In 1856, on the Feast of Saint Monica, John Henry Newman delivered a sermon on the topic "Intellect, Instrument of Religious Training." Newman, rector of the new Catholic University of Ireland, poses the question of the goal or intention of the Church in establishing universities. Comparing the Church's relationship to young students with Monica's relationship to her son, Augustine, he proposes that the aim of the Church is "to reunite things that were in the beginning joined together by God but which have been put asunder by man." The sermon contains a brilliant philosophy of adolescent development and of the intellectual, moral, and spiritual formation of youth.

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David Fincher's The Social Network, starring Jesse Eisenberg, Justin Timberlake and Andrew Garfield, turns 10 this autumn. In its focus on the origins of Facebook it seems rather quaint and dated; yet, in its depiction of the new meritocracy and the peculiar character formation of the techie world, it is perhaps more relevant today than it was in 2010.

Aaron Sorkin's clinical and cynical script highlights the motives of envy and anger, the absence of love and friendship, and the naked ambition for influence, impact, money and fame. In myriad ways, the film exemplifies what Pope Francis calls the "throwaway culture" – a culture that sees knowledge and human relationships in nothing more than instrumental terms.

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In the final, aching line of one of the few truly lasting American novels, F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote the following words: "and so, we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."

Artists have been warning this country for generations that there is no escaping the past; even if we could, the results would not be healthy for us.

Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man discovers that history is not marked by linear development but is rather a boomerang that returns to plague the naïve believer in progress. The past comes back in different ways in different times to specifically defy and upend whatever we might believe is the best current thought.

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One of the pleasant surprises of this summer is the release of a chart-topping album from Bob Dylan. At 79, Rough and Rowdy Ways makes him the first artist with a Billboard Top 40 album in every decade since the 1960s and the oldest musician to have led the Artist 100 Chart, surpassing Paul McCartney, who was 76 when he led in September 2018.

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In one of his most perceptive writings, C.S. Lewis says that one of the most common temptations that leads people who are not yet bad to do very bad things is the desire to be part of an inner group — what Lewis calls the inner ring. "Unless you take measures to prevent it, this desire is going to be one of the chief motives of your life, from the moment you enter your profession until you are too old to care," Lewis writes. "If you do nothing about it, if you drift with the stream, you will in fact be an 'inner ringer.'"

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