Dear Reader,
Thank you for picking up your third issue of The Brownson Record! I have found it a tremendous joy to carry this fledging journal into a new academic year, amidst new contributors and new discussions, all the while working to uphold the same vision articulated at our founding. It is my hope you will find that same joy in these pages.
In this issue, Tim Johnson sheds light on some of the underlying assumptions that motivate our political discourse. This first piece in what is to be a long-running series on morality, nationhood, and the question of the political, introduces us to the inescapable connection between politics and an understanding of the Good. Given the Mount’s deep historical roots in both America’s beginnings and the beginnings of the Catholic Church in America, it is particularly fitting that such reflections be reinvogorated here. Following the historic overturning of Roe v. Wade, Mary Grace Germain, née Coltharp, C’22 invites us to think further about the demands of a truly pro-life platform. In his featured editorial, Donald Briggs celebrates the life of Kathleen Richardson Williams, a woman who was nothing short of an Emmitsburg legend. Joey Carlson helps us to reflect on the merits of our current workaday world through a theological approach to labor. Stephen McGinley, John Singleton, C’86, and Claire Doll provide us with poetry that is at once sobering and transcendent. Finally, Msgr. Charles M. Mangan commemorates the Assumption with an appreciation for Mary as the image and model of the Church.
Such appreciations for our Blessed Mother could not be more timely following her long-awaited return to the top of what we rightly call Mary’s Mountain. Once again we can experience the comforts of her guiding light. Whether it is her dawn-lit glimmer during our hurried, early morning rush to class, or her glow in the darkness after a long night at the library, she is the woman who eternally beckons the rest of humanity to look up toward higher things.
All of this is a reminder of what it truly means to be men and women of the Mount. Already well into the third century of our history, we acknowledge the great trials that have come before and the little we are deserving of praise for overcoming them. Being men and woman of the Mount is not, at the end of the day, about realizing our desires for the world through our own sheer will. Rather, it is about accepting the gift of participating in the providential journey that has already been set out for us.
As we continue on through yet another semester I look forward to sharing in this gift with you all.
Sincerely,
Gavin Hamrick, Editor-in-Chief
