Image courtesy of webrn-maculardegeneration.com/central-scotoma.html . In Bernard Lonergan’s landmark work Insight , he uses the term scotoma  to describe a very specific kind of intellectual "blind spot." Becoming aware of ours is a form of refined self-knowledge that is imperative for building a good community. 1. What is a Scotoma? In medicine, a scotoma is a physical blind spot in the visual field. Lonergan adopts this metaphor to describe a psychic blind spot . It is an active exclusion...

Boston College women's eight at MIT Cup, April 6, 2024, courtesy of Boston College Athletics The student pivot to offload thinking to AI offers what I shall call here the coaching moment: that is, the time to pause the current work we're doing in order to get back to basics. Allow me to share a common experience from my coaching days. I spent a number of years as a rowing coach at colleges and a community boathouse, with male and female athletes between the ages of 16 and 75. The pattern was...

By Herbert Rose Barraud - archive.org, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=37002335 John Henry Newman, Pope Leo, and the new apostolic letter on education “Designing New Maps of Hope”   On the occasion of St. John Henry Newman being declared a Doctor of the Church   Lecture to the St. Thomas More Society [1] Boston College November 3, 2025     “Religious Truth is not only a portion, but a condition of general knowledge. To blot it out is nothing short, if I may so...