Friday, April 17, 2009

An Appeal from an Uneasy Lunatic

I have been informed that the funeral of Father Jaki will occur at the Benedictine Archabbey of Pannonhalma in Hungary on Wednesday April 29.

As a spiritual farewell, I would like to appeal to our members to join in a novena, beginning Tuesday April 21 and ending on Wednesday April 29, using the rosary or your own choice of prayer.

One final note for today: I have been re-reading Jaki's Scientist and Catholic: Pierre Duhem to find some guidance in our work, and have just discovered a curious parallel:
Pierre Duhem's father, Joseph Duhem, died on April 7, 1899.
Our spiritual father, Stanley Jaki, died on April 7, 2009.
Such timing is not coincidental. It should urge us to work to have a "Collected Works of Pierre Duhem", in French and in English, for the centennial of his death in 2016. These seven years will go very quickly, but it is something to work towards.

2 comments:

Editor said...

A wonderful inspired decision to create the Duhem society- It could be the Duhem -Jaki society. In any case I will join you in the novena as I have a devotion to Fr. Jaki and am in the process of trying to read his many works and would find it appropriate to try to give him something in return in his honor. Although I am more of a theologian who also studies philosophy, I am interested in the correspondences of theology, philosophy and science. Blessed Easter Week.

Dr. Thursday said...

Thank you Julianna!

While I have called it the "Duhem Society" because that is what Fr. Jaki suggested, it will have both Duhem and Jaki as "masters" - though we shall have only one Master, as we have one Purpose.

I think as you proceed in your studies and work, you will discover the truth of Chesterton's saying "I never can really feel that there is such a thing as a different subject." [GKC ILN Feb 17 1906 CW27:126]

We need the theologians and philosophers as much as we need the physicists... this is implied by St. Paul's "Analogy of the Body" (1Cor12)

May God bless you and yours - and all our members - on this Easter Saturday!