- Alex Lessard
- July 1, 2024
- 9:08 am
Courses Offered in Fall '24
We are thrilled that Dr. Alex Lessard will be teaching Theo 101: Sacred Scriptures, online, for Rosary College this Fall! Theology rests upon God’s revelation of himself and his plan of salvation. This course provides an overview of the Old and New Testaments, modeling a Catholic approach that draws upon tradition, prayer, and modern methods. For instructions on how to apply, read through to the end of this fascinating interview with Dr. Lessard on his approach to Catholic education, his experience with Catholic schools, the renewal of Catholic liberal education, and Catholic school leadership, and his background in Church teaching and the Catholic university.
Academic and Professional Background and Experience in Liberal Arts Education
Alex Lessard is Founder and President of Adeodatus, and Co-Director of The Cornerstone Forum.
Dr. Lessard studied theology as an undergraduate at the University of St. Thomas (MN) with Don Briel, the founder of the Catholic Studies movement, who introduced him to the writings of St. John Henry Newman and to the breadth and depth of Catholic literature. He took his doctorate in systematic theology at Boston College with Fr. Matt Lamb, who directed his thesis: Conversion & the Art of Reading: Dante vs. Augustine. He is an Adjunct Professor in the Institute for Catholic School Leadership at Saint Paul Seminary | University of St. Thomas, teaching the History, Philosophy & Mission of the Catholic School. Having co-founded St. Monica Academy, an independent Catholic school in Pasadena in 2001, he and his wife, Angela, now support the renewal of Catholic Liberal Education and Culture through their nonprofit, Adeodatus.
Alex is Executive Co-Director of The Cornerstone Forum, founded by Gil Bailie to bring René Girard’s anthropological contribution to human self-understanding into fruitful dialogue with the theological tradition exemplified by Joseph Ratzinger, Henri de Lubac, et al.
He is a Fellow of the Boethius Institute; serves on the Thomas Aquinas College Board of Regents; on the board of the Cantwell Foundation, a nonprofit supporting Catholic Arts & Culture; on the Executive Advisory Team of the John Paul the Great Institute of Lafayette, Louisiana; as the Theological Advisor to Gaudent Angeli, an apostolate promoting renewed devotion to St. Vibiana, the patroness of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles; and is Executive Board Secretary of the Newman Club of Los Angeles, a lay Catholic literary organization founded in 1899 under the inspiration of Bishop George Montgomery – less than a decade after Newman’s death – with an uninterrupted series of monthly meetings over the subsequent 124 years.
He is a perpetual member of the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars and a Knight of Columbus at St. Therese Carmelite Church in Alhambra, CA.
What most excites you about the opening of South Carolina's first Catholic College?
When St. Gregory’s University in Oklahoma closed in 2017 after almost 140 years facilitating Catholic higher education, this brought the number of states without a Catholic college to 11. It is a fruitful milestone to get that number back down to 10 with Rosary College in South Carolina! Now we just need creative Catholic higher education initiatives in the 20% of states not yet served locally: Alaska, Arkansas, Delaware, Idaho, Mississippi, Nevada, Oklahoma, Utah, Vermont, and West Virginia.
What is your area of expertise and how did you come to specialize in this area?
My love of the Great Conversation as mediated by teachers and books and shared with friends was first sparked by teachers at Greenwood Elementary school in Plymouth, MN through the Junior Great Books program. It was kindled by a program called Summer Seeds run by Don Briel at the College of St. Thomas (a few years before the advent of Catholic Studies). Don also introduced me to the treasures of the Catholic literary tradition, which was rich fuel for this love. And it was brought to white heat through teaching in the Perspectives on Western Culture and Honors Programs at Boston College. This lifelong love of the Western cultural tradition has been grounded in scripture, literature, theology, and philosophy, but is as wide as all learning. My expertise is increasingly in weaving the threads of the Great Conversation into the contemporary renewal of Catholic education.
What was one of the most profound experiences of your own college/university education?
I came to St. Thomas as a pre-med student with questions about the relationship of science and religion and of faith and reason. I soon heard about a remarkable new Professor of Theology, and in my second semester took Don Briel’s Introduction to Theology. Don addressed all of my questions and gave me so many more to contemplate in the course of articulating a sacramental vision of the world. I took his courses on Newman and on the Church as soon as possible thereafter, and also began working with him as the student liaison to the Summer Seeds program. This also gave me the opportunity to facilitate student discussions on Homer, Shakespeare, Austen, Newman, Pieper, etc. with Don and others. In my senior year, I was fortunate to become Don’s first research assistant, and we began a project on liberal education that fed into the later Catholic Studies curriculum. Dr. Ryan Topping’s Renewing the Mind: A Reader in the Philosophy of Catholic Education, for which Don wrote the Foreword, is essentially the book Don had in mind in that early project.
What ought to be the value of a liberal arts education? How does this influence your teaching?
Given that every art is a habit of making, what is being made in the course of the liberal arts is intellectual virtues formed in us as students and teachers – rightly ordering and perfecting our minds in knowing various aspects of word and number. As Newman put it, liberal education is “a philosophical habit” which “lasts through life” and which is characterized by “equitableness, calmness, moderation, and wisdom” (The Idea of a University, Discourse 5). But this wisdom is not that of the Catholic but of the gentleman, and that is why we move beyond liberal education to specifically Catholic liberal education. By nature we desire to know God, and thus only a theological, supernatural liberal education will satisfy us. My teaching is informed by all of this: biblical anthropology, the natural desire to know God, and the path through word and number to philosophy and theology grounded in revealed truth.
How do you plan to integrate course material from other disciplines into your own courses to promote the integrated humanities aspect of Rosary College's Catholic Liberal Education?
I wholly agree with St. John Henry Newman’s judgment that “all knowledge forms one whole, because its subject-matter is one” (Idea, Discourse 3), and that there are natural and supernatural circles of knowledge which “intersect; first, as far as supernatural knowledge includes truths and facts of the natural world, and secondly, as far as truths and facts of the natural world are…data for inferences about the supernatural” (Idea, Lecture 7). The integration of Sacred Art into the study of Sacred Scripture is of obvious importance, pairing the greatest beauty of Western art with the word of God. In terms of writing, we can: (1) look back to epic and tragedy in comparison with the all-encompassing sweep of the Bible; (2) study the rich variety of historical, legal, poetic, prophetic, sapiential, parabolic, epistolary, parabolic, and apocalyptic writing in Sacred Scripture; and, (3) look ahead to the remarkable influence of the Bible on the great literature of the Western literary tradition. And we have very interesting opportunities to tie Euclidian math into the study of scripture, especially in terms of the order and harmony of the cosmos; the proportions of the Ark and the Temple; Ezekiel’s vision; the relation of beauty and order; etc.
Why is it essential that Catholicism is present in your course?
Quite simply, we have been given something in the Sacred Scriptures that we could never discover: the word of God. God’s word, especially in the Gospels, is our “principal witness for the life and teaching of the incarnate Word, our savior” (Dei Verbum, 18). The authentic interpretation and transmission of the word of God “has been entrusted exclusively to the living teaching office of the Church” (Dei Verbum, 10) which has “the apostolic teaching” (Irenaeus). Given the divine subject matter, it is not only essential that Catholicism is present in this course on Sacred Scripture but that every such course be conducted by the teacher in full communion with Catholic church in its teaching office under the commission of the local bishop.
How to apply for Dr. Lessard's online course in the Catholic tradition, Theo 101: Sacred Scripture
We at Rosary College are so grateful to have such a learned scholar as Dr. Lessard, with long experience in Catholic school leadership, teaching for us this fall. We are currently accepting applications for Fall ’24, and Dr. Lessard’s theology course, Theo 101: Sacred Scripture, is being offered online at an affordable price. If you are a degree-seeking student, Rosary College offers a 2-year Associate of Catholic Studies (ACS) in Integrated Humanities. Learn more about Tuition and Costs here.
Rosary College also has agreements in place with Thomas More College of Liberal Arts and Ave Maria University to transfer credits for students who would like to continue on into a 4-year Bachelor degree program. And stay tuned to see what other colleges will be accepting Rosary College credit transfers!
You can visit this link at Rosary College to apply and register today.
by: Dr. Alex Lessard
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