The box office records set by James Cameron's movie, Avatar, tell me that I was not alone in finding the movie's visual presentation breathtaking. The 3D screen immersed me in the beauty and variety and power of Cameron's imagined nature and machine. Along with leading character, Jake Sully, I re-discovered the delight of walking and running and got a taste of the joy of jumping and swinging and flying.

 

 

Every year at the beginning of my Moral Theology class, I have my students (high school sophomores) read C. S. Lewis's "Illustrations of the Tao" (from The Abolition of Man). By the "Tao" Lewis means the Moral Law, and he shows how its various precepts ("Do not Kill," "Do not Steal") are evident throughout history in cultures around the world. I begin the course in this way, because every year my students come in believing that moral judgments are merely opinions. Why? Because all they know is moral disagreement among cultures, not agreement.

 

 

Scientist Jean Fabre (1823-1915) seems out of place in our time and in his own. He was a scientist more in the mold of Henry David Thoreau than Louis Pasteur or Niels Bohr. Here is a man who made a home in a nearly uninhabitable plot of land overrun by insects and rodents in order to watch up close the behaviors of bugs most of us consider pests. "The Harmas," the first chapter in Fabre's book The Life of the Fly, reveals, at first glance, something of a mad scientist too engrossed in the world of his subjects, but as we look deeper we find a timely reminder of the philosophical and imaginative heart of science.

 

 

Written for adults who wish to introduce themselves to Church history, The Catholic Church Through the Ages, by Father John Vidmar, provides an excellent instrument for faculty formation and discussions. Kevin Schmeising, director of Catholic History.net and Institute Advisory Board Member, provides a review.