The Great Books of the Western World and Bishop Barron's Pivotal Players

Ironically, the Great Books only includes two of Bishop Barron's Pivotal Players: Saint Augustine and Saint Thomas Aquinas and do not mention the person who preserved Western Civilization: Saint Benedict of Nursia.

The Great Books of the Western World are books that constitute an essential foundation of Western culture and influence world civilization. To be considered great, books must be critically acclaimed works that are relevant to many major ideas and issues, have contemporary significance and benefits, and include literary merit. 

Great Books  is a series of books originally published in the United States in 1952, by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., to present the great books in 54 volumes.

Bishop Robert Barron Pivotal Players book describe "12 heroes who shaped the Church and changed the world"

In the Preface to the Great Books,  Robert M. Hutchins writes: Until lately, the West has regarded it as self-evident that the road to education lay through Great books. No man was educated, unless he was acquainted with the masterpieces of his tradition. There never was very much doubt in anybody's mind about which the masterpieces were. They were the books that had endured and that the common voice of mankind called the finest creations, in writing, of the Western mind. 

In the course of history, from epoch to epoch, new books have been written that have won their place in the list. Books once thought entitled to belong to it have been superceded; and this process if change will continue as long as man can think and write. It is the task of every generation to reasses the tradition in which it lives, to discard what it cannot use and to bring into context with the distant and intermediate past the most recent contributions to the Great Conversation - Robert M. Hutchins, Preface to the Great Books.

Pivotal Players and the Great Books

The original editors had three criteria for including a book in the series drawn from Western Civilization: the book must be relevant to contemporary matters, and not only important in its historical context; it must be rewarding to re-read repeatedly with respect to liberal education; and it must be a part of "the great conversation about the great ideas", relevant to at least 25 of the 102 "Great Ideas" as identified by the editor of the series's comprehensive index, the Syntopicon, to which they belonged. The books were chosen not on the basis of ethnic and cultural inclusiveness (historical influence being seen as sufficient for inclusion), nor on whether the editors agreed with the authors' views.

A second edition was published in 1990, in 60 volumes. Some translations were updated; some works were removed; and there were additions from the 20th century, in six new volumes.

Ironically, the Great Books only includes two of Bishop Barron's Pivotal Players: Saint Augustine and Saint Thomas Aquinas and do not mention the person who preserved Western Civilization: Saint Benedict of Nursia. According to Bishop Barron

"at a time when Roman order had collapsed and barbarian invaders were picking through the rabble of a once great civilization  Benedict founded the religious community that would, in time, preserve the best of the old and allow for the emergence of a particularly Christian way of life. 

This is the massive Segovia aqueduct, constructed during the reign of Emperor Trajan between AD 98 and 117, which stands as a testament to the ingenuity of Roman engineering. Remarkably preserved, this monumental structure spans 2,388 feet and rises with 165 arches, each exceeding 30 feet in height. Uniquely, it is assembled from around 24,000 dark Guadarrama granite blocks, laid without any mortar, showcasing the precision and durability of ancient Roman construction techniques.

And so it is absolutely no exaggeration to say that without Benedict, there would not be Thomas Aquinas, no Catherine of Siena, no Ignatius of Loyola, no Michelangelo, and no John Henry Newman." Saint Benedict relentlessly preserved Seneca, Cicero, Plato, Aristotle, Aristophanes, Caesar  - in fact, practically everything of value that we have from the ancient world 

Pivotal Players 

As Stephen Beale puts it: "It’s difficult to overstate how crucial Western monasticism was to preserving European civilization. As the last vestiges of the Roman Empire withered away in the fifth century, monastic communities emerged as islands of enlightenment among a dark sea of barbarism and anarchy that held sway over Europe for centuries. There was one occupation of the monks which, perhaps more than any other, helped in the preservation of Western Civilization: that of copying ancient manuscripts.
But the role of the monks in saving civilization was even broader than this. Besides praying and working out their salvation and preaching the gospel, what else did monks pursue in those monasteries? The practical arts, agriculture being a significant one. They literally saved agriculture in Europe. They taught the folks how to cultivate the land, especially in Germany where they converted the wilderness into a cultivated country. Manual labor was intrinsic part of their rule which proclaimed “ora et labora” (pray and work). In England they owned one fifth of all its cultivable land. The monks would introduce crops, industries and production methods with which the people were not familiar: the rearing and breeding of cattle, horses, the brewing of beer, the raising of bees and fruits. The corn trade in Sweden was established by the monks, in Parma it was cheese making, in Ireland salmon fisheries, and in many places vineyards. St. Benedict of Nursia, whose feast day was earlier this month, is universally recognized as the founder of Western monasticism, with his famous Rule of St. Benedict serving as the blueprint for what was at its height 37,000 Benedictine monasteries. So it’s not for nothing that St. Benedict is one of the patron saints of Europe. (And it’s easy to see why Pope Benedict XVI, facing the onslaught of a new dark ages upon Europe, took his name.)

While Bishop Barron's book the  Pivotal Players is not the Great Books of the Western World, all the Pivotal Players, including Michelangelo, St. Catherine of Siena, G.K. Chesterton, St. John Henry Newman, Fulton J. Sheen and others would meet the three criteria for including a book in the series drawn from Western Civilization.  

Just like  Robert M. Hutchins writes in Preface to the Great Books: "In the course of history, from epoch to epoch, new books have been written that have won their place in the list. Books once thought entitled to belong to it have been superceded; and this process if change will continue as long as man can think and write." So it is with the Pivotal Players: "Evangelizing the culture then, requires being able to  'red the signs of the times.' All our Pivotal Players had the ability, whether consciously or intuitively: From St. Benedict discerning he needed to leave the decadent urban culture of sixth-century Italy and set up a monastic community, to Bartolomè de las Casas in the fifteenth century recognizing he must challenge the inhumane treatment of indigenous people in the Americas, to St. John Henry Newman engaging in the intellectual life of nineteenth century Oxford. Closer tonour own age, we find Flannery O'Connor responding to the spiritual deafness of twentieth-century America with her fiction, and Fulton Sheen recognizing the potential of television for evangelization. These figures presented the same truth I'm distinctive ways that met the needs of the time," Holly Ordway writes

Holly Ordway also writes: What can we learn from these Pivotal Players? We have seen how their lives reflected the love of God, and how their devotion to Christ decisively influenced the Church.the  we have recognized the way that these figures embodied the Church's mission, to evangize the culture. We have admired them, learned from them, and been surprised and challenged by them.

But we should not stop there.. we should ask: What next? How can we carry on their work of evangelization? That question may seem daunting or even prideful. After all, these are really great figures. Who are we to emulate someone like St. Ignatius, St. Catherine of Siena, or Michelangelo?  It might seem more fitting and more humble to view these men and women as set apart, bigger and better than ordinary Catholics like us. Let others who have great spiritual gifts do great things, right? No, that's not right, and I dare say that any of these Pivotal Players would speak up to say so.

When we look at the lives of these great figures, we see again and again the truth that they recognized:  their lives were not about them. From St. A-Benedict to St. John Henry Newman, from G. K. Chesterton to Flannery O'Connor, we see that these figures had tremendous intellect, spiritual, pastoral, and creative gifts - and they used them with great humility to pursue the beautiful, the good and the true; that is to love and serve God in his Church.

True humility does not mean pretending one does not have any talents or downplaying the value of one's gift. Rather, it means recognizing that these are precisely God's gifts, and focusing on how they can be put to service for the kingdom. The Pivotal Players we have encountered were gifted in many ways., and their humility is grounded in their outward focus: How to serve Christ with talents God gave them.

So it is right and fitting - and indeed vitally important - that we should ask the question: How can we fo what they did in our own day and and with our gifts and talents?

In order to answer that question we need to discern the shape of the culture.

Every age and every culture presents

particular opportunities for evangelization. Certain aspects of the human experience are perennial: people have always faced the problem of suffering, and struggled with issues of justice and mercy. Individual people have grappled with questions about the existence of God, the truth of the Resurrection, the nature of sin and so on. But the way these issues are experienced is profoundly shaped by the culture.

Whatever particular gifts any one of us might have, one thing we do all have, for certain: a vocation to holiness. We are all called to be saints, and to witness with our lives to the truth of the faith. 

There are new saints being raised up right now, who in future generations will be recognized as pivotal players of the 21st century. It might be you or me, in God's providence  - it might be someone whom you or I help to come into the Church, or someone we encourage, or teach, or pray for, or serve. Each and everyone of us is a pivotal player for someone in our lives. Let us live out that calling, with God's help and the help of the saints.

For example, Carlo Acutis, a video game and computer-loving teenager known as "God's influencer" who died at age 15 will become the first Millennial saint.

While Bishop Barron's book the Pivotal Players does not come close on terms of depth and breadth to the Great Books, it can be read in one sitting and used to discard what is not useful and use it to bring into context with the distant and intermediate past the contributions to the Great Conversation as Robert M. Hutchins might say.

Related

A good book opens the mind, stimulates the heart, and prepares us for life, Pope Francis writes in a letter to future priests, but also all pastoral workers and Christians will appreciate "reading novels and poems as part of one’s path to personal maturity."