TAC: 40th Anniversary Gala: Audio and Photos

Gombert - Salve Regina

Alamire

Op-StJoseph: New website for Providence College. Here it is. At the website I see this: ​Collaborative Dorr Rebellion Documentary to Premiere. The filmmakers seem to be democrats: "But while Rhode Islanders may be among the only people to learn of this important incident in the history of voting rights, constitutional scholars and historians remember it as a milestone in the quest for the common man to control his own government." Not exactly something I'd expected to see in connection with Providence College.

A DPS project of the Phillips Memorial Library.

Is a [naive] commitment to democracy a feature of Americanism?

Wiki: Dorr Rebellion

Intellectual history as the sophomore's philosophy

Robert Barron on Univocity and Voluntarism

Why reason when doing genealogy is so much easier?

MoJ: Catholic theologians' statement against capital punishment

More from Pope Benedict XVI's trip to Germany

Vultus Christi: Only God Himself, His Word and His Signs

First Things: The Case Against False Assertions by Christopher Tollefsen and Alexander Pruss

Edit. In the comments someone mentions this paper by Alasdair MacIntyre: Truthfulness, Lies, and Moral Philosophers.

First Things: The Pastoral Response to Homosexuality by Melinda Selmys

Francesco Cavalli, Salve Regina

MOJ: John Coughlin's "Canon Law"

OUP
faculty page/Notre Dame News
"Antinomianism and Legalism in Canon Law"

Salve Regina by Rheinberger

Rheinberger - Abendlied - The Cambridge Singers

Edward Feser, Modern biology and original sin, Part II

Rome Reports: Pope: “I came to Germany to speak about God”



Zenit:
The Pope Has Come to Germany, He Speaks of God
L'Osservatore Director Reflects on First Days of State Visit

Pontiff's Reflections at Marian Shrine [2011-09-23]
"At the Foot of the Cross, Mary Becomes Our Fellow Traveler and Protector"

Papal Homily at Ecumenical Prayer Service [2011-09-23]
"In the Prayer of Jesus We Find the Very Heart of Our Unity"

Papal Words to Germany's Evangelical Church [2011-09-23]
"God Is Increasingly Being Driven Out of Our Society"

Benedict XVI's Address to Muslim Leaders [2011-09-23]
"We Believers Have a Special Contribution to Make Toward Building a Better World"

Holy Father's Comments en Route to Berlin [2011-09-22]
"We Are in Need of a Presence of God in Our Time"

Pontiff's Homily at Germany's Olympic Stadium [2011-09-22]
"The Risen Lord Gives Us a Place of Refuge, a Place of Light"

Papal Message to Berlin's Jewish Leaders [2011-09-22]
"Strengthen Our Common Hope in God in the Midst of an Increasingly Secularized Society"

Pope's Words to Germany's Lower House of Parliament [2011-09-22]
"The Listening Heart: Reflections on the Foundations of Law"

Benedict XVI's Address at Berlin Welcome Ceremony [2011-09-22]
"Just as Religion Has Need of Freedom, so Also Freedom Has Need of Religion"

Scholé: The Jesus Prayer: Annotated Bibliography and Internet Resources (See also: The Jesus Prayer: Breathing and Posture.)

CathBlog - Metaphysics well regarded outside the Catholic 'ghetto' by Simon Rowney (via Insight Scoop)

Humanitas: Michael Polanyi, Alasdair MacIntyre, and the Role of Tradition by Mark T. Mitchell

NCRegister: Young Theologians Encouraged to Confront 'The Intellectual Tasks of the New Evangelization' (via First Things)

Vatican Council II: a Debate That Has Not Taken Place, by Msgr. Brunero Gherardini
(via Ite Ad Thomam)

Thomistica.net: Aquinas’s De unione verbi incarnati: An Interview with Klaus Obenauer, part 2.

The Korean Martyrs -September 20

Die Kirche ist von außen und innen bedroht

Predigt von Weihbischof Athanasius Schneider beim Pontifikalamt im Alten Ritus in der Wiener Karlskirche am Fest Maria Namen, am 12. September, auf Einladung der Petrusbruderschaft.

Dominicana: Br. Philip Neri Reese, O.P., Truth and the Wonder Trap

Robert George: Remarks on Natural Law at Notre Dame

MoJ

Steven Long responds to Christopher Tollefsen regarding capital punishment

Thomistica.net: "Goods" Without Normative Order to the Good Life, Happiness, or God: The New Natural Law Theory and the Nostrum of Incommensurability

Chris Masterjohn recommends the following:
Publish-or-perish: Peer review and the corruption of science
Pressure on scientists to publish has led to a situation where any paper, however bad, can now be printed in a journal that claims to be peer-reviewed

Sister Matthaia Osswald's story of conversion to Orthodoxy: My Great Adventure in Search of the Truth

A Catholic can't help but scrutinize her reasons for converting, and the importance of the Divine Liturgy in the process.

Fr. Giertych has already been down to TAC. He will be in Berkeley next Tuesday. As my car is in the shop, I do not know if I will be able to attend, but I will post the video if it becomes available.

An interview of Wojciech Giertych, O.P. by the Province of St. Joseph.


Post-production for Master of the Sacred Palace was completed in May, but no news of when the DVD will be released. A post about him and his duties at Pro Unione.

His course on moral theology.

Medievalists.net: The Normans between Byzantium and the Islamic World

A typical NNLT appeal to "dignity"

Capital Punishment, Sanctity of Life, and Human Dignity by Christopher O. Tollefsen

TED: Richard Resnick: Welcome to the genomic revolution

Haven't the reductionistic claims of geneticists been shown to be exaggerated already?

Record: LIVE chat with Lucianne Walkowicz on extrasolar planets and how that affects life on Earth, September 15, 1-3pm EDT.

History of the Ancient World: Church, State and Divorce in Late Roman Egypt

Godzdogz: Fruits of Study 6: Suffering and Love in St Catherine of Siena

TED: Kate Hartman: The art of wearable communication




TED ever going to have someone talk about using less energy?

Dominicana

The journal of the student brothers of the Province of St. Joseph.

"Upright"

Online Etymological Dictionary:

O.E. upriht, from up "up" + riht "right." Similar compounds are found in other Germanic languages (cf. O.Fris. upriucht, M.Du. oprecht, O.H.G. ufreht, Ger. aufrecht, O.N. uprettr). Figurative sense of "good, honest" is first attested 1520s. The noun in the sense of "something standing erect" is from 1742. 

Another link between "straight" [right] and being morally good? The erect position is proper to man, not only because he is a biped but a quadruped, but the natural posture is what is healthy for him as well?

EvoPsych

MoMo, FaMo, MoFa, and FaFa By David Barash

Angelicum: Thomas Aquinas and Contemporary Philosophy keynote highlights

Edward Feser has some responses to comments to the first part on original sin and modern biology.

Should I get a copy?

Rick Garnett recommends Josef Pieper's The Christian Idea of Man. A short introductory work that probably isn't as thorough as his essays on the cardinal virtues?

Laura Inglis interviews Robert George (via MoJ)

Zenit:

Papal Address to Engaged Couples
"Educate Yourselves Henceforth in the Liberty of Fidelity" [2011-09-12]

Papal Address to Priests and Parents
"No Vocation Is a Private Issue" [2011-09-12]

Papal Homily at Close of Eucharistic Congress
"A Eucharistic Spirituality Is a Real Antidote to Individualism" [2011-09-11]

On the Virgin's "Fiat"
The Risen Christ Is the "Source of Hope and Comfort for Daily Life" [2011-09-11]

Robert Araujo, SJ: On Cheering Death and Catholic Legal Theory

Life on the Rock - 09-08-2011 - The Rule of St Benedict - Fr Mark and Doug with Cullman Monks

The Smithy: Henry of Ghent on Aquinas and Existence

Henry of Ghent: "The first way of understanding the participation of a creature in being is mistaken; it is not an understanding but a phantastical imagination. For the essence of a creature should not be imagined like the air indifferent to obscurity and luminosity, but like a certain ray in itself apt to subsist, produced by the sun, not by the necessity of nature but by free will."

Isn't it rather petty to complain that an analogy is a phantastical imagination rather than an understanding?

Thomas' image of the air's illumination is an image of one sort of thing being poured into another sort of thing to make it actual in a certain way, but for Henry (and, I might add, the Franciscan tradition in general along with him) existence can't be understood as a different sort of thing than the existing nature and added to it in order that it can be.

But does Aquinas think that existence and nature are two separate things? How can they be distinct without being separate in reality? How is "real" to be understood? After all, St. Thomas's and the Thomistic understanding of the real distinction is what is at issue...

Discussion of Peter Moskos's book on punishment

Public Discourse: Flogging: The Best Hope for Our Broken Prison System? by Stefan McDaniel

More on the book.

Ptolemy of Lucca and Giles of Rome on women as soldiers

Women in the Military: Scholastic Arguments and Medieval Images of Female Warriors

OP Vocations: In Praise of the Rule of St. Augustine

Moniales OP: Interview With Our Master General, Fr. Bruno Cadore, OP

Richard Lewontin reviews The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark by Carl Sagan

Edward Feser enters the fray

Modern biology and original sin, Part I

Medievalists.net: Patterns of Polemic: Medieval Women and Christian Doctrinal Reform

Zenit: On Beauty as a Way to God
Art "Is Like a Door Opened to the Infinite"

Sandro Magister, Ratzinger's Favorite Bach Cantata
It is the one for the last Sunday of the Lutheran liturgical year, centered on the parable of the wise and foolish virgins. All the details of a personal memory of Pope Benedict, on the eve of his next voyage to Germany

Video of Mortimer Adler

Mortimer Adler, The Mike Wallace Interview

Medievalists.net: Women Scientists of the Middle Ages and 1600s

Medievalists.net: Adelard of Bath and Roger Bacon: early English natural philosophers and scientists

A website for Josef Pieper. (via First Things)

Righteous

What are the Greek and Hebrew words which are translated by the word "righteous" or "just"? The Online Etymological Dictionary has the following for "righteous":

early 16c. alteration of rightwise, from O.E. rihtwis, from riht (see right) + wis "wise, way, manner." Suffix altered by influence of courteous, etc. Meaning "genuine, excellent" is c.1900 in jazz slang. Related: Righteousness.

And for right:

right (adj.1)

"morally correct," O.E. riht "just, good, fair, proper, fitting, straight," from P.Gmc. *rekhtaz (cf. O.H.G. reht, Ger. recht, O.N. rettr, Goth. raihts), from PIE base *reg- "move in a straight line," also "to rule, to lead straight, to put right" (see regal; cf. Gk. orektos "stretched out, upright;" L. rectus "straight, right;" O.Pers. rasta- "straight, right," aršta- "rectitude;" O.Ir. recht "law;" Welsh rhaith, Breton reiz "just, righteous, wise"). 

"Straight" as describing the path one takes [to God]?

The word can describe a person with respect to his actions in relation to God. (His moral orientation?) Is this what is conveyed by the Hebrew and Greek?

Coming up at the Church of St. Vincent Ferrer, NYC

OpStJoseph: Solemn Vespers for All Saints Eve
Liturgy and Lecture at St. Vincent Ferrer with Fr. Uwe Michael Lang

By Fr. Lang:
The Reform of the Liturgy and the Position of the Celebrant at the Altar

The Language of Liturgical Celebration
How Latin Could Serve as a "Bond of Unity"

Fr. Uwe Michael Lang on Latin in the Liturgy

Medievalists.net: Masolino’s Saint Catherine of Alexandria: Mystic Saint or Female Role Model?

Godzdogz: The Angelicum

John Deely has been busy.

But is he rewiting the same book? From U. of Scranton Press:
Descartes and Poinsot: The Crossroad of Signs and Ideas
Augustine and Poinsot: The Protosemiotic Development
Medieval Philosophy Redefined: The Development of Cenoscopic Science, AD354 to 1644 (From the Birth of Augustine to the Death of Poinsot)

Forthcoming

Intentionality and Semiotics: A Story of Mutual Fecundation (also available)


Did he take his history of philosophy and expand certain chapters?
Four Ages of Understanding: The first Postmodern Survey of Philosophy from Ancient Times to the Turn of the Twenty-First Century (GB)

A commendable article by Dr. Kevin White

In the Spring 2011 issue of Nova et Vetera, "Aquinas on Good Will." I find the essay's organization to be rather appealing and something I would like to emulate; if only others could be as clear and rigorous in as Dr. White in their writing and presentation.

Who was St. Gregory the Great? Benedict XVI tells us in his own words

James Chastek, What sort of revision does scientific research call for on the Catholic doctrine of the fall?

Thomistica.net: The Aquinas Center of Ave Maria University and the 'New' Thomistica.Net

The university has a lot of good people, but will it ultimately survive the bad leadership of the past? It looks like there are plans to publish the proceedings for the conference honoring Ralph McInerny:

In pursuit of this aim, The Aquinas Center hosts international conferences on the thought of Aquinas, grants annual awards for superlative books and dissertations written on the thought of Aquinas, and publishes substantial volumes on Aquinas’ thought.  These volumes include, to date, Reading John with St. Thomas (CUA Press), Aquinas the Augustinian (CUA Press), Rediscovering Aquinas and the Sacraments (Hillenbrand Books), Reading Romans with St. Thomas (in preparation), and a forthcoming volume on the role of philosophy in theological education in honor of Ralph McInerny.

Medievalists.net: Signification of Names in Duns Scotus and Some of His Contemporaries by Pini Giorgio

Ralph McInerny on rights

Updating some links: On Natural Law and Natural Rights and Natural Law and Human Rights.

The Precepts of Natural Law

There is a very good article in the January 2011 issue of The Thomist by Randall Smith, "What the Old Law Reveals about the Natural Law." I think St. Thomas's discussion of the moral precepts of the Old Law does illuminate his teachings about Natural Law and the first principles of practical reason. However, it is curious that Smith reduces the Natural Law to the two great commandments:

The natural law is grounded in two general, invariable precepts, which are invariable with respect to both rectitude and knowledge: to love God and to love neighbor as oneself. The natural law also contains a series of more specific precepts  derived from these first-level, general, invariable precepts (135).

Did he not remember I II 100, 5 ad 1?

Now there was need for man to receive a precept about loving God and his neighbor, because in this respect the natural law had become obscured on account of sin: but not about the duty of loving oneself, because in this respect the natural law retained its vigor: or again, because love of oneself is contained in the love of God and of one's neighbor: since true self-love consists in directing oneself to God. And for this reason the decalogue includes those precepts only which refer to our neighbor and to God.

According to Aquinas, there is a precept to love one's self, but it was not necessary for it to be promulgated as a separate commandment from God.

A reminder about St. Thomas on the fppr:

Now as "being" is the first thing that falls under the apprehension simply, so "good" is the first thing that falls under the apprehension of the practical reason, which is directed to action: since every agent acts for an end under the aspect of good. Consequently the first principle of practical reason is one founded on the notion of good, viz. that "good is that which all things seek after." Hence this is the first precept of law, that "good is to be done and pursued, and evil is to be avoided." All other precepts of the natural law are based upon this: so that whatever the practical reason naturally apprehends as man's good (or evil) belongs to the precepts of the natural law as something to be done or avoided. 

I think this post at Siris, On Grisez on the First Principle of Practical Reasoning, goes too far to make a distinction between the first principle of practical reason and the first principle of law, as it says the first principle of practical reason is "one founded," not that it is. 

(The Latin: "Et ideo primum principium in ratione practica est quod fundatur supra rationem boni, quae est, bonum est quod omnia appetunt. Hoc est ergo primum praeceptum legis, quod bonum est faciendum et prosequendum, et malum vitandum.")

Related:
SEP: Medieval Theories of Practical Reason
IEP: Medieval Theories of Practical Reason

Germain Grisez, "The First Principle of Practical Reason: A Commentary on the Summa Theologiae, 1-2, Question 94, Article 2"

Kelsen and Aquinas on “the Natural-Law Doctrine” by Robert P. George

An Overview of Practical Reason on Aquinas

THE LOGIC OF NATURAL LAW IN AQUINAS'S "TREATISE ON LAW" James Fieser

Tomás Luis de Victoria - Letaniae de Beata Virgine

Fr. Z summarizes the Theological Studies controversy

The Theological Studies dust up, NCR, creeping infallibility, and the ecclesial vocation of the theologian

Fr. Cessario on casuistry

The appendix to Introduction to Moral Theology.

Rather than putting all of the blame for the laity developing a distorted understanding of obedience on the Jesuits (as Geoffrey Hull does in A Banished Heart, iirc), should we attribute it instead to the general intellectual and cultural trends following Trent? Was this development in Christian moral theology mirrored by secular trends in understanding ethics in the 18th and 19th centuries? I can see how it would be in the interest of those in power to create docile citizens, but this is always the case, as we see in Aristotle's differentiation of the good citizen from the good man.

Regarding the appraisal of pre-conciliar treatments of sexual morality,  we should keep these comments by Fr. Cessario in mind:

The liberty of indifference favors a dualist anthropology insofar as the theory envisions the will as set over and against the rest of the powers of the human person. This may explain why casuist moral theology took a disproportionate interest in regulating sexual morality. No greater threat to the liberty of indifference could be imagined than the sudden upsurge of bad lust. So every precaution had to be taken to maintain the serene "indifference" of the will in the face of some de facto, especially unexpected, compelling good. Recall that, according to the casuist theorists, no factor outside of the will itself could set human willing effectively upon a particular course of action (238).

The "Jansenistic" attitude towards sex may not have been due to formal or even cultural Jansenism, but a "practical" Jansenism arising from the dominance of casuistry?

Father Reed talks with Father Romanus Cessario on This Is The Day

James Chastek, A (sort of) Thomistic divine command theory

“Command” is an analogous term, that is, the meanings of “[human] command” and “divine command” are in one sense the same and in another sense different. They are the same so far as, when considering a command, we view it as either (a) a procession from the will or (b) a normative being. But the sense in which a human command is an (a) and (b) is not the same as the way a divine command is. The unity we find between (a) and (b) in human commands must be negated when speaking of divine commands.

I'm curious as to why command is described as a "procession from the will" as opposed to something pertaining to reason. When imposed on another, it does involve the will of the law-giver.

Related:
Introduction to Moral Theology
The Pinckaers Reader

Physical Premotion: What's so hot about Thomism?

Concierto del Coro de la Paz de la Universidad de Hiroshima (Elisabeth University of Music)