On St. Albert the Great

On St. Albert the Great

"Scientific Study Is Transformed Then Into a Hymn of Praise"

VATICAN CITY, MARCH 24, 2010 (Zenit.org).- Here is a translation of the address Benedict XVI gave today during the general audience in St. Peter's Square.

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Dear brothers and sisters,

One of the greatest teachers of Medieval theology is St. Albert the Great. The title "great" (magnus) with which he has passed into history, indicates the vastness and depth of his doctrine, which he coupled with holiness of life. But already his contemporaries did not hesitate to attribute excellent titles to him; one of his disciples, Ulrich of Strasbourg, described him as "wonder and miracle of our age."

Born in Germany at the beginning of the 13th century, he was still young when he went to Italy, to Padua, seat of one of the most famous universities of the Middle Ages. He dedicated himself to the study of the so-called liberal arts: grammar, rhetoric, dialectics, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music, that is, of the general culture, manifesting that typical interest for the natural sciences, which would soon become the favorite field of his specialization. During his stay in Padua, he frequented the church of the Dominicans, whom he later joined with the profession of religious vows. The hagiographic sources lead one to understand that Albert matured this decision gradually. The intense relationship with God, the example of holiness of the Dominican Friars, the listening of sermons of Blessed Giordano of Saxony, successor of St. Dominic in the leadership of the Order of Preachers, were the decisive factors that helped him to overcome every doubt, overcoming also family resistance. Often, in the years of youth, God speaks to us and indicates the plan of our life. As for Albert, so for all of us, personal prayer nourished by the Word of the Lord, the frequenting of the sacraments and the spiritual guidance of enlightened men are the means to discover and follow the voice of God. He received the religious habit from Blessed Giordano of Saxony.

After his priestly ordination, the superiors sent him to teach in several centers of theological study adjacent to monasteries of the Dominican Fathers. His brilliant intellectual qualities enabled him to perfect the study of theology in the most famous university of the time, that of Paris. From then on St. Albert undertook that extraordinary activity of writer, which he would then follow for his whole life.

He was assigned prestigious tasks. In 1248 he was charged with opening a theological study at Cologne, one of the most important administrative centers of Germany, where he lived in successive stages, and which became his adopted city. From Paris he took with him an exceptional pupil, Thomas Aquinas. The merit would suffice of having been St. Thomas' teacher to foster profound admiration toward St. Albert. Established between these two great theologians was a relationship of mutual esteem and friendship, human attitudes that help much in the development of science. In 1254, Albert was elected Provincial of the "Provincia Teutoniae" -- Teutonic Province -- of the Dominican Fathers, which embraced communities spread over a vast territory in Central and Northern Europe. He distinguished himself for the zeal with which he exercised this ministry, visiting the communities and constantly recalling his fellow brothers to fidelity, to the teachings and examples of St. Dominic.

His gifts did not pass unnoticed and the Pope of that time, Alexander IV, wanted Albert next to him for a certain time in Anagni -- where the Pope frequently went -- in Rome itself and in Viterbo, to make use of his theological counsel. The same Supreme Pontiff appointed him bishop of Regensburg, a great and famous diocese, which was, however, going through a difficult time. From 1260 to 1262 Albert carried out this ministry with tireless dedication, succeeding in taking peace and concord to the city, reorganizing parishes and convents, and giving a new impulse to charitable activities.

In the years 1263-1264 Albert preached in Germany and in Bohemia, charged by Pope Urban IV, to return then to Cologne to take up again his mission of docent, scholar and writer. Being a man of prayer, of learning and of charity, he enjoyed great authoritativeness in his interventions, in several affairs of the Church and of the society of the time. He was above all a man of reconciliation and peace in Cologne, where the archbishop had entered into harsh opposition with the city's institutions; he spent himself during the unfolding of the Second Council of Lyon in 1274, convoked by Pope Gregory X to foster the union between the Latin and Greek Churches, after the separation of the Great Schism of the East of 1054; he clarified the thought of Thomas Aquinas, who was the object of objections and even of wholly unjustified condemnations.

He died in the cell of his monastery of the Holy Cross in Cologne in 1280, and very soon was venerated by his fellow brothers. The Church proposed him to the devotion of the faithful with his beatification in 1622 and his canonization in 1931, when Pope Pius XI proclaimed him Doctor of the Church. It was undoubtedly an appropriate recognition of this great man of God and illustrious scholar not only of the truths of the faith, but of very many other sectors of learning; in fact, glancing at the titles of his very numerous works, we realize that his culture was something prodigious, and that his encyclopedic interest led him to be concerned not only with philosophy and theology, as other contemporaries, but also with every other discipline then known, from physics to chemistry, from astronomy to mineralogy, from botany to zoology. For this reason Pope Pius XII named him patron of cultivators of the natural sciences and he is also called "Doctor universalis" precisely because of the vastness of his interest and learning.

Of course, the scientific methods adopted by St. Albert the Great are not those that were to be affirmed in subsequent centuries. His method consisted simply in observation, description and classification of phenomenons studied, but thus he opened the door for future works.

He still has much to teach us. Above all, St. Albert shows that between faith and science there is no opposition, notwithstanding some episodes of misunderstanding recorded in history. A man of faith and prayer, as St. Albert the Great was, can cultivate serenely the study of the natural sciences and progress in the knowledge of the micro and macro cosmos, discovering the laws proper of matter, because all this concurs to feed the thirst for and love of God. The Bible speaks to us of creation as the first language through which God -- who is supreme intelligence, who is Logos -- reveals to us something of himself. The Book of Wisdom, for example, states that the phenomena of nature, gifted with grandeur and beauty, are as the works of an artist, through which, by analogy, we can know the Author of creation (cf. Wisdom 13:5). With a classic similarity in the Medieval Age and the Renaissance one can compare the natural world with a book written by God, which we read on the basis of several approaches of the sciences (cf. Address to the participants in the Plenary Assembly of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, Oct. 31, 2008). How many scientists, in fact, in the wake of St. Albert the Great, have carried forward their research inspired by wonder and gratitude before a world that, in the eyes of scholars and believers, seemed and seems the good work of a wise and loving Creator! Scientific study is transformed then into a hymn of praise. It was well understood by a great astrophysicist of our times, whose cause of beatification has been introduced, Enrico Medi, who wrote: "Oh, you mysterious galaxies ... I see you, I calculate you, I understand you, I study you and discover you, I penetrate you and I am immersed in you. From you I take the light and I do science, I take the motion and do science, I take the sparkling of colors and make poetry; I take you stars in my hands, and trembling in the unity of my being I raise you beyond yourselves, and in prayer I hand you to the Creator, that only through me you stars can adore" (The Works. Hymn to Creation).

St. Albert the Great reminds us that between science and faith there is friendship, and that the men of science can undertake, through their vocation to the study of nature, a genuine and fascinating journey of sanctity.

His extraordinary openness of mind is revealed also in a cultural operation that he undertook with success, that is, in the acceptance and evaluation of the thought of Aristotle. Spreading at the time of St. Albert, in fact, was knowledge of numerous works of this great Greek philosopher who lived in the fourth century before Christ, above all in the realm of ethics and metaphysics. They demonstrated the force of reason, explained with lucidity and clarity the meaning and structure of reality, of its intelligibility, the value and end of human actions. St. Albert the Great opened the door for the complete reception of the philosophy of Aristotle in Medieval philosophy and theology, a reception elaborated later in a definitive way by St. Thomas. This reception of a philosophy, let us say, pagan and pre-Christian was an authentic cultural revolution for that time. And yet, many Christian thinkers feared Aristotle's philosophy, non-Christian philosophy, above all because, presented by its Arab commentators, it was interpreted in a way of appearing, at least in some points, as altogether irreconcilable with the Christian faith. Thus a dilemma was posed: are faith and reason in opposition to one another or not?

Here is one of the great merits of St. Albert: with scientific rigor he studied the works of Aristotle, convinced that everything that is rational is compatible with the faith revealed in sacred Scriptures. In other words, St. Albert the Great, thus contributed to the formation of an autonomous philosophy, different from theology and united to it only by the unity of the truth. Thus was born in the 13th century a clear distinction between these two learnings, philosophy and theology, which, in dialogue between them, cooperate harmoniously in the discovery of the authentic vocation of man, thirsty for truth and blessedness: and it is above all theology, defined by St. Albert as "affective science," which indicates to man his call to eternal joy, a joy that gushes from full adherence to the truth.

St. Albert the Great was able to communicate these concepts in a simple and comprehensible way. Authentic son of St. Dominic, he preached willingly to the people of God, which were conquered by his word and the example of his life.

Dear brothers and sisters, let us pray to the Lord so that there will never be lacking in the Holy Church learned, pious and wise theologians like St. Albert the Great and may he help each one of us to make our own the "formula of sanctity" that he followed in his life: "To want everything that I want for the glory of God, to wish and do everything only and always for his glory."

[Translation by ZENIT]

[The Holy Father then greeted the people in several languages. In English, he said:]

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

In our catechesis on the Christian culture of the Middle Ages, we now turn to Saint Albert, better known as Albertus Magnus, Albert the Great. A universal genius whose interests ranged from the natural sciences to philosophy and theology, Albert entered the Dominicans and, after studies in Paris, taught in Cologne. Elected provincial of the Teutonic province, he served as bishop of Regensburg for four years and then returned to teaching and writing. He played an important part in the Council of Lyons, and he worked to clarify and defend the teaching of Saint Thomas Aquinas, his most brilliant student. Albert was canonized and declared a Doctor of the Church by Pope Pius XI, and Pope Pius XII named him the patron of the natural sciences. Saint Albert shows us that faith is not opposed to reason, and that the created world can be seen as a "book" written by God and capable of being "read" in its own way by the various sciences. His study of Aristotle also brought out the difference between the sciences of philosophy and theology, while insisting that both cooperate in enabling us to discover our vocation to truth and happiness, a vocation which finds its fulfillment in eternal life.

I welcome all the English-speaking visitors, especially a group of priests, Religious and seminarians visiting from the Philippines. Upon all the English-speaking pilgrims and your families, I invoke God's abundant blessings.

©Copyright 2010 - Libreria Editrice Vaticana

[He concluded in Italian:]

Finally, I greet young people, the sick and newlyweds. May the Solemnity of the Annunciation, which we celebrate tomorrow, be for all an invitation to follow the example of Mary Most Holy: for you, dear young people, may it translate into prompt availability to the call of the Father, so that you can be evangelical leaven in our society; for you, dear sick, may it be a stimulus to renew the serene and confident acceptance of the divine will and transform your suffering into a means of redemption for the whole of humanity; may Mary's yes inspire in you, dear newlyweds, an ever more generous commitment in building a family founded on mutual love and eternal Christian values.

[Translation by ZENIT]

James Chastek, The four truths of the principle of contradiction

(Mr. Chastek links to this post by the Maverick Philosopher: An Empirical Refutation of the Law of Non-Contradiction? See the MP's update, More on the Law of Non-Contradiction and its Putative Empirical Refutability.)

James Chastek, Three Platonisms

The evolution of Plato's thought neatly summarized? Do Giovanni Reale and Walter Wehrle agree with it? I really should get around to reading their books... (I take it that this understanding of Plato is standard for the Laval School.)

Insight Scoop: The Scandal of Natural Law: An Interview with J. Budziszewski

John Haldane, Putting Ethics Back Together Again: A British Perspective (via Mirror of Justice)

Similarly, the idea of human rights has its origins not in the secular enlightenment but in the world of the scholastic theology. In the middle ages there was a debate over holy poverty, which turned in part on the question of whether Christ and his Apostles owned anything individually or held everything in common. The conclusion was that everyone has inalienable rights of ownership and control over their own bodies, from which was developed, by extension, the idea that people have rights over what they create through their labor. These various ideas of equality of regard, of duties of beneficence and charity, of the universality of rights of bodily integrity, and of ownership of one’s body and of the products of one’s labor, are fruits of a particular religious understanding of human nature. Detached from that understanding it will only be a matter of time before they dry and wither. Of course, one might seek to develop equivalent fruits from a different source, but the question is whether that can be done.

Brian Tierney's thesis, I believe.

Is waterboarding torture? Fr. Harrison seems to think that this is debatable. Is there a valid distinction between causing physical pain and mental pain/anguish? What of the actual procedure, in which someone is prevented from breathing normally? Even if it does not cause any permanent harm to the body or actual bodily pain, it does seem to be some sort of injury (i.e. an unjust act), an attack on the normal functioning of the body.

David Oderberg, “’Whatever is Changing is Being Changed by Something Else’: A Reappraisal of Premise One of the First Way” (via Edward Feser)

Mark Shea posts a clarification by Fr. Brian Harrison, O.S.:

On this website and elsewhere, my obedience to the Holy Father and overall fidelity to the Church's magisterium was angrily and extensively called in question last week, following some telephoned comments I gave to the New York Times (February 27, 2010, p. A15). I am therefore very appreciative of the Christian and gentlemanly spirit Mark Shea has now shown in deleting those attacks and posting instead an apology and partial retraction. That struck me as especially fitting in this Lenten season in which we are exhorted to strive for humility, forgiveness and reconciliation.

In my brief response to the Times I expressed support for fellow-Catholic Marc Thiessen's analysis and evaluation of the carefully defined and limited waterboarding procedure which, some years ago, was approved by US government authorities and applied by the CIA in the interrogation of three confessed Al Qaeda terrorists. In his new book, Courting Disaster, Thiessen argues at length that this precise type of waterboarding (as distinct from other much harsher procedures like those highlighted in the far-from-impartial Wikipedia entry on this topic) does not legally or ethically constitute torture. I did not tell the Times reporter I supported everything Thiessen says in his book; in fact, I had already previously advised the latter in emails that I thought his references to "pacifism" were mistaken, as was the way he used the double effect principle. I also told him I thought his analysis confuses the object and the intention of a given act, as defined in our Catechism, ##1751-1752. Nevertheless, I regard as manifestly unjust the accusation that Thiessen is guilty of "consequentialism" in a sense that would involve dissent from any teachings of the Church's magisterium.

The central point of my present statement is as follows. A friend has pointed out to me today that in a speech of 6 September 2007 on Catholic prisons ministry, Pope Benedict XVI personally endorsed a statement against torture found in the 2005 Vatican Compendium of the Church's Social Teaching. Citing article 404 of this document, the Holy Father said, "In this regard, I reiterate that the prohibition against torture 'cannot be contravened under any circumstances'".

In my 2005 Living Tradition article on the development of Church teaching regarding torture and corporal punishment (cf. www.rtforum/lt/lt118.html) I had cited and discussed, in my section A13 and footnote 27, this article 404 of the Compendium, which is a publication of the Pontifical Commission for Justice and Peace. I pointed out then that this and other statements authored by the Commission itself - as distinct from the statements of Popes and Councils which it cites abundantly throughout the Compendium - does not possess magisterial authority; for the various Vatican commissions, unlike the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, are not in themselves arms of the Church's magisterium (teaching authority).

However, having now become aware that Pope Benedict himself has personally reiterated this particular statement of the Compendium, I wish to state that I accept the Holy Father's judgement on this matter, and so would not defend any proposal, under any circumstances, to use torture for any purpose whatsoever - not even to gain potentially life-saving information from known terrorists.
As a matter of fact, I never have expressed any positive personal approval of torture for that last-mentioned purpose (and much less for any other purpose). However, Mr. Shea has informed me that on this website many Catholics have attributed this to me in recent years, seeking to support their own willingness to justify the use of torture in the current war against terrorism. No, all I ever said is this: "My understanding would be that, given the present status quaestionis, the moral legitimacy of torture under the aforesaid desperate circumstances, while certainly not affirmed by the magisterium, remains open at present to legitimate discssusion by Catholic theologians." (That's the last sentence of the aforesaid Living Tradition essay). As readers can see, I thus abstained from saying which side, if any, I would myself take in any such "legitimate discussion". (Frankly, I myself was uncertain about that.)

Nobody disputes that the CIA-approved waterboarding was a thoroughly nasty and frightening experience. However, I submit that whether or not it reached the point of torture does remain a seriously disputed question among reasonable and well-informed people. I think anyone who carefully studies with an open mind the available documentation and arguments on both sides, in regard to both the CIA and Navy SERE versions of waterboarding, will admit that ths is true, regardless of which side they personally come down on. Thiessen is not out on a limb of his own here: he can point, for instance, to the carefully considered witness of expert and independent (non-partisan) Justice Department lawyers to back up his contention that the CIA interrogators were not torturers (cf. p. 352). I will add no further comments on the waterboarding question now, except that I certainly intend to devote more study to this and related issues. However this will be my only statement on the matter in this forum. Indeed, I do not normally read this (or any other) blog, mainly because I think disputes in the blogosphere tend to generate more heat than light - especially since they so often involve intemperate, unsubstantiated, anonymous - and therefore cowardly - attacks on persons and reputations. Also, heat is often accompanied by smoke; so I hope that this present clarification of my own position at least clears the air somewhat.

Fr. Brian W. Harrison, O.S., M.A., S.T.D.
Oblates of Wisdom Study Center
Saint Louis, Missouri
March 11, 2010

Janet Smith, Rethinking Capital Punishment [pdf] (via the combox for this post by the Western Confucian)

Zenit: Papal Address on Internal Forum

Papal Address on Internal Forum

"It Is Necessary to Turn to the Confessional"

VATICAN CITY, MARCH 11, 2010 (Zenit.org).- Here is a translation of the address Benedict XVI delivered today upon receiving in audience participants in the course on the internal forum promoted by the Apostolic Penitentiary.

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Dear Friends,

I am happy to meet with you and to address to each one of you my welcome, on the occasion of the annual course on the internal forum, organized by the Apostolic Penitentiary. I cordially greet Archbishop Fortunato Baldelli, who, for the first time as Major Penitentiary, has led your study sessions and thank him for the words he addressed to me. With him I greet Bishop Gianfranco Girotti, regent, the staff of the Penitentiary and all of you who, with your participation in this initiative, manifest the strong need to reflect further on an essential subject for the ministry and life of presbyters.

Your course is placed, providentially, in the Year for Priests, which I proclaimed for the 150th anniversary of the birth in heaven of St. John Mary Vianney, who exercised in a heroic and fruitful way the ministry of reconciliation. As stated in the letter of proclamation: "All of us priests must hear those words which regard us personally that he (the Curé d'Ars) put in Christ's mouth: 'I will charge my ministers with proclaiming to sinners, whom I am always ready to receive, that my Mercy is infinite.' From the Holy Curé d'Ars we priests can learn not only an inexhaustible trust in the sacrament of penance, which drives us to put it at the center of our pastoral concerns, but also the method of the 'dialogue of salvation' that should be carried out in it."

Where do the roots of heroism and fruitfulness sink, with which St. John Mary Vianney lived his own ministry of confessor? First of all in an intense personal penitential dimension. The awareness of one's own limits and the need to take recourse to Divine Mercy to ask for pardon, to convert the heart and to be sustained on the path of sanctity, are essential in the life of the priest: Only one who has first experienced its greatness can be a convinced herald and administrator of the Mercy of God. Every priest becomes minister of penance by his ontological configuration to Christ, High and Eternal Priest, who reconciles humanity with the Father; however, fidelity in administering the sacrament of reconciliation is entrusted to the responsibility of the presbyter.

We live in a cultural context marked by a hedonistic and relativistic mentality, which tends to cancel God from the horizon of life, does not favor the acquisition of a clear picture of values of reference and does not help to discern good from the evil and to mature a correct sense of sin. This situation makes even more urgent the service of administrators of Divine Mercy.

We must not forget, in fact, that there is a sort of vicious circle between obfuscation of the experience of God and the loss of the sense of sin. However, if we look at the cultural context in which St. John Mary Vianney lived, we see that, in several aspects, it was not so dissimilar from ours. Also in his time, in fact, a hostile mentality to faith existed, expressed by forces that sought actually to impede the exercise of the ministry. In such circumstances, the Holy Curé d'Ars made "the church his home," to lead men to God. He lived radically the spirit of prayer, the personal and intimate relationship with Christ, the celebration of Mass, Eucharistic adoration and evangelical poverty, appearing to his contemporaries as such an evident sign of the presence of God, as to drive so many penitents to approach his confessional.

In the conditions of liberty in which it is possible to exercise today the priestly ministry, it is necessary that the presbyters live in a "lofty way" their own response to their vocation, because only one who becomes every day the living and clear presence of the Lord can arouse in the faithful the sense of sin, give courage and have the desire born for the forgiveness of God.

Dear brothers, it is necessary to turn to the confessional, as place in which to celebrate the sacrament of reconciliation, but also as place in which to "dwell" more often, so that the faithful can find mercy, counsel and comfort, feel loved and understood by God and experience the presence of Divine Mercy, close to the real Presence in the Eucharist.

The "crisis" of the Sacrament of Penance, so often talked about, is a question that faces first of all priests and their great responsibility to educate the People of God to the radical demands of the Gospel. In particular, it asks them to dedicate themselves generously to the listening of sacramental confessions; to guide the flock with courage, so that it will not be conformed to the mentality of this world (cf. Romans 12:2), but will be able to make choices also against the current, avoiding accommodations and compromises. Because of this it is important that the priest have a permanent ascetic tension, nourished by communion with God, and that he dedicate himself to a constant updating in the study of moral theology and of human sciences.

St. John Mary Vianney was able to establish with penitents a real and proper "dialogue of salvation," showing the beauty and greatness of the Lord's goodness and arousing that desire for God and heaven, of which the saints are the first bearers. He affirmed: "The good God knows everything. Before you even confess, he knows that you will sin again and yet he forgives you. How great is the love of our God, which drives him to willingly forget the future, so as to forgive us" (Monnin A., "Il Curato d'Ars. Vita di Gian-Battista-Maria Vianney," Vol. 1, Turin, 1870, p. 130).

It is the priest's task to foster that experience of "dialogue of salvation," which, born of the certainty of being loved by God, helps man to acknowledge his own sin and to introduce himself, progressively, into that stable dynamic of conversion of heart, which leads to the radical renunciation of evil and to a life according to God (cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, No. 1431).

Dear priests, what an extraordinary ministry the Lord has entrusted to us! As in the Eucharistic Celebration he puts himself in the hands of the priest to continue to be present in the midst of his people, similarly, in the sacrament of reconciliation he entrusts himself to the priest so that men will have the experience of the embrace with which the Father receives the prodigal son, restoring him the filial dignity and reconstituting him fully heir (cf. Luke 15:11-32).

May the Virgin Mary and the Holy Curé d'Ars help us to experience in our life the breadth, the length, the height and the depth of the Love of God (cf. Ephesians 3:18-19), to be faithful and generous administrators. My heartfelt thanks to all of you to whom I willingly impart my blessing.

[Translation by ZENIT]

James Chastek, Being as an "ing" word

The word “being” has two parts: the infinitive verb “be” and the suffix “-ing”. One difficulty is that the sign “-ing” signifies more than one thing. Take the word “running”- there are two relevant senses:

1.) Running is healthy, though it can harm the knees.

2.) Bill is running a marathon.

The first mode of the word running is a noun (or gerund) the second mode is a participle. Both modes can be said in either the subject or the predicate, viz:

1.) One thing that can hurt your knees is running

2.) The running wolf caught the gazelle.

The difference between the modes of the word is whether the term consignifies with time. I say “consignifies” because neither word signifies time (running signifies some motion of the legs), but the participle is bespeaks the past, present or future action whereas the gerund doesn’t. When one says “running is healthy” he isn’t saying that there is running happening now or then or in the future, but when he says “the wolf was running”, he is. Because of this, the gerund is to the participle as the abstract to the concrete, or as the potential to the actual: the running that is healthy (gerund) is actual in Bill running (participle). Likewise, being as a gerund is potential to being as a participle.

The difference between these two senses of being is crucial, and the later Scholastics (including the -gasp – manual Thomists) gave it a prominent place. The distinction was overlooked by Kant- along with the division of potency and act that is needed to articulate it- and the omission shows. In his famous an influential critique of the ontological argument, Kant is right to say that existence (or being) is not contained the concept of something, but he goes wrong when he construes this as meaning that it is not a “real” predicate, but has only a “logical” existence. Every defined state or “concept of something” is a noun or gerundive, or is conceived of in this mode, and thus the participle is not contained in it according to its mode, but is opposed to it. But this is because the participle is more real and concrete, and because the concept has a “logical” existence. Kant notices, correctly, that the participle cannot be derived from the gerundive; but he misconstrues the character of their opposition when he calls the participle logical or less real. Exactly the opposite is the case.

(N.b. we don’t so much object to Kant’s case against the ontological proof, which is very profound, but to the terms he uses to describe being as a participle. These terms, in my opinion, are not necessary to make Kant’s case, but they stuck, and they played a crucial role in making metaphysics seem silly.)

It is being as concrete and real- that is, as signified in the mode of a participle that the ancients and medievals sought. When taken precisely in this sense, it is distinct from the concept being or being as quasi-definable. So taken, this kind of metaphysics has always been a metaphysics of existence, at least inchoately. That said, no participle is definable precisely as participle, just as “running” is not defined precisely as participle, but only as a gerundive (participles function as adjectives, but they do so by including a time reference, and definable things have no time reference)

So what if we return to the ontological proof when considering being as a participle? The question then becomes “to what does being belong?” St. Thomas would compare it to heating: which heats: the stone or the moving molecule? to which does to heat belong?” Clearly, to heat belongs to moving molecule in a way that it does not belong to the stone. So to what does being belong just as heating belongs to the moving molecule? I’d submit that unless one admits the existence of God, he must say that there is not answer to this question, even in principle. Said another way, if one claims know God does not exist, he must claim to know that there is no answer to the question “to what does being belong?” or “what is, simply speaking?” or “what is like moving molecules heat?” I’d argue, at the very east, that we can’t know that there is no answer to this question.

Public Discourse: Recovering Sight after Scientism by Edward Feser

Zenit: On St. Bonaventure's Concept of History
"The Richness of the Word of Christ Is Inexhaustible"

Blinded by Scientism by Edward Feser. James Chastek comments.

The Berquist audio files are being moved to this website. (via Just Thomism)

Public Discourse: Marc Thiessen, Double Effect, and the Torturer’s Dilemma by Christopher O. Tollefsen, February 26, 2010

Both Marc Thiessen and his critics have misunderstood an important moral distinction on the question of torture.

"Aristotelian Liberals"

A FB group:

Aristotelian Liberalism is a burgeoning tradition in political philosophy, an Aristotelian form of classical liberalism or libertarianism.

Aristotelian Liberalism synthesizes the best features of Aristotelian ethical and political thought and liberal political and economic thought. Aristotelian Liberals argue that a neo-Aristotelian philosophy not only provides liberalism with a sounder foundation, it also provides liberalism with the resources to answer traditional left-liberal, communitarian, and conservative challenges by avoiding some Enlightenment pitfalls that have plagued it since its inception: atomism, an a-historical and a-contextual view of human nature, license, excessive normative neutrality, the impoverishment of ethics and the trivialization of rights.

Aristotelian Liberalism attempts to transcend the liberal/communitarian debate by embracing liberalism's commitment to pluralism, diversity, and the free market while grounding politics in a eudaimonistic theory of virtue ethics and natural rights. Aristotelian Liberalism avoids the specters that continue to plague communitarianism – paternalism and totalitarianism – and the traditional communitarian and conservative criticisms of liberalism – atomism and license – while promoting freedom in community and human flourishing.

Aristotelian Liberalism holds that man's natural end is a life of eudaimonia (flourishing); that virtue is constitutive of one's own flourishing but must be freely chosen to count as such; that man is a profoundly social being, but nevertheless that individuals are ends-in-themselves and not means to the ends of others; that the right to liberty is a metanormative ethical principle necessary for protecting the possibility of all forms of human flourishing and an interpersonal ethical principle such that rights-respecting behavior is constitutive of one's own eudaimonia. Thus, unlike most Enlightenment versions of liberalism, Aristotelian Liberalism is not solely concerned with rights or political justice narrowly conceived. It is also important to identify ethical and cultural institutions and principles necessary for bringing about and maintaining a free and flourishing society.

Hence, Aristotelian Liberalism embraces free markets and free enterprise but not statist capitalism; it is severely critical of the state. There is still an excessive focus on the State and what it can and should do for us. Our focus, rather, needs to return to a notion of politics as discourse and deliberation between equals in joint pursuit of eudaimonia and to what we as members of society can and should do for ourselves and each other. True immanent politics presupposes liberty. Thus, Aristotelian Liberalism seeks to shift the locus of politics from the state to civil society. The market is not the whole of society, however; nor is politics - rather, both are aspects of society while the state is an antisocial institution.

Some prominent Aristotelian liberals are:
Douglas Rasmussen (http://new.stjohns.edu/academics/graduate/liberalarts/departments/philosophy/faculty/bi_phi_rasmussend.sju)

Douglas Den Uyl, VP of Educational Programs at Liberty Fund (http://www.libertyfund.org/)

Roderick Long (http://www.praxeology.net/)

Chris Matthew Sciabarra (http://www.dialecticsandliberty.com/)

Fred D. Miller, Jr. (http://www.bgsu.edu/departments/phil/faculty/miller/miller.html)

Ayn Rand (http://www.objectivistcenter.net/)

Fellow Travelers:
Murray Rothbard (http://www.mises.org/content/mnr.asp)

For your convenience, edification and reading/viewing pleasure, I have created an Aristotelian Liberal Amazon.com Store (http://astore.amazon.com/geofallaplau-20), which includes books on this burgeoning political philosophy, on market anarchism and the Austrian school of economics, and liberty-themed fiction - especially fantasy and science fiction (books and dvds).

Edward Feser on Fr. Pinckaers

From the comments to his latest:

Hello all,

Bwall and Anon 1, I agree that Pinckaers intends to be fair-minded and doesn't indulge in the knee-jerk Neo-Scholastic bashing others do. But I still think he's just wrong to pit the manualists' understanding of obligation against the other themes mentioned -- as if what existed was an incompatibility, as opposed to a mere difference of emphasis -- and gravely wrong to insinuate that the manualists' position somehow presupposes Ockhamism (especially given that he concedes, as of course he must, that they were not nominalists). In general, I am utterly opposed to the mentality that holds that Catholic thought -- here or elsewhere -- somehow got way off track between Trent and Vatican II, a mentality which you find in writers like Pinckaers no less than in dissenters like Curran and Co. And this sort of mindset has, unfortunately, contributed to a contemporary tendency of even some conservative Catholic thinkers to want to distance themselves somewhat from the manualists. This nonsense has got to stop.

As Bruce says, though, the mentality is to be found in surprising places, and I think you're right, Bruce, to see a tendency toward Platonism as part of the problem, at least among conservatives who evince hostility to Aristotelianism, Thomism, Neo-Scholasticism, etc. In conservative Catholic circles, this "Platonic" mentality manifests itself in a tendency to pit Augustinianism and the Church Fathers in general against the period between Trent and Vatican II. This is standard nouvelle theologie shtick, for example, which one finds in de Lubac, Balthasar, et al.

Part of the motivation here is ecumenical -- a desire to minimize Catholic-Protestant differences. Part of it is a tendency toward mysticism and a temperamental dislike of the rigor and systematic quality of Scholastic thinking. And part of it reflects, I think, a moral rigorism of its own -- a dislike of the realistic and down-to-earth quality of the manualists' approach to ethics, and an insistence on something more high-falutin' and touchy-feely.

This is why in sexual morality, for example, these folks often fling around the same sorts of caricaures of Neo-Scholasticism that theological liberals do -- "All those horrible manualists cared about is what body part goes where" blah blah blah -- and prefer to talk instead about a communion of persons, "one flesh union" etc. That's all fine as far as it goes, but sure enough, the moment they have to explain why exactly this rules out homosexual acts, marital sodomy, and the like, they are themselves back to talking about... why this body part is supposed to go here rather than there etc. But they do so in a way that is totally unconvincing to those who don't already agree with them, because they've chucked out the A-T metaphysics that makes the appeal to natural function intelligible. The whole thing is farcical.

In other ways too I think the decision of many Catholic conservatives after Vatican II to abandon the Neo-Scholastic tradition has been rather obviously a disaster. The disappearance of general apologetics is only one example: In response to the militant secularism that has only increased since Vatican II (all the "dialogue" with "modern man" notwithstanding), too many conservative Catholics have nothing to say except that Christianity is a better way of upholding "the digity of the human person" -- which, of course, secularists don't buy for a moment, because they disagree in the first place about what counts as upholding the dignity of the human person. To settle that question requires getting into the metaphysics of human nature, the metaphysics of the good, and all the other stuff the Neo-Scholastics did so well and their successors do so badly when they do it at all. There is also the collapse of catechesis and the disappearance of a general understanding among the faithful of what Catholic theology teaches and how it all fits together into a rational system -- something R. R. Reno lamented in a recent First Things piece, and traced to the abandonment of Neo-Scholasticism.

Is it merely a difference in emphasis? Or is obligation/law taken to be the foundational principle for the science, around which everything else is "organized"? Which offers a better moral theology, the Summa Theologiae or the manuals?

Edward Feser, Scholastic’s Bookshelf, Part III

Zenit: On St. Bonaventure
"Proposing This Theme I Feel a Certain Nostalgia"

St. Thomas Aquinas must be coming up soon; perhaps next week?

Francesco Sisci, A new battle for Confucius

A new battle for Confucius By Francesco Sisci (via the Western Confucian)

A new translation of Mozi's corpus has been made available by the Chinese University Press:
The Mozi: A Complete Translation by Ian Johnston (Translator). The Chinese University Press (December 15, 2009). ISBN-10: 9629962705. Price US$85, 1,032 pages.

It looks like the same translation is being published by Columbia University Press here in the States. Too bad it's not bilingual.

Mr. Sisci writes:

Furthermore, Mozi's doctrine of "universal love" sounded like the idea of Christian love propagated in the 17th century, as well as like the drive to egalitarianism by the communists in the 20th century.

The Confucianis criticized the Mohists for obliterating social relations -- if this charge is accurate (I haven't read the complete Mohist corpus, only selections), then Mozi and his followers are more like liberals than Christians. The Christian tradition has a doctrine of universal love (which is not identical with Confucian ren, given that the object of charity is primarily God), but it also recognizes that there is an order in charity. Moreover, we have different duties to people, according to their relation to us, or what they have done for us. Hence, the allied virtues to justice. I do not recall what the Mohist account of justice is, and whether they recognize these duties. It's something I'll have to research, if I obtain a copy of the complete corpus.

He also contrasts Mozi with Sunzi:

Importantly, the book provides a basis to reconsider an important aspect of Chinese traditional thinking - military strategy. Johnston is the first person to provide both a credible Chinese textual reconstruction and a translation of Mozi's military chapters. Mozi theorized about defensive wars and his followers, the Mohists, were renowned tacticians who helped organize the defense of small states being attacked by larger ones.

This was at a time when small states were being gobbled up by large ones competing for dominance in the Chinese central plain. The aggressive theories of famous strategist Sunzi helped conceive those and many other future wars of attack, whereas Mozi argued against aggressive wars.

It is very likely that, as popularly described in the unsuccessful 2006 Chinese-Japanese movie production Mo Gong, in the Third century BC Mohist militants aided small states to withstand attacks and then tried to apply radical political and social reforms that went against the interests of the local elites.

Johnston's translation of Mozi could cast new light on Sunzi's theories and Chinese strategic thinking. It's possible that gong, a word commonly understood as aggressive war, at the time meant more precisely war by a large force against a small one, as Lu Xiang, a modern student of Sunzi argues in a forthcoming essay. This kind of war is what Sunzi preferred and Mozi opposed.

Sunzi does not appear to be in favor of unjust wars of aggression, as he does discuss the moral component of victory. Teachers of maneuver warfare and 3GW claim Sunzi as one of their own; numbers may be important if one is one the attack, so it is not clear to me that this is a justification of conquest of smaller polities by larger polities. Did Mozi advocate a purely reactive form of warfare? If so, he would seem to be a bit too idealistic, to the point of causing defeat for anyone who followed his teachings. I remember reading one issue of Lone Wolf and Cub in which the protagonist tells a dying samurai who was disgraced because he did not stay with his lord's palaquin but chose instead to go on the offensive against assassins that attack and defense are the same, since they have the same object.

(How deep is Mr. Sisci's understanding of contemporary Chinese society and classical Chinese culture? He seems to be an apologist for the present government and the Patriotic Associations.)

I'd like to read up on Mohist logic. (Indian logic too.)

Related links:
墨子
Mozi - Chinese Text Project
SEP
Mozi and Confucianism

The Meaning of Life

At the reception for xiao Jimmy's wedding one of his high school friends asked for an update on my life, and remembered I had been studying philosophy. He jokingly asked, "What's the meaning of life." That is the question Americans associate with philosophy, I suppose. This question can be understood in two ways: an existential question that aims at knowing what the purpose or end of human living is, and thus it relates to ethics. Or a more "general" question that pertains to metaphysics -- why do things exist. (Of course, this is a question which does have import for how we live.) The short and simple answer for both questions is God. It might have been a good opportunity to talk about God being our ultimate end. But would this have been well-received, even if I were to approach as a philosopher rather than as a Christian? Would it have been prudent to talk about our Lord then? I regret not taking the conversation to a more serious level.

The FSSP is running a series of articles originally written by Dr. Dennis McInerny for their letter.

Qui non est mecum, contra me est; et, qui non congregat mecum, spargit.

Matthew 12:30

Yesterday at school I was struck by the absence of God during the school day -- that is, He is not mentioned at all. It is what you would expect at an American public school, but how can this be acceptable to any right-thinking person of good will? The other day a student said, "Oh my God," and I told him not to say that. Unfortunately I didn't have a chance to explain to him way, that we should not take His name in vain; we should instead reverence it. (I wouldn't want to give him the impression that being a secularist or anti-theist is the norm.)

At any rate, man can come to know that he has a duty to pay due homage to God as Creator of the universe, to perform the acts proper to the virtue of religio. This is a precept of the Natural Law, even if it cannot be fulfilled perfectly without from grace and charity. Our public schools, in ignoring God and refusing to discuss Him (as opposed to teaching about "religions"), thereby belittle His importance and foster the lack of proper respect. God has no place in the daily life of our public schools, and students are habituated accordingly -- much potential spiritual growth for beginners is hampered with God is effectively excluded for half of the day (7 or 8 hours out of the 16 during which we are awake). If we are already living as if God is not important to us, then how can we take His commandments seriously when we are confronted with severe temptation?

False religions, those which teach polytheism or atheism or monism, may be tolerated, but they should never have been granted equal status with Christianity. The reaction against Christianity entails a rejection of God (or right monotheism). One cannot preserve the latter in a formerly Christian society.

Discussion of Metropolitan Kallistos Ware's lecture at CUA at Eirenikon.

What’s black and white and misread all over? by Edward Feser

Desires Natural and Unnatural: A Reply to Paul Griffiths by R. J. Snell

James Chastek, The basis of Aristotle’s logic

Aristotle’s whole system of logic starts from two premises:

Logic is the direction of the act of reason

The direction of reason is from what is more universal in predication to what is less so.

Aristotle says the major premise everywhere, and at the slightest provocation; the minor is from St. Thomas, and Aristotle simply assumes it everywhere. The conclusion is that logic is the right order from what is more universal to what is less so. This is why Aristotle starts his logic with a study of most universal things (the Categories) Then shows all the ways that one universal thing can relate to another (On Interpretation) and then goes on to speak of arguments as the motion from what is major (or most universal) to what is minor (least universal) through a term of middle universality. The middle only has a middle universality when we speak in a way that follows what is called “the first figure syllogism” and so Aristotle rightly insists that this is the pre-eminent tool for ordering reason, and that all other tools of reasoning are correct so far as they can be reduced to it. Aristotle insists that this is even true of non-categorical reasoning, as Yvan Pellitier proves here (download “PelletierStrategy.pdf”). This is not to say it is the only way that reason can go from one thign to another: there is an ocean of dialectical tools that are used to bring us to the point where we can actually form a valid universal.

We more tend to look at terms like checkers that can be arranged in certain correct ways, and in doing so we can reach conclusions that cannot be reached by the mere categorical method. This is all fine, but it is not logic in the same sense of the term, and it is not clear how we can make one thing called logic relate to the other thing called logic.

Burke Lecture: Stanley Martin Hauerwas

A blog dedicated to him.

Faith Fights Back: A Conversation with Stanley Hauerwas

Dr. Gilbert gives a response concerning Orthodox treatments of the papacy:

Veritas’s comment, that Orthodox views of the papacy run the gamut, is a fair assessment: there is the “papal antichrist” literature, which you can find if you go to almost any monastic bookseller in Greece and, I would assume, in countries like Russia and Serbia as well,* and, at the other extreme, there are people like Soloviev, who more or less accept the pope as being what he says he is, or, at the very least, who think the slogan “first among equals” is not a terribly precise way of describing the role the Bishop of Rome played in the early Church and who would like to see to see communion reestablished on something like the terms that obtained during the first millennium; I myself would fall into this last-named category. Clément’s book, mentioned by Veritas, also takes this view and is worth reading (although there are things in his book that I would criticize, especially his postscript). But I would not go so far as to say, with Veritas, that there is no mainstream Orthodox view. There is, among Orthodox, a common rejection of the claim of the First Vatican Council that the doctrinal pronouncements of the Bishop of Rome are binding ex sese, non ex consensu ecclesiae, that is, of themselves, not from the consent of the Church. Most Orthodox fear that such a doctrine gives the Bishop of Rome a blank check on which he can write whatever he pleases. And I confess that I share that worry, although I recognize that the Second Vatican Council sought to reaffirm the role of the bishop and of bishops’ conferences, and I also recognize that, in the absence of a final dogmatic court of appeal, like that of the Pope, there is a great danger of the Church being unable to speak with one common, authoritative voice on matters of pressing importance.

The first book that came to mind when you raised the question of a “mainstream” Orthodox understanding of the papacy is one of the books Veritas has mentioned, The Primacy of Peter. It is a book I own, but my copy of it does not seem to be immediately at hand; what I remember of it is that it has historical essays by Meyendorff and Schmemann (with Meyendorff, in particular, stating some of the Byzantine responses to the Roman claims), and gives an assessment of the role of what St. Ignatius of Antioch calls “the Church that presides in love” from the standpoint of eucharistic ecclesiology; if I’m not mistaken, there is an essay in the volume by Afanassiev with that title. Granted, not all Orthodox are quite sure what “eucharistic ecclesiology” means, and I probably should count myself among the number of the not-so-sure: when authors affirm that “the eucharist makes the Church” and that the bishop is ontologically defined by his role as president of the eucharistic synaxis, or when they say that the word “catholic” in the early Church referred simply and exclusively to the “fulness” of the faith and not to its “universality” in terms of geographical extent, my mind grows dizzy from the metaphysical heights, and I recognize that I am in the presence of argumentation of such exquisite, self-referential completeness that any attempt to verify or question it by examination of evidence would be pointless. I do not mean to belittle these theses; I only mean to express my concern that, when stated as ideological premises, immune to historical verification, they make the attempt to understand the role exercised by the bishop of Rome in the early Church very difficult.

Some other Orthodox books I might mention are the following:

Aristeides Papadakis, The Christian East and the Rise of the Papacy (Crestwood, NY, 1994). This is a general history of the Church between 1071 and 1453 A.D., but, as the title implies, much of it is in fact taken up with the papal claims and the history of their assertion over the Eastern Church. Papadakis is a writer with whom I have some disagreement, particularly over his assessment of John Bekkos as a theologian; but he makes some valid points in this book; for instance, he notes that the medieval papacy’s policy of demanding personal declarations of submission from Greek bishops was not calculated to reassure the Greek Church that its traditional beliefs and practices, its autonomous ecclesiastical life, would be respected. And those medieval Greek writers who complained that Rome was acting towards their church, not like a loving mother towards a daughter, but like an angry master towards an abject slave, had some genuine grounds for their complaint. Still, Papadakis’s tone in this book, while not as unrelentingly strident as in his book on Gregory of Cyprus, suggests that he has an axe to grind. He seldom condescends to acknowledge that the medieval papacy, or the Crusaders, did some actual good.

Michael Whelton, Two Paths: Papal Monarchy – Collegial Tradition. Rome’s Claims of Papal Supremacy in the Light of Orthodox Christian Teaching (Salisbury, MA: Regina Orthodox Press, 1998). Written by a Catholic convert to Orthodoxy. It is a popular presentation, a work of Orthodox apologetics, and in that sense it probably could be called mainstream.

Methodios Fouyas, Orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism, and Anglicanism (London; New York: Oxford University Press, 1972; reprinted, Brookline: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 1984). Not a study of the papacy as such, but a general comparison of the three churches. He tends to see greater affinities between Orthodoxy and Anglicanism than between Orthodoxy and Catholicism; this was, of course, written before some of the more notable modern developments in Anglican practice had taken place.

Philip Sherrard, Church, Papacy and Schism: A Theological Enquiry (London: SPCK, 1978). The author argues that there are deep theological differences between “the Greek East and the Latin West” (to cite the title of another of his books), which underlie the differing ecclesiologies. The book is worth reading, whether one agrees with the author or not. On p. 14, he refers to the point about “catholicity” that I mentioned briefly above, and gives a succinct and eloquent statement of this point of view:

“In its original and more profound sense, the word catholic when applied to the Church does not have this quantitative and geographical connotation, or at least it has it only in a secondary and derivative manner. Essentially, the Church is not catholic in relation to topography or space, or in relation to the fact that it embraces a multitude of local communities within a wider collectivity. Catholicity is not a collective term. What it essentially denotes is the interior integrity and spiritual plenitude of the Church. It has, that is to say, a strictly qualitative sense. It denotes fullness, completeness, what is essential rather than what is accidental. It has consequently, like the Church itself, trinitarian and christological roots. The Church is catholic because it lives in Christ. It is the expression of the fullness, the completeness or plenitude of the truth which is Christ. The catholicity of its head—Christ—is the principle of the catholicity of the Church as the body of Christ; and it is precisely its capacity to manifest divine life and truth in their fullness to all creatures that constitutes the catholicity of the Church.”

Those are the Orthodox treatments of the papacy that come to mind. I hope you find this note helpful.

Peter

* To give a brief specimen of this: one of the “famous sayings of Fr. Justin Popovitch” runs as follows: “The three great sins of humanity are the disobedience of Adam and Eve, the treason of Judas, and papism.” This is translated from the dedication page of Métropolite Michel Laroche, La papauté orthodoxe: Les origines historiqes du papisme du Patriarcat de Constantiople et de sa guerre ecclésiologique avec le Patriarcat de Moscou (Paris: Éditions Présence, 2004). Note that, in Laroche’s book, the word “papism” serves to designate an ecclesiastical tendency of the Patriarchate of Constantinople. One wonders: would Constantinople and Moscow still be in communion with each other, if they did not share the same polemics against the West in general, and against Rome in particular?

Veritas had recommended the following: (1) Olivier Clement, You Are Peter: An Orthodox Theologian’s Reflection on the Exercise of Papal Primacy (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2003); (2) The Primacy of Peter: Essays in Ecclesiology and the Early Church, ed. John Meyendorff (St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1992); and (3) Klaus Schatz, Papal Primacy: From Its Origins to the Present (Collegville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1996).

Eirenikon: Patriarchal and Synodal Encyclical On the Sunday of Orthodoxy

Do the Orthodox have ecclesiastical or canonical problems with religious orders being placed under the direct jurisdiction of the pope?

James Chastek: Garrigou Lagrange-on discussing the Trinity

Insight Scoop: "In Memory of Ralph McInerny" by Charles E. Rice

Byzantine, Texas: Another report from the Met. Kallistos lecture tour

An important aspect of how authority is practiced in the Church, both in the East and the West, is the concept of “protos”, which means “first”. The Church is hierarchical, and therefore in every grouping in the Church, there must be a “protos”. For example, the bishop is the “protos” of his diocese. The Patriarch is “protos” among the bishops in his patriarchy. The pope is “protos” among all the bishops in the universal Church. Both Catholics and Orthodox accept this structure. But what does it mean to be “protos”? How is that role exercised? Metropolitan Kallistos pointed out Apostolic Canon 34 as a model for the role of “protos” in the Church. Apostolic Canon 34 states,

The bishops of every nation must acknowledge him who is first among them and account him as their head, and do nothing of consequence without his consent…but neither let him (who is head) do anything without the consent of all.

It should be obvious that the problem arises from the second part of that Canon. In fact, this appears to be in direct conflict with Vatican I, which states that “definitions of the Roman pontiff are of themselves, and not by the consent of the church, irreformable”. But Metropolitan Kallistos is hopeful that this Canon will be a way in which the Church can find a mutually agreeable means for the pope to practice universal primacy.

(Originally posted at the blog of Eric Sammons.)

Sedevacantism

Let us assume the sedevacantist position is correct -- would the rest of the Catholic bishops, by recognizing a false bishop of Rome, be putting themselves outside of the Church? Most, if not all, sincerely believe that he is the pope, and there are ways to make sure he has been validly elected. (Maybe this is a moot point, since many sedevacantists believe that the Catholic bishops are outside of the Church because they are heretics?)

(I haven't had to think about sedevacantism too much or study the arguments of sedevacantists up until now, but I recently became acquainted with a sedevacantist through FB. I am not sure how to proceed with that relationship.)

Some Sedevantists:
SSPV
Aquinas Catholic Website
Gerry Matatics
Traditional Latin Mass Resources

Responses:
SSPX - Sedevacantism
Dominique Boulet, SSPX
Concerning a Sedevacantist Thesis
Br. André Marie of St. Benedict Center
CAI

Via Joe Carter at First Things -- Reno on Theology and Apologetics

The archive for the CUA Philosophy lectures is missing. I tried to send a message informing those who manage the website of the error, but I think I got another error message instead. I hope this page is restored -- there is one lecture by Alasdair MacIntyre and another by John Wippel that I want to watch.

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

Is Belief in Free Will Unscientific “Vitalism?” by Wesley J. Smith

James Chastek, Determination by Habit:

Though this can be taken in more than one way, one literal reading is that “Servant of justice” is said only “because of the infirmity of your flesh”. Servitude is properly only of evil habits; good habits are precisely what constitute liberty and freedom. The fatal mistake of habits is to see the slavery and bondage of the habits we know best as characteristic of all human habits. This is yet another way in which we confuse what is most known to us with what is most knowable in itself.

Stephen M. Barr, The End of Intelligent Design?
(via Rod Dreher)

The latest issue of Living Tradition to be uploaded: Regarding Pope Benedict XVI's Address on Biblical Exegesis and Theology of 14 October 2008

Papal Address to Pontifical Academy for Life

Papal Address to Pontifical Academy for Life

"God Loves Every Human Being in a Unique and Profound Way"


VATICAN CITY, FEB. 14, 2010 (Zenit.org).- Here is a translation of the address Benedict XVI gave Saturday in an audience with members of the Pontifical Academy for Life who gathered in Rome for a general assembly on the topic of bioethics and natural law.

* * *

Dear brothers in the Episcopate and in the Priesthood,
Illustrious members of the "Pontificia Academia Pro Vita,"

Kind Ladies and Gentlemen!

I am glad to cordially welcome and greet you on the occasion of the general assembly of the Pontifical Academy for Life, called to reflect on themes pertaining to the relationship between bioethics and the natural moral law, which appear evermore relevant in the present context because of the continual development in the scientific sphere. I address a special greeting to Archbishop Rino Fisichella, president of this academy, thanking him for the courteous words that he wanted to address to me in the name of those present. I would also like to extend my personal thanks to each of you for the precious and irreplaceable work that you do on behalf of life in various contexts.

The issues that revolve around the theme of bioethics allow us to confirm how much these underlying questions in the first place pose the "anthropological question." As I state in my last encyclical letter, "Caritas in Veritate:" "A particularly crucial battleground in today's cultural struggle between the absolutism of technology and human moral responsibility is the field of bioethics, where the very possibility of integral human development is radically called into question. In this most delicate and critical area, the fundamental question asserts itself force-fully: is man the product of his own labors or does he depend on God? Scientific discoveries in this field and the possibilities of technological intervention seem so advanced as to force a choice between two types of reasoning: reason open to transcendence or reason closed within immanence" (no. 74).

Before such questions, which touch in such a decisive manner human life in its perennial tension between immanence and transcendence, and which have great relevance for the culture of future generations, it is necessary to create a holistic pedagogical project that permits us to confront these issues in a positive, balanced and constructive vision, above all in the relationship between faith and reason. The questions of bioethics often place the reminder of the dignity of the person in the foreground. This dignity is a fundamental principle that the faith in Jesus Christ crucified and risen has always defended, above all when it is ignored in regard to the humblest and most vulnerable persons: God loves every human being in a unique and profound way. Bioethics, like every discipline, needs a reminder able to guarantee a consistent understanding of ethical questions that, inevitably, emerge before possible interpretive conflicts. In such a space a normative recall to the natural moral law presents itself. The recognition of human dignity, in fact, as an inalienable right first finds its basis in that law not written by human hand but inscribed by God the Creator in the heart of man. Every juridical order is called to recognize this right as inviolable and every single person must respect and promote it (cf. "Catechism of the Catholic Church," nos. 1954-1960).

Without the foundational principle of human dignity it would be difficult to find a source for the rights of the person and the impossible to arrive at an ethical judgment if the face of the conquests of science that intervene directly in human life. It is thus necessary to repeat with firmness that an understanding of human dignity does not depend on scientific progress, the gradual formation of human life or facile pietism before exceptional situations. When respect for the dignity of the person is invoked it is fundamental that it be complete, total and with no strings attached, except for those of understanding oneself to be before a human life. Of course, there is development in human life and the horizon of the investigation of science and bioethics is open, but it must be reaffirmed that when it is a matter of areas relating to the human being, scientists can never think that what they have is only inanimate matter capable of manipulation in their hands. Indeed, from the very first moment, the life of man is characterized as "human life" and therefore always a bearer -- everywhere and despite everything -- of its own dignity (cf. Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, "Instruction 'Dignitas Personae' on Certain Bioethical Questions," no. 5). Without this understanding, we would always be in danger of an instrumental use of science with the inevitable consequence of easily ceding to the arbitrary, to discrimination and to the strongest economic interest.

Joining bioethics and natural moral law permits the best confirmation of the necessary and unavoidable reminder of the dignity that human life intrinsically possesses from its first instant to its natural end. But in the contemporary context, while a just reminder about the rights that guarantee dignity to the person is emerging with ever greater insistence, one notes that such rights are not always recognized in the natural development of human life and in the stages of its greatest fragility. A similar contradiction makes evident the task to be assumed in different spheres of society and culture to ensure that human life always be seen as the inalienable subject of rights and never as an object subjugated to the will of the strongest.

History has shown us how dangerous and deleterious a state can be that proceeds to legislate on questions that touch the person and society while pretending itself to be the source and principle of ethics. Without universal principles that permit a common denominator for the whole of humanity the danger of a relativistic drift at the legislative level is not at all something should be underestimated (cf. "Catechism of the Catholic Church," no. 1959). The natural moral law, strong in its universal character, allows us to avert such a danger and above all offers to the legislator the guarantee for an authentic respect of both the person and the entire created order. It is the catalyzing source of consensus among persons of different cultures and religions and allows them to transcend their differences since it affirms the existence of an order impressed in nature by the Creator and recognized as an instance of true rational ethical judgment to pursue good and avoid evil. The natural moral law "belongs to the great heritage of human wisdom. Revelation, with its light, has contributed to further purifying and developing it" (John Paul II, Address to the Plenary Assembly of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, February 6, 2004).

Illustrious members of the Pontifical Academy for Life, in the present context your task appears more and more delicate and difficult, but the growing sensitivity in regard to human life is an encouragement to continue, with ever greater spirit and courage, in this important service to life and the education of future generations in the evangelical values. I hope that all of you will continue to study and research so that the work of promoting and defending life be ever more effective and fruitful. I accompany you with the apostolic blessing, which I gladly extend to those who share this daily task with you.

[Translation by Joseph G. Trabbic]

Fr. Rhonheimer persists.

From The Tablet:

The truth about condoms
Martin Rhonheimer


Church leaders have caused a furore by suggesting that even the HIV-infected should avoid condoms. But this is not church teaching, says a leading moral philosopher

Most people are convinced that an HIV-infected person who has sex should use a condom to protect his partner from infection. Whatever one may think about a promiscuous lifestyle, about homosexual acts or prostitution, that person acts at least with a sense of responsibility in trying to avoid transmitting his infection to others.

It is commonly believed that the Catholic Church does not support such a view. As a BBC Panorama programme recently suggested, the Church is thought to teach that sexually active homosexuals and prostitutes should refrain from condoms because condoms are ?intrinsically evil? (The Tablet, 26 June). Many Catholics also believe this. One of them is Hugh Henry, education officer of the Linacre Centre in London, who told Austen Ivereigh in last week?s Tablet that the use of a condom, even exclusively to prevent infection of one?s sexual partner, ?fails to honour the fertile structure that marital acts must have, cannot constitute mutual and complete personal self-giving and thus violates the Sixth Commandment?.

But this is not a teaching of the Catholic Church. There is no official magisterial teaching either about condoms, or about anti-ovulatory pills or diaphragms. Condoms cannot be intrinsically evil, only human acts; condoms are not human acts, but things. What the Catholic Church has clearly taught to be ?intrinsically evil? is a specific kind of human act, defined by Paul VI in his encyclical Humanae Vitae, and later included in No. 2370 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, as an ?action which, whether in anticipation of the conjugal act, or in its accomplishment, or in the development of its natural consequences, proposes, whether as an end or as a means, to render procreation impossible?.

Contraception, as a specific kind of human act, includes two elements: the will to engage in sexual acts and the intention of rendering procreation impossible. A contraceptive act therefore embodies a contraceptive choice. As I put it in an article in the Linacre Quarterly in 1989, ?a contraceptive choice is the choice of an act that prevents freely consented performances of sexual intercourse, which are foreseen to have procreative consequences, from having these consequences, and which is a choice made just for this reason.?

This is why contraception, regarded as a human act qualified as ?intrinsically evil? or disordered, is not determined by what is happening on the physical level; it makes no difference whether one prevents sexual intercourse from being fertile by taking the Pill or by interrupting it in an onanistic way. The above definition also disregards the differentiation between ?doing? and ?refraining from doing?, because coitus interruptus is a kind of ? at least partial ? refraining.

The definition of the contraceptive act does not therefore apply to using contraceptives to prevent possible procreative consequences of foreseen rape; in that circumstance the raped person does not choose to engage in sexual intercourse or to prevent a possible consequence of her own sexual behaviour but is simply defending herself from an aggression on her own body and its undesirable consequences. A woman athlete taking part in the Olympic Games who takes an anti-ovulatory pill to prevent menstruation is not doing ?contraception? either, because there is no simultaneous intention of engaging in sexual intercourse.

The teaching of the Church is not about condoms or similar physical or chemical devices, but about marital love and the essentially marital meaning of human sexuality. It affirms that, if married people have a serious reason not to have children, they should modify their sexual behaviour by ? at least periodic ? abstinence from sexual acts. To avoid destroying both the unitive and the procreative meaning of sexual acts and therefore the fullness of mutual self-giving, they must not prevent the sexual act from being fertile while carrying on having sex.

But what of promiscuous people, sexually active homosexuals, and prostitutes? What the Catholic Church teaches them is simply that they should not be promiscuous, but faithful to one single sexual partner; that prostitution is a behaviour which gravely violates human dignity, mainly the dignity of the woman, and therefore should not be engaged in; and that homosexuals, as all other people, are children of God and loved by him as everybody else is, but that they should live in continence like any other unmarried person.

But if they ignore this teaching, and are at risk from HIV, should they use condoms to prevent infection? The moral norm condemning contraception as intrinsically evil does not apply to these cases. Nor can there be church teaching about this; it would be simply nonsensical to establish moral norms for intrinsically immoral types of behaviour. Should the Church teach that a rapist must never use a condom because otherwise he would additionally to the sin of rape fail to respect ?mutual and complete personal self-giving and thus violate the Sixth Commandment?? Of course not.

What do I, as a Catholic priest, tell Aids-infected promiscuous people or homosex-uals who are using condoms? I will try to help them to live an upright and well-ordered sexual life. But I will not tell them not to use condoms. I simply will not talk to them about this and assume that if they choose to have sex they will at least keep a sense of responsibility. With such an attitude I fully respect the Catholic Church?s teaching on contraception.

This is not a plea for ?exceptions? to the norm prohibiting contraception. The norm about contraception applies without exception; the contraceptive choice is intrinsically evil. But it obviously applies only to contraceptive acts, as defined by Humanae Vitae, which embody a contraceptive choice. Not every act in which a device is used which from a purely physical point of view is ?contraceptive?, is from a moral point of view a contraceptive act falling under the norm taught by Humanae Vitae.

Equally, a married man who is HIV-infected and uses the condom to protect his wife from infection is not acting to render procreation impossible, but to prevent infection. If conception is prevented, this will be an ? unintentional ? side-effect and will not therefore shape the moral meaning of the act as a contraceptive act. There may be other reasons to warn against the use of a condom in such a case, or to advise total continence, but these will not be because of the Church?s teaching on contraception but for pastoral or simply prudential reasons ? the risk, for example, of the condom not working. Of course, this last argument does not apply to promiscuous people, because even if condoms do not always work, their use will help to reduce the evil consequences of morally evil behaviour.

Stopping the worldwide Aids epidemic is not a question about the morality of using condoms, but about how to effectively prevent people from causing the disastrous consequences of their immoral sexual behaviour. Pope John Paul II has repeatedly urged that the promotion of the use of condoms is not a solution to this problem because he holds that it does not resolve the moral problem of promiscuity. Whether, generally, campaigns promoting condoms encourage risky behaviour and make the Aids pandemic worse is a question of statistical evidence which is not yet easily available. That it reduces transmission rates, in the short term, among highly infective groups like prostitutes and homosexuals is impossible to deny. Whether it may decrease infection rates among ?sexually liberated? promiscuous populations or, on the contrary, encourage risky behaviour, depends on many factors.

In African countries condom-based anti-Aids campaigns are generally ineffective, partly because for an African man his manliness is expressed by making as many children as possible. For him, condoms convert sex into a meaningless activity. Which is why ? and this is strong evidence in favour of the Pope?s argument ? among the few effective programmes in Africa has been the Ugandan one. Although it does not exclude condoms, it encourages a positive change in sexual behaviour (fidelity and abstinence), unlike condom campaigns, which contribute to obscuring or even destroying the meaning of human love.

Campaigns to promote abstinence and fidelity are certainly and ultimately the only effective long-term remedy to combat Aids. So there is no reason for the Church to consider the campaigns promoting condoms as helpful for the future of human society. But nor can the Church possibly teach that people engaged in immoral lifestyles should avoid them.

He hasn't changed his mind--when will a Dominican give a response. See this post for a link to Fr. Rhonheimer's previous piece for The Tablet.

James Chastek, What a consideration of the divine names tells us about what is logical, knowable, conceivable, etc.

In his discussion of the divine names in the Scriptum (at the beginning of book I, d. 22), St. Thomas quotes Dionysius approvingly saying that when we speak of God, we can affirm the same thing we deny. This is particularly striking since St. Thomas defines a contradiction as affirming and denying the same thing. The saving distinction in the divine names is (as it always is in St. Thomas) the distinction between the way of signifying and the thing signified (the modus significandi and the res significativa). When we affirm the thing signified, we still must deny the mode of signifying. When said like this, however, we can easily lose sight of just how close to contradiction our speech about God is. While there is nothing odd or remarkable about our concepts grasping a thing imperfectly (to say “a platypus is an animal” is certainly a very imperfect grasp of what it is), when we affirm something of God, or concepts are so imperfect that we must then also turn around and show how we could deny it.

One of St. Thomas’s preferred objections to the possibility of naming God (and therefore knowing God in this life) is an enumeration of the deficiencies of possible names. Nouns signify a supposit with a formal quality ( a “this” that is such and such) but God is not such that there is some supposit modified by a formal quality; verbs and participles signify with time, but God is not a temporal being; pronouns either stand for something we can point to (“this” or “that”) or for some noun, but the deficiencies of nouns have already been spoken of, and the divine nature is not something one points to. On the one hand, St. Thomas has an easy solution to all these problems: the mode of signifying is not the same as the mode of existing. What the sign requires will not always be the same on the side of the thing. One example that makes this distinction particularly clear occurs when St. Thomas responds to a claim that a noun names “what subsists in itself”. He responds saying that the noun signifies what subsists in itself so far as it is a subject of predication. So taken, logical second intentions or even the noun “nothing” signify something that subsists. Obviously, to subsist in the order of signs does not require subsistence in reality; and so neither does composition in the order of signs, nor temporal existence in the order of signs, nor being pointed to in the order of signs require an identical reality on the side of the thing. St. Thomas will also go through each of the given parts of speech and explain how they can be understood to speak of divine reality: while a noun cannot name a composition of supposit and form composed in God, it can name a supposit with a form so far as form is taken a principle of knowledge. Again, while a pronoun cannot name what is pointed to by the finger, it can name what is pointed to by argument.

That said, composition, temporality, and being pointed to all “come along with” the word we are using. They reflect the sort of existence that our speech is proportioned to. Just as we must reject the sort of existence proportionate to our minds when we think of God, we must negate something that always comes along with the speech we use to speak of him. In this sense, we must always deny what we affirm of God (though we need not always affirm what we deny: if we say “God is not a body”, we don’t have to turn around and look for a way in which he is one.) This happens in a particularly remarkable way when we consider the division of certain words into the concrete and the abstract. A concrete term like “wise” is proportioned to speaking of something that is diverse from and composed with a subject that differs from it. So far as it involves this proportion, we must negate that God is wise; but we must also affirm the simple (and therefore abstract) quality “wisdom”. God is wisdom so far as wisdom bespeaks sheer simplicity- and even so far as wisdom bespeaks something that cannot be pointed out by the finger. One can pray to wisdom, if taken in this way.

Given St. Thomas’s principles, in the measure that we speak about anything that is not proportioned to what we understand first, we will have to make distinctions between what we are led to by the mode of signifying and knowing, and what is really the case for the reality in question. This bandwidth of things we are attuned to is vanishingly small. There is really no proportion at all between the sense-intelligible reality that we are proportioned to and the intelligible reality we are only faintly aware of in this life. We must begin, of course, with sense-intelligible reality, but the more we attain to the principles of this reality, both in natural science and metaphysics, the more we become aware of the need to make distinctions in our speech and thinking in order to accurately describe the principles we attain to. How can God act in time without being temporal? How can a light wave wave though nothing is waving? What is the aether of magnetic fields? All these difficulties are created by the way we think and signify.

The more we want to speak of the principles of things, the more we need to be very wary of what it means for them to be “logical”. Whether we are talking about God, subatomic particles, prime matter, the fourth dimension, or the human intellect, we need to be clear that “to be logical” will involve, at some point, negating what we have just affirmed. If “logical” means “what is proportioned to our intellect”, then the whole point of science (which reaches to profound and foundational causes) is to get to non-logical reality. As science and learning advances, we need to turn to our very tools of knowing and explain precisely how they are not adequate, and how they can be used to speak of and understand what exceeds the bandwidth of reality we are attuned to. Notice that this is the opposite of throwing up our hands and shouting “mystery!” The whole point is to give a precise account of how the conceptswe first form can be used as principles to explain what is not proportioned to them. This is particularly important, since so far as “mystery” means whatever exceeds what our minds are proportioned to, then the portion of reality that is not mysterious is so small that it could be ignored, just as we could ignore the amount of mass that a mountain loses when a bird’s wing brushes against it. If we want to get to what is most of all real, “being logical” will have to involve a negation of what is first of all logical to us. This does not mean we need to start saying random things, or writing poetry, or meditating in order to attain the real, it means that we have to recognize what our concepts are proportioned to in order to see more clearly how they can be used to speak of what exceeds them or falls short of their reality. All that we have said here about “logical” can be equally said of “to be conceivable” or “to be knowable” or “to be coherent” or “to be verifiable”.

So the question of the divine names awakens us to the need to understand how our knowing is first of all proportioned to something, and that this is what we first mean by logical, conceivable, knowable, verifiable. Science advances by breaking outside of these proportionate limits to things that at first blush might be called “illogical” (though this is a poor name, since it bespeaks a lack). The tool by which we mark these breaks is analogous naming. We call time a fourth dimension though it is certainly not what we first mean by a dimension; we say God exists and is intelligent though he does not have what we first call existence or intelligence. The methods of going past what is proportionate to us are not the same in both cases, but our need to mark an advance by analogous naming is the same in both cases.

At the limit of what is disproportionate to our intellect, one finds the mysteries of the faith: the Trinity and Incarnation. It must be stressed that these are limiting cases- they are not the first such cases. Speaking about the mysteries of the faith requires us to make some new distinctions in the tools which we use to know, but they are not the first times we need to make such distinctions. The logical problem of the Trinity, or the problem of its conceivability, is the clearest and most preeminent problem of knowability and conceivability, but it is not the only such problem. Speaking of God existing, or light waving, or the soul knowing presents small-scale versions of the same sort of problem. In all these, the words or concepts themselves will exert a distorting influence on the reality itself, and this distorting influence must be taken into account and corrected against. If we ask whether any of these things are knowable or conceivable without taking this need for correction into account, or as though there was only one concept involved here, we will do a great deal of damage.

Papal Greeting to Lutheran Delegation

Papal Greeting to Lutheran Delegation

"A Spiritual Ecumenism Should Be Grounded in Ardent Prayer"


VATICAN CITY, FEB. 10, 2010 (Zenit.org).- Here is the greeting given by Benedict XVI today to the Lutheran Bishop Mark Hanson and the delegation accompanying him at the general audience in Paul VI Hall.

* * *

Distinguished Friends,

I am pleased to greet Bishop Mark Hanson and all of you present here today for this ecumenical visit.

Since the beginning of my Pontificate, I have been encouraged that relations between Catholics and Lutherans have continued to grow, especially at the level of practical collaboration in the service of the Gospel. In his Encyclical Letter "Ut Unum Sint," my beloved predecessor Pope John Paul II described our relationship as "brotherhood rediscovered" (No. 41). I deeply hope that the continuing Lutheran-Catholic dialogue both in the United States of America and at the international level will help to build upon the agreements reached so far. An important remaining task will be to harvest the results of the Lutheran-Catholic dialogue that so promisingly started after the Second Vatican Council. To build on what has been achieved together since that time, a spiritual ecumenism should be grounded in ardent prayer and in conversion to Christ, the source of grace and truth. May the Lord help us to treasure what has been accomplished so far, to guard it with care, and to foster its development.

I conclude by renewing the wish expressed by my predecessor, during whose Pontificate so much was accomplished on the road to full visible unity among Christians, when he said to a similar delegation from the Lutheran Church in America: "You are most welcome here. Let us rejoice that an encounter such as this can take place. Let us resolve to be open to the Lord so that he can use this meeting for his purposes, to bring about the unity that he desires. Thank you for the efforts you are making for full unity in faith and charity" (Address to the Bishops of the Lutheran Church in America, 26 September 1985).

Upon you and all those entrusted to your pastoral care, I cordially invoke the abundant blessings of Almighty God.

© Copyright 2010 -- Libreria Editrice Vaticana

Ite ad Thomam: Scholasticism as Modern Philosophy

In general outline, this division of the history of philosophy is convenient insofar as it accurately represents six general trends in doing philosophy. For example, the way in which the 'ancients' did philosophy is quite distinct from that of the medievals, and medieval philosophy is quite different from the philosophy of Descartes, Locke, and Kant.


But this division also has its problems, particularly in its understanding of the relationship between Scholasticism and Modern Philosophy. It gives the impression that Scholasticism lasted only from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. It excludes Scholasticism altogether from Modern Philosophy... as if Scholasticism were an obsolete medieval thing that was only revived by some right-wing papists of the Twentieth Century. It makes you believe that the Franciscans, Dominicans, Carmelites and Jesuits were happily doing their scholastic disputations until they ran out of gas, and then came Descartes and ended the whole thing with his cogito... as if Modern Philosophy got started and Scholasticism completely disappeared. Hence, Modern Philosophy is portrayed as essentially non-scholastic (or anti-scholastic).


This conception of Modern Philosophy is utterly flawed. This is a case where history is completely written by the victors. The philosophy that was taught during this period in the universities was Scholasticism. Hence the name: 'scholas-tic', the philosophy of the schools (of the scholas). Descartes did not end Scholasticism. At no point during his life did Descartes change or even affect the way philosophy was done in the universities. In fact, none of the Empiricists and almost none of the Rationalists (with the sole exception of Wolff, who was himself a Scholastic Leibnitzian) ever taught at a university. They were literally amateurs. What we are being taught today as mainstream Early Modern Philosophy (Descartes, Spinoza, Leibnitz, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, etc.) is really an afterthought of the Early Modern Period, a movement completely peripheral to what the professional scholars of the time were doing. No one at that time saw the thought of these men as being part of the mainstream academic philosophical thinking.

So who were the mainstream, professional scholars--the Scholastics--during the Early Modern Period? There were thousands, but the best known are: Báñez, Molina, John of St. Thomas, Suárez, Contenson, Gonet, De Lugo, the Salmanticenses and Complutenses, etc., etc. Although some of authors place these figures within the Renaissance period, nonetheless John of St. Thomas and Suárez were contemporaries of Descartes; and, in fact, De Lugo, Contenson, Gonet, the Salmanticenses (and the Salamanca school of economics) together with the Complutenses came a generation later. These men rightly belong to Descartes' period but they are typically either completely ignored by historians or dismissed as medieval remnants that do not deserve to be considered 'modern'.


And even much later, after the new philosophy of the Rationalists, Empiricists and Idealists made its way into secular and Protestant academia (Kant was the first to bring this amateur philosophy into the universities), Scholasticism was still being practiced and taught in Catholic universities. Billuart, De Rubeis, St. Alphonsus de Liguori, San Severino, Cornoldi, Kleutgen, etc. were all within a generation of Kant and thus rightly belong to the Later Modern Period.


And Scholasticism kept being taught in Catholic universities throughout the 19th and 20th Centuries. So how do anti-scholastic histories of philosophy deal with this point? They have interpreted the so-called Neo-Scholastic / Neo-Thomist movement as bearing a discontinuity with what they disparagingly call 'Barroque Thomism' (or Second Thomism). They portray it as a resurrection of Thomism, passing strictly from a completely defunct state to a vibrant Catholic trend in the late 19th Century thanks to Pope Leo XIII's encyclical Aeterni Patris, long after Descartes has put the last nail on the coffin of 'Barroque Scholasticism'. But in fact, 'Neo-Scholasticism' (which is really a misnomer because it was not really discontinuous with traditional scholasticism) was a 'revival' in the sense of giving Scholasticism more life, not in the sense of giving life to something that was dead. Pope Leo XIII's Aeterni Patris does not call for a resurrection of something that had been long defunct, but rather, for greater efforts to keep it going. "Neo-Scholasticism," then, is nothing other than Scholasticism as it regained vigor in the 19th-20th centuries. But it is given that name to make us think that it is something new. As the Catholic Encyclopedia's article on Thomas Zigliara states, "in some universities and seminaries, the teaching of St. Thomas had never been interrupted...." Even today, Scholasticism is not entirely dead, although we must fight to revive it once again.


It is due time for someone to write a history of philosophy that portrays things the way they really are: Scholasticism as a continuous whole that throughout modern times represented the mainstream mode of Catholic thought and that lasted from the time of St. Anselm up until today.

James Chastek, The reality of extension and Notes on what is res extensa?