Understanding Catholic Christianity
Mr. Gavin
Presentation on the Catholic contribution to Western
Civilization/Famous Catholics
Fall 2007
Each
student should pick one of the famous person (or persons) or topics below. Each individual or topic has a date assigned
to it. You are required to do a 7-10
minute presentation on the date listed.
If your class does not meet on that date, you will give your
presentation the following day. This
will be done at the beginning of class.
Please note, not every figure listed below is a ‘saint’
-- some of them made poor personal choices.
Despite their foibles, in each case their Catholic faith helped to form
them and helped them succeed in their respective fields.
1. If doing a historical figure, give a
brief overview of his/her life.
2. Provide
pictures, maps or relevant illustrations.
3. If you have
chosen something or someone related to music, provide sound clips.
4. Provide
quotations and anecdotal stories.
5. Please
provide a handout for the class.
6. If you do a
historical figure, how did/does the Catholic faith form his/her life
perspective? How did/does the Catholic
faith factor into his/her thinking?
7. Power point
is the preferred method of presentation.
Please email your presentation to Mr. Gavin at gavinw@bishopireton.org Also, bring a copy on a disk or flash
drive.
8. Please
provide bibliographical information at the end of your presentation. You do not have to cite picture references.
Most of the biographical
information listed below was taken direcetly from wikepedia.com
1.
September 24: Presenter: ___________________________ Blessed
Charles de Foucauld (1858-1916). Born in Strasbourg, France on September
15, 1858, he
grew up in an aristocratic family and entered the Saint-Cyr Military Academy in
1876. He later was a
French army officer in Algeria but left the army in 1882 and went as an
explorer to Morocco. In 1890 he joined the Trappist
order, but left in 1897
to follow an as yet undefined religious vocation. He returned to Algeria and
lived a virtually eremetical
life. He first settled in Beni Abbey, near the Moroccan border, building a
small hermitage for ‘adoration and hospitality’, which soon became the
‘Fraternity’. For Charles wished to be, and was seen to be, a “brother” to each
and every visitor, whatever their religion, ethnic origin or social status. Foucald was eventually killed by thieves.
2.
September 24: Presenter:
___________________________ Floyd
Patterson (January
4, 1935 – May 11, 2006) was an American heavyweight boxing champion who made
history multiple times in the sport of boxing. He had a
record of 55 wins, 8 losses and 1 draw, with 40 wins by knockout. He once said
that a champion should conduct himself as one in real life as well as in the
ring. Patterson lived in New Paltz, New York, and was a
convert to Roman Catholicism and a member of the Knights of Columbus.
3.
September 24: Presenter:
___________________________ Francis
Thompson
(December
18, 1859 – November 13,
1907) was an English poet. Born
in Preston, Lancashire,
his father was a doctor who had converted to Roman
Catholicism. His most famous poem,
"The Hound of Heaven" describes the pursuit of
the human soul by God.
This poem is the source of the phrase, "with all deliberate speed,"
used by the Supreme Court in Brown II, the remedy phase of the
famous decision on school desegregation.[1]
4. September 24: Presenter: ___________________________Johann
Christian Bach (September
5, 1735 – January 1, 1782) was a composer of the
Classical era, the eleventh and youngest son of
Johann Sebastian Bach. He is sometimes
referred to 'the London Bach' or 'the English Bach', due to his time spent
living there. In 1762 held the post of
organist at Milan Cathedral,
for which he wrote two Masses, a Requiem, a Te Deum, and
other works. Around this time he converted from Lutheranism to Catholicism.
For twenty years he was the most popular musician in England: dramatic
works, produced at the King’s theatre, were received with great cordiality.
5. September 24: Presenter: ___________________________ Elizabeth
Fox-Genovese (May 28, 1941 – January 2, 2007) was a feminist American historian
particularly known for her writing about women in the Antebellum
South. She was also a primary voice of the conservative women's movement (though not
originally). She earned a bachelor’s degree in history and French
from Bryn Mawr in 1963; a master’s in history from Harvard
in 1966; and a Ph.D. in history, also from Harvard, in 1974. Fox-Genovese was the Eléonore Raoul professor
of the humanities at Emory
University till her death in 2007.
6. September 25: Presenter: ___________________________ Medieval illuminated manuscripts
is a manuscript
in which the text is
supplemented by the addition of decoration or illustration, such as decorated initials, borders
and miniatures. The majority of
surviving manuscripts are from the Middle Ages,
although many illuminated manuscripts survive from the 15th century Renaissance,
along with a very limited number from late antiquity.
7.
September 25: Presenter:
___________________________ Maria
Montessori (August
31, 1870 – May 6, 1952) was an Italian educator,
scientist, physician, philosopher, feminist, and humanitarian, and the first early childhood educator to be nominated
for the Nobel Peace Prize. The Montessori
Method of education
that she derived from this experience has subsequently been applied
successfully to children
and is quite popular in many parts of the world. Her method can now be found on
six continents and throughout the United
States.
8.
September 26: Presenter:
___________________________ Bernard
Nathanson is a medical doctor and pro-life
activist from New
York. As a younger man, he had been
strongly pro-choice,
and he performed an abortion on a woman he impregnated .
He later gained national attention by then becoming one of the founding members
of the National
Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws, now known as NARAL Pro-Choice America. He has written the books Aborting America
and The Hand of God. Although he grew up Jewish, he became
a Catholic in 1996
9.
September 26: Presenter:
___________________________ Herbert
Marshall McLuhan CC (July 21, 1911 – December 31, 1980) was a Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar. A professor of English literature, a literary critic, and communications
theorist, McLuhan's work is viewed as one of the cornerstones of the
study of media ecology. Perhaps the most celebrated English teacher
of the twentieth century, McLuhan was a fixture in media discourse from the
late 1960s to his death and remains highly influential. The "patron
saint" of Wired magazine, McLuhan
famously coined the expressions "the medium is
the message" and the "global village".
10. September 27: Presenter: ___________________________ George V. Coyne, S.J. (born January 19,
1933) is a Jesuit priest, astronomer,
and former director of the Vatican Observatory
and former head of the observatory’s research group which is based at the University of
Arizona in Tucson, Arizona.
11. September 27: Presenter: ___________________________ Louis Pasteur (December 27,
1822 – September 28, 1895) was a French microbiologist and chemist. He is best known
for demonstrating how to prevent milk and wine from going sour, which came to
be called pasteurization. His experiments
confirmed the germ theory of
disease, and he created the first vaccine for rabies. He also made many
discoveries in the field of chemistry, most notably the asymmetry of crystals.
12. September 28: Presenter:
___________________________ Nicolaus Copernicus (February 19,
1473 – May 24, 1543) was the astronomer and priest who
provided the first modern formulation of a heliocentric
(sun-centered) theory of the solar system in his epochal book, De revolutionibus orbium coelestium
(On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres).
13. October 1: Presenter:
___________________________ Tom Monaghan (born March 25,
1937 in Ann Arbor,
Michigan), formally known as Thomas
S. Monaghan, is an entrepreneur
and Catholic
philanthropist from
Michigan who founded Domino's Pizza
in 1960.
14. October 1: Presenter: ___________________________ Gregor Johann Mendel (July 20[1], 1822 – January 6, 1884) was an Augustinian abbot who is often called
the "father of modern genetics"
for his study of the inheritance
of traits
in pea plants. Mendel showed
that the inheritance of traits follows particular laws,
which were later named after him. His rediscovery prompted the foundation of
genetics.
15. October 2: Presenter: ___________________________ Father Georges-Henri Lemaître (July 17,
1894 – June 20, 1966) was a Belgian Roman Catholic priest, honorary prelate, professor of
physics and astronomer. Fr.
or Msgr. Lemaître proposed
what became known as the Big Bang
theory of the origin of the Universe,
although he called it his 'hypothesis of the primeval atom'.
16. October 2: Presenter: ___________________________ The Reverend Father Professor Stanley L.
Jaki OSB (b. Győr, Hungary 1924) is a Benedictine priest and
Distinguished Professor of Physics at Seton Hall
University, New Jersey since 1975. He is a leading thinker in
philosophy of science, theology and on issues where the two disciplines meet
and diverge.
17. October 3: Presenter: ___________________________ Fra Angelico, (c. 1395
- February 18, 1455) was an Early Italian Renaissance
painter, referred to in Vasari's
Lives of the Artists as having "a rare and perfect talent". [1]
18.
October 3: Presenter:
___________________________ Frederick
Hart (1943 – 1999) was an American sculptor, best
known for his public monuments and works of art in bronze, marble, and clear acrylic (a technique he
coined as "sculpting with light").
Noted Works: The Three Soldiers
sculpture - Located at the Vietnam Veterans
Memorial in Washington, D.C. Dedicated in 1984.
The Creation - Located at Washington
National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. Dedicated in 1990.
19.
October 4: Presenter:
___________________________ Samuel Alito On 31 October 2005, President George W. Bush announced
his nomination of Samuel Alito to replace outgoing justice Sandra Day O'Connor
on the U.S. Supreme Court. Samuel A. Alito, Jr. is a Catholic.
20.
October 4: Presenter:
___________________________ J.R.R.
Tolkien CBE (3 January 1892 – 2 September 1973) was an English writer and university professor who
is best known as the author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the
Rings. He was an Oxford professor of Anglo-Saxon
language (1925
to 1945) and English language and literature
(1945 to 1959). He was a strongly committed Roman Catholic.
21.
October 4: Presenter: ___________________________ Saint Francis
of Assisi (September 26, 1181 – October 3, 1226) was a Roman Catholic friar and the founder
of the Order
of Friars Minor, more commonly known as the Franciscans. He is known as the patron
saint of animals, birds, and the environment.
22.
October 5: Presenter:
___________________________ George Herman
Ruth, Jr. (February 6, 1895 – August 16, 1948), also known as "Babe", "The Bambino", "The
Sultan of Swat", and "The
Colossus of Clout", was an American baseball player. Ruth, a
notable sports figure during the Roaring Twenties, was one
of the first five players elected to the Baseball Hall of
Fame. Babe Ruth was Catholic
(his name is inscribed in the National Shrine in Washington D.C.).
23.
October 5: Presenter:
___________________________ Johannes
Vermeer or Jan Vermeer (baptized October 31, 1632, died December 15, 1675) was a Dutch painter who specialized
in domestic interior scenes of ordinary bourgeois life. His entire
life was spent in the town of Delft.
Vermeer was a moderately successful provincial painter in his lifetime.
Virtually forgotten for nearly two hundred years, in 1866 the art critic Thoré Burger
published an essay attributing 66 pictures to him (only 34 paintings are firmly
attributed to him today). Since that time Vermeer's reputation has grown astronomically,
and he is now acknowledged as one of the greatest painters of the Dutch Golden
Age, and is particularly renowned for his masterly treatment and use of light in his work. Several of his works are found at the
National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C.
24.
October 9: Presenter:
___________________________ Michelangelo (whose full name was Michelangelo di Lodovico
Buonarroti Simoni) is regarded as one of the greatest and most popular artists
in history. He was born in Caprese, Tuscany, Italy in 1475. He died in
1564. Michelangelo was a Catholic.
25.
October 9: Presenter:
___________________________ Norma Leah
McCorvey (née Nelson born September 22, 1947 in Simmesport,
Louisiana) is best known as "Jane Roe" in the
landmark Roe v. Wade lawsuit in which a 1973 U.S. Supreme
Court ruling recognized abortion as a
Constitutional right, overturning individual states' laws against abortion. At
a signing of her first book in 1994, McCorvey was confronted by pro-life
activist Flip Benham.
Within a year, McCorvey converted to Christianity in 1995. On August 8, she was baptized by
Benham in a Dallas backyard swimming pool that was filmed for national
television. On August 10
of that year, she announced that she had become an advocate of the pro-life movement
(specifically, "Operation Rescue"),
fighting to make abortion
illegal. In 1998, she released
a statement that affirmed her entrance into the Roman Catholic
Church, and she has been confirmed
into the Church as a full member.
26.
October 10: Presenter:
___________________________ Flannery
O'Connor (March 25, 1925 – August 3, 1964) was an American author. She was
born in Savannah,
Georgia. An important voice in American literature, O'Connor wrote
two novels and 31 short stories, as well as a number of reviews and
commentaries. She was a Southern writer in the vein of William Faulkner, often
writing in a Southern Gothic
style and relying heavily on regional settings and -- it is regularly said -- grotesque character. She was a deeply devoted Catholic living in
the mostly Protestant American South.
27.
October 10: Presenter:
___________________________ Arthur Evelyn
St. John Waugh (October 28, 1903 – April 10, 1966) was an English writer, best known
for such satirical and darkly
humorous novels as Decline and Fall, Vile Bodies, Scoop, A Handful of Dust, and The Loved One, as well as
for more serious works, such as Brideshead
Revisited and the Sword of Honour trilogy,
that are influenced by his own Catholic
outlook.
28.
October 11: Presenter:
___________________________ Charles
Carroll is regarded as one of the
Founding Fathers of the United States of America. He was one of the signers of
the Declaration of Independence. He was a delegate from Maryland. Charles Carroll was the last signer of the
Declaration of Independence to die. This last survivor of one of his nation's
foundational moment died on 14 November 1832. This was 56 years after the
events of 1776. Charles Carroll was a
Catholic.
29.
October 12: Presenter:
___________________________ James Patrick
Caviezel (born September 26, 1968) is an American film actor. Caviezel is perhaps
best associated with his role as Jesus
in Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ (2004), but
he has also starred in such mainstream Hollywood films as Angel Eyes,
Pay It Forward and The Count of
Monte Cristo (2002). Caviezel is a devout Roman
Catholic.
30.
October 12: Presenter:
___________________________ William John
'Liam' Neeson born in Ballymena, Northern Ireland on June 7, 1952, is an Oscar-nominated Irish actor. He was raised as a Roman Catholic in the
predominately Protestant
and Unionist
town of Ballymena in Northern Ireland. High-profile appearances include the lead roles in Darkman,
Schindler's List,
Kinsey, Michael Collins,
Qui-Gon Jinn in Star Wars
Episode I: the Phantom Menace and Rob Roy.
31. October 15: Presenter: ___________________________ Vincent Thomas Lombardi (June 11, 1913 – September 3,
1970) was one of the
most successful head coaches in the history of American
football. He was the driving force of the Green
Bay Packers from 1959
to 1967, leading
them in the capture of five NFL championships during his 9 year
tenure. Following a one-year retirement from coaching in 1968, he returned as
head coach of the Washington Redskins for the 1969
season. He owns a 9-1 record in the post-season. Just a week after his death,
the NFL's Super
Bowl trophy was renamed the Vince Lombardi Trophy in his honor. He was
enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame in the summer
of 1971. Lombardi was a devout Catholic.
32. October 15: Presenter: ___________________________ Eduardo Veràstegui. is a Mexican
actor. Verástegui is one of today's
fastest rising Latino
stars and has been voted by People en Español as one of the 50 Most Beautiful
People in the world[citation needed]. The Mexican
actor has also made appearances in the popular TV series, Charmed as Mr. Right, and in Jennifer
Lopez's "Ain't It Funny" video and her new perfume
commercials. Verástegui completed his
latest film, called "Bella",
in 2006.
33. October 15: Presenter: ___________________________ Thomas Malcolm Muggeridge (March 24, 1903–November 14, 1990) was a British journalist, author, satirist, media
personality, soldier-spy and Christian scholar. Having professed publicly to
being an agnostic for most of his life, he found his Christian faith,
publishing Jesus Rediscovered in 1969
and Jesus: The Man Who Lives in 1976.
In A Third Testament, he profiles seven
spiritual thinkers, or God's Spies as he called them, who influenced his life: Augustine of Hippo, William Blake, Blaise Pascal, Leo Tolstoy, Dietrich Bonhoeffer,
Søren
Kierkegaard, and Fyodor Dostoevsky. In this
period he also produced several important BBC documentaries with a religious
theme, including In the Footsteps of St. Paul. In 1982, he surprised many
people by converting to Roman
Catholicism at the age of 79 along with his wife, Kitty. This was
largely due to the influence of Mother Teresa.
34. October 16: Presenter: ___________________________ Michael John Sweeney (born July 22,
1973, Orange,
California) is a first baseman/designated hitter in Major League
Baseball who has played his entire career for the Kansas City Royals.
35. October 16: Presenter: ___________________________ Frank Capra (18 May 1897 – 3 September
1991) was an Academy
Award winning Italian-American film
director and a major creative force behind a number of highly popular films
of the 1930s and 1940s, including It's a Wonderful Life and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,
among others.
36. October 16:
Presenter: ____________________
Roger Thomas Staubach (born February 5,
1942 in Cincinnati,
Ohio) is a businessman, Heisman
Trophy winner and former American
professional football player where he was the quarterback for
the Dallas
Cowboys for most of the 1970s during their reign as America's
Team.
37. October 17: Presenter: ___________________________ Robert P. George is McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton
University, where he teaches courses on constitutional
interpretation, civil liberties and philosophy of law. He also
serves as the director of the James Madison
Program in American Ideals and Institutions. He was educated at Swarthmore College (BA), Harvard Law School (JD), Harvard Divinity
School (MTS), and New College,
Oxford
(DPhil). At Oxford he studied under John Finnis and Joseph Raz. He is a former
member of the US Commission on
Civil Rights and fellow at the US Supreme Court
and currently serves on the President's Council on
Bioethics. Robert George is a
devout Catholic.
38. October 17: Presenter: ___________________________ Walker Percy (May 28,
1916 – May 10, 1990) was an American Southern author
whose interests included philosophy
and semiotics. Percy is best
known for his philosophical novels, the first of which, The
Moviegoer, won the National Book Award
for Fiction in 1962.
He devoted his literary life to the exploration of "the dislocation of man
in the modern age,"[1]
and his work exhibited a unique combination of existentialism, southern
sensibility, and deeply-felt Catholicism.
39. October
17: Presenter:
____________________________ Blaise Pascal (June 19, 1623 – August 19, 1662) was a French mathematician, physicist,
and religious
philosopher.
He was a child prodigy who was educated by his father.
Pascal's earliest work was in the natural and applied sciences where he
made important contributions to the construction of mechanical calculators,
the study of fluids,
and clarified the concepts of pressure and vacuum. Pascal also
wrote powerfully in defense of the scientific
method.
40. October 23: Presenter:
___________________________ Nicholas of Cusa (1401–
August 11, 1464) was a German cardinal
of the Roman Catholic
Church, a philosopher,
jurist, mathematician,
and an astronomer. He is
widely considered as one of the greatest geniuses and polymaths of the 15th
century. He is also referred to as Nicolaus
Cusanus and Nicholas of Kues.
41. October 23: Presenter: ___________________________ Jay Feely (born May 23, 1976 in