HeightsCast: Forming Men Fully Alive The Heights School

This week we feature a lecture by Fr. Carter Griffin, rector of the Saint John Paul II Seminary in Washington, D.C., to Heights Fathers on magnanimity.  This virtue calls us to stretch forth towards greatness, but with humility; to have an unshakable confidence in the victory of good over evil, but to walk slowly; to know ourselves to be loved by an all powerful father, but to be unmoved by either praise or slander.  As we help our sons to grow in virtue, Father Griffin encourages us, as fathers, to foster in ourselves this, the jewel of all the virtues which gives us confidence and certainty that God has a plan, and that we have a role in it.
 
Father Carter Griffin
St. John Henry Newmann: 
Warfare the Condition of Life

St. Thomas Aquinas on Magnanimity
https://www.newadvent.org/summa/3129.htm

Teaching Through Immersion Workshop at Northridge Preparatory School
June 17-21, 2024
 
Alexandre Havard on Magnanimity and Great Hearts

In this week's episode, Mr. Michael Moynihan discusses freedom in education. Michael traces the development of our philosophical understanding of freedom through the centuries, starting with the Greeks and moving into the modern age. Next he presents the Christian ideal of freedom as a resolution and expansion of these conflicting understandings, along with some implications of this new freedom for our work in the classroom.

This week's episode features Mr. Alexander Havard, an internationally recognized authority on leadership and virtue. Mr. Havard gives us, as parents and teachers, a beautiful introduction to the virtue of magnanimity. In addition, Mr. Havard helps us understand the critical role of the human heart in the process of first embracing and then living a life of virtue. A good education shapes not only intellect and will, but heart as well. Listen in to hear why that is the case, and how we can go about offering a great education to the great souls entrusted to us.
 
Links: 
AlexHavard.com
Books: 
Free Hearts: Understanding Your Deepest Motivations Created for Greatness: The Power of Magnanimity And more...

This week's episode features Chris McKenna, founder and CEO of Protect Young Eyes (ProtectYoungEyes.com), who discusses the challenges and opportunities of raising sons in a digital age. Our guest has been on the frontlines of the current battle to protect children from digital exploitation, both criminal and corporate. As we form sons into men of freedom, it is grossly negligent to lack awareness and plan in this domain. Chris provides both. Listen in to hear more about how parents can flip a challenge into an adventure by accompanying their sons through a digital world where pornography and distraction saturate the landscape. As always, the obstacle becomes the way, and by keeping our sights set on the good while fearlessly walking with our sons, we can rely on grace to help our boys grow into men with hearts capable of profound and lasting love.

For many people today, avoiding existential despair is like shoveling water from a damaged ship: the effort, no matter how valiant, is ultimately futile. Stuck in an immanent frame, a frame which lacks any real transcendence, one is left without a substantial source for hope.
The above remains true, though in different ways, even for believing and practicing Christians. As children of our current culture, that culture shapes even our faith. 
This week on HeightsCast, we welcome back Dr. R. J. Snell, the Director of Academic Programs at the Witherspoon Institute and the editor-in-chief of Public Discourse. In the episode, Dr. Snell discusses his recently published book, Lost in the Chaos, in which he offers an examination of the theological virtue of hope and an application of that virtue to our current times.
More than an optimistic personality trait, more than a virtue that looks forward to a time in which all shall be made right, and more than a nostalgia that pines for a past in which all is thought to have been right, R. J. encourages us to see hope as a supernatural gift whereby we trust now in the agency of God even while evil perdures around us.
Chapters 
2:55 What is hope?  7:30 The “in the end” attitude  11:00 Job and hope in the darkness 14:00 The metaphysics of despair  18:55 Safety-ism  21:55 Despair as the desire to disappear  24:30 How immanence affects even the believer 26:46 Temptations of believers and non-believers  31:40 The twin dangers of utopianism and fundamentalism  36:35 The small teams and the little flocks 42:20 The importance of loving people as they are  44:15 Re-evaluating our approach to reason and our capacity to see reality 50:50 Expanding reason  54:35 Feelings as hooks into reality 1:01:00 Towards a more human way of seeing 1:02:00 Take-aways 1:05:05 A parting blessing Also on the Forum 
Work and Acedia: On Our Original Vocation with R. J. Snell
Leisure and Acedia: On Contemplative Homes in a Frenetic Age with R. J. Snell

This week we feature a lecture offered by Head of Upper School, Michael Moynihan, at the most recent Teaching Vocation Conference. In his presentation, Michael encourages us as teachers to engage our students as free and rational agents, even when they don't want to be engaged as such. Michael offers us some helpful insights into the principles that should guide our teaching, as we lead our students to becoming seekers of truth, rather than consumers of information produced by others.