Rorate Caeli: Marmion - Charity for neighbor: avoid judging others

Joseph Bottum, The Authority to Kill (via MoJ)

(see also The Most Controversial Decision: Challenging Pro-Life Witness by
Christopher O. Tollefsen)

Christopher West is at it again...

Zenit: Our Bodies Are Theological (Part 1)
Christopher West on Striking Down a False Sacred-Secular Divide

Part 2

Humanum review

Humanum (via Beauty in Education)

Mark Brumley, "Should We Seek Economic Equality?" (via Insight Scoop)

Is it easier for us to accept the pushes for changes in mores because the consequences are physically remote from us or hidden due to our ignorance? Or because they are taken care of by someone else (e.g. the government)? Who cares if she's a single mom? It's not our problem -- she can get aid from the government and the schools will give child care. We can see how the no harm principle of liberalism would harmonize with this -- if the harm is not obvious and all consent, then why shouldn't it be allowed? Who cares about what they do in the privacy of the bedroom? But we don't know what the impact of their actions on their own psychology or their relationship with others is like. Those who push for the normalization of homosexual relationships are bound to say that there is nothing subjectively wrong.

Zenit; Dropping Out: Why Young People Leave the Church
20-Somethings Cite Many Reasons for Disconnect

An important factor influencing young people today is the cultural context in which they live. No other generation of Christians, he affirmed, has lived through so many profound and rapid cultural changes, Kinnaman argued.

During the last few decades there have been massive changes in the media, technology, sexuality and the economy. This has led to a much greater degree of complexity, fluidity and uncertainty in society.

Summing up these changes, Kinnaman used three concepts to describe them: access, alienation and authority.

Regarding access he pointed out that the emergence of the digital world has revolutionized the way in which young adults communicate with each other and obtain information. This has led to significant changes in the way in which the current generation relates, works and thinks.

This has a positive side, in that the Internet and digital tools have opened up immense opportunities to spread the Christian message. However, it also means there is more access to other cultural views and values and it invites people to question more their beliefs. There is also less emphasis on linear and logical thought.

Alienation, Kinnaman observed, means that many teens and young adults feel isolated from their families, communities and institutions. High levels of divorce and childbirth outside marriage mean many have grown up in non-traditional family structures.

Moreover, the transition to adulthood has stretched out, with marriage and parenthood being put off to a later age. Many churches do not have the pastoral solutions in place to effectively help those who are not following the traditional path to adulthood, according to Kinnaman.

In addition, many young adults today are skeptical about the institutions that in the past have shaped society. Grassroots networks and collaborative efforts are prized over hierarchical institutions.

This skepticism becomes then a distrust of authority, the third concept used by Kinnaman. A tendency to pluralism, and even holding conflicting ideas, takes precedence over acceptance of Scripture and moral norms.

A culture of questions can lead people to the truth, and tension between faith and culture can also have a positive outcome, but, Kinnaman noted, it requires new approaches by churches.

James Chastek, Defining torture

There seems to be some sort of silent agreement on both sides that this is an impossible thing to do. I’m missing something here since the action doesn’t seem that hard to define: the use of physical pain to break the will of another, where “breaking the will” (which can mean more than one thing) means “breaking ones self possession”. The definition manifests why such an action would be intrinsically evil, since to be in possession of ones own power to choose or of ones own will is necessary for human dignity. A man is a lord of his action, so much so that to attempt to break this lordship is, in a very real sense, worse than murder. It is the attempt to kill what is most of all human in a human being.

Puzzling, as this is a definition that those adhering to a "liberal" version of Natural Law might accept, but it's a poor one, as far as I can tell -- how does one distinguish torture from the deterrent effect of law or legitimate coercion, for example police officers using pain compliance on those actively resisting arrest? (See my previous posts on this topic.)

Torture (or fear) does not destroy voluntariness (see the treatment of voluntary, involuntary, and non-voluntary) , though in some instances fear can diminish responsibility.

Zenit: Theological Commission to Continue Social Doctrine Study
Also Considering Monotheism and Theological Method

English Catholics to Pray for Queen
Bishops Approve Text for Her 60th Anniversary

Obligation of the Liturgy of the Hours
And More on "For Many"

Feast of Blessed Miguel Pro, November 24

A page for Blessed Miguel Pro.

Eastern Christian Books: Ecclesial Hierarchy

Eastern Christian Books: Ecclesial Hierarchy

Eastern Christian Books: Oxford Handbook of the Trinity

Eastern Christian Books: Oxford Handbook of the Trinity

Eastern Christian Books: Books for Christmas: Some Recommendations

Eastern Christian Books: Books for Christmas: Some Recommendations

Revenge of the Neo-Cats by Hilary White

If they have heard of the Oath Against Modernism they hate it and will frequently tell you that Pope (St) Pius X, while he might have had his heart in the right place, was too heavy-handed about the Modernists and accomplished nothing but to drive them underground. (That is if they will concede that Modernists ever existed at all and were not merely the product of the paranoid fantasies of popes given to overreaction, cf: Freemasons, leprechauns and Soviet infiltrators.)

They did a lot of good work in the 70s, 80s and 90s, particularly with founding universities and colleges that more or less teach Catholicism as if it were true. Christendom and TAC are the best examples, with Franciscan U at Steubie bringing up the academic rear. They are often very articulate about the evils of contraception and abortion, but frequently fall into the various intellectual traps designed for them because of their determination that Catholicism and democracy are inherently compatible.

In brief then, neo-Catholics, or neo-conservative Catholics are people who like to think of themselves as conservatives both politically and religiously, who are terrified by the idea of looking like a fanatic, who like to talk a great deal about how the Church has "a place in the public debate". Though they object to being called "moderate", they secretly love the term to be applied to them, and feel like they are at last being taken seriously by The Big Kids at the New York Times, the BBC and CNN when they are invited to comment on debate programmes. In general they are mostly an American phenomenon, with a bit of spillage over the Canadian border. Interestingly, they are almost unknown in Britain, where the divisions are much less ambiguously between Trads and the insane heretics running the show.

Writing a taxonomy for something non-substantial (rather an aggregation of accidents) is difficult, and I don't think faculty members of the small Catholic colleges, who might be "neo-Cats" in other ways, balk at taking the Oath against Modernism. Not all "Neo-Cats" are "theocons (Catholic neo-cons, the biggest examples being Neuhaus and Weigl). They do tend to be ardent Republican part members, though perhaps some are slowly becoming disgusted with the party and are supporting Ron Paul. (I think he gets more support from traddies than mainstream conservative Catholics.) I do think that the rest of the characterization applies, but only because Catholics are culturally Americans, and so they have imbibed certain ideas about feminism, "free market" capitalism, and so on. A failure of catechesis to produce counter-cultural Catholics...

Heinrich Pesch, SJ

Thomas Storck, A Giant Among Catholic Economists

Servants of the Lord: A look at the permanent diaconate in the U.S.

Gifts and Rights by James Schall, S.J.

The tyranny of possession

I'm not a grammarian or logician, so this is probably in need of correction.

In English, and in other languages, one can predicate one thing of another through "to be" but also "to have." "My hair is black" vs. "I have black hair" -- how different is the meaning of these two sentences. But is thinking in terms of possession potentially dangerous because it may be coupled with an erroneous understanding of dominion or ownership?

I have a body. --> I own my body. --> I can do with it as I please.

One can make the first statement about physical reality without having a wrong attitude of self-ownership. But isn't it the case that our moral attitudes can distort our understanding of physical reality, and not just of the ethical life?

What is it to have something? To be able to use or control it, but also to have the first claim (not necessarily an exclusive claim) to its use? To be able to use or dispose of it at will? It is mine, and not yours. To define it in terms of "ownership" does not clarify, since our understanding ownership follows having and is not prior to it?

"To have" may be in different ways, but the problem is to understand it only with reference to absolute sovereignty?

This is related to an ethics grounded upon the good. It can make a significant difference between conceiving of the good as something to be done as opposed to something that is possessed. Striving to possess something as opposed to acting well (or virtuously) -- having God vs. living or being in union with God. Thinking in terms of habitus may foster too much of a subjective conception of happiness that exacerbates self-love?

Daniel McInerny, Moral Absolutes and Foyle's War

The Word on EWTN

Documentary on the new translation of the Roman Missal.

James Chastek, Ending the supposed primacy of fact

Adam DeVille, Not Clerical Celibacy Again

NLM: Book Notice: The Latin Clerk: The Life, Work and Travels of Adrian Fortescue (by Fr. Aidan Nichols)

A new book from Zaccheus Press: Christianus: The Christian Life by Abbot Vonier. Special sale prices until December 31.

Zenit: Address to Pope From Chief Rabbi of Israel
"There Is No Reason Why the Sons of Abraham Should Not Be Able to Live in Peace" [2011-11-14]

The Smithy: Richard Rufus of Cornwall (copy at medievalists.net)

The Richard Rufus of Cornwall Project

I think he was one of Dr. Brown's favorites...

Some recommendations from "JA":

Sovereignty: God, State, and Self by Jean Bethke Elshtain

This may be the most relevant to your interests. Elshtain, a political theorist, considers modern understandings of sovereignty in regard to the state and individual as derivative of certain late scholastic that abandoned Neoplatonic and Aristotelian metaphysics for nominalism/voluntarism.


The Theological Origins of Modernity by Michael Allen Gillespie

Gillespie, a political theorist and philosopher, covers the same general trends as Elshtain, but his focus is not on sovereignty in particular, but broader.

Some rights theorists make a big deal about medieval theological discussions of sovereignty, but does the modern concept of sovereignty really have roots in nominalism/voluntarism?

Patrick Brennan, The rather-larger-than-asserted competence of "the state"

Many leading American Catholic neo-cons are embarrassed by the doctrine of the social Kingship of Christ.  If you have any doubt about that, listen to the silly things George Weigel, Jodi Bottum, and Raymond Arroyo say (and observe the awkward body language and snark on their faces) in this discussion on EWTN .  Weigel concludes by asserting that "The state does not have the capacity to make the judgment that Christ is King."  But this is patently absurd, at least taken as a statement about states as such.  As I've argued before, surely a group of Catholics founding a state would be competent to install leaders who would be competent to recognize what their installers recognize, viz., the Kingship of Christ.  To be sure, many states, including our own, are contingently incompetent to recognize the Kingship of Christ and its social consequences, but the fulfillment of such an unfortunate contingency does not lay a finger on the traditional Catholic teaching that Christ is King over political society.  

Medievalists.net: Theocratic Centralism: The Politics of Boniface VIII during the Thirteenth Century
The Medieval Friaries of London

The Feast of St. Albert the Great

St. Albert the Great - The Church and Science Are Not at War
by Dan Burke


St. Albert the Great Icon
The History of DSPT

Medievalists.net: Man and nature in the Middle Ages

Dr. Hibbs once posed a question about the history of the word "nature" and how its use changed over time. I haven't come across an answer yet.

Medievalists.net: Deplatonising the Celestial Hierarchy. Peter John Olivi’s interpretation of the Pseudo-Dionysius

SEP

Rome Reports: Archives on the role of the Church during the Spanish Civil War are published

Michael Pakaluk is now at Ave Maria.

Related:
Center for the Renewal of Catholic Theology

Pertinacious Papist: Marini’s Conciliarist Manifesto by Peter A. Kwasniewski

There's a new edition of Yves Congar's True and False Reform in the Church.

True and false reforms to the Catholic Church
True and False Reform by Avery Cardinal Dulles
The Tablet review

DomLife


Related:
At the Heart of Christian Worship
Liturgical Essays of Yves Congar

CNS Blog: Did Cardinal Bertone really ‘disown’ the document on economic reform?

Fr. Barron comments on the new translation of the Roman Missal

Em. I think his account of the Pauline "reform" reveals a lot about his perspective. He ignores the fact that the push for the whole liturgy to be in the vernacular came from certain quarters and not from the Council Fathers. It may not be germane to the video, but I get the impression that this was a hastily prepared presentation.

Corporatism

I had to look at how "corporatism" was commonly used - it underlies the organization of men into guilds and the like. What would be a good authoritative source on this topic?

Edward Sri on the new translation

A Guide to the New Mass Translation - Information Session


Will people start paying attention to the words more, instead of going autopilot through rote memory? And will the changes matter if the music accompanying the text is itself a distraction from attentiveness?

Insight Scoop: New: Expanded 2nd edition of "Dogma And Preaching" by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger
Now available: "Newman: An Intellectual and Spiritual Biography of John Henry Newman"

Domine Deus Noster

A video for the Feast of St. Leo the Great (new calendar). Fr. Z.

Insight Scoop: Praise for and Prose from St. Leo the Great, Pope and Doctor of the Church

Who's minding the Curia?

Sandro Magister, Too Much Confusion. Bertone Puts the Curia Under Lock and Key (via Rod Dreher)

Any long-term reforms in the Curia because of "Towards reforming the international financial and monetary system in the context of global public authority"?

Fr. Shanley going home

In a way... Providence College President to Give Aquinas Lecture at CUA - January 27, 2012

CUA's 125th Anniversary Events

Video of Fr. Giertych at the DPST

Begun on September 21 at 2:34 PM.

Here

"Virtuous human action-- an icon of God. Aquinas's vision of Christian morality." Fr. Wojciech Giertych, OP from DSPT on Vimeo.

Alas, I don't think it includes the Q&A session after the presentation, but I haven't watched it yet since I was in the audience and heard the talk. That's too bad, I wanted a friend to see a couple of the people (students?) asking questions.

Fr. Giertych talks about the moral agent as being an icon of God through cooperation with grace. He
accepts the thesis of Fr. Pinckaers that the roots of modern moral theology are to be found of William of Ockham's nominalism. But does voluntarism, a certain account of the will as a spiritual faculty or the of the relationship of law to the will, really originate in nominalism?

One does notice a shift in the organization of moral theology texts of the Counter-Reformation period and afterwards. But what is the theological source of this shift? I don't think this has really been established yet. Beginners and sinners may understand morality in terms of law and obedience, and a moral theology focused on law (and freedom) may have some explanatory force for them. What was happening in Christianity (or the universities) to cause the shift? What are the social and political changes that contributed to it?

Fr. Giertych touched upon the relationship between the infused virtues and the acquired virtues, but it is not something that he has studied in detail. He did claim that St. Paul had the acquired virtues, which could be properly applied after he had been converted. But the exact relation between the two sorts of virtues needs to explored more. He did recommend a recent article... (in The Thomist?). I'll have to add the information when I find my notes.

Eamon Duffy's review of Newman’s Unquiet Grave: The Reluctant Saint

A Hero of the Church

Jim Keenan is associated with it, so...

is it a questionable endeavor?

Catholic Theological Ethics in the World Church

Thomas Tallis - If ye love me

James Chastek, Aspects of the free act

The three aspects of our experience of our own freedom: dominus, determinatus, derilictus.

1.) On the one hand, the experience is of determining oneself, of being responsible, of experiencing the choice in ones own power. The whole universe seems to fall silent in the face of such a decision. Man is fundamentally, as St. Thomas would put it, dominus sui actus. I am the Lord!

2.) All this positive power expresses itself across a lattice of various determinations. I find myself in a certain situation, thinking in a certain language, with various sets proclivities, iron habits, needs to be satisfied, interests, aversions and talents, and all this points to a  thousand more determinations than I’d ever be able to see. Twins separated at birth found that they shared a long list of common pursuits and interests that they probably never suspected were simply the silent proddings of their genetic code, and one doesn’t need to see himself in a twin to see that there is a fair amount that seems spontaneous to him that is in large part due to somatic factors.

3.) A third element is the lack or imperfect possession of the perfection or good that I choose and/ or am driven to. The path of dereliction left open to me. Failure, mistakes, loss and wickedness are always an option.
The second trait is usually distinguished from freedom, although it is also a principle of freedom.  If freedom is the action of some nature, it has some determination from another. All nature is some mode of being open to the divine activity.

The first and third are differing aspects of the free act for us; the first expresses its perfection and completion, the other expressing its imperfection and incompletion. It is no easy task to untangle the aspect of lordship in the free action from the freedom or indetermination of it, though they are contrary elements. Freedom as possessed by the one that is most perfectly Lord is not open to mistake, failure or wickedness as an object of choice, and yet is not determined for being so.

The two great dangers in understanding freedom are (a.) to confound the first and third, the dominus and derilictus, and (b.) to overstate the significance of the second factor as a conditioning factor; though this factor is not entirely contrary to freedom and is even necessary for its exercise. No philosophy that reduces its concepts to being as actuality will fall into the first one, since perfection is precisely what divides the dominus and derilictus, and which shows us the path of perfection on which we find the perfect Dominus who is in no way a derilictus.

The Medievalverse - November 2011

From the people who run Medievalists.net. Canadians! What sort of "neutral" viewpoint would they bring to their "American Civil War" website?

Province of St. Joseph: The Souls of Dominicans
Blessed Jordan of Saxony, Patron of Dominican Vocations

Insight Scoop: Blessed Duns Scotus, faithful disciple of Saint Francis

Zenit: Papal Reflection on Priesthood to Open Academic Year
"As Priests, the One Legitimate Ascent ... Is Not That of Success But That of the Cross"

Had to look up corporatism

Which is not the same as corporatocracy.

Wiki entry on corporatism (which does not have the same meaning as communitarianism, especially in the restricted sense)

Byzantine, Texas: Armenian Seminary to host talk on Jerusalem tonight

Tonight at 7:30 PM. (Not sure of the time zone.) You can view the lecture online at St. Nersess.

More recent items from The Catholic Thing

A New Center for Natural Law by Hadley Arkes

The Fading Sense of Citizenship by Hadley Arkes

But to ask what a “good citizen” or a good member of the political community would be is to bring us back to the original question of what the polis or the polity is.

Is it more like a hotel, where people take up residence? In that case, the connection generates no moral demands apart from the requirement of paying the rent and obeying the house rules. Or is the polis more truly, as Aristotle taught us, a moral association: a place where the members share certain understandings of the things that are just or unjust; where they agree to be ruled by procedures they regard, by and large, as just; and where they take it as their chief mission to cultivate that sense of justice among one another through the lessons they teach through the laws?

But for what end? So that they can live on their own? Or so they can live together? A liberal would probably not disagree with what is written here.

The Cruelty of Hedonism by Anthony Esolen

In defense of the status quo

Conservatives and Social Justice
by Ryan T. Anderson

What else should one expect from AEI?

Sandro Magister, There's a New Star in the Russian Sky. His Name Is Aleksandr

Martin Hanczyc: The line between life and not-life

TED

He seems to accept that there is a distinction between life and not-life. How many others wish to do away with it in a play for reductionism?

MoJ: Patrick Brennan, Equality and Authority
Optimism is a Brain Defect

2011 Haskins Conference

The Haskins Society at Boston College
BC Events
Episcopal Liberty and the Council of Paris (556/73)


The Medieval Cistercians

Swiss Dominican Appointed Bishop

Insight Scoop: The Introduction to "A Bitter Trial: Evelyn Waugh and John Carmel Cardinal Heenan on the Liturgical Changes"

Robert George interview in America magazine

Full Interview with Robert P. George (via Mere Comments)

Authority in the Education of a Human Being by Anthony Esolen (MoJ and Mere Comments)

Professor Esolen is correct to criticize radical egalitarianism. But do teachers have an authority, and does authority have the same meaning as auctoritas? They are superior to students in virtue of the knowledge that they have (or should have). But the do not have the authority of a law-giver, the author of the laws. They may have the authority proper to someone who is reckoned wise or knowledgeable or proficient, someone who has the trust of the students or others. But is not authority then being used in a different sense?

More on the nomination of Charles Morerod

Le dominicain Charles Morerod sera le nouvel évêque de Lausanne, Genève et Fribourg
Rome Reports


Fr. Z

Thomas Merton

DSPT: Visual Meditations from Thomas Merton's Abbey of Gethsemani

Screening of Merton - A Film Biography (1984) : Sunday, November 6, 2 - 4 pm
trailer

Trailer provided by Video Detective

DVD

Sandro Magister, Vatican Diary / The "spirit of Assisi" that the pope doesn't trust

Charles Morerod, O.P. to become bishop

Rorate Caeli: A Thomist Bishop in Suisse Romande

Related:
Non-protagonism helps ecumenism
"The Ecumenical Meaning of the Petrine Ministry"

All Saints Day