released 8/8/2025

In this lecture, Fr. Mark Perkins — chaplain and assistant headmaster of St. Dunstan’s Academy — describes how modern culture allows us to offload all of the physical necessities of life — growing food, making clothes, building shelters — to corporations and professionals. Engaging with the reality of the physical world and the challenges it presents is not regarded as an essential mode of understanding reality. One of the results of this practical Gnosticism is that we typically don’t help boys become men by training their embodied interaction with physical things. Perkins explains how alienation from creaturely embodiment tempts modern people to acedia — spiritual or mental sloth — which often invites a frenetic activity — sometimes “foolhardy recklessness” — to keep oneself distracted from the looming emptiness. Perkins describes how forms of education that combine the liberal arts with the common or practical arts offers an alternative that can encourage boys to become virtuous men.

This lecture was given at the CiRCE Institute’s 2025 national conference, the theme of which was “A Contemplation of Building.” The school at which Fr. Mark Perkins builds is St. Dunstan’s Academy.

50 minutes

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