Faculty Publications

When the founder of Saint Vincent, Boniface Wimmer, OSB, arrived in Latrobe, Pennsylvania in 1846, he quickly set out to establish a monastery and school that would be immersed in the arts. Envisioning the arts as having the same status and support as science and religion, Wimmer immediately began to assemble artists, teach students, and collect art. Over the past 170 years Saint Vincent has been inspired by its founder's vision - continuing to collect art that edifies spaces on campus, provokes discussion, and engages diverse modes of thought and inquiry. "Art Nourishes Life: Selected Works from the Saint Vincent Art & Heritage Collections" traces a unique history of collecting back to the mid-19th century when artwork began arriving at the nascent community through the auspices of King Ludwig I of Bavaria. At the time of this publication, Saint Vincent counts some 4,000 works of art in its holdings ranging from ancient to contemporary in nearly all media. This full-color volume features over fifty works culled from Saint Vincent's impressive holdings. These works stand not only as a testament to Abbot Boniface and King Ludwig, but to the myriad of artists, educators, and benefactors whose determined efforts collectively acknowledge the power of art to transform its viewers and environment.

 About the Authors

 Andrew Julo serves as the director/curator at the Verostko Center for the Arts on the campus of Saint Vincent College in Latrobe. Before relocating to Pennsylvania, Julo was formerly as a member of the curatorial staff managing the corporate art collection of Hallmark Cards in Kansas City, Mo. Julo is a graduate of the University of Missouri - Kansas City (M.A.) and Saint John's University in Collegeville, Mn (B.A.).

A senior curator in the Word and Image Department at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, Douglas Dodds is responsible for developing the Department's digital art collections, which range from early computer art to recent born-digital works. Dodds has curated a variety of exhibitions and displays at the V&A including: Chance and Control: Art in the Age of Computers (2018-); Barbara Nessim: An Artful Life (2013); and Digital Pioneers (2009-10) as well as an expanded version of the Barbara Nessim exhibition for the Bard Graduate Center in New York (2014). Other V&A projects include Deciphering Dickens, an initiate that makes the Victorian author's manuscripts more accessible online. In addition, Dodds leads efforts to digitize the Department's prints, drawings, paintings and photograph collections. Douglas is a Trustee of Seven Stories, the National Centre for Children's Books and chairs the associated Seven Stories Collection Trust.

A member of the Saint Vincent Archabbey monastic community, Br. Nathan Cochran, OSB, (1957 - 2014) served as the director of The Saint Vincent Gallery for over thirty years. Br. Nathan curated over sixty exhibitions, interpreting the art and history of Saint Vincent, including the 1986 seminal exhibition, "Gifts of a King: The Treasured Art of Saint Vincent Archabbey.

Roman Verostko, co-founder of the Algorists, identifies with first generation pioneers of computer art who create original algorithms for generating their art. Perennially interested in semiotics, philosophy, and cross- cultural exchange, Verostko's work exists at the nexus of creativity and technological innovation. Over the course of his career, Verostko's work has appeared in over a hundred exhibitions nationally and internationally, and to date, he has twenty-two published articles on subjects ranging from a 1964 paper on Abstract Liturgical art to his 1988 International Symposium on Electronic Art paper identifying the biological analogues to generative art. His work is in numerous international public and private collections.

Based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Abzorb Design, Inc. specializes in print, digital, and environmental identity material. Meticulously attentive to client needs, Abzorb boasts an impressive marketing and design portfolio. Learn more at: www.abzorb.com

I write with the exciting news that the Saint Vincent Center for Catholic Thought and Culture has published its first volume of Conversatio: A Journal in the Tradition of Catholic, Benedictine, and Liberal Education.

The idea of the journal is to provide a venue for Saint Vincent faculty to write for our community. The journal includes essays, poetry, and book reviews. As you can see from the contents below, the entries are academically serious and largely interdisciplinary in nature. They are the sorts of things one would expect a liberally educated person at a Catholic, Benedictine college in Latrobe to find informative, enriching, and—well—fun.  Authors come from all parts of campus. This has truly been a collaborative endeavor full of SVC charm. The journals contents include:

              Essays

Nathan Munsch, OSB – “Conversatio Morum: Hallmark of Benedictine Education or Invitation to a Way of Life

Jason Jividen – “Reading Xenophon’s Cyropaedia”

Robert Bufalini – “A Commemoration of Dante Alighiere: Dante’s Encounter with Saint Benedict in Paradiso XXII”

Aaron J. Sams and Kelsey S. Sams – “The Mind of Dorothy Sayers”

Michael Robinson – “Beyond Strength: The Cosmology of C.S. Lewis”

Daniel J. Heisey – “Mister Rogers’ Miniature Neighborhood”

Symposium on E. F. Schumacher’s Small is Beautiful

Lucas Briola – “A New Society within the Shell of the Old: Reflections on Small is Beautiful and an Integral Ecology”

Justin Petrovich – “Uncertainty is Beautiful”

Zachary G. Davis – “Of Course People Matter: A Response to Small is Beautiful from a ‘Modern’ Economist”

Book Reviews

Patricia Sharbaugh – Leon R. Kass, Founding God’s Nation

Matthew A. Fisher – Luigi Gioia, O.S.B., Saint Benedict’s Wisdom: Monastic Spirituality and the Life of the Church

Edward Mazich, O.S.B. – John Henry Newman, A Benedictine Education: The Mission of Saint Benedict and the Benedictine Schools

Daniel Vanden Berk – Stephen M. Barr, Modern Physics and Ancient Faith

Reviews of Faculty Books

Steven Gravelle – Joseph Ogbonnaya and Lucas Briola, Everything is Interconnected: Towards a Globalization with a Human Face and an Integral Ecology

Sara Lindey – Jerome C. Foss, Flannery O’Connor and the Perils of Governing by Tenderness

Daniele Arcara – Michael P. Krom, Justice and Charity

Dana Winters – Eric J. Mohr and Holly k. Mohr, Mister Rogers and Philosophy: Wondering through the Neighborhood

Stacy Birmingham – Patricia Sharbaugh, Irrepressible Light: The Women of the New Testament

Ben Schachter – Bradley C.S. Watson, Progressivism: The Strange History of a Radical Idea

Poetry

Selected Poetry of Julia Snyder

Isabel Sicree, Nicole Fratrich, and Elizabeth Elin -  Winners of the 2021 Martin Luther King, Jr. Poetry Contest

No other encyclical has generated as much conversation—both Catholic and non-Catholic—as Laudato si’. Often forgotten in these conversations is the theological heart and eucharistic vision of the encyclical and its integral ecology. Even the title of Laudato si’—"Praised be!"—signals the centrality of right praise in caring for our common home. Using Bernard Lonergan’s theology of history, this book unearths the doxological, eucharistic vision that shapes the encyclical’s integral presentation of social and ecological conversion. It offers the first book-length study that recovers the eucharistic nature of Laudato si’.

In drawing out the eucharistic vision of Laudato si’, the book accomplishes several feats for the reader. It roots the eucharistic dimensions of the encyclical in the writings of Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI, showing how Pope Francis develops their thought in notable ways. It introduces Bernard Lonergan’s theology of history, showing how his framework can capture the eucharistic contours of caring for our common home; so too, in light of Laudato si’, does the book expand his theology of history to incorporate both ecological concern and the doxological, eucharistic essence of the church. The book assembles a liturgically shaped, systematic account of the church’s social mission. It joins poles otherwise sundered in a polarized church and world: between worship and justice, between concerns for human life and concerns for the natural world. Realizing the eucharistic vision of Laudato si’ promises much for our contemporary moment.

Pope Francis recently observed that the integral ecology of Laudato si’ holds the key for the world’s recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. The U.S. Catholic Bishops recently launched a Eucharistic Revival that aims to rekindle eucharistic devotion and praxis. The Eucharistic Vision of Laudato Si’ : Praise, Conversion, and Integral Ecology supplies a timely study that helps fulfill these intertwined calls.