Friday Links, January 21, 2022
+ Death of a prominent Catholic woman philosopher/ writer/educator.
+ Writing query letters, there’s a CLA class for that.
+ On another noted Catholic woman philosopher/writer and the loss of value in art.
Farewell to Alice Von Hildebrand
“Shortly after midnight [January 14], Dr. Alice von Hildebrand . . . passed away at the age of 98. A great scholar, philosopher and theologian in her own right, she was also dedicated to preserving the legacy of her husband Dietrich von Hildebrand, whom Pope Pius XII once called a ‘twentieth-century Doctor of the Church.’”—Gregory Dipippo, New Liturgical Movement.
Alice von Hildebrand’s teachings about the existence of objective truth, her defense of traditional marriage, and her proclamation of the unique role of women, which she called the “Feminine Genius” inspired many, including many of her students at secular Hunter College in New York City where she taught for 37 years. Even though she said she mentioned nothing about Catholicism in her classes, students often converted after they learned from her that there is such a thing as objective truth. “If someone finds the truth,” she would say, “he automatically finds God, because God is the truth.”
Here in California, I first heard of her in the 1990s when a friend of mine told me she and her fiancé read numerous books by Dr. von Hildebrand as part of their personally chosen marriage preparation, including The Privilege of Being a Woman, and Man and Woman: A Divine Invention, along with a related book by her husband, philosopher Dietrich von Hildebrand, In Marriage: The Mystery of Faithful Love.
Even if you are in the New Rochelle, New York area and close enough geographically, by the time you read this, it will almost certainly be too late to attend Alice von Hildebrand’s wake, which is scheduled for today (Friday, January 21, 3-6 PM at Fred H. McGrath & Son Funeral Home, 20 Cedar St., Bronxville, NY 10708). But you might be able to attend her funeral Saturday, January 22, 9:30 AM, Church of the Holy Family, 83 Clove Road, New Rochelle, NY 10801. “If you plan to attend the funeral mass, you are encouraged to arrive early as a large turnout is expected.”—John Henry Crosby, Hildebrand Project
“Lily was utterly devoted to her husband's intellectual work. . .. And she was a powerful thinker in her own right—a formidable woman. . . . For the last 10 years, she has been in a good deal of physical discomfort and pain. She told me that she put stoups of holy water here and there through her house, to help her practice what she called ‘holy pestering,’ that is, petitions to God to alleviate her suffering by taking her away, yet not her will but His was to be done. . . . Lily von Hildebrand was a good and brave and gracious woman, whose breadth and depth of reading would make most professors in our time look like rather clever but ill-bred and ill-read high schoolers.”—“Rest in Peace, my friend Alice von Hildebrand, 1923-2022,” a tribute from Anthony Esolen
(Her friends called her Lily.)
The Path to Publication: the Query Letter and the Synopsis Workshop January 25
You can find more about the class and register at the above link.
Art and the Restoration of the Value
Katy Carl, Dappled Things editor in chief, recommends the above linked post, with this quote from Tom Break’s essay on Simone Weil and the loss of value at “Genealogies of Modernity”:
"If the loss of value is the affliction of our time, and if the recovery of value is going to be this serious and this painful, we will need to dig deep into the heart of the artistic enterprise to find the thing that has gone missing."
Cropped from a photo of a commemorative plaque on the exterior of the apartment building on Riverside Drive in New York City, where Weil lived in 1942. By Christopher Hickey - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0
