My Introduction To Philosophy

[Sanvean]

My first year philosophy professor was anything but an example of the tired and dry academic so common in the sciences. At the time, I was fresh and bright-eyed(but too naive to realize this), and didn't quite realize that he was not quite so extraordinary as I thought.

I was at a very important crossroads in my life, and my twice weekly experiences in his classroom provided me with the foundations that ultimately lead me straight to the bosom of the Catholic Church. I can only imagine his reaction if he knew!

Ah, his lectures were incredible. He was a man of fire.... for years before returning to school, he worked in a steel mill. This showed in his gruff, brutally honest demeanor. My own blue-collar heritage has left me with a profound respect for a man who knows the meaning of a hard day's work. Everything about him was physical, from his frantic pacing and dramatic postures to the way he linked summer hunting expeditions to the assigned readings. At the same time, he was the most brilliant, eloquent passionate and well-read man I had ever encountered.

At the same time, I had somehow stumbled into a very strange, almost Gnostic, distaste for the physical. In my early youth, I was enraptured by the world... it was as though something so slight as the sight of a pine bending in the wind could send me into an ecstasy. Years later, after a failed suicide attempt and a bout with self-injury, I learned to hate the flesh. Specifically, my own. I distanced myself from my past love of the physical to the other extreme.

Sean's very existance acted in contradiction to mine. As he lectured about everything from the nature of truth to the mind-body division(or lack thereof), I began to rethink a large part of my worldview. My views towards the physical world started to soften, slowly. This is something I still struggle with, even now as I learn to revel in the Sacramental nature of our faith. I'm... still working on my happy medium.

Another thing about Sean... he believed in God. No, not in the same way as I do now, but he was also very clearly not an atheist. I was, at the time, suffering from a pseudo-intellectual streak of adolescent agnosticism (funny, since I was essentially arguing that the only thing of substance to the world was that which I most reviled, the physical). Quite the fashionable form of angst, no? It was disturbing, to say the least, to encounter a man so clearly brilliant who was also a theist. Imagine that.

He made us read portions of St. Augustine's Confessions, presenting us with an image of a sour fellow, dead set on an unhealthy hatred of woman, sex, and the body in general. This, he explained, was the source of most of what was wrong with the Catholic faith. I recall, early in the semester, when Sean walked into the lecture hall, exclaiming, "I grew up Catholic, but I got better". This affirmed an almost lifelong dislike (mingled with an inexplicable fear... I had never really been exposed to Christianity of any variety while growing up) I had for Catholicism.

I was driven to study St. Augustine's writings in more depths, and the history of Catholicism, to solidify my rejection of Christianity. What I found was... something else entirely.

Two years later, I receive the Sacraments of baptism, confirmation and first communion in the Catholic Church, and in a major way, I have my first year philosophy professor to thank. He was no evangelist, to be sure, but he did open the doors that ultimately lead me home.

-Veronica

[Colleen]

Wow, that's awesome, Veronica!

[StColette]

Awesome Veronica !!!!!!!!!!

[Thy Geekdom Come]

Cool.

[VeraMaria]

Like I told you on PalTalk, that's really cool Veronica

[Brother Adam]

Thank you for sharing

[MichaelFilo]

The story is beautiful, so are your writing skills.

God bless,

Mikey