Last week I received a lovely box of shiny new books from the Open University, and had the pleasure of opening this box of delights. At least it is a delight at the moment; no doubt when the first assignment arises, I may feel slightly less overjoyed. The course starts in November, so this gives me some time to prepare.
I finished the previous one, AA100 - 'The Arts Past and Present' - at the end of September, and during the year I also completed A297 - 'Reading Classical Latin' - in June. So it has been a very busy year, but a very interesting one. I absolutely loved the Latin course, although it necessarily involved a lot of memorising of vocabulary and grammar. I would have liked to continue with it at a higher level, but I found the Arts P & P course so interesting - and so challenging - that I think my future studies may move to history and politics. At least thats the idea at the moment because I find everything so fascinating that I want to know more about it.
The reason I found AA100 challenging had nothing to do with the content of the course, which as it is Level 1 gives a 'taster' of various academic disciplines. Rather, it was learning the techniques of academic writing. This is a specialised style with its own very specific rules, and it is totally alien to my own - which as I can see now - is full of opinion, assumptions and unacknowledged value judgements. But if you want to be taken seriously in the academic arena you must learn to write in the appropriate style. And quite right too!
There is a whole debate out there in the wider community where people of every opinion are attempting to articulate for themselves a philosophy of life which could make sense of this apparently pointless and chaotic world. We Catholics do not feel that life is pointless or, at its deepest level, chaotic, and we have a sound intellectual basis for believing what we do. Faith and Reason are profoundly connected. But if we want to share this with others we must be prepared to enter the cut-throat arena of public debate, and speak out. There is one very important proviso. We must be well prepared and educated. That is why the Heralds of the Gospel place so much importance on education. The University of the Heralds of the Gospel opened initially with courses in Philosophy and Theology, but all of their members are encouraged to develop their education in every area. Their founder Msgr. João Scognamiglio Clá Dia is an outstanding exemplar of this idea. See: http://heraldsgospelsinengland.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/our-founder-msgr-joao-scognamiglio-cla.html We must have the intellectual skills and understanding so that what we say or write will be taken seriously in the marketplace.
So this is why I have decided to do A150. I need to hone those skills that I have begun to develop in AA100. And anyway, its fun! So for the next few months I will be grappling with the questions of:
- how authority is sometimes conferred on texts through establishing approved ‘canons’ of selected works,
- the relationship between language and identity, and the way language is used in different social settings
- the way that ideas about social order were produced and exchanged
If you wish to know more, see: http://www3.open.ac.uk/study/undergraduate/course/a150.htm
As a Catholic today, I feel that I should be doing something to contribute to the work of those who are trying to bring our Catholic intellectual heritage to bear on contemporary issues.There is a lot of work to be done in this area, so we lay people must join the battle and not leave it to the clergy. Pope Benedict was talking to us all as well as to priests when he said on Catholic Church's World Day of Communications in 2010, ".. proclaim the Gospel by employing the latest generation of audiovisual resources — images, videos, animated features, blogs, Web sites — which, alongside traditional means, can open up broad new vistas for dialogue, evangelization and catechesis."
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