Boston Catholic Men's Conference

www.catholicboston.com
www. tsaab.com
www.peterkreeft.com

I arrived at Boston College (the venue for the conference) at 7am, and helped collect tickets - I had a fairly boring job, other than the fact you get to see _everyone_ as they come in - sorts of makes me feel like I got to meet everyone!

I didn't get to hear much of Tarek Saab, but did get to hear all of Peter Kreeft. He spoke of things in his book "Ecumenical Jihad" but also that the "culture war" has been on since original sin, and won't end until the end times. He framed it in an interesting way: Culture of life is a culture that allows itself to be detached from this world, and focus on the next. Culture of death is that seeks happiness in this world alone, and want to create a utopia here. Culture of life actually embraces death ("unless a grain of wheat.."), while the culture of death embraces the continuation of this life. It's like a choice for an egg - will you stay in the shell forever, or embrace the death of the shell and hatch! Unfortunately, logic doesn't really work when we are dealing with the culture of death, because the issue is not that those who live in the culture of death don't understand the arguments, but their metaphysics is different. To fight this "dark magic," we need "white magic.", not arguments. That is, prayer and fasting.

The fight for souls occur most prominently in our education system, especially in the humanities, according to Kreeft. I found that statement inspiring, as a prospective professor, and it helps me affirm my call to this line of work. In my line of work, geriatric and aging research, we encounter two factions: "anti-aging, life extension" people, and people who work in hospice and palliative care. The Gerontological Society of America meetings have sessions on how to deal with this "stay in this world" "anti-aging" movements.

Kreeft also calls the modern professorship "the intellectual prostitution." Where we peddle knowledge for money. and Boston College as his "pimp." This was funny, but it points out that people don't learn to think in college - I realized that after 4 years of engineering, I knew nothing about how the world runs or how to write well. After 7 years of graduate school, I hope I know things a bit better.

Anyway, he put this much more eloquently.