Ex umbris in veritatem. This is the Canongate motto.
What does this actually look like at Canongate?
One answer is our Senior Seminar. This class was designed to prepare our senior ladies for the challenges they will face after graduation and upon entering higher education, gainful employment, and beginning a family. We want to do our best to make sure those we help bring ex umbris in veritatem do not, upon graduation, go ex veritate in umbras – from the truth back into the shadows.
Here are some of the questions we have been and will be tackling in this course:
- What does it mean for a woman to be an intellectual?
- Can a wife and mother have an intellectual life?
- Is motherhood a dignified vocation?
- What are the dominant critical ideologies students often encounter in higher education, and what is the best way to respond to them?
- What do natural law and the magisterium teach us about issues related to marriage and family, such as contraception, abortion, surrogacy, IVF, divorce?
- What has been the effect of the sexual revolution on the way women perceive themselves and their roles vis-a-vis men?
- Is there such a thing as a Catholic feminist?
- What are the most common objections to the Catholic faith young adults will face by their friends, peers or professors? How can they best respond to them?
- How can we guard against becoming part of the 80% (or more) of young Catholics who abandon the Church after graduating from high school?
So far, the Senior Seminar has had two guest speakers join us: Katy Faust, founder of ThemBeforeUs, and Maddy Pelletier from the Person and Identity Project of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, speaking on surrogacy and gender theory. Dr. Rebecca Morse, founder of the Ruth Institute, is scheduled to speak to the class later this month on the sexual revolution and its impact on women and children.
The goal of this course is to equip our senior ladies to anticipate, not be caught off guard by, and know how to respond to the lifestyle and intellectual challenges they will face as young adult alumnae of Canongate.
Please pray for them (and our one senior gentleman!) as they prepare to enter life after Canongate in just a few months.