The Province of Wisdom

Photo by David Vives on Unsplash

Here is another golden nugget from a 1930s commencement address.

I first “met” Amleto Cicognani while researching my biography of Bishop Bonaventure Broderick. He played a central role in bringing to a happy ending the bishop’s long, unfortunate thirty-four year exile.

The Italian-born Cicognani (1883-1973), as archbishop, was the Vatican’s apostolic delegate to the United States from 1933 to 1958, later a cardinal and Secretary of State. During a quarter century in America, he was much in demand as a speaker. Several of his addresses and sermons between 1938 and 1942 were collected and published by St. Anthony Guild Press in 1942 - which is where I uncovered his commencement speech given at the University of Notre Dame on June 5, 1938. His speech was lengthy and dynamic, a great read, but to give you a hint of his force of eloquence, here is a brief excerpt contrasting wisdom and knowledge.

To seek after knowledge merely for the sake of knowledge, to promote human culture as an end in itself, is a gravely defective method. Education which teaches the student to do no more than this is wanting in its highest element: it lacks wisdom.

Knowledge and wisdom are not the same.

Wisdom is a virtue, and every virtue is dispsitio perfecti ad optimum. The sublime end of wisdom is to shed light - divine light, primarily, rather than human light.

There are things which pertain solely to the senses, or, at the highest, the intellect, and these are the object of knowledge.

But there are other things which pertain to the immortal soul and bind us to God in the bond of sonship and of finality. To acquire these, study is not enough, however exhaustive, nor a scientific method, however perfect; but there is need for recollection, silence, meditation, exercises of abnegation and self-denial, watchfulness against the beginnings of the passions, will power, and the practice of virtue. These constitute the province of wisdom.

I look forward to sharing more of Cicognani’s treasure chest of sound teaching in the future.