron saint of anything.

I'll just take the same to the at that point well, alex this has been a blast. Thank you so much for coming on and enjoy your anniversary dinner. You say 3032 years, 32 years tomorrow.

Well, congratulations what a lovely wife, angela. Nine children and the number six and seven grandchildren on the way fantastic congratulations.

Well, thank you again, alex. Thank you so much for everyone who is listening. Until next time, go out there and be a saint.