In this episode, our guest (an AP U.S. History teacher) and our host (an AP Government teacher) delve into the worthy American most likely missing from your U.S. history or government class.

Orestes Brownson was a nineteenth-century political thinker who wrote about the American project through his unique lens as a post-Civil War American-Catholic. He was well known in his time but is often only featured in the footnotes for the Election of 1840, the Transcendental Movement, and the Emancipation Proclamation. Brownson’s essays, though, belong in the classroom. They seek to answer with optimism and insightful reflection: what is this country all about? For what did our sons die in this great Civil War?

4:20 Why read Brownson?

10:11 A religious and political wanderer

14:01 Arrives at the Catholic Church

17:00 Magnus opus: The American Republic

21:57 “Territorial democracy”

27:44 History as human experience

28:51 Territorial democracy and American Union

32:31 Missteps of democracy

36:54 Brownson’s vision: “Freedom of each with advantage to the other”

37:41 Yet history repeats itself

41:47 America’s role in the story of history

44:55 “Unwritten constitution”

49:36 The task of the modern teacher

54:24 One’s development of ideas over time

The American Republic by Orestes Brownson

“Democratic Principle” by Orestes Brownson

Orestes Brownson Symposium hosted by the American Family Project

“Catholic Lives: Orestes Brownson, the American Newman” on Controversies in Church History

On Faith and Beauty in Churches talk by Joe Cardenas at The Heights School (February 1, 2025)

Series for Heights Fathers: Accompanying Our Sons as They Grow in Understanding of Human Sexuality at The Heights School (Thursdays in February 2025)

Parents’ Conference: Freedom and Addiction at The Heights School (April 12, 2025) link coming soon

Teaching Men’s Conference at The Heights School (October 2025) link coming soon

ChatGPT Holds These Truths to Be Self-Evident by Mark Grannis

The Importance of Ugly History by Mark Grannis

Keeping the Story in History by Mark Grannis

Seeing History: On Using Images in the History Classroom by Kyle Blackmer

Patriotism and Piety: Honoring Founders and Fathers featuring Matthew Mehan

All the first universities were—St. Thomas Aquinas would tell us—Catholic ones. But in this modern day, it takes intentionality to maintain the rich tradition of Catholic education.

In a talk recorded for HeightsCast, Dr. Peter Kilpatrick, president of The Catholic University of America, spoke to families at The Heights about what it means to be a Catholic university. He first consults the experts: Thomas Aquinas, John Henry Newman, John Paul the Great, and Pope Benedict XVI. He then offers examples from his own career in school leadership, and how to put the exhortations of popes and saints into action on campus.

6:14 Universities: a Catholic inheritance

8:06 Newman and Aquinas on universities

11:58 Papal directives for Catholic universities

15:56 Theodrama vs. egodrama

19:16 Getting these ideas on campus

19:36 Mission-enthusiastic faculty

21:26 Mission-integrated curricula

24:12 Counseling with a Christian anthropology

25:01  Teaching a professional call to holiness

26:21 Campus ministry

28:15 The distinctive value of Catholic education

31:10 Q1: Technology and the next 50 years

36:13 Q2: College affordability and value

The Idea of a University by St. John Henry Newman

Ex Corde Ecclesiae by Pope St. John Paul II

Regensburg Address on Faith, Reason, and the University by Pope Benedict XVI

“The Real Cost of College Education—for Students, Families, and the Nation” by Jamie Merisotis

Superhabits: The Universal System for a Successful Life by Andrew Abela

Hannah’s Children: The Women Quietly Defying the Birth Dearth by Catherine Pakaluk

Receiving Beauty: A Liberal Arts Education featuring Dr. George Harne

Considerations for the College-Bound Student featuring Dr. Peter Kilpatrick

The Idea of the Liberal Arts University, Part I featuring Dr. Thomas Hibbs

Rethinking College: Why go? How? When? featuring Arthur Brooks

Advent invites us to reflect on our Christian disposition, oriented towards peace, hope, joy, and love. St. Josemaría Escrivá was known to summarize that disposition by calling it, simply… “simple.” In The Way, he praises the apostles and St. Joseph for imitating Jesus himself in being simple. And then he exhorts us: “May you not lack simplicity.”

Heights faculty Joe Cardenas and Nate Gadiano join us this week to explore the Christian meaning of “simplicity,” beginning with the ways that God is simple: unified, sincere, essential, and wholly true. As we strive to reflect his example, how do we find that interior disposition of simplicity? And how can we help our boys find it too?

3:07 A Catholic sense of simplicity

10:13 Moving beyond “minimalism”

18:38 Simplicity in Scripture

20:43 Social simplicity

24:12 As opposed to duplicity

26:08 How spiritual direction simplifies you

30:36 A unity of purpose

32:39 Distinct from feelings-based “honesty”

39:02 Helping our boys as parents, mentors

41:41 A boy’s insecurity, overcome by trust

47:38 Secure in divine filiation

The Way, Furrow, and The Forge by St. Josemaría Escrivá

The Virtues Playlist on The Heights Forum