Fr. John Flynn, Business Ethics and Christianity

Business Ethics and Christianity
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By Father John Flynn, L.C.

ROME, JUNE 24, 2007 (Zenit.org).- Confrontations over globalization no longer make headlines, but many concerns remain over the future of the world economy. In past months the question of growing economic inequality has come under increasing attention.

Globalization has delivered many benefits, argued a front-page article published May 24 by the Wall Street Journal. The article did concede, however: "As trade, foreign investment and technology have spread, the gap between economic haves and have-nots has frequently widened, not only in wealthy countries like the United States, but in poorer ones like Mexico, Argentina, India and China as well."

The experience of the last few years is showing that those with education and skills benefit from globalization. Others, without these advantages, are not so fortunate. While not forgetting the benefits of globalization for many millions of people, the Wall Street Journal also expressed concern that the growing inequalities could provoke a backlash that would damage trade and investment.

Earlier this year, U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke also warned of problems stemming from economic inequality. In a speech given Feb. 6 to the Greater Omaha Chamber of Commerce in Nebraska, Bernanke defended the idea that the free market does not guarantee an equality of economic outcomes, allowing as it does the possibility for unequal rewards due to differences in effort and skill.

Slipping down the ladder

"That said, we also believe that no one should be allowed to slip too far down the economic ladder, especially for reasons beyond his or her control," he added in the text posted on the Federal Reserve Board site.

Outlining evidence from a variety of sources, the Federal Reserve chairman pointed out that over the last few decades economic well-being in the United States has increased considerably. At the same time, he observed that "the degree of inequality in economic outcomes has increased as well."

Bernanke admitted the difficulty of resolving the question of how to maintain a balance between a market system that uses economic incentives and stimulates growth, and the need to protect individuals against adverse economic outcomes.

Proposing solutions to this problem involves value judgments beyond the realm of economic theory, Bernanke concluded. He did, however, suggest a range of possible measures, ranging from education and job training, to helping individuals and families bear the cost of economic change, as ways to affront the problem of inequality.

A similar position was expressed in an opinion article by Danny Leipziger and Michael Spence, published in the Financial Times on May 15. The authors, respectively a vice president at the World Bank and a 2001 Nobel laureate in economics, argued that in the globalization debate the most important issue is "who benefits and who loses."

"Globalization is a positive sum game in the aggregate but one that produces both winners and losers," they also observed.

Leipziger and Spence supported improvements in education to help workers affront the current situation. In addition, they called for better safety nets, more investment in infrastructure and assured access to services such as health care.

Dignity of the person

Amid the ongoing debate over issues of economics and ethics, Benedict XVI has addressed these issues on several occasions in recent months. On May 26 he spoke to a group of young people from Confindustria, the General Confederation of Italian Industry.

Every business, the Pope noted, should be considered first and foremost as a group of people, whose rights and dignity should be respected. Human life and its values, the Pontiff continued, should always be the guiding principle and end of the economy.

In this context, Benedict XVI acknowledged that for business, making a profit is a value that they can rightly put as an objective of their activity. At the same time the social teaching of the Church insists that businesses must also safeguard the dignity of the human person, and that even in moments of economic difficulties, business decisions must not be guided exclusively by considerations of profit.

The Pope also dealt briefly with the theme of globalization. This is a phenomenon, he commented, that gives hope of a wider participation in economic development and riches. It is a process not without its risks, however, leading in some cases to worsening economic inequality. Echoing the words of Pope John Paul II, Benedict XVI called for a globalization characterized by solidarity and without marginalization of people.

Other principles that need to guide the economy are justice and charity, Benedict XVI explained in a message, dated April 28, to the president of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, Mary Ann Glendon. The letter was sent on the occasion of the plenary session of the academy, held April 27-May 1.

The pursuit of justice and the promotion of the civilization of love, the message stated, are essential aspects of the Church's mission in its proclamation of the Gospel. Justice and love cannot be separated, the Pope observed, because of the Church's experience of how the two were united in "the revelation of God's infinite justice and mercy in Jesus Christ."

Justice, he continued, must be "corrected" by love, a love which inspires justice and purifies our efforts to build a better society. "Only charity can encourage us to place the human person once more at the center of life in society and at the center of a globalized world governed by justice," the Pope stated.

Labor market

The Pope took a closer look at some of the problems facing workers in a couple of speeches earlier this year. In a message dated March 28, sent to participants in the 9th International Youth Forum organized by the Pontifical Council for the Laity, Benedict XVI commented that in recent years economic and technological changes have radically changed the labor market.

This has given hope to young people, the Pontiff conceded, but it also brings with it the need for greater skills and education, and the demand that workers be prepared to travel, even to other countries, in searching for jobs.

Work, he explained, is part of God's plan for humanity and through it we participate in the work of creation and redemption. We will live this better, the Pope urged, if we remain united to Christ through prayer and sacramental life.

Then, on March 31, Benedict XVI spoke to a gathering of Confartigianato, an association of Italian artisans. Work is part of God's plan for man, even if because of original sin it has become more of a burden, the Pope explained.

It is important, he exhorted, to proclaim the primacy of the human person and the common good over capital, science, technology and even private ownership. As Christians, we can testify to the "Gospel of work," in our daily lives, the Pope reminded them.

The Pontiff also had words for those directing workers, in an address to a group from the Italian group, the Christian Union of Business Executives on March 4. Justice and charity, the Pope said, are inseparable elements in the social commitment of Christians.

"It is incumbent on lay faithful in particular to work for a just order in society, taking part in public life in the first person, cooperating with other citizens and fulfilling their own responsibility," said the Pope.

"Unfortunately, partly because of current economic difficulties, these values often run the risk of not being followed by those business persons who lack a sound moral inspiration," he also noted. Values which, together with sound economic policies, could go a long way in finding solutions to the ethical challenges in a globalized world.

Interview With Father Vincent Twomey

The Conscience of Our Age
Interview With Father Vincent Twomey



MAYNOOTH, Ireland, JUNE 25, 2007 (Zenit.org).- The modern conception of conscience reduces it to an excuse mechanism, that it cannot err and that what one thinks is right is in fact right, said author Father Vincent Twomey.

Father Twomey, retired professor of moral theology at the Pontifical University of St. Patrick's College, in Maynooth, is the author of "Pope Benedict XVI: The Conscience of Our Age," published this year by Ignatius Press.

In this interview with ZENIT, he comments on the Holy Father's role in providing a way to return to a deeper understanding of conscience.

Q: You were a doctoral student of Father Joseph Ratzinger. How has that experience uniquely prepared you to write this book?

Father Twomey: I joined professor Ratzinger's doctoral colloquium in the spring of 1971, and studied under his supervision for the doctorate, which I was awarded in 1979.

Since his election as archbishop of Munich in 1977, he has met with his former doctoral and postdoctoral students each year for a weekend colloquium, a practice that continued even after his election as Benedict XVI.

I think that, as a result, I have a personal knowledge of the Pope that is, perhaps, unique.
Sitting at his feet as a student, studying his writings, and participating in discussions with him over some 36 years has also given me a certain insight into his thought, which in turn has influenced my own theology profoundly.

Q: What do you think are the most defining characteristics of the writings of Joseph Ratzinger, now Benedict XVI?

Father Twomey: The most defining formal characteristics of his writings are originality, clarity and a superb literary style that is not easy to render in translation.

Ratzinger is more than a world-class scholar and academic: He is an original thinker.

He has the Midas touch, in the positive sense that whatever he touches, he turns to gold, in other words, whatever subject he examines, he has something new and exciting to say about it, be it the dogmas of the Church or a mosaic in an ancient Roman church or bioethics. And he writes with amazing clarity.

With regard to his style, Cardinal Joachim Meisner of Cologne is reported as commenting that Ratzinger is the Mozart of theology -- he writes masterpieces effortlessly.

With regard to its content, as Ratzinger once said himself, "God is the real central theme of my endeavors."

There is hardly an area of theology -- dogma, moral, political life, bioethics, liturgy, exegesis, music, art -- that he has not examined in-depth. And everything he examines, he does so from God's viewpoint, as it were, namely trying to discover what light revelation -- Scripture and Tradition -- can shine on a particular issue.

On the other hand, his theological reflection is firmly rooted in contemporary experience: the questions and existential issues posed by modernity and post-modernity, by contemporary thinkers and the epoch-making events of our times.

However, his pastoral and administrative duties as archbishop and prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith were such that he had little time to write extensive monographs, with the result that most of his writings are of a fragmentary nature. But what fragments!

Each has the capacity to convey that insight into truth that touches the mind and heart of the reader -- and can effect in many a change of heart.

Q: You describe Benedict XVI as unafraid of making mistakes, and as "having the courage to be imperfect." Can you explain this further?

Father Twomey: Having the courage to be imperfect is more than being afraid of making mistakes, though it may include it.

Basic to his whole attitude to life and to theology is the assumption that only God is perfect, that human effort is always imperfect.

Perfectionism of any kind is inimical to man, but above all in the political sphere. Most political ideologies aim to create a perfect world, a perfect society and usually end up making hell on earth.

That is a frequent theme of his writings on political life. But also with regard to the human effort to do theology, as it were. That, too, will always be unfinished business, always capable of improvement, of correction and deepening.

We cannot know everything, least of all God and his design for man. I have described his writings as "fragmentary." Most of his writings are unfinished -- like his classic book, "Introduction to Christianity," and, more recently, his "Jesus of Nazareth." And yet he has the courage to publish them in their unfinished state.

This attitude gave Joseph Ratzinger that inner calm and detachment which the world is now experiencing in Benedict XVI. But it also is, perhaps, the secret of his gentle humor and wit.

Q: You suggest that there has been a distortion of the word conscience. What is this distortion and how has it affected the Church?

Father Twomey: The starting point is the traditional notion of an erroneous conscience, which in the wake of the turbulence that followed "Humanae Vitae," was falsely interpreted to mean, in effect for many, that it does not matter what one does, provided that one is sincerely convinced that it is right.

Sincerity now becomes the criterion of morality and, taken to its logical conclusion, it would be impossible to condemn a Hitler or a Stalin, since it could be claimed that they too acted according to their "lights," according to their sincere convictions.

The traditional insistence on the primacy of following your conscience, even if erroneous, led to a new notion, that of the "infallible conscience." This amounts to the claim that conscience cannot err, that what you think is right is in fact right.

This is to reduce conscience to an excuse mechanism. This notion receives its persuasiveness, if not its inspiration, from the prevailing relativism of modernity.

It is sometimes claimed today that each one can adopt whatever moral principles he or she decides best for them. These are the fruit of their conscientious choice, after having looked at the options.

This is indeed a very attractive theory. But it amounts to the claim that each person can determine for himself what is right or wrong, the temptation of Adam and Eve in the garden.

Often, it is given the title "a la carte" Catholicism, picking and choosing what suits us. Morality is reduced to an ultimately irrational personal preference.

This prevailing notion of conscience has had a devastating effect on the Church and Christian living.

Q: You describe Benedict XVI as a guide for the conscience in today's age. In what ways do you believe this to be true?

Father Twomey: First of all, as theologian and later as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Ratzinger has been the voice of the Church's conscience in affirming the objective truth when it was denied either theoretically or in practice.

It is astonishing that secular thinkers, those outside the Church, as it were, seem to recognize this more than those inside. Thus, for example, the French Academy honored him as the apt successor to Andrey Sacharov, the dissident atom physicist during the tyranny of the Soviet Union.

It was their recognition of a courageous thinker who was in effect the great "dissident" under the "dictatorship of relativism" that has swamped Europe and America over the past half-century.

Secondly, conscience is not only a central theme of his writings, he has also made a major contribution to correcting the false understanding of conscience outlined above, to which I devote a whole chapter in my book.

Q: How did the experience of growing up in Nazi Germany helped to prepare Joseph Ratzinger for the papacy? What particular lessons did he learn then that he still puts into practice today?

Father Twomey: The answer to this question is to be found in a comment he made in an interview in 1999: "As a result [of living through the Nazi period], I learned to have a certain reserve with regard to the reigning ideologies."

Evidently, he meant "ideologies" also to cover those found within the Church, which are fashionable since they reflect current ideological trends in society.

His experience of living under a political ideology and its bureaucracy made him sensitive to the need for the exercise of moral responsibility on the part of each one, but in particular on the part of those who hold public office in the Church or in the state. Moral responsibility is but another word for conscience.

His skepticism regarding episcopal conferences is rooted in the experience of how, as a collective, the German bishops, to put it mildly, had not quite matched up to the witness given by individual bishops such as Bishop Clemens von Galen of Muenster and Archbishop Michael Faulhaber of Munich.

He calls on all bishops to give personal witness and not wait for the collective conference to rubber-stamp some document prepared by an anonymous commission.

Likewise, his theology has been marked by a personal search for the truth, urged on by his conscience. All his life, he has exercised his personal moral responsibility, even when it earned for him the negative title of "rottweiler" or "grand inquisitor" -- or, indeed, "the enemy of humanity," as one journalist put it.

To speak the truth in love is to be in opposition, very often, to the prevailing fashions and so to make oneself unpopular.

Now, as Benedict XVI, he continues to exercise that moral responsibility, not least in the way he writes most of his own speeches, which speak to the heart of his audience because they are spoken from his own heart and not from a prepared schema.

Quick thoughts on money

Is it too controversial to say that money is primarily used for exchange within a political community? What if we say that interstate trade should be conducted solely through barter, and that money should not flow out of a state? What do we make of its use as a commodity in itself? Money is for the sake of promoting the good life within a community, and not for people within the state and outside the state to exploit in order to get rich? That is, money exists to faciliate the exchange of goods and services between members of a community, so that their bodily needs can be taken care of.

New from CUA Press

Just received their Fall/Winter 2007-8 catalog today.

Aquinas the Augustinian, ed. Michael Dauphinais, Barry David, and Matthew Levering (September, paper $39.95, 978-0-8132-1492-4)

The Perspective of the Acting Person: Essays in the Renewal of Thomistic Moral Philosophy by Martin Rhonheimer, ed. William F. Murphy, Jr. (February, paper $39.95, 978-0-8132-1551-2)

No doubt there will be a lot of discussion of the essays in this book among "traditional" Thomists.
The Age of Strict Construction: A History of the Growth of Federal Power, 1789-1861 by Peter Zavodnyik (October, cloth $59.95, 978-0-8132-1504-4)

The book focuses on the dispute over the spending power of Congress, the Supreme Court's expansion fo the Contract Clause, and the centralizing effects of the Jacksonian spoils system. The book also surveys the conflict over constitutional interpretation--originalism v. textualism--that has divided Americans from the time of the dispute over the first Bank of the United States until the present day.

The standard interpretation of American history holds that the federal government remained a weak and passive creature until the New Deal. The Age of Strict Construction argues that this interpretation is not valid--if measured against the original understanding of the powers of Congress and the Supreme Court, federal authority grew rapidly during the antebellum period. The most stunning aspect of centralization occured with the rise of a party system heavily dependent on federal largesse for patronage.

The book also details how the federal government quickly came to play an unexpectedly prominent role in the lives of citizens, as its policies in areas such as land sales and tariffs had a huge effect on the fortunes of individual Americans. It also explains how the Founders' classical ideas of a rural electorate immune to pecuniary considerations quickly succumbed to the changes brought on by the arrival of a market economy and the growth of cities.

The relationship between centralization and the sectional crisis of the 1850s is also explored. The book turns the long-running argument over the cause of secession--slave v. the growth of federal power--on its head by revealing how the two combined to cause southern states to leave the Union.

Widsom's Apprentice: Thomistic Essays in Honor of Lawrence Dewan, O.P. ed. by Peter A. Kwasniewski (September, cloth $49.95, 978-0-8132-1495-5)

A second edition of Joseph Ratzinger's Eschatology: Death and Eternal Life. (October, paper, $19.95, 978-0-8132-1516-7).

And there's a new series coming out: The Library of Early Christianity

A new series of texts and translations featuring the early Christian literature of both the Eastern and Western churches (A.D. 150-800)

The Library of Early Christianity will be a permanent enterprise that publishes one new volume approximately every other year. The Library will publish texts in the original ancient languages of both East and West--Greek, Latin, Arabic, Syriac, Coptic, Ethiopic, Armenian, and Georgian--accompanied by contemporary English translations printed on the facing pages. In order to make the texs more accesible to the nonspecialist and to aid readers in comprehending the thought of ht influential thinkers of the early church, each volume will include an introduction,
notes, and a bibliography.

Editorial Director John F. Petruccione is associate professor in the Department of Greek and Latin at the Catholic University of America.

The first two volumes are from Theodoret of Cyrus, The Questions on the Octateuch.

The Theological Genius of Joseph Ratzinger

The Theological Genius of Joseph Ratzinger An Interview with Fr. D. Vincent Twomey, S.V.D., author of Pope Benedict XVI: The Conscience of Our Age (A Theological Portrait) Carl E. Olson

Go to the original for the embedded links.

Fr. D. Vincent Twomey, S.V.D., holds both a Ph.D. in Theology and is Professor Emeritus of Moral Theology at the Pontifical University of St. Patrick's College, Maynooth, Ireland. He is also a former doctoral student of Joseph Ratzinger, having studied under the man who is now Pope Benedict XVI at the University of Regensburg in the early 1970s. Twomey is the author of several books, including an acclaimed study of the state of Irish Catholicism, The End of Irish Catholicism?.

His most recent book is Pope Benedict XVI: The Conscience of Our Age (A Theological Portrait), recently published by Ignatius Press. Rev. Twomey, both a former student and longtime friend of Joseph Ratzinger, wrote the book, in part, to answer the common question he heard often after the papal election, "What kind of person is the new Pope?" Having often heard and read false depictions of both the man and his thought, especially the image presented by the media as a grim enforcer, Twomey wished to set the record straight. Rev. Twomey offers in his book a unique double-presentation of the man, Pope Benedict XVI--a "theological portrait" that encompasses both an overview of the writings, teachings and thought of the brilliant theologian and spiritual writer, as well as the man himself, and his personality traits and how he communicates with others.

Carl E. Olson, editor of IgnatiusInsight.com, recently interviewed Rev. Twomey, and spoke to him about his former professor, the theological vision of Joseph Ratzinger, and what he expects from the pontificate of Pope Benedict XVI.

IgnatiusInsight.com: How and when did you first meet Joseph Ratzinger? What was your impression of him?

Rev. Twomey: I first met Joseph Ratzinger early in the new year of 1971, when he interviewed me in Regensburg after I had asked him to be my doctoral supervisor. My first impression was of an unassuming man with piercing eyes, a gentle smile, and not the slightest touch of the arrogance of a Herr Professor.

IgnatiusInsight.com: What were some of the essential formative theological influences on Joseph Ratzinger?

Rev. Twomey: The immediate post-war situation of the Church in Germany exercised a huge influence on the fledgling theologian. The Church had emerged triumphant after the persecution under Hitler. There was a feeling of a new beginning, not least in theology, where the neo-scholasticism of the previous half-century was more or less abandoned in the search for a fresh approach.

Young theologians such as Henri de Lubac, who had a great influence on Ratzinger, turned to the Fathers of the Church for inspiration and found it. The Munich theologian Gottlieb Soehngen directed Ratzinger's doctoral dissertation on Augustine's ecclesiology and his postdoctoral dissertation on Bonaventure's theology of history. Augustine and Bonaventure are two major thinkers whose profound influence on Ratzinger cannot be underestimated. He came under the spell of Cardinal Newman thanks to his Prefect of Studies, Alfred Laepple, who at the time was writing his thesis on Newman's understanding of conscience and introduced his students to the writings of perhaps the greatest theologian of the 19th century, who was also steeped in the Fathers of the Church.

But, ultimately, it was Scripture that formed the basic thrust of all his theology. He once said something to the effect that, in the final analysis, his theology is a form of exegesis. And here his friendship with the great German exegete Heinrich Schlier must be mentioned; Schlier's attention to the precise terms of the original text of Scripture is echoed in Ratzinger's careful exegesis. Josef Pieper, the most important German Catholic philosopher, also exercised a great influence, as did Endre von Ivanka on the philosophy of the early Church.

IgnatiusInsight.com: What attracted him to Augustine and how has his early studies of the great Doctor of the Church informed how he addresses contemporary controversies?

Rev. Twomey: Ratzinger found the scholastics too cerebral. Augustine appealed to him as a man of passion, whose whole life was dedicated to the search to know the truth and articulate it. For neo-scholasticism, everything found its place in the "system", but Ratzinger was instinctively aware that truth is more than any system of thought could encompass, that it has to be discovered anew in all its freshness from one generation to the next.

Augustine was more than a controversialist, but he was still a remarkable controversialist, who was not frightened by any attack on the faith, be it within the Church or without. Confident in the truth revealed in Christ, he found the courage to take on all those who questioned that truth or denied it. Ratzinger shows a similar courage. He is not afraid to face up to the most difficult challenges to the faith, knowing that in trying to answer them we discover the truth in all its grandeur and compelling nature. More concretely, Ratzinger's studies of the ecclesiology of Augustine shaped his own understanding of Church--including the role of the Eucharist at the core of the Church--and her mission. They also prepared him for his later theology of political life, since Augustine's ecclesiology also involved clarifying the relationship between Church and State, between civil religion and faith.

IgnatiusInsight.com: What is unique or perhaps even surprising about Ratzinger's theological methodology? How does it differ from some of the celebrated Catholic theologians of the 1960s such as Küng and Rahner?

Rev. Twomey: What is unique to Ratzinger's theological methodology is, in the first place, its originality and creativity. Despite all the influences I mentioned, Ratzinger retained his distance and so retained his independence as a thinker, even with regard to the great theologians he studied.

His methodology is to take as his starting point contemporary developments in society and culture, then he listens to the solutions offered my his fellow theologians before returning to a critical examination of Scripture and Tradition for pointers to a solution. He is not satisfied to analyze a topic, but, having dissected the issue, he then attempts a systematic answer by seeing the topic in the context of theology as a whole. Unlike Küng, who is always in tune with the latest fashion, Ratzinger is not afraid to be unfashionable. Unlike Rahner, who produced a full systematic theology, Ratzinger's theology is fragmentary--filled with brilliant insights into almost every subject of theology and yet not a fixed "system".

Using the best findings of academic theology, Ratzinger goes beyond them to create something new and original. He is more than an academic. He is an original thinker, whose scattered writings on a host of subjects are "seminal", awaiting development by others. Finally, unlike either Küng or (especially) Rahner, Ratzinger writes with a clarity and, at times, literary beauty, that never fails to impress.

IgnatiusInsight.com: In the introduction to your book you wrote about how it was an "unsettling sight" to see, in April 2005, "the familiar face of my former teacher in hundreds of posters everywhere." In what ways, do you think, has being elected Pope brought out or highlighted little-known aspects of Benedict XVI's personality? Theological vision?

Rev. Twomey: Before he was elected Pope, it has to be admitted, few theologians or others were interested in his writings--he had been effectively sidelined. In addition, his task as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith was such that he was seen in a very negative light as the Grand Inquisitor, or Dr No. Theologians, it would seem, are as influenced by the media as anyone else. Few were even aware that, while Prefect, he had continued to publish as a private theologian. It came as a great surprise to many that, in his homilies and talks since his election, the main topic he stressed was joy--the joy God intends to bring into the world through the Church. Now many are reading Ratzinger for the first time and are often quite overwhelmed. The media had presented Ratzinger's frowning face, when announcing some unpalatable decision of the Congregation. Since his election, the whole world has been captivated by his smiling face. That says it all.



IgnatiusInsight.com: What do you think are the most misunderstood aspects of Benedict's person and thought? How have some of those misunderstandings come about?

Rev. Twomey: Generally speaking, Ratzinger was written off as a conservative, if not a reactionary, primarily because few bothered to read his writings--but also because of his task as Prefect, which was to determine the boundaries of theological investigation and discipline certain theologians. His famous dialogue with Habermas in Munich in 2004 came as a huge surprise to Catholic intellectuals, who were unaware of how far Ratzinger was open to the heritage of the Enlightenment. It was not a surprise to secular thinkers, who had learned to treat Ratzinger with respect. The French Academy honored him as the apt successor to Andrey Sacharov, the dissident atom physicist during the tyranny of the Soviet Union. It was their recognition of a courageous thinker who was in effect the great "dissident" under the "dictatorship of relativism" that has swamped Europe and American over the past half-century.

IgnatiusInsight.com: A common mainstream media portrayal of Joseph Ratzinger, especially during his days as head of the CDF, was that he was rigid, dour, ultra-conservative, and closed to dialogue with those he disagree with. How far off the mark is that depiction? Why do you think, in particular, there continues to be this idea that Benedict is close off from ecumenical and inter-religious dialogue, in spite of years of writings that emphatically state otherwise?

Rev. Twomey: As already mentioned, it is completely off the mark to portray Ratzinger as rigid, dour, etc. As I point out in my book, what marked Ratzinger as a professor was his ability to promote genuine, open discussion and dialogue, as well as his dry wit and gentle humor. He enjoys a good joke and a humorous story. All his life, he has been engaged in ecumenical dialogue. His critical appreciation for non-Christian religions can be traced back to his earliest writings as a young theologian. Perhaps it was the document Dominus Iesus, on the oneness of Christ and his Church and the relationship of the Church to the other Christian denominations and the non-Christian religions, and more recently his Regensburg lecture, that gave rise to the idea that Benedict is opposed to inter-religious dialogue. His true, positive yet critical attitude can be found in his book Truth and Tolerance.

IgnatiusInsight.com: Your book was already in production when Benedict gave his now famous Regensburg Address that created a furor around the world. What was your reaction to the address? What do you think of the criticisms of those Catholic critics who said that Benedict wasn't properly diplomatic, didn't understand that he was now Pope and not a professor, and that he doesn't really understand Islam thought and theology?

Rev. Twomey: My own reaction was positive, since the main thrust of the lecture was to criticize European thinkers for leaving God out of the picture, of using a limited notion of reason that excluded the Transcendent, much to the impoverishment of society, and how poorly Europe was prepared to enter into dialogue with Islam as a result. It should be remembered that the lecture at the University before an assembly of academics and scientists received a standing ovation. The lecture, surprisingly, has resulted in a genuine dialogue between Christian and Muslim scholars (now that the air has been cleared) as well as what seems to be the beginning of a dialogue between secular and Christian thinkers (the latter being the main concern of his lecture). The Pope's visit to Turkey, especially to the Blue Mosque, should have put an end to any doubts about his attitude toward Islam.

IgnatiusInsight.com: Three of the seven chapters in your book deal with the issue of conscience and its vital place in the theological work of Ratzinger. What are the origins of his theological interest in conscience? Why has it been such an integral part of his writings over several decades?

Rev. Twomey: In the background is the rejection of any kind of fixed system of thought or ideology (even of a theological nature, "orthodox" or liberal) and a corresponding insight into the highly personal nature of truth. As mentioned before, his exposure to Newman as a young student of theology brought him into contact with one of the great modern thinkers who had thought deeply about the nature and centrality of conscience as a "co-knowing" of the truth in an age ofgrowing skepticism about knowing truth.



But also his study of Augustine, the great explorer of the human soul and its relationship to God, alerted him to the subjective aspect of grasping objective truth. Augustine, too, had to overcome the skepticism of his day that denied the possibility of knowing the truth. More generally, "conscience" is the term used today to justify the subjectivity that underlines relativism, not only in the moral sphere--it is in the air. As a result, Ratzinger, who is highly sensitive to every current of contemporary thought, must of necessity confront the question as to the nature of conscience and has done so consistently. Finally, an erroneous notion of conscience has penetrated deeply into Catholic moral theology, which Ratzinger has on occasion subjected to a radical criticism.

IgnatiusInsight.com: In writing of potential liturgical changes that Benedict may implement--and which have been rumored for many months now--you wrote that Ratzinger knows that "restoration ... must of necessity be creative, rooted in theology, and concerned with essentials, not the accidentals." Based on your knowledge of the Holy Father and his writings, what are some of the creative actions you think he might take to help restore the beauty and reverence that many Catholics believe has been largely lost over the past four decades?

Rev. Twomey: The Pope will first teach by doing--by the way he celebrates the liturgy. If he issues the Moto Proprio on the Tridintine Mass, then it will not be an attempt to restore that rite but to insist on the continuity between that rite and the present rite, but also in the hope that future generations will learn from that wonderfully rich rite, as many liturgists are now learning from the Eastern Orthodox rites. Liturgy must grow organically; it takes time to ripen, as it were, and changes must be introduced gradually. (The great mistake with the new liturgy, it seems to me, was the way a completely new rite was suddenly imposed on the Church from above.) According to the Post-Synodal Instruction on the Eucharist, the Pope has requested the relevant Congregation to examine some changes. Liturgy is about great and marvelous things happening under the form of little actions and words. Each work and ritual is significant. Any change affects the whole.

IgnatiusInsight.com: In your opinion, where does Joseph Ratzinger stand in the pantheon of great Catholic theologians of the 20th century? What sort of influence might his theological works have on future generations?

Rev. Twomey: This question is difficult to answer. I see Ratzinger as one of the great original thinkers of the 20th century. His pastoral tasks as Archbishop of Munich and his disciplinary tasks as Prefect of the CDF and now as Pope, prevented and prevents him from that writing project which would have produced a magnificent opus. And yet he has produced a vast corpus of writings on almost every topic in theology--mostly of a fragmentary nature, but capable of inspiring future generations to develop his seminal insights.

What is unique to Ratzinger is his ability to speak to all levels of society and to inspire all. Rarely has a theologian been able to speak to people's minds and hearts in such a way that their lives can be changed as a result. His latest book, Jesus of Nazareth, produced, like most of his work, in his spare time, is likely to set the parameters for theological debate on the nature of exegesis and the person of Jesus Christ for generations to come.

Pope's Address to European Professors

Pope's Address to European Professors
"A New Humanism for Europe. The Role of the Universities"



VATICAN CITY, JUNE 24, 2007 (Zenit.org).- Here is the address Benedict XVI gave to participants of the European Meeting of University Professors, gathered in Paul VI Hall. The four-day meeting ended today in Rome.

* * *

Your Eminence,

Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen,

Dear Friends!

I am particularly pleased to receive you during the first European Meeting of University Lecturers, sponsored by the Council of European Episcopal Conferences and organized by teachers from the Roman universities, coordinated by the Vicariate of Rome's Office for the Pastoral Care of Universities. It is taking place on the fiftieth anniversary of the Treaty of Rome, which gave rise to the present European Union, and its participants include university lecturers from every country on the continent, including those of the Caucasus: Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan. I thank Cardinal Péter Erdő, President of the Council of European Episcopal Conferences, for his kind words of introduction. I greet the representatives of the Italian government, particularly those from the Ministry for Universities and Research, and from the Ministry for Italy's Cultural Heritage, as well as the representatives of the Region of Lazio and the Province and City of Rome. My greeting also goes to the other civil and religious authorities, the Rectors and the teachers of the various universities, as well as the chaplains and students present.

The theme of your meeting -- "A New Humanism for Europe. The Role of the Universities" -- invites a disciplined assessment of contemporary culture on the continent. Europe is presently experiencing a certain social instability and diffidence in the face of traditional values, yet her distinguished history and her established academic institutions have much to contribute to shaping a future of hope. The "question of man", which is central to your discussions, is essential for a correct understanding of current cultural processes. It also provides a solid point of departure for the effort of universities to create a new cultural presence and activity in the service of a more united Europe. Promoting a new humanism, in fact, requires a clear understanding of what this "newness" actually embodies. Far from being the fruit of a superficial desire for novelty, the quest for a new humanism must take serious account of the fact that Europe today is experiencing a massive cultural shift, one in which men and women are increasingly conscious of their call to be actively engaged in shaping their own history. Historically, it was in Europe that humanism developed, thanks to the fruitful interplay between the various cultures of her peoples and the Christian faith. Europe today needs to preserve and reappropriate her authentic tradition if she is to remain faithful to her vocation as the cradle of humanism.

The present cultural shift is often seen as a "challenge" to the culture of the university and Christianity itself, rather than as a "horizon" against which creative solutions can and must be found. As men and women of higher education, you are called to take part in this demanding task, which calls for sustained reflection on a number of foundational issues.

Among these, I would mention in the first place the need for a comprehensive study of the crisis of modernity. European culture in recent centuries has been powerfully conditioned by the notion of modernity. The present crisis, however, has less to do with modernity's insistence on the centrality of man and his concerns, than with the problems raised by a "humanism" that claims to build a regnum hominis detached from its necessary ontological foundation. A false dichotomy between theism and authentic humanism, taken to the extreme of positing an irreconcilable conflict between divine law and human freedom, has led to a situation in which humanity, for all its economic and technical advances, feels deeply threatened. As my predecessor, Pope John Paul II, stated, we need to ask "whether in the context of all this progress, man, as man, is becoming truly better, that is to say, more mature spiritually, more aware of the dignity of his humanity, more responsible and more open to others" ("Redemptor Hominis," 15). The anthropocentrism which characterizes modernity can never be detached from an acknowledgment of the full truth about man, which includes his transcendent vocation.

A second issue involves the broadening of our understanding of rationality. A correct understanding of the challenges posed by contemporary culture, and the formulation of meaningful responses to those challenges, must take a critical approach towards narrow and ultimately irrational attempts to limit the scope of reason. The concept of reason needs instead to be "broadened" in order to be able to explore and embrace those aspects of reality which go beyond the purely empirical. This will allow for a more fruitful, complementary approach to the relationship between faith and reason. The rise of the European universities was fostered by the conviction that faith and reason are meant to cooperate in the search for truth, each respecting the nature and legitimate autonomy of the other, yet working together harmoniously and creatively to serve the fulfilment of the human person in truth and love.

A third issue needing to be investigated concerns the nature of the contribution which Christianity can make to the humanism of the future. The question of man, and thus of modernity, challenges the Church to devise effective ways of proclaiming to contemporary culture the "realism" of her faith in the saving work of Christ. Christianity must not be relegated to the world of myth and emotion, but respected for its claim to shed light on the truth about man, to be able to transform men and women spiritually, and thus to enable them to carry out their vocation in history. In my recent visit to Brazil, I voiced my conviction that "unless we do know God in and with Christ, all of reality becomes an indecipherable enigma" (Address to Bishops of CELAM, 3). Knowledge can never be limited to the purely intellectual realm; it also includes a renewed ability to look at things in a way free of prejudices and preconceptions, and to allow ourselves to be "amazed" by reality, whose truth can be discovered by uniting understanding with love. Only the God who has a human face, revealed in Jesus Christ, can prevent us from truncating reality at the very moment when it demands ever new and more complex levels of understanding. The Church is conscious of her responsibility to offer this contribution to contemporary culture.

In Europe, as elsewhere, society urgently needs the service to wisdom which the university community provides. This service extends also to the practical aspects of directing research and activity to the promotion of human dignity and to the daunting task of building the civilization of love. University professors, in particular, are called to embody the virtue of intellectual charity, recovering their primordial vocation to train future generations not only by imparting knowledge but by the prophetic witness of their own lives. The university, for its part, must never lose sight of its particular calling to be an "universitas" in which the various disciplines, each in its own way, are seen as part of a greater unum. How urgent is the need to rediscover the unity of knowledge and to counter the tendency to fragmentation and lack of communicability that is all too often the case in our schools! The effort to reconcile the drive to specialization with the need to preserve the unity of knowledge can encourage the growth of European unity and help the continent to rediscover its specific cultural "vocation" in today's world. Only a Europe conscious of its own cultural identity can make a specific contribution to other cultures, while remaining open to the contribution of other peoples.

Dear friends, it is my hope that universities will increasingly become communities committed to the tireless pursuit of truth, "laboratories of culture" where teachers and students join in exploring issues of particular importance for society, employing interdisciplinary methods and counting on the collaboration of theologians. This can easily be done in Europe, given the presence of so many prestigious Catholic institutions and faculties of theology. I am convinced that greater cooperation and new forms of fellowship between the various academic communities will enable Catholic universities to bear witness to the historical fruitfulness of the encounter between faith and reason. The result will be a concrete contribution to the attainment of the goals of the Bologna Process, and an incentive for developing a suitable university apostolate in the local Churches. Effective support for these efforts, which have been increasingly a concern of the European Episcopal Conferences (cf. "Ecclesia in Europa," 58-59), can come from those ecclesial associations and movements already engaged in the university apostolate.

Dear friends, may your deliberations during these days prove fruitful and help to build an active network of university instructors committed to bringing the light of the Gospel to contemporary culture. I assure you and your families of a special remembrance in my prayers, and I invoke upon you, and the universities in which you work, the maternal protection of Mary, Seat of Wisdom. To each of you I affectionately impart my Apostolic Blessing.

[Original text: English]

© Copyright 2007 -- Libreria Editrice Vaticana

Robert George on 'Reason, Freedom and the Rule of Law'

Robert George on 'Reason, Freedom and the Rule of Law'
"Reason, Freedom and the Rule of Law: Their Significance in the Catholic Intellectual and Moral Tradition" was the title of a recent (Nov 11) presentation by Professor Robert P. George of Princeton University. Professor George, a member of the President's Council on Bioethics and previously on the United States Commission on Civil Rights, was invited by the Institute of Catholic Studies.

Introduction by Mark Lewis SJ (2 min)
Lecture by Robert George (1 hr)

New url for Pontifications

evidently Fr. Al has moved to wordpress; the old website appears to be gone--no idea if the archives have been saved somewhere and eventually restored...

edit: apparently everything is gone, though one can still find what has been cached by Google and Yahoo...

The Rule of Law

Often liberal democrats will claim that democracy is superior to other forms of government precisely because of "the Rule of Law." But is their assertion really justified?

Can it not be claimed that during the middle ages, it was understood that the ruler was subject to the Divine Law (and the Natural Law)? And did not the medievals speculate about the limits to authority and to legislation? Even if a temporal ruler had no earthly superior who could judge him, he was still subject to the Divine Judgment, and his rule was not absolute.

(Notes: See Pennington on "princeps legibus solutus" and "plenitudo potestatis" and also Charles N.R. McCoy's essay.)

Should we then identify the Rule of Law solely with the possession of a written constitution and written laws? This seems to be too narrow, since it ignores the role of custom. Writing down laws does seem to be beneficial to the community, facilitating their being made known (assuming of course that the community is literate). Still, there are ways to make laws known to a society that relies exclusively on oral communication and the spoken word.

Nonetheless, written laws have a permanence and fixity that unwritten laws seem to lack, at least in our imagination. Law seems to be more "tangible" when it is written, even though it is first and foremost a spiritual reality. While it is good not to change laws too much, if a law is written does this prevent it from being changed when necessary, because we develop an excessive attachment to the law as it is formulated? (Do we run the risk of document worship?)

And if liberals were reacting to the claims of absolutism and also to the religious wars of the 16th century, were they justified in seeking a religion-free ideology upon which they could ground their political theory?

If the "Rule of Law" is simply that a community is governed by laws rather than by men, and there is an acknowledgement of the existence and priority of Natural Law, then what sets liberal democracies apart from polities that observed the Natural Law? Is it the secular nature of many liberal democratic governments? After all, if this is how the "Rule of Law" is understood by liberals, then it is not a defining feature of liberalism (or of the form of government known as politeia). We must look to other core beliefs of liberalism that set it apart from other political theories and ideologies of government.

SEP: Natural Law Theories

Fr. Rutler on eating meat

source

Someone asked that I reply to a recent comment on your blog that questioned the logic of my letter on vegetarianism. Let me say that I am not a meat fanatic, and in fact I often have meatless dinners. One should never cite Genesis to promote strict vegetarianism, as it was written by meat-eaters inspired by God who created all the animals as a menu for Adam and Eve. Their “dominion” over every beast gave them authority to choose how they wanted to serve them up, it seems to me.

I had a great aunt who was a vegetarian and her body started to make funny sounds and then she died. We hardly mention her, although we pray that our merciful Lord has welcomed her to the eternal Supper of the Lamb where there is no alternative menu.

It is silly to suppose that the creation of seed-bearing plants and fruit trees means that we should not eat meat. It only means that we should eat vegetables and fruits just as the provision of animals means we should eat them, as we are biologically designed to do. To think that incisor teeth for biting meat evolved only as an indulgence to beefeaters later on, would be like saying that legs evolved as a consequence of wanderlust.

Vegetarianism is not like celibacy. Vegetarians disdain meat; celibates do not disdain marriage. I am a celibate, but would not exist if Adam and Eve had not married, albeit without the benefit of a clergyman. Their only dietary restriction was against a certain fruit; experts think it was a pomegranate. I suspect they did not eat the first animals because there would not have been second animals, but once animals got going, there you had dinner.

We need not wait for Exodus to find carnivorous action permitted. Abel ate meat and Cain seems to have been a vegan. The Lord had respect unto Abel’s roasted lamb and rejected Cain’s vegetables and so Cain waxed exceeding wroth and slew Abel. The first murderer was a vegetarian. Vegetarians tend to be more violent toward meat eaters than the other way around, probably because of a lack of protein. Also in Genesis, Jacob made his father a lamb stew from what was evidently an old family recipe. It probably went back to Eden.

The citation of Deuteronomy only supports meat eating. The prohibition of blood and strangled animals renders licit bloodless meat slaughtered some other way. Rare is the man who can strangle a cow to death anyway. It is also unwise to cite the saga of Babylon. Nebuchadnezzar became a vegetarian only when he went mad. He was driven from men and ate grass like an ox (Daniel 4:33).

As for health, meat is now being promoted for its vitamins and other sorts of stuff our bodies need, although preferred meats include hard to get elk and impalas. I had a great aunt who was a vegetarian and her body started to make funny sounds and then she died. We hardly mention her, although we pray that our merciful Lord has welcomed her to the eternal Supper of the Lamb where there is no alternative menu.

Meat eating is better for the economy, too. It gave us Chicago for starters. It also gives us waterproof rainwear and sensible shoes. In a vegetarian society we’d be clad in watermelon rinds and shod with potato skins.

Vegetarians do not address my point about vegetable abuse. The vegan sentimentalist has no tears to shed for the mashed potato. Ask the olive: How cold is it at the bottom of a martini?

The New Adam is certainly an improvement on the Old Adam. But even in resurrected glory, He had a barbecue on the shore of Galilee. One more evidence of the Divine Mercy is that Jesus never hectored the early Christians about the health benefits of spinach.

CIEL proceedings

Sixth Proceedings: Presence of Christ in
the Eucharist
• The Degrees in Holy Orders and their Liturgical
Functions
Fr. Martin Reinecke
• The Offering of Christ in the Roman Liturgy
Mgr. Arthur Burton Calkins
• Memory, Presence and Contemplation -- The Feasts of
our Lord in the Traditional Roman Missal
Professor Pawel Milcarek
• The Celebrant and the Notion of President
Dr. Andrew Beards
• 'Altar Girls': Feminist Ideology and the Roman Liturgy
Fr. Brian Harrison OS
• Quid Hoc Sacramento Mirabilius? The Presence of
Christ in the Sacrament according to St. Thomas
Aquinas
David Berger
• Holy Scripture, Liturgy and the Presence of Christ
Fr. Andrew Wadsworth
• The Rites of the Consecration
Fr. Raoul Olazabal
• A Pastoral View of the Ecclesia Dei Communities
Mgr. Camilo Gregorio
• Christ, the Principal Priest of the Eucharistic Sacrifice
and Ministerial Priests Acting in Persona Christi
Dom Basile Valuet OSB
• The Cross, the Mass... and the Key to Eucharistic
Doctrine
Dom Jaques de Lillers OSB
2000, 266 pages, paperback, $20.00


Seventh Proceedings: Faith and Liturgy
• The Nature and Content of Preaching
Mgr. Martin Viviès
• Defence and Propagation of the Faith in the Prayers of
the Tridentine Missal
Abbé Dariusz Olewinski
• The Liturgy as Locus Theologicus
Mgr. Joseph Schumacher
• Unity of Faith and Liturgical Diversity
Fr. Gabriel Díaz Patri
• Doctrine, Liturgy and Ecumenism
Brother Ansgar Santogrossi OSB
• Revelation, Tradition and the Liturgy
Fr. Aidan Nichols OP
• The Development of Doctrine and the Evolution of
Liturgy
Dom Basile Valuet OSB
• Liturgy and Catechesis
Professor Robert Kramer
• The Holy Spirit, the History of the Church and of the
Liturgy
Mgr. Rudolf Michael Schmitz
• The Centrality of Christ in the Ordo Missae of the
Classic Roman Rite
Professor John Saward
• Authentic Liturgy versus the Tower of Babel: the Dawn
of a 'New Era'
Mrs. Helen Hitchcock
2001, 280 pages, paperback, $20.00


Eighth Proceedings: Liturgy and the Sacred
• Modern Man in Search of the Sacred
Fr. Maurice Gruau
• Sacred Signs
Fr. Samuel F. Weber OSB
• Architecture and Sacred Space
Professor Thomas Gordon Smith
• Liturgical Music - Sacred or Profane?
Dr. Mary Berry CBE
• The Effects of the Sacred: Is the Sacred Missionary
Fr. James Jackson
• The Roman Missal - Bearer of the Sacred
Fr. Tancrede Guillard
• Revelation Through Concealment in the Old Roman
Catholic Liturgy
Martin Mosebach
• Time and the Sacred
Fr. Andre Forrest
• The Sacred and the West - Preliminary Reflections on a
Forgotten Concept
Benoit Neiss
• Tradition, Liturgy, and Catholic Culture
Rudolf Michael Schmitz
• The Liturgy and Man's Spiritual Life
Dr. Alice von Hildebrand
• The Classical Rite and Holy Scripture
Dr. Sheridan Gilley
2002, 208 pages, paperback, $20.00


Ninth Proceedings: Liturgy, Participation, and
Sacred Music
• Mystery, Comprehension, and Participation
Fr. Pietro Cantoni
• Elements of a Theory of Participatio Actuosa in the Writings
of St. Thomas Aquinas
David Berger
• Active Participation and Pastoral Adaptation
Dom Alcuin Reid OSB
• St. Pius X and the Liturgical Question
Fr, Christian-Philippe Chanut
• Active Participation in the Liturgy in Accordance with the
Prescriptions of Mediator Dei
Fr. Bernard-Marie Laisney
• Participation in the Current Magisterium
Fr. Peter M J Stravinskas PhD STD
• Quis Non Amantem Redamet?
Fr. Charbel Pazat de Lys OSB
• Josef Pieper and Participatio Actuosa
Dr. Guido Rodheudt
• Participation and Singing
Benoit Neiss
• Position and Attitude of the Faithful during Mass: The Body in
the Liturgy
Fr. John Perricone
• Active Participation in the Parish
Fr. Jerry J Pokorsky
• The Principle of Participation in the Roman Rite
Fr. Tancrede Guillard
• Participation in the Holy Liturgy
Jorge A Cardinal Medina Estevez
• Sermon Given at the Closing Mass
Jorge A Cardinal Medina Estevez
• Ens, Verum, Bonum et Pulchrum Liturgicum Conventuntur:
Reflections to Serve as a Conclusion to the Colloquium
Mgr Rudolf-Michael Schmitz
• Liturgy, the Sacred, and Inculturation: the Testimony of a
Missionary
(From the 2002 Colloquium)
Fr. Jean-Marie Moreau
2003, 270 pages, paperback, $20.00


CIEL USA

I think I have 2-5, but I'm going to have to double-check once I get the library organized.

New titles from St. Augustine's Press

that are of interest to me...

A reprint of the Tractatus de Signis, by John Poinsot -- Latin text plus English translation by John Deely. This is the corrected second edition; the first edition, published by UC Press, has been out of print for a while.

624 pages, jacketed clothbound, $85
publication date: November 2007
ISBN: 978-1-58731-877-1

And two titles published in association with Thomas International:

Virtue's End: God in the Moral Philosophy of Aristotle and Aquinas
ed. Fulvio Di Blasi, Joshua P. Hochschild, Jeffrey Langan; preface by Ralph McInerny
208 pages, paperbound, $19.00
ISBN: 978-1-58731-901-3
publication date: October 2007

Ethics Without God?
ed. Fulvio Di Blasi, Joshua P. Hochschild, Jeffrey Langan; preface by Ralph McInerny
196 pages, paperbound, $19.00
ISBN: 978-1-58731-225-0
publication date: October 2007

From the Fall 2007 catalog:

Virtue's End collects nine substantial essays on the nature and relationship of theological commitment to moral theory, practical reason, and the metaphysical framework of Aristotelian ethics. Among the questions explored: What does it mean to know the good? What is the source of moral law? What role does God, or the notion of God, play in practical reasoning and human action? What is the relationship between Aquinas's ethics and Aristotle's? How is friendship with God possible? The contributors include: Kevin Flannery, Christopher Kaczor, Antonio Donato, Anthony J. Lisska, Fulvio di Blasi, Giacomo Samek Lodovici, Robert A. Gahl, Marie I. George, Daniel McInerny.

Ethics Without God? brings the theological perspective of the Aristotelian and Thomistic traditions to bear on a variety of current political and theoretical questions. The main essays explore a place for the role of God in recent academic philosophy and political theory. The volume also explores a place for the role of God in recent academic philosophy and political theory. The volume also explores the implications of two recent books, each a major scholarly venture in theologically realist ethical reflection: a defense of Platonism in John Rist's Real Ethics and a natural law jurisprudence in Russell Hittinger's The First Grace. With lengthy essays prompted by these books--four essays each, by prominent theologians, moral philosophers, and political scientists--and with extended responses from Rist and Hittinger, the result is a volume that engages ultimate questions across academic disciplines and intellectual traditions.

None of these titles are listed yet at the website. St. Augustihe's Press has been trying to catch up with its publishing schedule for a while, so we'll see if these books are published not too long after the tentative publication date.

I think I'll hold off ordering them until I see Mr. Fingerhut at the next Center for Ethics and Culture conference, if I am able to attend.

National Times series on climate change

here

Things to check out

From the ISN conference:
Prof S Conway Morris, Earth Sciences, University of Cambridge
Simon Conway Morris - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Life's Solution - Cambridge University Press
Amazon.com: Life's Solution: Inevitable Humans in a Lonely ...
PCID - A Review of Life's Solution by Simon Conway Morris
Book Review by Anthony Campbell: Life's Solution (Simon Conway Morris)
Pharyngula::Curse you, Simon Conway Morris!
Simon Conway-Morris, "The Crucible of Creation," 1997
Gifford Lecture Series - Biography - Simon Morris
ASTROBIOLOGY AND THE SACRED PRESENTS: UA's Templeton Research ...

Someone collaborating with him recently moved from Cambridge to Oxford?
Templeton Foundation: Biology

Dr. Ard A. Louis, Royal Society Research FellowCambridge University (Cambridge UK)
Adriaan (Ard) A. Louis: homepage
Ard Louis Research Group Home Page
Dr Ard Louis
Redeeming Reason

Dr. Jonathan Doye Department of ChemistryUniversity of Cambridge (Cambridge UK)
Jonathan Doye's Research Group
Dr Jonathan Doye
Dr Jonathan Doye

Emergent Properties; Neil Campbell?

A Proposed Link Between Emergent Biological Principles and Cosmology

Albert Goodelbert
Allphonso Aguilar

Jacques Maritain, Introduction to Philosophy

Alan Guth, The Inflationary Universe
MIT Department of Physics - Alan H. Guth
Edge: THEINFLATIONARY UNIVERSE

William Carroll, "At the Mercy of Chance: Evolution and the Catholic Tradition"

Professor Nancy Cartwright
London School of Economics and Political Science
No God, No Laws

Chris Olsen (PhD, CUA) -- also teaches at the Center for Higher Studies

What Genes Can't Do
Michael Bradie reviews What Genes Can’t Do by Lenny Moss

Pierre Gassendi
Pierre Gassendi - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: Pierre Gassendi
Pierre Gassendi (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Mercurius in Sole Visus - Pierre Gassendi

Baylor University Department of Sociology Rodney Stark
Rodney Stark - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Faith and reason - The Boston Globe
A Double Take on Early Christianity, An Interview with Rodney Stark
The Testimony of Rodney Stark, Ph.D.
The American Enterprise: Fact, Fable, and Darwin

Behe's latest book

The Edge of Evolution: The Search for the Limits of Darwinism
By Michael J. Behe
(Free Press, 320 pp., $28)

More by James Larson

his series on the New Theology

Broken Cisterns (on Hans Urs von Balthasar)

By Arts Entirely New (on Henri de Lubac)

The Suffering Continues

Christian Order: Eastern Orthodoxy Unveiled

Eastern Orthodoxy Unveiled

JAMES LARSON

We tend to think of Eastern Orthodoxy as a branch of Christianity whose form of worship and religious symbolism may seem rather strange to us, and we are also ready to admit that the one really important Catholic doctrine which they have rejected is the Primacy of the Pope (we tend to mistakenly think of their rejection of the Filioque - the doctrine that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son - as being a rather marginal issue), but most of us are not prepared to consider that Orthodoxy is something radically different, and even opposed, to Catholicism.

However, such is the case. The extraordinary fact is that virtually any serious Orthodox writer will be the first to make precisely this claim: namely, that Orthodoxy and Eastern Spirituality represent a faith and spirituality which in many ways are in profound opposition to the Latin Tradition. And this, despite the fact that his counterpart in the West is usually expending a good deal of effort in attempting to prove that the differences are minimal and inconsequential.

Dionysisus and the "Palamite" tradition

I want to begin our analysis of Eastern Orthodox theology and spirituality with a series of quotes which I hope will shock the reader into a state of acute watchfulness. It is, of course, always possible to distort a writer’s thought by taking quotations out of context. We will therefore be discussing their full meaning in relationship to Eastern theology and spirituality as we proceed in our discussion. For the present, however, I would like the reader to try to conceive of any context in which the following statements might be acceptable. They are all taken from authors writing in what certainly must be considered the dominant Orthodox tradition.
Two of the writers are of ancient tradition. Dionysisus the Areopagite was considered until relatively recent times to be of apostolic origins. In his writings he disingenuously portrays himself as a contemporary of the apostles, and to have witnessed the solar eclipse at the Crucifixion. It is now known for certain that he lived somewhere around the year 500 A.D. We should also note that the writings of Dionysisus are of immense importance to Orthodox tradition, and have also probably been the primary source of Neoplatonic contamination of Western theology.

Gregory of Palamas (1296-1359) is considered by the Eastern Church to be a Saint (proclaimed to be so by a Synod in Constantinople in 1368), and the greatest theologian in the Eastern Orthodox tradition. A series of Eastern Councils in the 14th century endorsed his theology as being the doctrinal basis for Orthodox Christianity.

The two other writers, Vladimir Lossky and John Meyendorff, are probably considered the most respected explicators and apologists for this tradition (the "Palamite" tradition) in the twentieth century. I would therefore ask the reader to carefully consider all the following quotes:

1. "The cult of the humanity of Christ, is foreign to Eastern tradition….The way of the imitation of Christ is never practiced in the spiritual life of the Eastern Church." (Vladimir Lossky, Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, 243

2. "The Eastern tradition knows nothing of ‘pure nature’ to which grace is added as a supernatural gift. For it, there is no natural or ‘normal’ state, since grace is implied in the act of creation itself." (Lossky, 101)

3. "The notion of a state of grace of which the members of the Church can be deprived, as well as the distinction between venial and mortal sins, are foreign to Eastern tradition." (Lossky, 180)

4."The notion of merit is foreign to Eastern tradition." (Losski, 197)

5."The essence of God is everywhere, for, as it is said, ‘the Spirit fills all things’, according to essence. Deification is likewise everywhere, ineffably present in the essence and inseparable from it, as its natural power. But just as one cannot see fire, if there is no matter to receive it, nor any sense organ capable of perceiving its luminous energy, in the same way one cannot contemplate deification if there is no matter to receive the divine manifestation. But if with every veil removed it lays hold of appropriate matter, that is of any purified rational nature, freed from the veil of manifold evil, then it becomes itself visible as a spiritual light, or rather it transforms these creatures into spiritual light." (Gregory Palamas, The Triads, p. 89)

6. "This latter division [of mankind into two sexes] was made by God in prevision of sin, according to St. Maximus, who is here reproducing the thought of St. Gregory of Nyassa. ‘Being, which has had its origin in change – says the latter – retains an affinity with change. This is why He who, as Scripture says, sees all things before their coming to be, having regarded or rather having forseen in advance by the power of His anticipatory knowledge in which direction the movement of man’s free and independent choice would incline, having thus seen how it would come to pass, added to the image the division into male and female: a division which has no relation to the divine Archetype, but which, as we have said, is in agreement with irrational nature’." (Lossky, 108-109)

7. "It was the divinely appointed function of the first man, according to St. Maximus, to unite in himself the whole of created being; and at the same time to reach his perfect union with God and thus grant the state of deification to the whole creation. It was first necessary that he should suppress in his own nature the division into two sexes, in his following of the impassible life according to the divine archetype. He would then be in a position to reunite paradise with the rest of the earth, for, constantly bearing paradise within himself, being in ceaseless communion with God, he would be able to transform the whole earth into paradise. After this, he must overcome spatial conditions not only in his spirit but also in the body, by reuniting the heavens and the earth, the totality of the sensible universe. Having surpassed the limits of the sensible, it would then be for him to penetrate into the intelligible universe by knowledge equal to that of the angelic spirits, in order to unite in himself the intelligible and the sensible worlds. Finally, there remaining nothing outside himself but God alone, man had only to give himself to Him in a complete abandonment of love, and thus return to Him the whole created universe gathered together in his own being. God Himself would then in His turn have given Himself to man, who would then, in virtue of this gift, that is to say by grace, possess all that God possesses by nature. The deification of man and of the whole created universe would thus be accomplished. Since this task which was given to man was not fulfilled by Adam, it is in the work of Christ, the second Adam, that we can see what it was meant to be." (Lossky, 109-110)

8. "The true purpose of creation is, therefore, not contemplation of divine essence (which is inaccessible), but communion in divine energy, transfiguration, and transparency to divine action in the world." (Meyendorff, Byzantine Theology, p.133)

9. "But He Who is beyond every name is not identical with what He is named; for the essence and energy of God are not identical." (Gregory Palamas, TheTriads, p. 97)

10. "In God the order of nature precedes the order of volitive action, and is both superior to and independent of it [this means that God and His Will are not One]. Because God is what He is, He is not determined or in any way limited in what He does, not even by His own essence and being." (Meyendorff, pl 130)

11. "Now this union with the illuminations [which is the divinizing experience of the "saints"] – what is it, if not a vision? The rays are consequently visible to those worthy, although the divine essence is absolutely invisible, and these unoriginate and endless rays are a light without beginning or end. There exists, then an eternal light, other than the divine essence; it is not itself an essence – far from it! – but an energy of the Superessential." (Gregory Palamas p. 100)

12. "This is the perfecting of prayer, and is called spiritual prayer or contemplation….It is the ‘spiritual silence’ which is above prayer. It is that state which belongs to the kingdom of Heaven. ‘As the saints in the world to come no longer pray, their minds having been engulfed in the Divine Spirit, but dwell in ecstasy in that excellent glory; so the mind, when it has been made worthy of perceiving the blessedness of the age to come, will forget itself and all that is here, and will no longer be moved by the thought of anything.’" (Lossky, 208)

13. "This tradition remains common to the East and to the West as far as the Church witnesses with power to those truths which are connected with the Incarnation. But those dogmas which are, so to speak, more inward, more mysterious, those which relate to Pentecost, the doctrines about the Holy Spirit, about grace, about the Church, are no longer common to the Church of Rome and to the Eastern Churches. Two separate traditions are opposed one to another." (Lossky, 237)

14. "But these things are not to be disclosed to the uninitiated, by whom I mean those attached to the objects of human thought, and who believe there is no superessential [in Orthodox theology this term is used to convey the belief that God is "above" essence] Reality beyond, and who imagine that by their own understanding they know Him who has made Darkness His secret place. And if the principles of the divine Mysteries are beyond the understanding of these, what is to be said of others still more incapable thereof, who describe the transcendental First Cause of all by characteristics drawn from the lowest order of beings, while they deny that He is any way above the images which they fashion after various designs; whereas they should affirm that, while He possesses all the positive attributes of the universe (being the Universal Cause) yet, in a more strict sense, he does not possess them, since He transcends them all; wherefore there is no contradiction between the affirmations and the negations, inasmuch as He infinitely precedes all conceptions of deprivation, being beyond all positive and negative distinctions….He is super-essentially exalted above created things, and reveals Himself in His naked Truth to those alone who pass beyond all that is pure or impure, and ascend above the topmost altitudes of holy things, and who, leaving behind them all divine light and sound and heavenly utterances, plunge into the Darkness where truly dwells, as the Oracles declare, that ONE who is beyond all." (Dionysisus the Areopagite, Mystical Theology)

In the ensuing analysis of Eastern Orthodox theology and spirituality, the numbers in parenthesis will refer to the quotations given above.

"Apophatism"

The name given by Eastern Orthodoxy to their theological approach to God, and also to the process by which man is "deified" is "apophatism."
The "apophatic way," as taught by Eastern Orthodoxy, is rooted in a conception of God which makes of Him an Absolute Who is beyond everything the human mind can attribute to His nature. He is, in fact, beyond essence, nature, and being (9,10,11,14).

Anyone who is familiar with the monism of the Absolute in philosophical Hinduism will be familiar with such a concept. It is rooted in the belief that the human mind can predicate nothing of God. If we wish to call God such things as Good, Truth, Love, Being, Essence, Existence, One, Eternal, Immutable, Just, Merciful, we may do so only with the proviso that these "names apply only to the "energies" of God, and not to His "Superessential" Godhead, which always must be seen as "beyond" any naming, essence, or even being.

The human mind can never, even with the assistance of God’s grace, know anything positive about God’s ultimate being and essence. (Interestingly enough, the Eastern theologian, while denying being and essence to the ultimate nature of God, are still forced into using these terms).

"Deification"

Our ultimate union with God is therefore not a matter of "seeing Him as He is", but rather the fruit of a negative process of growth and evolution by which we are liberated from all limitations (both of passions and mind) and become united in contemplative union with God’s "energies" or "rays" which are already present in creation (we will be exploring Eastern Orthodoxy’s distinction between God and His "energies" in a moment).
This union can take place in this life and is called, among other things, "contemplation" (5,7,8,11,12,14). It is also called "deification", and this deification culminates in that state of union whereby God gives himself to man "who would then, in virtue of this gift, that is to say by grace, possess all that God possesses by nature (7)." (This would indeed seem to be self-contradictory since, as we have seen, Eastern Theology believes God is beyond nature, essences, and even being).

However, in considering the real content of what Eastern theology considers "deification", we must take into account two things.

Eastern understanding of nature and grace

First, in the words of Vladimir Lossky, "The Eastern tradition knows nothing of ‘pure nature’ to which grace is added as a supernatural gift. For this tradition, there is no natural or ‘normal’ state, since grace is implied in the act of creation itself (2)."
Deification in this tradition must then consist of a union with the "energies" of God which are in man and in all creation from the beginning. This is simply a variant of Pantheism, and involves a profound violation of the Catholic ontological distinction between God and His creation. John Meyendorf writes:

This concept of salvation is itself based upon an understanding of the human being which views the natural [this is Meyendorf’s own emphasis] state of man as composed of three elements: body, soul, and Holy Spirit….The Spirit is not seen here as a ‘supernatural’ grace – added to an otherwise ‘natural,’ created humanity – but as a function of humanity itself in its dynamic relationship to God, to itself, and to the world. (Meyendorf, Catholicity and the Church, p.21)

In other words, according to the Eastern tradition, the Divine is ontologically part of creation from the beginning. This involves a profound violation of creation ex nihilio ( creation from nothing). If the Spirit (the Holy Spirit) is "a function of humanity itself" from the beginning, and if, as Gregory Palamas say, "the Spirit fills all things according to essence", then creation is not "out of nothing" because it contains God in its original essence.

Further, in viewing the human being in his "natural" state as a "dynamic," evolutionary process in which the Holy Spirit seeks to rend the veil of all human limitation (5), Eastern theology also denies the substantial "nature" of the human person. There is no "grace added to nature" – both because grace and the Holy spirit are present as the Spirit of man from the beginning (2,5), and also because there is no such thing as human substantial nature to begin with. The whole concept of "nature" is to be seen as abstract, limiting, and stultifying to the process of man’s "deification."

Eastern understanding of God

Secondly, the "nature" of God which man is alleged to possess in this supposed state of deification cannot be what Eastern Orthodoxy considers the absolutely transcendent and ineffable God Himself, who is beyond all nature, essence, and being. This "nature" can only be the "energies" of God which are in no way identifiable with the "God Who is."
We may see, therefore, that in kindred cause with reductive analytical science, that Eastern theology is at war with the whole concept of substantial being itself, whether it be Supreme Being or created being.

To realize how profoundly contrary all this is to Catholic theology and spirituality, it is very beneficial to consult St. Thomas. St. Thomas is explicit in his affirmation concerning the "knowability" of God:

It is written: We shall see Him as He is (1 John, ii. 2)

I answer that, Since everything is knowable according as it is actual, God, Who is pure act without any admixture of potentiality, is in Himself supremely knowable….Hence, it must be absolutely granted that the blessed see the essence of God (I, Q.12, A.1).

Profound difference

There is, of course, a certain way in which negative assertions are also integral to Catholic theology. St. Thomas goes on to say that because the Saints see the essence of God is not at all the same as meaning that they totally comprehend Him. God is infinite, man finite. We may very well see God face to face, be able to see His Divine Essence, receive the Gift of knowing Him as He is, and yet be infinitely far away from comprehending the fullness of God.
Yet this does not in any way justify the notion that God is unknowable in His essence. Rather than being infinitely unknowable, God is in fact infinitely knowable. And herein lies the profound difference between Catholic and Eastern theology and spirituality.

Catholic understanding of God

This profound difference is reflected in the way in which we understand the Names that are attributed to God.
When Catholic theology understands the concept of man being created in the image of God it also understands that this concept means that man’s nature is created in the image of God’s Nature. As such, the supreme values of our life are directly reflective of Who God is. When, therefore, we say that God is supreme Being, or that He is infinite Intelligence and Love, that He is Good, Eternal, Immutable, etc. we give names to God that are His Essence, Substance, or Nature. These Names while being severely affected by our finite limitations, are nevertheless positive affirmations of Who God is. In speaking of these names, St. Thomas writes:

Therefore the aforesaid names signify the divine substance, but in an imperfect manner, even as creatures represent it imperfectly. So when we say, God is good, the meaning is not, God is the cause of goodness, or, God is not evil; but the meaning is, Whatever good we attribute to creatures, pre-exists in God, and in a more excellent and higher way (I, Q.13, A.2)."

Nor does the fact that we attribute all these various names or attributes to God violate His Divine Simplicity or the Absolute Unity of His Being. St. Thomas further writes:

The perfect unity [and Simplicity] of God requires that what are manifold and divided in others should exist in Him simply and unitively. Thus it comes about that He is one in reality, and yet multiple in idea, because our intellect apprehends Him in a manifold manner, as things represent Him (I, Q.13, A. 4)."

While there is, therefore, a total discontinuity between man and God according to being (according to the doctrine of creation ex nihilo), there is at the same time a profound continuity in the fact that man is truly created in the image of God, and that man’s perfections, and the perfections of all created things, are created "likenesses" to the very Essence of Who God is.

Catholic understanding of nature and grace

The process of "deification" in the Catholic tradition does not therefore require a negation of all that is human nature. Rather it requires the perfecting of human nature through a gratuitous Gift of God superadded to human nature.
It necessitates, in the first place, the free cooperation of man with God’s grace. Secondly, however, it requires the Gift of a special grace of God, the "Light of Glory", which lifts man’s intellect and will above its created nature in order for him to be able to see the very Essence of God. St Thomas again writes:

"It is written: In thy light we shall see light (Ps. 35:10).

I answer that, Everything which is raised up to what exceeds its nature, must be prepared by some disposition above its nature; as for example, if air is to receive the form of fire, it must be prepared by some disposition for such a form. But when any created intellect sees the essence of God, the essence of God itself becomes the intelligible form of the intellect. Hence it is necessary that some supernatural disposition should be added to the intellect in order that it may be raised up to such a great and sublime height. Now since the natural power of the created intellect does not avail to enable it to see the essence of God, as was shown in the preceding article, it is necessary that the power of understanding should be added by divine grace. Now this increase of the intellectual powers is called the illumination of the intellect, as we also call the intelligible object itself by the name of light of illumination. And this is the light spoken of in the Apocalypse (21:23). The Glory of the Lord hath enlightened it – viz., the society of the blessed who see God. By this light, the blessed are made deiform – that is, like to God, according to the saying: When He shall appear we shall be like to Him, because we shall see Him as He is (1 John 2:2)

"Energies" of God are not His "essence"

Eastern spirituality and theology reverses all this. On the one hand, in accord with its apophatic theology, it denies that the Names of God are applicable to His essence. In fact, it denies essence to God.

On the other hand, it destroys the absolute distinction between the Being of God and the being of created things by placing the eternal energies of God within creation itself (5). This amounts to a denial of creation ex nihilo through a not-so-subtle affirmation of Pantheism. In order to now be able to fully see the truth of this statement, we shall quote again a portion of quote # 5:

"The essence of God is everywhere, for, as it is said, ‘the Spirit fills all things’, according to essence. Deification is likewise everywhere, ineffably present in the essence and inseparable from it, as its natural power."

The reader will notice that Eastern theologians are very willing to use a term such as "essence" when speaking of the "energies" of God. Usually, they are only willing to apply such concepts as "essence", "nature", and "being" to created things or to the "energies" of God, simply because they believe in the apophatic conception that God is beyond all such concepts or assertions, including any assertions concerning God’s own "energies." There is, however, one instance in which they are willing to violate this rule – this occurs when they wish to distinguish between the "energies" of God and His "essence." Thus, Gregory Palamas writes:

But He Who is beyond every name is not identical with what He is named; for the essence and energy of God are not identical. (Gregory Palamas, TheTriads, p. 97

Simply because God is viewed as being completely transcendent in the sense that no Name or operation can be predicated of Who He is, then Eastern Orthodoxy found it necessary to make an ontological distinction in God between Who He is and What He does.

"Who God is" is therefore viewed as totally distinct from "What God does." The first is God Himself. The second are the "energies" of God, which are not to be identified with His essence (again we must emphasize that the Eastern Orthodox use of the word "essence" here contradicts its own assertion that God is not an essence).

Radical divide

These energies are, as I have said, not identical with God, and yet are to be seen as eternal, and inhering in God. Thus, in order to deify creation, Eastern Orthodoxy is forced to violate not only the Catholic doctrine creation ex nihilio, but also the truth concerning the unity and simplicity of God.
It is also important to understand that these energies are not just limited to the actual work of God (such as creation), but also to all the Names of God. In other words, God’s Will is not identical with His essence. Nor are His supreme Intelligence, Goodness, Immutability, Eternity, Beauty, or Unity identical with God.

There is no question but that the "apophatic way" of Eastern Orthodoxy destroys the simplicity of God. In order to preserve and protect their sterile conception of an absolutely transcendent and unknowable God, the Eastern theologians have been forced to posit a radical divide between God’s essence and His operations.

Variant of Pantheism

For St. Thomas, this is, of course, completely unnecessary. God is defined as pure Act. All the Names and Acts we rightly posit of God may be multiple in our conception of them, but are in reality One in His Substance. It is this fundamental fact of the Nature of God which Orthodoxy has entirely missed.
But there is more. Having denied a knowable Nature in God, and the real possibility of man achieving union with God through the Beatific Vision of God’s Essence, Eastern Orthodoxy is left, in a sense, with God’s crumbs under the table.

It is left, in other words, with the possibility of union with God’s "energies" or "rays." And since these rays or energies are defined by Eastern theology to be in the world, then the process of deification becomes identified with a "communion in divine energy, transfiguration, and transparency to divine action in the world (Meyendorff, p.133)." This "divine action in the world" is seen to be the action of the Holy Spirit. Some Orthodox writers, including Soloviev, have in fact called the Holy Spirit the "Soul of the World." This is simply a variant of Pantheism.

Aversion to the Incarnation

In our analysis of Eastern Orthodoxy we have now come full circle. We should now be able to understand why Vladimir Lossky could say that "The cult of the humanity of Christ is foreign to Eastern tradition", and that "The way of the imitation of Christ is never practiced in the spiritual life of the Eastern Church."
We should also be able to understand why both Lossky and Meyendorff can conclude that the question concerning the procession of the Holy Spirit is the absolutely central point of contention between Roman and Eastern Christianity. If, as believed by Eastern Orthodoxy, the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father alone, and not also from Christ, then our Faith is not truly Incarnational because the road back to God does not lie through the Flesh and Blood of Jesus Christ:

Having therefore, brethren a confidence in the entering into the holies by the blood of Christ; A new and living way which he hath dedicated for us through the veil, that is to say, his flesh. (Heb 10:19-20)
I believe that there is a causal relationship between the division established in Orthodox theology between God’s essence and His "energies" and, on the other hand, the denial of the "Filioque."

In Catholic mystical theology, the way to the "Heart" of God, and the Vision of His Essence, lies through Christ. Since Eastern theology denies that man can ever see or know the Essence of God, then his aspirations must stop at union with the divine "energies." These "energies" would then most appropriately be the operations of a Spirit Who is the Soul of the World, but not sent by Christ. Any incorporation into the Mystical Body of Christ would then never be accompanied by a true union with, and vision of, the Divine Person of Christ, anymore than it would ever be fulfilled in the direct vision of the Blessed Trinity.

Aversion to Transubstantiation and Original Sin

The reader should not be surprised that since it views God as being beyond any category of substance, essence, being or nature, Eastern theology also has no time for the doctrine of Transubstantiation. John Meyendorff writes:
"The Byzantines did not see the substance of the bread somehow changed in the Eucharistic mystery into another substance – the Body of Christ – but viewed this bread as the ‘type’ of humanity: our humanity changed into the transfigured humanity of Christ (Meyendorff, Byzantine Theology, P. 205)."

This aversion to the idea of substance or nature as applied to either God or man also affects Eastern Orthodoxy’s view of Original Sin. The Catholic view is aptly expressed in the New Catechism of the Catholic Church (the italics in the following passage are part of the actual text):

By yielding to the tempter, Adam and Eve committed a personal sin, but this sin affected the human nature that they would then transmit in a fallen state. It is a sin which will be transmitted by propagation to all mankind, that is, by the transmission of a human nature deprived of original holiness and justice (#404)."

The Eastern position, on the other hand, is succinctly stated by Meyendorff:

"But sin is always a personal act, never an act of nature. Patriarch Photius [author of the Photian schism in the latter part of the ninth century] even goes so far as to say, referring to Western doctrines, that the belief in a ‘sin of nature’ is a heresy (p. 103)."

"There is indeed a consensus in Greek patristic and Byzantine traditions in identifying the inheritance of the Fall as an inheritance essentially of mortality rather than of sinfulness, sinfulness being merely a consequence of mortality (Meyendorff, p. 145)." [In a subsequent passage the author specifies that "mortality" is the "means through which the fundamentally unjust ‘tyranny’ of the devil is exercised over mankind after Adam’s sin" – p. 146].

It is not at all surprising, therefore, that the Orthodox view of baptism does not accord with the Catholic:

"Thus, the Church baptizes children, not to ‘remit’ their yet non-existent sins, but in order to give them a new and immortal life, which their mortal parents are unable to communicate to them. The opposition between the two Adams [the First Adam and Christ] is seen in terms not of guilt and forgiveness but of death and life (Meyendorff, p. 146).

Aversion to St. Thomas

All of the errors which I have discussed concerning Eastern Orthodox theology and spirituality (and there is much more that could be said) are the fruit of violating those truths which are contained in the Catholic doctrine of creation ex nihilo.

There is no true understanding of this doctrine without at the same time understanding the real existence of Being, Essence, and Nature in both God and man.

Creation ex nihilo is necessarily founded upon an absolutely real ontological distinction between the being of God and the being of His creation The metaphysics of St. Thomas, which has been embraced by the Catholic Church as "her own" (Pius XI, Studiorum Ducem) is absolutely necessary to this distinction and this doctrine. In placing itself in direct opposition to this metaphysics, Eastern theology not only compromises the doctrine of creation ex nihilo, but also all other doctrines of the Church which are either directly or indirectly dependent on such ontological concepts of being and substance, including as we have seen: Original Sin, Baptism, and the doctrine of Transubstantiation.

Union by conversion alone

It would, of course, be very easy to also expand this list to include the necessity of the Papacy as the foundation of a hierarchical Church. As the Russian philosopher Nikolai Berdiaev said: "For the East the infallibility of the pope and the outward unity of the ecclesiastical organization were superfluous…."
After all, if God does not have an identifiable Nature, why should His Church? We should be able to see from this how pathetic are any attempts to achieve unity with the Eastern Orthodox in any way that falls short of their full conversion to the Catholic Church.

Fellow-travellers against Catholic truth

Finally, we should also realize that whenever Thomistic philosophy is undermined in our own tradition, inevitably some form of Neoplatonism or Eastern theology and spirituality is there to take its place.
Therefore, since the primary intellectual force involved in the war against Thomistic metaphysics has been reductive analytical science, it should come as no surprise that over the centuries reductive atomic science and Eastern theology (including both Neoplatonic and Orthodox) have been fellow-travellers in their war against Catholic truth.

Eastern Orthodoxy and the New Theology

I would hope that all through the preceding analysis of Eastern Orthodox theology and spirituality, the reader would have experienced a great deal of resonance with my previous articles on the "New Theology." [CO, March, April, May 2006]
When Lossky, for instance, denies the Catholic notion of grace added to nature, our minds should go back to de Lubac.

When Gregory Palamas tells us that God’s essence and energy are not identical, this heresy should resonate with the heretical propositions of Rosmini. [CO, Feb. 2004]

The totally foreign attempts by Eastern authors to explain Original Sin and the Real Presence by eliminating all Thomistic concepts of cosmology and ontology should bring us face to face with the writings of Cardinal Ratzinger. [CO, Oct., Nov. 2003]

And the vehemence with which Eastern Theology combats and persecutes any form of Thomistic Metaphysics should bring before our minds the image of a whole host of 20th century philosophers and theologians, at the centre of which stands the whole Communio movement.

High doctrinal stakes

The reader is probably aware of the great emphasis which John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI have placed upon establishing unity with the Orthodox Church. We tend to equate such ecumenism with what has been traditionally considered to be the sin of indifferentism. But I believe that we are here dealing with something much more than indifferentism. Rather, we are faced with a passion for unity founded upon a hunger for a certain kind of theology and spirituality (Palamite spirituality) which both the New Theology and Eastern theology make possible and acceptable.
Meanwhile, what is at stake in this contest is virtually every doctrine of the Catholic Faith: of Who God is, and also who man is; of what constitutes nature and grace, sin and redemption; and, most fundamentally, of the distinction between God and man that is enshrined in the Catholic doctrine of creation ex nihilo.

Theology of Antichrist

In conclusion, I would like to quote a passage from George Williams’ book entitled The Mind of John Paul II, in which he gives his synopsis of the theological approach promoted by the proponents of a "New Theology" (often called "Neo-Thomism") in their promotion of the ecumenical agenda. I will leave the reader to make his own comparisons between what is quoted below, and the subject which we have discussed above:
Always carefully enunciated, a fundamental concern of the New Theology was to accommodate a general Catholic acceptance of human evolution to received theology at the crucial point of Adam created in the image of God and of Christ as the Second Adam and Redeemer of men. By speaking of "the unity of mankind" alongside the received oneness of the race in the First Adam, and in beholding the eternal son of God incarnate as the second Adam and as having from eternity with God the Father sought the redemption of all humanity and indeed of all creation with "the new man" even before the incarnation and the rise of the Church as his salvific prolongation in time through the Holy Spirit, they had come to understand Christ as continuously active in the minds and hearts of all peoples and persons under Providence. Going back behind the sharp distinction drawn by Thomas between nature and grace and between reason and faith, the proponents of the New Theology in different ways found sanction in St. Augustine and the Greek Fathers and in Scripture itself for their disposition to see the whole of life sacramentally (hence their interest in lay participation in the Liturgical Movement) and to see nature suffused with sustaining grace and the Church itself as the Sacrament and Sign of the fundamental unity of every man in body, mind, and soul, of all mankind in a common global history. They were opposed to secularism but they were also opposed to a displacement of the supernatural spatially above and beyond the natural ( p. 99).

It is out of such a Pantheistic theology that the Antichrist will surely rise.