Too Little, Too Late?

That title could be applied to a lot of actions. Here's to not squandering it.

Rorate Caeli: For the record: a new motu proprio creating a Pontifical Academy of the Latin Language

Edit.
Latin rebirth in schools
Latin is about to undergo a renaissance in schools under plans being drawn up by the Vatican.

Medievalists.net: A Spectacle of Great Beauty: The Changing Faces of Hagia Sophia

Insight Scoop: Vatican II and the Ecclesiology of Joseph Ratzinger
The Introduction to Joseph Ratzinger: Life in the Church and Living Theology—Fundamentals of Ecclesiology with Reference to Lumen Gentium by Fr. Maximilian Heinrich Heim

An allusion to a "remnant" Church?

Maybe, maybe not?

Pope suggests it’s best to be ‘honest’ and leave the Church if you don’t believe: HLI priest

Zenit: ON BELIEVING IN JESUS, BREAD OF LIFE
"In those words is foretold the paschal mystery of Jesus"

Pope explains how doubt was created in Judas


From earlier this year: John Allen, A Pope of Ironies

Feast of St. Augustine of Hippo, 28 August

The Scriptural Roots of St. Augustine's Spirituality | Stephen N. Filippo | IgnatiusInsight.com

Dominicana: St. Augustine: Ever Ancient and Yet Ever New!

The extended trailer for Restless Heart:


A review of the movie.

Byzantine, Texas: The explosive growth of Orthodoxy in Guatemala

Even though she is patroness of the Americas, is there much devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe outside of Mexico (and Mexican immigrant communities)?

Does Orthodoxy have better safeguards against syncretism? Is it because of a better model of inculturation? Or just better catechesis?

Can we define what we mean by modernity, please?

Irony of Ironies: Vatican II Triumphs Over Moribund Modernity by Samuel Gregg

You don't need to reach the bottom of the essay to guess that the author is associated with the Acton Institute. Defenders of the liberal [dis-]order are apt to credit liberalism or capitalism with the development of new technology, the increase in longevity and decrease in morality, and so on, as if these developments could only happen because of the concentration of capital in the hands of the few.

From earlier this month--Feast-Day Celebrations at San Francisco’s “Old Cathedral”

Metropolitan Hilarion in town?

Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk will visit USA to take part in celebrations on the occasion of 200th anniversary of Fort Ross

He will be celebrating the Divine Liturgy at St. Nicholas tomorrow, at Holy Virgin Cathedral on Tuesday.

Fort Ross 2012 Bicentennial
Diocese of the West

From February: An Interview with Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev





IEC 2012: Br. Alois Löser, Dr. Maria Voce, Liturgy of Word and Water - June 11, 2012

David Anders, Archbishop Minnerath on Rome, the Papacy, and the East

Clarifications on the Political Common Good

Solidarity, subsidiarity, and principled sanity by Carl E. Olson (via Insight Scoop)

A lot of people have made use of a picture of Inigo Montoya from Princess Bride and the quotation, "You Keep Using That Word, I Do Not Think It Means What You Think It Means," with reference to some disputed term or other. I think it would be humorous to make one of these photos with "common good."



Is the definition of the common good (along with subsidiarity), as put forth by contemporary CST and used by Mr. Olson, helpful? Yes, but primarily with reference to the modern nation-state. He cites the Compendium: "The common good of society is not an end in itself; it has value only in reference to attaining the ultimate ends of the person and the universal common good of the whole of creation. " The political common good, as "traditionally" understood by Thomists and Aristotelians, is not the same as the instrumental good defined by John XXIII and adopted into contemporary CST. The common good, the good of the community, is an end in itself - desirable for its own sake and not merely as a means to an end desired for itself. This does not mean that it is not subordinate to a "higher" end or good, like the supernatural common good (and man's ultimate end), God Himself. The common good, as defined within contemporary CST, may be an instrumental good to the political common good, but it is not identical to the political common good:

The principle of the common good, to which every aspect of social life must be related if it is to attain its fullest meaning, stems from the dignity, unity and equality of all people. According to its primary and broadly accepted sense, the common good indicates “the sum total of social conditions which allow people, either as groups or as individuals, to reach their fulfilment more fully and more easily”.

This instrumental good is explained as such by proponents of the New Natural Law Theory, for example. And yet there is use of language usually associated with the traditional [definition of the] common good:

The common good does not consist in the simple sum of the particular goods of each subject of a social entity. Belonging to everyone and to each person, it is and remains “common”, because it is indivisible and because only together is it possible to attain it, increase it and safeguard its effectiveness, with regard also to the future. Just as the moral actions of an individual are accomplished in doing what is good, so too the actions of a society attain their full stature when they bring about the common good. The common good, in fact, can be understood as the social and community dimension of the moral good.

An explanation of how the common good is common, though it may have been better to explain how it is common or shared - not as belonging to them, like property (in which case common would be said in praedicando), but as a shared end. And in the next paragraph:

A society that wishes and intends to remain at the service of the human being at every level is a society that has the common good — the good of all people and of the whole person [347] — as its primary goal. The human person cannot find fulfilment in himself, that is, apart from the fact that he exists “with” others and “for” others. This truth does not simply require that he live with others at various levels of social life, but that he seek unceasingly — in actual practice and not merely at the level of ideas — the good, that is, the meaning and truth, found in existing forms of social life. No expression of social life — from the family to intermediate social groups, associations, enterprises of an economic nature, cities, regions, States, up to the community of peoples and nations — can escape the issue of its own common good, in that this is a constitutive element of its significance and the authentic reason for its very existence[348]

Can the second part of this section be harmonized with the first? If the common good is the "social and community [communal] dimension of the moral good [the life of virtue]" then is it the same as "the sum total of social conditions which allow people, either as groups or as individuals, to reach their fulfilment more fully and more easily"?

As for Fr. Barron's essay -- "Now in Catholic social theory, subsidiarity is balanced by solidarity, which is to say, a keen sense of the common good, of the natural and supernatural connections that bind us to one another, of our responsibility for each other." Solidarity may be identified with the virtue of social justice (or legal justice), or with civic friendship, or both, depending on, of course, its definition. The Compendium:

Solidarity is also an authentic moral virtue, not a “feeling of vague compassion or shallow distress at the misfortunes of so many people, both near and far. On the contrary, it is a firm and persevering determination to commit oneself to the common good. That is to say to the good of all and of each individual, because we are all really responsible for all”[418]. Solidarity rises to the rank of fundamental social virtue since it places itself in the sphere of justice. It is a virtue directed par excellence to the common good, and is found in “a commitment to the good of one's neighbour with the readiness, in the Gospel sense, to ‘lose oneself' for the sake of the other instead of exploiting him, and to ‘serve him' instead of oppressing him for one's own advantage (cf. Mt 10:40-42, 20:25; Mk 10:42-45; Lk 22:25-27)”[419].

I've already written about subsidiarity (as well as the contemporary notion of common good) and how these terms probably are better understood as reactions to the growth of the modern nation-state and polities that are too big for their own good, and the concomitant political and economic centralization. This may have been a conscious formulation for the first theorists, but those currently presenting CST as a basis for seeking political solutions may be unaware of the original contextual background of the terms.

Is the whole greater than the sum of its parts when we consider the [political] community and its members? Is legal justice distinct from civic friendship? I will have to address these questions at some other time. At some point I will also have to rewrite the discussion of how one cannot talk about common good if a community is mostly absent and the potential for community must be developed first, addressing the need for a common culture and a single identity, one people. Taking the United States as one nation, or polity, is a problem, because the scale is too big and the relationship between all of its members to one another too tenuous for the most part. Talking about the common good (and subsidiarity and solidarity) when the current political order (taken broadly as to referring not only to the federal government but also the culture and social order), or constitution in the Aristotelian sense, mitigates against it.

The Purpose of Education: A Catholic Primer by Stratford Caldecott

Discussing primarily the formation in the intellectual virtues, rather than in the moral virtues.

His Beauty in the Word is published by Angelico Press.

CMT: What is Happiness? by Charles Camosy

How does one relate goods to ends and activities? Some precision would be helpful.

From December of last year: In Defense of Human Dignity – on the 500th Anniversary of the Preaching of the Dominican Friars in Hispaniola

Related: Dominicans in the Americas
Join us in celebrating our 500th anniversary!
(Update)

Happiness and Its Discontents by Fr. Michael Sherwin, OP

(Logos)

Zenit: Pope's Message to Rimini Meeting
"Not only my soul, but even every fiber of my flesh is made to find its peace, its fulfillment in God"

Thus do we discover the truest dimension of human existence, that to which the Servant of God Luigi Giussani continually referred: life as vocation. Everything, every relationship, every joy, as well as every difficulty, finds its ultimate meaning in being an opportunity for a relationship with the Infinite, a voice of God that continually calls to us and invites us to lift our gaze, to find the complete fulfillment of our humanity in belonging to Him. “You have made us for Yourself – wrote St. Augustine – and our hearts are restless until they rest in You” (Confessions I, 1,1). We need not be afraid of what God asks of us, through the circumstance of our lives, were it even the dedication of ourselves in a special form of following and imitating Christ, in the priesthood or religious life. The Lord, in calling some to live totally for Him, calls everyone to recognize the essence of our own nature as human beings: we are made for the Infinite. And God has our happiness at heart, and our complete human fulfillment. Let us ask, then, to enter in and to remain in the gaze of faith that characterized the saints, in order that we might be able to discover the good seed that the Lord scatters along the path of our lives and joyfully adhere to our vocation.

Dominicana: J. Augustine Di Noia, O.P., “Theological Method and the Magisterium of the Church,” Dominicana 54:2 (2011), 51-61.

Tired of the Conflict Between Catholics

Spiritual Consumers by Matthew Cantirino

One of my mom's friends had recounted to my mother how a priest had admonished people for being picky and choosey as to which Masses they attended.

It can be rather easy to do some amateur "psychologizing" about groups of people, in order to draw some sort of moral point. I've done it as well. But it has to be couched in terms of hypotheticals; and is it really that helpful for the intended audience? It can easily degenerate into condemnation of the "other." But it does get boring, whether it be from the right or the left, when there is a failure to grasp reality and the nature of the problem. Are both just different forms of Americanism? Do older, "left-leaning" Catholics really think institutionally? Or is their comfort level first and foremost?

Mr. Cantirino writes:

This is anecdotal, but virtually all of the youngish (say, under-35) orthodox Catholics I know, for example, don’t attend Mass at their local parish. They’ll travel long distances–sometimes, clear across cities–to certain “special” chapels or “traditionalist parishes” or order houses where a dynamic priest keeps them coming back. In many ways this is highly commendable: That someone is willing to take significant additional time out of their day to commute to church signifies a deep commitment to the liturgy and an impressive grasp of its importance. And it’s a sympathetic dilemma: Certainly, young people don’t do this to spite their canon-law pastor, but they do often find the services on offer in their bailiwick in some sense impoverished, or the preaching theologically wayward, or the architecture grossly midcentury, and for the good of their spiritual health decide they can and must find a home elsewhere.

But should this be the end goal? Might it be fruitful to encourage a way of thinking that emphasizes not only the individual’s conscious embrace of orthodoxy (key though individual response has always been in Catholicism), but which also sees this commitment as eventually settling, becoming the norm, and integrating itself into the existing framework rather than subsisting outside of or in a subculture of it? This, then, would seem to be an emerging challenge for the “movement” back towards orthodoxy. We’ve become, maybe by accident, accustomed to a sort of “remnant” mindset rather than an institutional one, to prophetic denunciations from without but with not enough “working within.” So perhaps it’s time for “self-conscious” young Catholics to start seeing themselves less as dissidents and “choosers” and more simply as part of the future of the Church, and begin working out what that means.

Traddies and conservative Catholics may put a premium on orthodoxy and good liturgical praxis and sometimes, their ability to live as a community suffers since they have to travel over long distances to their church. Many may be ignorant that this is not the idea, but even if they are aware of the problem, when looking to the good of their family, a strong parish life may not compare. Sure, some may have a mindset which is opposed to an awareness of communion with those who are ignorant. But should the burden be on them or on the priests and ultimately the bishop of the local Church?

Commonweal and the like belong to the past, even if that crowd may feel good at the moment because a SWPL Democrat occupies the White House, because it is tied to a dying, unsustainable political economy. How many go beyond an easy, painless progressivism to make real sacrifices for others that is in accordance with the order of charity (rather than following their own notions of victim classes and the "preferential option")?

Not a “Swerve,” but a “Slouch” by Anthony Esolen
Modern atheists may think they’ve found an ally in ancient Epicureanism. They’re quite mistaken.

Feast of St. Bernard of Clairvaux, 20 August

On the Love of God

Fr. Augustine's Book Talk Rescheduled

I saw Fr. Augustine today and asked him to sign some copies of his book. I mentioned the book talk at the DSPT and he responded that it had been rescheduled for January, so that Regis Martin could participate. (? I think I am remembering the correct name.)

Fr. Augustine may also be giving a talk at the National Shrine of Saint Francis of Assisi in October, but that has not been finalized yet.

Sister Vassa Larin

Sister Vassa Larin from George Kokhno on Vimeo.

John Allen on Archbishop Dolan

Lake Effect: The Mind of the Archbishop - mp3

Audio files for Orientale Lumen XVI Conference

Ancient Faith Radio - website for the annual conference


Related:
Diaconate in Christ: Orientalium ecclesiarum No. 17. Commentary Part II

Simonopetra

A Thousand Years are as One Day

NCReg: Catholic University Looks East (1851)
Ukrainian Father Mark Morozowich is the first Eastern Catholic to lead CUA’s School of Theology.

Joseph Trabbic on Maritain

Some Critical Comments on Maritain's Political Philosophy

Finally, I cannot accept Maritain’s thesis about democracy’s privileged connection to Christianity. As I read ecclesiastical history, the Church has always been very pragmatic about her relationships with the various types of political regimes, never teaching in any binding manner that some one kind of regime in particular has its roots in the Gospel. And yet, as I argued [earlier in the review], it does appear that Maritain would have to insist that Christians are in some sense bound to promote democracy. There is not the space here sufficiently to reflect on the papal teaching of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that, in fact, was quite critical of some of the same democratic tenets held by Maritain. It is ironic that in reviewing Christianity and Democracy in 1945 the prominent Unitarian theologian James Luther Adams questioned the Catholic nature of Maritain’s political thought: “How, then, does M. Maritain, the Thomist and the Roman Catholic, manage to become here the apostle and the mentor of the democracy of the future? He does it by ignoring Roman Catholicism and by ignoring the antidemocratic heritage of pre-eighteenth-century Christianity.” No doubt there are many who would say that previous Catholic teaching on political matters has since been superseded by John XXIII’s Pacem in Terris and Vatican II’s pronouncements in Dignitatis Humanae and Gaudium et Spes. But if we apply the hermeneutic of continuity proposed by Benedict XVI, we might discover that the story is far more complex than the hermeneuts of discontinuity and rupture would have us believe.

I think there is an impulse to an equality rooted in fraternity "within Christianity," such that Christian polity leans towards becoming a republic whenever possible. Perhaps Maritain's bigger mistake was identifying democracy with the contingent historical form of the modern nation-state and not addressing the problem of scale with respect to community.

Fr. Spitzer, in his Ten Universal Principles, talks about adjudicating between competing rights claims. Evidence that there is a problem with contemporary rights theory, that there can be competing claims? Or is the problem in the identification of rights with a specific understanding of ownership?



More from TEDxPannonia

Fr. Augustine's Lecture Cancelled?

A book party of sorts for his biography of St. Augustine - it was scheduled for September 26, but there is no longer any mention of it.

There is some discussion of the relationship between Church and State in the combox for Thomas Storck's Liberalism and the Absence of Purpose. My short contribution: "...while it may be somewhat useful to think of the division between the sacred and the secular in terms of supernatural and natural (especially with respect to the limits of secular authority), this can lead to be problems if we do not consider the underlying reason why this division is apt, namely the goods themselves. The political common good is communal well-being, or the virtuous life of the community – civic friendship. All friendships are open to something higher serving as a source of unity joining friends together – in this case, the higher good is God Himself. While secular authority may not be able to directly bring about man’s salvation through the imparting of grace, a Christian polity can nonetheless promote conditions which facilitate the observance of the Christian life (for example, removing obstacles)."

Mount Athos • The Holy Mountain

Mauricio Kuri on Religious Freedom

Metropolitan KALLISTOS Ware Salvation in Christ - The Orthodox Approach -Lecture

Met. Kallistos Ware | PRP Special : The Jesus Prayer

My Conversation with Professor Robert Pope on The 21st Century Renaissance

Ancient Faith Radio: Metropolitan Kallistos Ware on the Neopatristic Synthesis

The Second Vatican Council according to Albino Luciani by ANDREA TORNIELLI

It is also interesting to look at the way Luciani experienced the long process that lead to the Council’s declaration on religious freedom «Dignitatis humanae». “Religious freedom, interpreted in the right way“ wrote Luciani “ so we would not misunderstand. We all agree that there is only one true religion and those who are aware of this truth must practice this religion and no other. That said, there are also other things that are right and we must say them. In other words, those who are not satisfied with Catholicism have the right to profess their own religion for various reasons. Natural Law states that each one of us has the right to search for truth, especially religious truth. One cannot find it by staying shut in a room, reading some books. We truly search for it by talking with other people, by sharing opinions…. The right to the truth is just a common saying, but there are only physical or moral people who do not have the right to search for truth. Therefore do not be scared of slapping truth in the face when you give someone the right to use their freedom”.


“The choice of religious belief must be free.” explained the bishop of Vittorio Veneto “ The freer and more earnest the choice, the more those that embrace the Faith will feel honoured. These are rights, natural rights. Rights always come hand in hand with duties. The non Catholics have the right to profess their religion and I have the duty to respect their right as a private citizen, as a priest, as a bishop and as a State”.

Memorial of St. Dominic, 8 August

A photo taken by Fr. Lawrence:



EWTN
wff
St. Dominic's Church in SF
St. Dominic's Church in Benecia
Contemplation and action: Pope reflects on example of St. Dominic
General Audience: Pope speaks about prayer of Saint Dominic

On the Prayer of St. Dominic

Was this movie ever completed and released?

Going to NYC to attend a wedding. Planning to be back by Monday!

Finally!

I've been waiting at least 6 or 7 years for this book to be released by Ignatius Press; it should be out in November - Enchiridion Symbolorum, new, updated bilingual edition.

Two on Mathematics

The Purpose of Mathematics in a Classical Education by Thomas Treloar
History of Mathematics Education in the European Middle Ages

Zenit: Papal Letter to Knights of Columbus
"concerted efforts are being made to redefine and restrict the exercise of the right to religious freedom"

Wesley J. Smith, Incorporate and Lose Your Religious Liberty?

Faith and Religious Liberty

Rorate Caeli: De Mattei: "Religious Liberty - or liberty for Christians?"

"Further, the right of being immune to coercion, or rather the fact that the Church does not impose the Catholic Faith on anyone, but requires the freedom of the act of faith, does not arise from a presumed natural right to religious freedom or a presumed natural right to believe in any religion whatever, but it is founded on the fact that the Catholic Religion, the only true one, must be embraced in complete freedom without any constraints."

This does not seem to explain why the act of faith cannot be coerced. Should it not be said that the act of faith, by its very nature, must be free? The will moves the intellect to assent to God as First Truth, and the will cannot be coerced.

Secondly, if one is motivated to assent to propositions of the Faith for a reason other than God Himself, then it would not be an act of Faith but of some other sort of belief.

Since Faith cannot be coerced or compelled and its object is Divine and it is an act possible only through God's grace, it falls outside the competence of human authority. Human authority may act to protect the Church but it cannot punish those who have deliberately rejected Faith, except in so far as they threaten the good of the community? Does the Church have the authority to punish those who have sinned in rejecting Faith? It seems to me that Aquinas is wrong on this point. Even if Christians are obligated to keep the Faith, once they have turned away from it, how can they be compelled to return to it? How can anyone but God move them to return to Faith?

Did St. Thomas Aquinas Justify the Transition from "Is" to "Ought" by Piotr Lichacz, O.P.

(Fribourg)

General Audience: The Pope explains St. Alphonsus Liguori and importance of prayer


Zenit: On Prayer According to St. Alphonsus Liguori

Pope's personal secretary Monsignor Georg Gänswein turns 56

St. Hildegard of Bingen: Writer, composer and future Doctor of the Church

Rome Reports

As announced in a comment, there is a new blog: The Absolute Primacy of Christ.

An Interview with Fr. Maximos Davies

From a year ago, before the monastery moved to Wisconsin.

Sister Vassa (Larin) on Divine Liturgy and History

Sister Vassa (Larin) on Divine Liturgy and History from George Kokhno on Vimeo.

A Book About One Aspect of Congar's Theology

A Church Fully Engaged: Yves Congar's Vision of Ecclesial Authority by Anthony Oelrich