Latest / Catholic Spirit Radio / Being Catholic #385: Rebuilding the Church: San Damiano College Trains a New Generation of Craftsmen

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Being Catholic #385: Rebuilding the Church: San Damiano College Trains a New Generation of Craftsmen · Catholic Spirit Radio

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This is Being Catholic with Bob Johnston on Catholic Spirit Radio.
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Hi, this is Bob Johnston, and you're listening to Being Catholic right here
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Illinois and growing Thanks to you.
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We're going to have a great show for you today. I'm here with my wife,
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Lynn, and we also have a special guest.
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And he is Kent Lasnowski from Damiano, is it, Kent?
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Yes, San Damiano. San Damiano. San Damiano College for the Trades is with us today.
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And we're going to talk about that. We talked a little bit about that kind of an education last week.
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And we're going to talk specifically about San Damiano today and what they offer
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and why they offer it and some other things that Kent will probably touch on
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that I haven't even thought of yet.
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So we'll get into that in just a little bit. Remember always that we are brought
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Whatever you can do large or small is
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always welcome as you well know and so
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we'll go ahead and start the show and get
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with Kent and see what he has to say and Kent would you tell us a little bit
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about yourself and a little bit about San Damiano College and why it got started
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and of course I think it's his first year is it not sure is yeah you just started
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uh about a couple of weeks ago?
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Yeah, we welcomed our students on August 16th for move-in, and they've had a
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two-week orientation since then, and now they're starting up their classes here.
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This started on September 2nd.
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How many students do you have? We've got 24 students. Well, that's pretty good for the very first year.
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Yeah, well, the beauty of the thing
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is that we had something like 85 applications for those 24 spots. Wow.
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And so you had a sort of, how do you single them out or how do you select for?
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Yeah, really, it's about trying to discern how interested the student really
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is in this particular mission, you know, and how passionate they are about the
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full picture of what we're offering and do they want that.
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That's step number one. And then beyond that, it's really about aptitude.
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Does this student have what it takes to benefit from this education?
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And then thirdly, we're looking at things like employability.
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How likely is it we can get this guy into the trades and get him a job learning
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and hopefully an apprenticeship? Tell us a little bit more about,
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you know, what the purpose of the college is.
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And it's, you know, Sandy and Damiano College for the Trades. What does it offer?
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And, you know, what is your educational purpose, your intention?
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Can you talk along those lines? You know, let's just, let's go all the way back.
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I mean, the mission statement of the school, the motto of the school is rebuild my church.
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Right. And as many folks already know, but if you don't, I can take you back
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800 years to St. Francis of Assisi.
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Right. And he's sitting on the floor in a tumbled down church.
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Asking God to show him the way. And he hears the voice of Christ from that cross.
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And it says, Francis, rebuild my church for you can see it's falling into ruins.
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Right? Right. And so he did. He picked up stones and he physically rebuilt that church.
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And a lot of people kind of say, oh, you know, Francis, that was just kind of,
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you didn't get it. But he did get it.
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He did get it. That was the first thing he was called to do was physically rebuild that church.
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And then he went on to spiritually rebuild the church in so many profound ways
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with his religious order.
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So we're taking up that call holistically to rebuild the church.
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And yeah, we're starting with the physical piece. We're training up guys who
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are going to get out there and be able to be a part of ecclesial renewal and
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rebuilding physically, but also culturally in their families, in their businesses,
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and even as priests, right?
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And we can get into all that and how it works down the road.
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But that's it. It's about rebuilding the church.
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And the thing is, is that man has to learn the here and now in the temporal world that we live in.
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And at the same time, he has to have his focus, his mind focus also on the spiritual
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world and the world to come.
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And so there are two worlds that he has to deal with and live in.
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And you're talking about reaching the whole man, not just dividing a person
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into compartments where you go out into one world here and another world there
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and the church world over here.
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And everything is separate and the person is never really whole.
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Yeah. I mean, a big mistake is to think that somehow my professional life is
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not integrated into what it means to be following Jesus.
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Right. Right. And Francis wasn't Francis.
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Supposedly said it's attributed to him anyway.
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You know, preach the gospel, but don't use words. Preach the gospel at all times.
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And if necessary, use words. Right. And I think, you know, that's attributed to him.
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And I think what it shows us is that there can't, there's no space.
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There's no space where God doesn't have to saturate your life.
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Right. and be obvious to others around you that it's really the power of the
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Holy Spirit, you know, dwelling within you that helps you live the way you live.
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So yeah, we're hoping to have students learn that. Now at our school.
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You know, we have to give credit where credit's due. We really are picking up a tradition.
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We're not coming up with something new, right? There's a tradition of three
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religious orders sitting behind this school.
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And the first of them is the Hospital Sisters of St. Francis.
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And, you know, praise be to God, they're celebrating their 150th year in the
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United States of America this year. It's amazing, right?
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And the campus where we are, that was their mother house for so many years.
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They had up to 750 sisters living there. They had a tuberculosis hospital.
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It was just an amazing place. And now, you know, unfortunately their numbers are declining.
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And the question for them as a community was, how do we continue the mission
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with this space? What do we do with this campus?
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So they gave it in a trust and invited Bishop Paprocki into that conversation.
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And he and those sisters came up and thought it would be a wonderful idea to
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use it for this mission of this school.
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So that's amazing. And did we tell Kent, the people out there,
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where you're located? No, I may as well get onto that. Yeah,
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it's Springfield, Illinois.
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And it used to be called the Chiara Center. Before that, it was the mother house
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of the Hospital Sisters of St. Francis.
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But now it is the San Damiano College for the Trades.
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And that brings me to the second religious order that's involved.
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Because, you know, why not have more? And that's the Norbertines.
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Right. Yeah. And this is just a super energetic Orthodox.
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Religious order that is coming out of California, actually, St.
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Michael's Abbey, if you want to look them up. Yeah.
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Yeah. And then from there, they came from Europe, actually fleeing from communist persecution.
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And so they have so many vocations. They have such great life in their order.
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Bishop Paprocki invited them to come and share this campus as well.
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So they will be chaplains for us.
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I mean, to have a college with stable chaplains like that, We've got six Norbertines
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living on that campus, and they're providing sacraments, spiritual direction.
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They're teaching the students about the chant of the church, right? Scola.
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Wow. Yeah, and the students share in their religious life. Every night,
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the students sing night prayer with them, Compline, from the Liturgy of Hours. It's just so stunning.
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And they're going to be going on pilgrimages with us, doing a retreat for us.
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So, it's just cool to be integrated into the life of the Norbertines that way.
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Oh, and I think the whole idea is fantastic.
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And needless to say, the parents can count on a strong, faithful Catholicity at your school.
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Absolutely. I mean, the Catholic identity is really the center of the thing.
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We are unashamedly and unabashedly faithful to the Catholic Church and the magisterium,
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and we want to promote that in every single way. All the faculty and staff are
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taking an oath of fidelity.
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And it's just a beautiful place where we can be faithful, but also be evangelical.
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It's about inviting others into the goodness of Christ and his message and the
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goodness of the church that he founded.
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It's not like a walled in, we gotta be super protective and don't let anyone
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know. It's about inviting others into this beauty of this truth and this goodness.
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And wonder that Christ provides. That's fantastic.
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Many in the area, or the Franciscans in this area, will be familiar with the Kira Center.
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That's where the secular Franciscans, which I am a member, but we go down there for retreats.
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Okay, so you've seen the beauty of this church.
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It's gorgeous. I mean, it's 100 years old last year, and
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built in 1924 has this beautiful germanic
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influence in it it's 85 foot tall dome
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it's just kind of the thing it's like how is it that this isn't a pilgrimage
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center for illinois right it's it should be people should be going there and
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and celebrating and and worshiping so please come out and see us see what we're
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doing see the lord and and the relics that are there at this church That would be beautiful. Yeah.
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The third religious order, and I want to mention them too, is the Ursulines.
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Oh. Yeah, they came to Illinois as well for an educational purpose.
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They actually ran Springfield College, which was a junior college in Springfield, Illinois.
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So that closed down a few years ago.
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And so now what we have is a renewal of their higher education kind of portion.
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And as if that weren't enough, I suppose there's actually the fourth order now
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is the Francisco Brothers of the Holy Cross.
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They have a campus directly across the street from where we are.
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And in fact, for most of the 20th century, they ran a high school trade school.
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Wow. They ran one there. Yeah, from 28 to 79, I think it was.
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And they educated a good portion of the tradesmen in this community.
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And they did all the work for the mother house, right, of the sisters,
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which was right across the street.
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So we're inheriting that tradition of those Franciscan brothers of bringing
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the trades back within a Catholic context.
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Well, it's unbelievable. It really is.
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The way things are in today's world and business and so forth, we need it desperately.
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Yeah, you know, people think about the trades as being a rough area,
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you know, language and, you know, kind of behaviors and things like that.
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And I think what we're looking out there to do is not just educate people and
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keep them enclosed, but to elevate all of culture, right, by bringing the light of Christ into it.
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And these people as employees are going to have this sort of positive effect
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on everyone around them.
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And then once they go out and become entrepreneurs, it's going to even amplify
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it from there because they'll get to be the ones making the decisions about
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how the business is run and they get focused their businesses on Christ.
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Right. Yes. What a treasure. Bishop Profake, wonderful.
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Yeah, he's heroic, you know, and I feel like he's a man who's in touch with
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and listens to the Holy Spirit.
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Yes. And it seems like this is an inspired thing that he's discovered here with this college.
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And I'm looking here that you have both a, or you're going to have a degree
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program, and right now you have a non-degree program.
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Can you explain a little bit the differences between the two and why one is
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not yet available or the other one will be available and so on?
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Yeah, I appreciate getting into that detail because it's really important.
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We're offering a non-degree house of formation program right now in theology.
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And students come and live with us and study with us.
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And they're exposed to the trades with us in a one-year curriculum that,
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it's not actually a curriculum, it's a one-year exposure to the trades through
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demonstrations and presentations, and they see and get exposed to the seven
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basic construction trades, carpentry, HVAC, electrical, plumbing.
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Roofing, welding, masonry, okay, while they're out working, okay,
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three days a week, And then the two days a week, they have the formation and
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exposure with us. And this is a non-degree program.
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At the end of it, they can start working full-time, get into an apprenticeship,
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and continue learning the trade.
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Now, so that's what we're offering right now is that non-degree piece.
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And the piece that we're seeking permission from the state to get is the associate degree program.
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Okay? And that's unique. There are some other Catholic trade schools out there
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that offer certificates, or there's one that offers a bachelor's degree,
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but nobody else is really trying to get into this associate degree space.
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And I think that's really important for us, because not everybody wants to get
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a four-year degree, right? No, no.
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But they want to get some degree, or they want to get something that could set
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them up to eventually get a four-year degree.
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And so we're seeking, we're going to be putting together this associate degree
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program in the great books. So it'll be a classical approach, right?
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Really, as Chesterton says, you know, the democracy of the dead,
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we're learning from those who have gone before.
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We're receiving that tradition of the intellectual life from the greats who've
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gone before us and have something to hand on to us, right?
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I like that word, tradition, because that's what the Catholic Church is all about.
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It has handed down tradition for 2,000 years, and it has kept that tradition.
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And the fact is that that is a democracy of the dead.
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In other words, we don't change something simply because there's a new era or
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there's a year has gone by or two years has gone by or a hundred years has gone by.
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What Christ has handed on to us, we're obligated to hand on to others,
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and they're obligated to hand that on to others after them.
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And so, you know, this is something that is very, very precious and keeps a
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stability in a world, if I might say, that has gone, it seems to me,
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slightly mad. Yeah, absolutely.
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Slightly. That's an understatement, right?
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I think people, you know, underestimate God the importance of tradition even
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out there in the trades world, right?
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Because we've come to a point in culture where, you know, folks are getting
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on in their careers and they look behind them and they say, who can I give this to?
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Who can I give this family business to? Who can I train in the electrical skills that I have?
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Who can I train in the carpentry skills that I have? There's no one coming up
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behind me to learn that from me.
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And so what I want to emphasize that, you know, tradition within the spiritual
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life of the Catholic Church is incredibly important. I'm 100% committed to that.
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Tradition within the intellectual life, similarly, same importance.
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But receiving a tradition in the tangible skills of the trades is something
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that not enough folks are focusing on.
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And I think we could use a recovery of that as well.
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We're going to go on to talk more about those things. We have a couple of more
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segments to go in our program here, but right now we're going to take a break.
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So stay with us. We'll be right back.
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Hi, this is Bob Johnson. You're listening to Being Catholic right here on Catholic
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Spirit Radio. We're back from our break.
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I'm here with Kent Lesnowski, and we're talking about San Damiano College of the Trades.
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And he is giving us a rundown on what the college is doing now and what it intends
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to do in the future. And it's been very, very interesting.
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As we start into the second segment, Kent's going to talk a little bit about
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himself, what he does, and who he is, and what his qualifications are.
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So I'll go ahead and turn this over to you, Kent. All right. Thanks.
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Well, I mean, I guess I could start with the fact that I'm a Green Bay native,
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and I hope that doesn't get me kicked off the show right now,
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being in Illinois. You're embarrassed.
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But yeah, so I'm a Midwesterner, and I grew up as a Catholic,
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but I really discovered the power of the gospel in my own life and the power
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of grace in my own life, the grace of forgiveness once I got to college.
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And that was, you know, something that happened for me there.
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And I met, you know, the person who would become my wife, and we really grew
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in our faith through Bible studies
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and, you know, works of mercy and soup kitchens and things together.
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And we decided that, you know, my passion for teaching and our passion for really
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what we discovered as the truth, goodness, and beauty of the Catholic Church's
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teachings and the power of Christ in the church,
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we wanted to really live out our marriage as a renewal,
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trying to be part of a renewal of Catholic marriage and family in America.
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And so when I went to get my PhD in theology, that's what I studied,
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you know, is marriage and family and sexual ethics.
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And so my wife and I spent a number of years doing marriage prep programs and
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really working hard in that space to help renew Catholic marriage. And it was a blast.
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You know, over the course of years, my professional life and our personal life have shifted over.
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To include now, not really just the renewal of Catholic marriage,
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but really the renewal of Catholic education.
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You know, yeah, because as we started, you know, having our children and they
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start growing up, all these questions around, well, where are we going to send them to school?
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Or are we going to send them to school? Are we going to teach them ourselves?
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And should we be teaching them ourselves?
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You know, we're the primary educators of our children. That's what the church says.
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So what does that mean practically? So we started getting involved in education
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and its renewal in America.
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And I, being a professor, right, was involved in higher education renewal.
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And I discovered the classical turn, you know, the turn toward the great books.
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And if you haven't heard of John Sr.
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And the Integrated Humanities Program, I strongly suggest that you take a quick
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look at that anywhere you can, because I encountered that and I just fell in
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love. And I said, this is the solution.
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This is the solution to all the craziness in Catholic higher education right
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now is we need to get back to what really matters, an integrated vision of the
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human person and an integrated vision of learning from those who have come before.
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And so, yeah, I went out to Wyoming Catholic College and I got a job there by the grace of God.
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And I learned about the renewal of Catholic higher ed and I got involved administratively
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as an assistant dean for students, as a faculty board member,
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as a member of the academic council,
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and working with student life and teaching a number of different classes,
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not just theology, but all over the curriculum.
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So, you know, I got to give myself the great books education that I never got by teaching over there.
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And then all of a sudden, you know, I get a call from an email actually from
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Bishop Paprocki, right?
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Whom I had met back in Illinois during my first teaching job,
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which was at Quincy University.
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Oh, my brother-in-law graduated from Quincy, of course, 50, 60 years ago, you know. Sure.
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So I had taught there, and that was my first job. And I met Bishop Paprocki
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there, and we became good terms.
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And, you know, he got back in touch with me just a couple of years ago saying
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they were praying and discerning about this project. And would I be interested
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in entering that discernment process with him?
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And so it seems as if I felt anyway, and me and my wife together felt this way
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in prayers, that God had been sort of pointing everything in our life together
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as a marriage and in my career.
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For this moment, really, that my first job in the Midwest here in Quincy got
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me connected with Bishop Paprocki.
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I met a person who knew about John Sr., et cetera, et cetera.
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And I felt even at that moment that I wanted to start a school in the Midwest. And that was,
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12 years ago, right? And then I just, I had no skills with which to do it.
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I didn't know the great books. I didn't know higher education administration.
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I was a newly minted professor. So God then spent the next 13 years preparing
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me for this mission, I believe.
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And even now, I'm underqualified on paper,
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but I would hope and pray and I trust that the team that I'm with And the grace
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of God ultimately qualifies me to be doing what I'm doing as the president of
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this newly founded school.
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So that's just a little bit about me professionally and marriage.
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I guess, you know, also importantly, you know, we've had a number of kids.
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We've always thought that being open to life is something that's part of the
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grand adventure of marriage.
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And so we've always wanted to welcome children in our family and have done so together.
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How many do you have? We have just had our 11th child in June.
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And so, you know, my wife has been recovering really well from that and getting
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back into our homeschooling for this year.
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And it's been a challenge, to say the least, you know, founding a college,
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moving across the country, and I should say rehabbing a home all at one time
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and being pregnant and giving birth.
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I mean, she's a heroic woman, so I can't praise her enough.
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Right. It's fantastic. Yeah. I know our granddaughter has two small children
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now, and they want to do homeschooling, too.
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Yeah, there's a big interest in that. There really is, you know,
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and I think people are trying to own that vocation and that power of being the
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primary educator of their children, and they want to have that influence in
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their lives for as long as they can have it.
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Because once they go out, you may be an important person as their parent,
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but you won't have that same primary influence.
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No, definitely not. Yeah.
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And I might add that Wyoming Catholic College is, or Catholic University,
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is one of the Newman Guide schools, is it not?
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Yes, and we are also applying for the Newman Guide standing as well.
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There's nothing that would stand in our way from that on an identity basis.
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We're just gathering all of our evidence through our paperwork to get in there.
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I love the Newman Guide, and I think that they're doing such a great job for
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helping parents and students really navigate what authentic Catholic schools look like.
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Right, and I think that parents can understand that if you go to a school,
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a Newman Guide school, you're sending your kids to a real Catholic university
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that is faithful to the church.
26:09
And that's what you'll get when you send them to St.
26:13
Damien College for the trades.
26:16
You'll be getting teachers and a school that is dedicated faithfully to the
26:23
teachings of the Catholic Church, and you won't have to worry about your kids
26:26
getting a good Catholic formation.
26:29
That's so important. We've lost, you know, what's happened with Catholic education.
26:35
Yeah, it's been a strange ride here in America on Catholic education.
26:42
You know, you guys have probably talked about the Land O'Lakes moment in American
26:46
Catholic education history and the attempt of schools to sort of distance themselves
26:52
from the church, right, and be independent of her.
26:55
And then John Paul II's response of Ex Cordae Ecclesiae and then the recovery
27:00
of Catholic higher education identity over the recent years has been really exciting to watch.
27:06
I think there's a real hunger for that among the church, where the life in the
27:09
church is, the growth in the church is in this desire to receive the tradition again.
27:16
You know, I know for me, once I came back and really was brought alive in grace,
27:22
I started looking around and seeing like, hey, wait, wait, there's these set of prayers?
27:29
How come nobody told me about those? Wait, I could have been doing this all my life?
27:33
Like, how long has that been going on, right? How come nobody told me about
27:37
this or that tradition that I could have been? Here, I thought I had to make it all up.
27:42
But there's this rich tradition that has been handed on that I felt like was
27:47
kind of robbed from me, not by anyone's fault. No one knew they were doing it.
27:52
But I just, no one thought that these traditions were worth handing on.
27:56
And so as I'm rediscovering them, it's just like a kid in a candy store.
28:02
There's so many beautiful things to take in and that I want to share with my
28:08
own kids and I want to share with all these young men who are at the college,
28:11
which is another kind of interesting issue. We are a college just for men.
28:15
And I don't know if that's something you think we're talking about as well right
28:18
now. I'd love to speak on that.
28:20
Go ahead. Yeah, go ahead. I was just going to ask that. I was going to ask whether,
28:23
if there was both male and female, or if this was just male,
28:28
because I wasn't certain on that. So go ahead and talk on that.
28:32
So at the moment, it is just for men. And really, Bishop Paprocki has it on
28:37
his heart that we're in a moment in time when men are floundering.
28:43
And you can look at the data on this. It's just true.
28:46
It's just the data shows that for every four men in higher education,
28:50
there's six women, and women are graduating more frequently from higher ed than men are.
28:57
There's way more men living at home between the ages of 18 and 25 than there
29:01
are women living at home.
29:03
Men are actually leaving the job force, the workforce, and women are entering it.
29:08
So, you know, I am so excited about the fact that we've created all kinds of
29:14
great opportunities for women, and women have been doing so well.
29:17
They've been succeeding in the opportunities that they fought so hard to get, right?
29:22
And praise God that they have these great opportunities and that they're succeeding.
29:26
But unfortunately, we're in a moment where men seem to be floundering,
29:30
right? And they don't know what to do with themselves, especially in that kind of age of 18 to 30.
29:37
So Bishop Parag says, yeah, let's do something for them.
29:40
Let's try to give direction and opportunities for those guys to live into their masculinity.
29:46
I think one thing you find when you go out there and say, well,
29:50
what does it mean to be a man?
29:51
It's actually kind of a tough question to answer in many ways.
29:54
I think people are confused. Like, well, okay, I'm either the super machismo, right?
30:00
Parody over there, who's like
30:03
mean to women and just all about getting ripped and muscular and, and,
30:07
you know, drinking beers or whatever it is that you think a man's supposed to
30:10
do on that machismo level,
30:11
or you're kind of a simpering apologetic man who thinks that he has to always
30:17
apologize for the fact that he was born as a man and try to like make sure he
30:21
never steps on anything that a woman might want to do.
30:24
Right. So there's the kind of overly apologetic or there's the just brash and,
30:28
and really also not, not masculine machismo thing, but where's the middle road?
30:34
Like, how do you, how do you figure out what true masculinity is?
30:37
And I think that's what we want to offer to these guys is a chance to figure
30:40
that out together in fellowship, in Catholic community, under the guidance of
30:45
the Norbertines, right?
30:47
Helping them figure that out as, as their fathers in the faith.
30:50
But I think what we're trying to show them is that, you know,
30:52
to be a Catholic man is ultimately, I mean, to be man means to be an imitator of God's fatherhood.
30:58
And God's fatherhood is about engendering new life, engendering,
31:04
making the world that is better and more than it was somehow.
31:10
We're bringing forth something new and guarding it and protecting it and helping it to flourish, right?
31:18
And so if we can teach these guys that They can do that in their personal spiritual
31:22
lives. They can do that in their friendships.
31:23
They can do that in their business lives by bringing forth a new business,
31:28
for example, as an entrepreneur.
31:30
Get them doing difficult things to participate in God's fructifying of the world
31:37
and God's wise ordering of the world. I think they will have a lot more satisfaction
31:42
in what it means to be a man.
31:44
Exactly. I mean, even our Congress, our government, Don't.
31:51
And the Supreme Court was that one couldn't tell you what a woman was.
31:58
Oh, yeah, what is a woman? Yeah. Yeah.
32:01
That's pathetic. Yeah, there sure is a lot of confusion out there.
32:05
That's for sure. I like the emphasis here.
32:07
I'm reading in some of your literature here. Our Savior worked in a woodshop, not a cubicle.
32:13
And I think that's attractive to a lot of men, too, that, you know,
32:16
There are some people that are simply not attracted to sitting in a seat and
32:22
doing nothing but book learning all the time rather than getting out.
32:26
And I think you have somewhere in here, you know, that not just sitting in a
32:30
seat, but learning on your feet. Yeah, learning on your feet. Yeah.
32:34
And I think that is attractive to a lot of men as well. I mean,
32:37
we need to recognize, I think, that there are differences between men and women.
32:41
And it seems as if we live in an age in which somehow or another we're not supposed
32:44
to recognize the difference.
32:46
We live in an age of when there's this idea of nominalism, when the idea of
32:51
natures and so forth and everything are supposed to be simply abstract ideas
32:56
that don't exist in reality. But they do exist in reality.
33:00
And I think probably that's what you will also on your classical education program
33:05
will teach. Absolutely.
33:06
You know, we're taking it all the way from Aristotle through to Thomas Aquinas,
33:10
right? We're going to stay with natures and an optimistic philosophy.
33:14
Nominalism. Yeah, it invaded the church really, you know, starting,
33:19
you know, in the years after St.
33:21
Thomas Aquinas by others who were well-meaning and thoughtful,
33:25
but it's led to a pretty scary place.
33:28
It's led to a place where we don't think that there really are natures anymore
33:32
and that we don't have to receive who we are from God, but rather that we get
33:39
to make it up. We get to decide what we are.
33:42
And it's basically just a repetition of Genesis 3 again, right?
33:47
Because what was that sin except saying, I get to decide what's right and wrong.
33:52
I'm not going to receive that from you, God. I'm going to get out there and grasp at it.
33:57
Yeah, it's led to the idea that gender is not real. Gender is some kind of a choice that we make.
34:02
Almost all things along those lines are choices that we make.
34:05
That a husband or a wife is not real, that this is just something that we make up,
34:10
and it's willed by our own will, and we can decide that that is just something
34:17
that's arbitrary to whatever particular age or culture or group that we live
34:22
in, and these things are not real.
34:24
And, you know, that's what this whole idea of nominalism is,
34:27
that abstractions and so forth are just things that we make up that they're not real.
34:31
And the fact is, it has led to this, you know, this idea that you can be a man or a woman,
34:37
and it's, you know, something you decide for yourself that you want to be rather
34:43
than something that exactly exists in nature.
34:47
It's an actual, you know, nature itself and is real and exists and so forth.
34:51
And you're right. It did seep into the church back. I can't remember exactly
34:56
when it was. Sometime during the Middle Ages, I believe. Yeah.
34:58
You know, in the years right around Aquinas and after the Franciscan deologians,
35:03
Duns Scotus is among one of the founders. Ockham is another. Yeah.
35:07
Who did you just— William Ockham and John Duns Scotus. I was just trying to
35:11
think of Ockham. Yeah. William Ockham.
35:14
We won't get into that too much. But the point is that that did creep in,
35:19
and it's led in modern day and age to some of the things that are going on today.
35:24
People wonder, where did this come from? Well, it just didn't happen overnight.
35:28
It seems like it did, but it really didn't. It crept into our language,
35:32
and then it crept into our thinking and our philosophy and so forth.
35:36
And now we're stuck with the actual reality of people who think that they can
35:42
simply change their nature by their own will.
35:45
And it's sort of the idea, almost, that there isn't any God and that we can be our own gods.
35:51
Yeah, I mean, it's an age-old question. I mean, if you go all the way back to Plato, right?
35:56
I mean, in his dialogues, he's dealing with this question of what is it that makes something good?
36:00
Is it good because the gods like it?
36:03
Or do the gods like it because it's good, right?
36:07
And I mean, that question has continued to be asked by everyone who's thoughtful
36:11
for all of human history. And, you know, the Thomistic answer is slightly different
36:16
from the nominalist answer.
36:18
You know, where you go with these things have consequences over the 800 years. That's true.
36:25
Right. Ideas do have consequences.
36:28
Right. This present world has forgotten that.
36:33
They really have. Yeah, I think you're right.
36:37
We kind of live in a world with Control-Z, you know, which is the keyboard shortcut
36:41
for undo. You know, students are used to being able to undo anything they've
36:45
written or unsay anything they've said or even undo any action that they've done.
36:50
There's no action with a consequence that you couldn't take back.
36:54
And I think that's actually a scary world to live in because it means that it's
36:59
actually a destruction of freedom.
37:00
Because freedom is the ability to act with purpose toward a real end,
37:04
an end that you're meant for and made for.
37:06
But if there's no actions that really have enduring consequences,
37:11
where does that leave us?
37:13
We're going to have to stop here and take a break. So stay with us. We'll be right back.
37:16
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Hi, this is Bob Johnston. You're listening to Being Catholic right here on Catholic Spirit Radio.
38:13
We're talking with Kent Lassonowski and we're talking about San Damiano College for the Trades.
38:18
We're talking about how it is going to be teaching the skills of regular trades,
38:23
but at the same time, it is going to be a very Catholic college.
38:27
And it will also be putting an emphasis on classical learning,
38:31
the classical books and literature.
38:34
And I'm going to turn this over to Kent. He's going to talk about two other
38:38
issues that he wants to bring up in our last segment here. Sure, thanks.
38:43
I wanted to just tell a story that helps me understand how we've gotten to the
38:50
present moment in our culture around work and why it's meaningful.
38:55
You know, if you look at the data on this and, you know, if people get asked,
39:01
like let's say you ask teenagers what your dream job is, you know,
39:04
more than half, the majority of them are going to say it's to be a social media influencer,
39:09
social media influencer. Okay.
39:11
Now, if you were to go back to 1945, you're not going to get that answer. Oh, no. Right?
39:17
You know, a job that most people would find attractive is something that's stable,
39:21
provides enough for a family, and is satisfying in itself, right?
39:26
Now, that doesn't mean that people wouldn't say they have a dream job of being
39:29
an actor or an athlete or something like that, right? But they would know that those are rare things.
39:34
Now, if you talk to, again, the teenagers and even most Americans who would prefer to be
39:41
making money on social media, there's this idea that it's something that everybody
39:46
could do, you know, and it's a way of getting out there and getting affirmed for my identity, right?
39:52
I put out something there that's creative on my own terms, represents me,
39:57
who I am, and then people hit a like button and I get money because of advertisements or whatever else.
40:03
And so there's this connection between that people seem to have between their
40:09
creative identity, who they are, and getting affirmed for it,
40:13
right, through the social media.
40:15
So we live in a place where what it means to be creative is.
40:19
Has simply become to create digital content and have people like it.
40:23
Like there's this limitation on what creativity means.
40:27
So you don't hear people saying, well, I want to be a carpenter because I get
40:31
to actually create a house, right? Something that will endure.
40:35
Now, if the data gets lost, all of your electronic content is gone.
40:40
All the Instagram posts and the YouTube reels, it's all disappeared.
40:44
Now, a natural disaster could take down a house, right? But it's more stable than the digital world.
40:51
It's real. It's something tangible. And the creativity that goes into that is
40:56
something that can be handed on generation to generation.
40:59
Social media influencing, that's not a multi-generational reality.
41:03
That's a five-second reality.
41:05
Your YouTube reel is going to be gone, right? The next moment that somebody
41:09
else puts something out cooler than the cat that you saw walking in the telephone
41:13
wire, okay? Whatever it is you're posting.
41:17
So what I want to say is we live in a culture where the tangible,
41:21
durable creativity is undervalued and digital creativity is maybe overvalued.
41:28
Not to say that it's not creative, right? It is.
41:31
It's very creative. I mean, it requires a lot of the human person to come up
41:34
with great content like this, but it's not valued in the same way that tangible creativity is.
41:40
How do we get to that place, you know?
41:43
And there's a great book out there by a guy named Matthew Crawford called Shop Class as Soulcraft and.
41:50
And anybody who's interested in this, I would just strongly recommend you go pick that up.
41:54
He tells a really interesting story about what's happened to work in America, right?
42:01
He tells a story about when it used to be a time when there would be people
42:06
who would make wheels and make carts, make whole things, right? Make houses.
42:11
But then along came the Industrial Revolution and the assembly line.
42:16
And what that did was it disintegrated work.
42:21
It disintegrated the wholeness of work. So now instead of making a whole thing,
42:25
you made a part of a thing, right? And you made that part all day, every day.
42:29
And initially, you know, Henry Ford had trouble getting people to work in his
42:33
plants because it was obvious that it was not going to be a satisfying job compared
42:38
to making whole carts, right?
42:40
If you were just putting a wheel on something all day. And so that,
42:45
in a sense, destroyed the craftsmanship of our culture.
42:49
And we started training people in our schools to be good factory line workers,
42:55
to follow instructions, line up when you hear the bell, don't say anything,
43:00
sit in your seat at the right moment.
43:02
Like all of the stuff that goes into our common education that we all know as
43:05
late 20th century Americans is because we're training people to think and live
43:11
in a certain kind of factory-based way. Okay. A disintegrated way.
43:15
So there was a flood of people saying, okay, you got to get out of the blue
43:20
collar job and get into a white collar job because that's where you're going
43:23
to be able to be creative.
43:24
That's where you're going to be able to see a whole thing and be out of the
43:27
grind of just doing the same thing every day.
43:29
So it makes sense. But, and maybe that was true for a while.
43:33
But the same logic of disintegration has happened in the white-collar job that
43:40
happened in the world of making things physically.
43:47
For example, let's say your job is in insurance. Your job all day might be to
43:52
make sure that people are filling out a particular PDF form correctly.
43:57
And you go through and you check PDF forms of insurance policies to make sure
44:01
they've been filled out correctly. And if they don't, you email a person or
44:03
whatever it is, but you're in that lane.
44:06
You never get to see the policy from creation all the way to completion and
44:12
helping a customer through that whole thing.
44:14
You're doing this one little bit of the whole.
44:18
And so there's been a disintegration even in the world of information jobs.
44:23
And so what you see is they're not really any more cognitively satisfying than
44:29
working in a factory. It's just an intellectual factory, right?
44:33
And so now it's like, well, what can I do that's actually creative?
44:39
And so people fly to the digital creativity that they're in control of with
44:43
creating their own content, where they get to do a whole thing themselves,
44:46
make it, post it, get the reward, get the affirmation.
44:50
It's just really interesting, right? So we live in a world where all of human
44:54
work has been disintegrated in front of our eyes and we don't know what to do with ourselves.
44:59
True. Yep. So I guess the question is, you know, what do you do next? How do you recover that?
45:04
How do you recover a connection to holistic human work?
45:07
And I think that's part of what we're really after at San Damiano College for
45:11
the Trades is teaching people about how do you recover the dignity and value of work?
45:16
How do you not just be a person who does one little piece of something every
45:21
day, but tries to get himself involved in the whole of a project and see the whole.
45:25
Now you can start with that spiritually, see the whole of your life,
45:29
where are you aiming and how are you aiming spiritually?
45:32
See that in the whole of your intellectual life. What's the whole picture of
45:35
the truth received through this Western tradition and through scripture?
45:39
And then in the trade side, how do you encounter the whole of a trade,
45:44
learn it well through an apprenticeship and get involved in a meaningful work
45:49
in that trade where you can see something from start to finish, right?
45:54
So training people to see the whole picture is something that we're really after
45:59
because we know that that's participating in a whole is much more satisfying
46:03
to folks than just doing a part of something.
46:06
Well, the feeling that you've accomplished something. Yeah.
46:09
You don't get that in many, many jobs nowadays.
46:14
And there's no idea that you're going to have a skill that will take you to
46:19
retirement. I mean, most in the white collar world and stuff, it's.
46:27
They're today, gone tomorrow. Right. And with AI. I was just going to say that AI.
46:32
It's the question of, okay, which jobs are going to be left?
46:35
And so there's another interesting book out there called Durable Trades.
46:39
And this author goes through and ranks all of these jobs on how durable they are.
46:44
And it's a really fascinating book how he does this. He also describes his kind of intro to that book.
46:50
He shows the American economy as being an upside down triangle,
46:54
right? Where down at the bottom of the triangle, touching the ground,
46:59
are the people who actually interact with the earth, right?
47:02
Farmers, right? And then folks who are mining and taking things out of the earth.
47:06
And then as you go up, the triangle is every step away from the earth.
47:11
And you notice that in America, the vast majority of our jobs are up at the
47:14
top of that triangle, and it's creating an imbalance.
47:20
Most of our jobs are far away from the earth. And so if that tilts,
47:25
the whole thing kind of collapses and our economy is in danger there.
47:28
It's pretty interesting. You bet.
47:30
And the fact is, like you say, even the so-called intellectual jobs are no longer
47:37
safe from AI. A lot of these jobs will be replaced by AI.
47:42
So, you know, AI is not going to be some kind of super intelligent.
47:46
It's not intelligent. It doesn't know what it's doing. It's a super fast calculator.
47:50
It doesn't work like the human mind works. I've done a couple of shows on AI.
47:54
But nevertheless, it will be a disruption.
47:57
And it will be a change just like any industrial, you know, we've had in the
48:03
Industrial Revolution.
48:04
It will be another change in the digital revolution. Yep.
48:08
And so, trades, I was going to say trades,
48:12
things that you do and actually make and so forth, will probably be more impervious
48:18
to AI than will actually a lot of the intellectual work that's going on.
48:24
Yeah, I mean, I think people say, oh, if I get a college degree or even if I
48:28
get an advanced degree, like a medical degree or a lawyer, I become a lawyer,
48:31
I'm going to be safe from AI. But, like, let's be honest.
48:35
If you're a radiologist looking at x-rays, you could train an AI to look at
48:40
billions and billions of x-rays faster than you as a medical practitioner can
48:47
look at x-rays and probably identify things more quickly and more accurately
48:51
than you as a practitioner.
48:54
And so there's a risk, even at those high-level jobs, of what do you do with AI?
48:59
Now, there's ways to insulate radiologists from losing their jobs to AI.
49:05
Obviously, we need people involved with this, and I am no expert.
49:08
But the point is, I'm just bringing up a question.
49:10
Even with lawyers, you know, who spend their time summarizing documents and
49:14
checking them for accuracy, AI can do that kind of thing.
49:18
So, even an advanced degree doesn't guarantee that you're not going to be pushed aside, you know.
49:24
No, even if they need people to look over AI, there won't be as many jobs as there were before.
49:30
Right. So, you're going to have less people, you know, doing the same thing.
49:32
Babysitting the AI. Right. So, yeah, babysitting the AI, then you had actually
49:36
people doing what AI is doing.
49:38
So, that'll be a change as well. So, the other thing we have to think about
49:42
is that when you're talking about the trades, in my mind, I'm thinking that,
49:47
you know, once you have a trade, there are a lot of things you can do with it.
49:51
You could go into business for yourself.
49:55
You can use that trade in working for another person in another business.
50:00
You can use that particular trade as an offshoot to go into different businesses
50:05
along the similar lines and so on.
50:07
So there's a lot of things you can do with it that you have.
50:11
Yeah, for sure. And I think as we're getting back to the tangible goods of society,
50:17
I think there's a way of recovering what makes work worthwhile.
50:22
And if we go back all the way to Genesis, you know, we see God telling Adam
50:26
to tend until the garden.
50:28
And to, you know, he ends up naming all of the creatures as well, showing his dominion.
50:32
God says, be fruitful and multiply, have dominion over all the earth,
50:36
right? These aren't, you know, Adam was supposed to work even before the fall.
50:41
And we see that there's something, what is it that makes work essential to human happiness?
50:46
It's essential. It's not just something we do as a punishment.
50:49
Now, there is a punitive element because of the fall, and we can talk about that.
50:53
But it's actually part and parcel of human satisfaction and meaning in essence to do work. But why?
51:01
I think if you look at the first chapter of Genesis, it becomes a little more
51:05
clear. because you see what God does when he works and he takes the world, right?
51:12
And he says, okay, well, I'm gonna make light and then I'm gonna separate it from darkness.
51:18
Okay, I'm gonna make the water and I'm gonna separate the water from above from the water below.
51:22
And then I'm gonna separate the water from the land and then I'm gonna add animals.
51:26
So like you see him taking creation, bringing new things into being.
51:32
Ordering them with wisdom and making them more than they used to be,
51:37
making them more fruitful, more complex, more beautiful than they used to be.
51:41
And so we are invited to create, yeah.
51:46
And to participate in that, making the world more and better and ordering it
51:52
with a share of God's own wisdom and love in our own work. And that's just such a huge, amazing call.
51:59
Okay, we're coming up to the end of this segment pretty soon,
52:02
Kent. So before we finish here, how do people get in touch, you know,
52:07
with you or with the college?
52:10
When will the next semester or the next group of students start?
52:15
Can you go over some of those things before we finish up here? Absolutely.
52:18
We are receiving applications right now for our next academic year beginning in the fall of 2026.
52:26
And people can apply at our website www.sandamianotrades.org you can also email us at.
52:40
Kent at sdctrades.org, or you could do klasnoski, it's just more complicated,
52:50
k-l-a-s-n-o-s-k-i at sandamianotrades.org.
52:57
So a lot of ways to get in touch. I also give out my phone number here.
53:01
The phone number is 217-622-8994. And again, I want to clarify,
53:09
you know, when folks are looking at what we're doing and what they'd be applying
53:12
for, they're applying for a non-degree program that is in theology with us and
53:18
it has exposure to the trades, the seven trades, like I mentioned.
53:20
One cool thing that we didn't get a chance to talk about, but I'll mention very
53:23
briefly, is that we're in a cooperation with Quincy University,
53:28
okay, and our students who are with us in person, also doing theology,
53:34
also enroll in online courses through Quincy University if they want to get
53:39
actual college credit today.
53:41
It's a beautiful opportunity that we've just been developing with Quincy University.
53:45
That's fantastic. It really is.
53:49
I just think the whole thing is needed. Yeah, it is. So needed.
53:56
We've had too much emphasis on higher education and white-collar and service-orientated since the 60s.
54:06
Yeah. and getting away from this idea that there's doers and there's thinkers.
54:10
Like, no, we need to integrate that. People who work with their hands also think. They think.
54:14
I was going to say we need the whole man. Yeah. The whole person,
54:18
I should say, I guess. Yep. People make it mad and say I'm being sexist.
54:22
But when we say man and mankind, we're talking about the whole human race.
54:27
But at any rate, the point is that it rounds out the whole person,
54:33
and work is important to everyone.
54:37
And this, I think, is a program that has a great future, and I hope it really
54:43
grows, and it's been great having you here, Kent.
54:46
We're going to go ahead and end our program now. Is there anything more that
54:49
you want to say that we've left out that I haven't thought of?
54:52
Oh, just thank you so much for the chance to come and share with you guys.
54:55
It's an honor and a pleasure to be part of this program with you,
54:58
and may God bless us all in this work.
55:00
We'll go ahead and say our prayer. St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle.
55:06
Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil.
55:10
May God rebuke him, we humbly pray.
55:13
And to the O Prince of the Heavenly Host, by the power of God,
55:17
thrust into hell Satan and all evil spirits who wander through the world,
55:22
seeking the root of souls.
55:24
Amen. You've been listening to Being Catholic with Bob Johnston on Catholic
55:29
Spirit Radio. If you'd like to contact Bob, email bob at catholicspiritradio.com.
55:35
Again, that's bob at catholicspiritradio.com.
55:38
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