Fr. Dcn. Kyle Washut, president of Wyoming Catholic College, joins The Catholic Morning Show to discuss the new reprint of Truth on Trial: The Rise and Fall of the Integrated Humanities Program at the University of Kansas. He unpacks how the 1970s Great Books program led by John Senior, Dennis Quinn, and Franklyn Nelick sparked hundreds of conversions and shaped today's Catholic classical education movement. Discover why wonder, friendship, and the True, Good, and Beautiful remain at the heart of authentic Catholic liberal education.
The Book Fr. Dcn. Kyle Washut, president of Wyoming Catholic College, wrote the new introduction to the reprint of Truth on Trial: The Rise and Fall of the Integrated Humanities Program at the University of Kansas, authored by Dr. Robert K. Carlson — founding dean of Wyoming Catholic College and a student and friend of John Senior. The reprint appears in The Adeodatus Series on Catholic Education and Culture and is available from CUA Press.
What Made the IHP Different The Integrated Humanities Program (IHP) ran at the secular University of Kansas in the 1970s, led by three professors — John Senior, Dennis Quinn, and Franklyn Nelick. Rather than deconstructing the classics, students read Homer and Virgil to be moved by them, memorized poetry, sang songs, learned Latin, waltzed, told stories, and stargazed under the night sky. Washut explains how this immersion in authentic human culture — what John Senior called the recovery of a "hearth culture" — produced more than 300 conversions to the Catholic faith.
The Fruits Among those formed by the program: Bishop James Conley (who writes a foreword to the reprint) and Archbishop Paul Coakley. The IHP's influence rippled outward to Clear Creek Abbey in Oklahoma, St. Gregory's Academy, St. Martin's Academy, and the founding of Wyoming Catholic College itself — a vision Washut says is carried forward today through John Henry Newman's principle of "personal influence" and the friendship between professors and students rooted in the True, the Good, and the Beautiful.
Learn More Read the story of Wyoming Catholic College's founding and vision statement in the book's appendix, and explore the college at WyomingCatholic.edu. Listen to The Catholic Morning Show weekdays at 7 a.m. Central at IowaCatholicRadio.com or on the Iowa Catholic Radio app.
#CatholicEducation #GreatBooks #WyomingCatholicCollege #JohnSenior #TruthOnTrial #ClassicalEducation #LiberalArts #CatholicConversion #CatholicMorningShow #IowaCatholicRadio