Page 58 - Gonzaga at 60
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GONZAGA AT SIXTY: A WORK IN PROGRESS
John Wilson with students in the end he jeisons that framework, can be too ierce. In Ireland, a “simple faith” has been
of Greek at Mycenae in content with a level of theological understanding beneath our understanding of poliics or our
1972
capaciies in well-established professional ields. We have expected our priests and nuns to
serve as missionaries in the wide world. At home, in our capacity as believers, we have hardly
trusted ourselves to contribute to public policy. Even where policy has been deeply rooted in
Chrisian values, for example our paience and non-violence in relaion to Northern Ireland, we
have found it diicult to ariculate this or to confess to virtue.
Joe Veale’s long war against the subaltern mentality was announced in his aricle “Men
Speechless” published in “Studies” just over ity years ago. It took from the ancient world the
insight that the ability to give expression to experience is the most valuable of educaional
atainments. For the person who inds words for what is happening – what is really happening
– the scope of reason is much broader than facts veriied by experiment. When such a person
stumbles on what he cannot analyse – a love afair, say, or an injusice with ancient roots – he
dares to approach that mystery through language, conident that our most vital experiences are
in their inner nature consonant with reason.
“Rhetoric” understood in this way, as the recruitment and marshalling of words in the
interests of a true account, as ides quaerens intellectum, stands above individual sciences
and the separate departments of knowledge – above them because it organises them for the
purposes of persuasion. The good man trained in this art, Quinilian’s (and Joe Veale’s) vir bonus
GONZAGA AT SIXTY: A WORK IN PROGRESS
John Wilson with students in the end he jeisons that framework, can be too ierce. In Ireland, a “simple faith” has been
of Greek at Mycenae in content with a level of theological understanding beneath our understanding of poliics or our
1972
capaciies in well-established professional ields. We have expected our priests and nuns to
serve as missionaries in the wide world. At home, in our capacity as believers, we have hardly
trusted ourselves to contribute to public policy. Even where policy has been deeply rooted in
Chrisian values, for example our paience and non-violence in relaion to Northern Ireland, we
have found it diicult to ariculate this or to confess to virtue.
Joe Veale’s long war against the subaltern mentality was announced in his aricle “Men
Speechless” published in “Studies” just over ity years ago. It took from the ancient world the
insight that the ability to give expression to experience is the most valuable of educaional
atainments. For the person who inds words for what is happening – what is really happening
– the scope of reason is much broader than facts veriied by experiment. When such a person
stumbles on what he cannot analyse – a love afair, say, or an injusice with ancient roots – he
dares to approach that mystery through language, conident that our most vital experiences are
in their inner nature consonant with reason.
“Rhetoric” understood in this way, as the recruitment and marshalling of words in the
interests of a true account, as ides quaerens intellectum, stands above individual sciences
and the separate departments of knowledge – above them because it organises them for the
purposes of persuasion. The good man trained in this art, Quinilian’s (and Joe Veale’s) vir bonus
