Veritas - At Home and Abroad

In one week it will all be a reality.  I'll be on a plane, flying over the Atlantic, on my way to England.  Through the generosity of Providence College's Fr. Philip A. Smith Fellowship for Service and Study Abroad, this summer I will be spending six weeks of study at Blackfriars, Oxford.  This program gives PC students the opportunity to spend several weeks at various international sites of Catholic or Dominican heritage, engaging in either a study or service project.  I am so blessed to have been chosen as one of the seven 2012 Smith Fellows, and hope to be able to share some of my experiences with you through this blog!

During my time at Oxford, I will be working with tutors both at Blackfriars Hall, one of the University of Oxford's colleges, which is run by the Dominicans of the English Province, and at the Anscombe Bioethics Centre.  I will be taking several tutorials in ethics, centering my readings on the works of Elizabeth Anscombe.  Elizabeth Anscombe (1919-2001) was a prominent analytical philosopher, who studied at St. Hugh’s College, Oxford.  She wrote on a vast range of philosophical and moral topics, and I will be using her works as a starting point to delve into the field of ethics through a series of tutorials.  I hope to supplement Anscombe's works on ethics and what it means to flourish as a human being with Bl. John Paul II's writings on an authentic, Catholic anthropology.  In developing the Theology of the Body, he maintains that the Church's teachings, specifically regarding sexual morality, rather than being a burdensome restriction to freedom, are instead liberating, precisely because they respect the true nature of man.  By viewing man through the lens of a Catholic anthropology, it becomes apparent that it is through living a life in accord with the Church's teachings that one is freed to flourish to one's full potential as a human being. 

Aside from my academic studies, I am also eager simply to be surrounded by the culture of Oxford.  Spending six weeks at Blackfriars during Trinity Term, staying at an evangelical college, interacting with fellow students -- what a once-in-a-lifetime experience!  Immersed in the rich history of Oxford and the surrounding area -- from the heroic saints fighting to hold onto their Catholic faith during the Reformation (the Birmingham oratory was the first seminary to re-open after the Catholics were expelled from England following the Reformation), to the great Christian apologists (such as Chesterton and C.S. Lewis), to the artists who through their literary works pointed to eternal truth (Shakespeare, Waugh, Tolkien, Hopkins ... the list goes on) -- the beauty of our Catholic heritage shines forth and urges us to follow in the examples of these heroes who stood up to the pressures of their times, and like them to share with others the liberating treasure of the Church's teachings. 

In our society, pursuing veritas, truth, often requires having the courage to be countercultural -- Anscombe herself is a model of standing up for the Truth in the face of controversy.  As she so eloquently expresses:

What people are for is, we believe, like guided missiles, to home in on God, God who is the one truth it is infinitely worth knowing, the possession of which you could never get tired of, like the water which if you have you can never thirst again, because your thirst is slaked forever and always.  It's this potentiality, this incredible possibility, of the knowledge of God of such a kind as even to be sharing in His nature, which Christianity hold out to people; and because of this potentiality every life, right up to the last, must be treated as precious.

Veritas.  Not only is it PC's motto -- it's what humans, in all places and in all ages, desire.  And in one week, the little missile that is my search for truth will begin tracing its way across the ocean...