Outdoor Universities

Father Bede Jarrett says:
“The truths of a generation
become the platitudes
of the next generation.”
Henrik Ibsen says:
“Thought must be rewritten
every twenty years.”
That is to say
eternal principles
must at all times
be presented
in the vernacular
of the man on the street.
Emerson says
that the way
to acquire the vernacular
of the man of the street
is to go to the street
and listen
to the man of the street.
The way to become dynamic
and cease to be academic
is to rub shoulders
with the men on the street.

Some one said
that the Catholic Worker
is a movement
for down-and-outs.
And it is a movement
for down-and-outs,
including
down-and-out business men,
down-and-out college graduates
and down-and-out college professors.
In the Catholic Worker,
besides being fed,
clothed and sheltered,
people learn
to use their hands
as well as their heads.
And while they learn
to use their heads
to guide their hands,
the use of their hands,
improves a great deal
the working of their heads.

In Silver Springs,
a few miles
from Washington, D. C.,
the Missionaries
of the Holy Trinity
combine manual labor
with intellectual pursuits.
They go to the Catholic University
in the morning,
build their own campus
or cultivate their land
in the afternoon
and do their homework
in the evening.
While they do manual labor
their mind is taken off
their studies,
which is to the benefit
both of their health
and their studies.
In Silver Springs
scholars try to be workers
and workers
try to be scholars.

The machine
is not an improvement
on man’s skill;
it is an imitation
of man’s skill.
Read Post-Industrialism
by Arthur Penty.
The best means
are the pure means
and the pure means
are the heroic means.
Read Freedom in the Modern World
by Jacques Maritain.
The future of the Church
is on the land,
not in the city;
for a child
is an asset
on the land
and a liability
in the city.
Read The Church and the Land
by Father Vincent McNabb, O.P.