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

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

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

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


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

His course on moral theology.

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

A typical NNLT appeal to "dignity"

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

TED: Richard Resnick: Welcome to the genomic revolution

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

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

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

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

TED: Kate Hartman: The art of wearable communication




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

Dominicana

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

"Upright"

Online Etymological Dictionary:

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

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

EvoPsych

MoMo, FaMo, MoFa, and FaFa By David Barash

Angelicum: Thomas Aquinas and Contemporary Philosophy keynote highlights

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

Should I get a copy?

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

Laura Inglis interviews Robert George (via MoJ)

Zenit:

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Smithy: Henry of Ghent on Aquinas and Existence

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

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

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

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

Discussion of Peter Moskos's book on punishment

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

More on the book.

Ptolemy of Lucca and Giles of Rome on women as soldiers

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

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

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

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

Edward Feser enters the fray

Modern biology and original sin, Part I

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

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

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

Video of Mortimer Adler

Mortimer Adler, The Mike Wallace Interview

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

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

A website for Josef Pieper. (via First Things)

Righteous

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

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

And for right:

right (adj.1)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fr. Uwe Michael Lang on Latin in the Liturgy

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

Godzdogz: The Angelicum

John Deely has been busy.

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

Forthcoming

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


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

A commendable article by Dr. Kevin White

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ralph McInerny on rights

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

The Precepts of Natural Law

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

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

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

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

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

A reminder about St. Thomas on the fppr:

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

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

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

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

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

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

An Overview of Practical Reason on Aquinas

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

Tomás Luis de Victoria - Letaniae de Beata Virgine

Fr. Z summarizes the Theological Studies controversy

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

Fr. Cessario on casuistry

The appendix to Introduction to Moral Theology.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Related:
Introduction to Moral Theology
The Pinckaers Reader

Physical Premotion: What's so hot about Thomism?

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

Robert Sungenis, A Review of David Klinghoffer’s: Why the Jews Rejected Jesus

Here it is

That dissertation I thought might be interesting: Thomas John Bushlack, Justice in the Theology of Thomas Aquinas: Rediscovering Civic Virtue (pdf).

Zenit: Pope's Words to Former Students
"Let Us Ask the Lord to Show Himself"

Zenit: On Thinking Like God and Accepting the Cross
"To Think According to the World Is to Put God Aside"

Rorate Caeli: The majority and the minority at the Council - or, rather, two minorities?

Let us pray for someone worthy of the office.

(via Catholic Fire)

A promotion for Augustine Di Noia? It would be good to have a traditional Dominican in charge.

While looking through the website for St. Augustine's Press today, I saw John Deely's latest in the new releases -- Semiotic Animal. It was the subtitle that really caught my eye: A Postmodern Definition of
“Human Being” Transcending Patriarchy and Feminism. What does this mean, exactly? Patriarchy and Feminism are related to the sphere of moral action though they are rooted in conceptions of sex (or gender). So does Mr. Deely attempt to downplay sex differences?

More:
A brief essay with the same name as the title of the book.

Basics of Semiotics (Semiotics page)

Nicholas Orme

Medievalists.net: Medieval Schools: Roman Britain to Renaissance England, a post about Nicholas Orme's Medieval Schools: From Roman Britain to Renaissance England.

Orme also has a book about Medieval Children. A review of that book. (Mars Hill Audio)
Childhood in Medieval England, c.500-1500

More about Nicholas Orme:
The Devonshire Association

Someone writes in this controversy at FPR:

Also, the desire to embrace the continuation of the Jewish religion, rather than the negation, under Christ is being rediscovered in beautiful ways. This of course, dealing with God’s covenants, His people and what marks them out as His, etc. The heavy anti-semitism, most noticeably from the 4th century on by the church, has been linked to the Greek “trinity” of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle on the Church’s approach rather than the Hebraic understanding. This is what is driving much scholarship today in the Reformed circles of Christianity. The idea of the “rediscovering” of historical context and the mindset of Judaism, the followers of this Judaic Messiah, and the sociological implications are creating much fruitful discussion. Again, this is extremely broad, but at least covers an overview of some of the main presuppositions.

The Medieval Appropriation of Aristotle

1. The medieval schoolmen studied Aristotle, that is clear. What was their purpose in doing so? Was it only for the sake of their theology? Or did they wish to learn philosophy as philosophy?

2. Did they respect the integrity and reasoning of the science, as it was laid out by Aristotle in his lectures? How seriously did they take Aristotle's treatment of the sciences? Was the predominant attitude to use Aristotle only in so far as he bolstered their theological arguments, but without looking at how his arguments fit into the rest of his sciences, as he laid them out? (If he contradicted the Faith he was corrected with a response and/or not employed.) Was their theology so important that they lost sight of the philosophical argumentation?

I have to say that from what I have read of St. Bonaventure, this characterization appears to be true for him. But what of the Franciscans who came after him, or the secular masters? One can appropriate Aristotle without learning well from him, and the early medievals may have been disadvantaged in comparison with their successors.

3. The medievals had inherited certain ways of understanding material creation, but much of this apparatus was not Divinely revealed but given by their non-Christian predecessors, for example the neo-Platonists. Still, are the Augustinian and Aristotelian accounts of the soul so opposed that they cannot be reconciled? With regards to understanding Aristotle's physics as preparation for metaphysics -- was there a problem there as well? Did some jump into metaphysics without acquiring physics first? It seems to me that the later medievals took his physics more seriously.

4. What about Aristotelian logic? I have been unable to investigate the medieval appropriation of logic and its development (especially in relation to metaphysics) I'll have to pick up a copy of Medieval Logic: An Outline of Its Development from 1250 to c. 1400 by Philotheus Boehner. Can differences between Aquinas and Scotus (or Ockham) be reduced or at least partially linked to different understandings/interpretations of Aristotle?

Some posts on pre-Vatican 2 treatments of marriage in moral theology. Have we really lost a lot in our understanding of sexual morality since the council? Do popular treatments of theology of the body pale by comparison?

Original Sin

Idle and Rambling Speculations on Original Sin By Joseph Wood


The biological transmission of original sin has puzzled me, but it seems to have been taken seriously by the medievals. St. Thomas talks about the tranmission of sin and the infection of the powers of the soul. corruption of nature. What does that mean though, merely that because they are descendents of Adam that they are therefore subject to the providential order which he has caused through his sin? According to St. Thomas, no -- it is not merely a privation. So what is the corruption of nature, according to St. Augustine and St. Thomas? I need to read the relevant questions more carefully, but it may be that up to this point I have not been able to understand what St. Thomas has written because I was assuming an erroneous dualistic account of human nature, one that lead me to spiritualize original sin too much.

The Anti-Church of Antonio Gramsci by George J. Marlin

More from Medievalists.net on the medieval university.

The Medieval University

Some objections to a proposed Catholic view of the universe
Disputed question on the key premise in the fourth way

Mark F. Johnson, On the future of Thomistica.net

The great news is that the site will remain sure-footed under the direction and support of the people at The Aquinas Center at Ave Maria University, will in fact have a larger base of fine and diverse contributors, and will assuredly expand its viewership to an ever-widening audience of those interested in the academic study of St. Thomas Aquinas. Roger Nutt will be overseeing the site, with help of Michael Dauphinais and Joseph Trabbic. The new contributors will include Fr. Matthew Lamb and Steven Long of Ave Maria and Christopher Malloy of the University of Dallas and Fr. Timothy Bellamah of the Dominican House of Studies.

Wolfgang Smith, The Quantum Enigma

Edit. The videos are not of Wolfgang Smith, but someone giving a presentation on Smith. His book, The Quantum Enigma.





Response to the talk

Wolfgang Smith: Science and Myth, The Hidden Connection, The Plague of Scientistic Belief

profile for Wolfgang Smith
Sacred Web
The Foundation for Traditional Studies
Sophia Perennis

Nigra sum, sed formosa - Tomás Luis de Victoria

Zenit: Papal Message on Liturgy as Source of Catechesis
"The Liturgy Is Not What Man Does, But What God Does"

Zenit: Papal Message to Rimini Meeting
"Man Cannot Live Without the Certainty of His Destiny"

Sandro Magister, After Madrid. How Benedict XVI Has Innovated the WYD
There are at least three innovations that characterize the World Youth Days with this pope: moments of silence, the very young age of the participants, the passion to witness to faith in the world

Certain traditionalists remain critical.

Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology:

Papal Theologian's Talk

Tuesday, September 20, 7:30 pm
DSPT Galleria

DSPT will have the honor of hosting Fr. Wojciech Giertych, OP, a Dominican friar of the Polish Province who is the Theologian to the Papal Household. Fr. Giertych will speak on "Virtuous human action-- an icon of God. Aquinas's vision of Christian morality." Download flyer for the Papal Theologian Talk

Ite ad Thomam: Berry: Ecumenical Councils are Not Entirely Infallible

MoJ: Natural Law, "positivism", judging, etc.

The post links to a paper by Michael Baur on the interpretation of the law by judges.

Hrm... how does the separation of powers play out? Would it be possible to give judges the authority to rule as to whether a law was just or not?

Pope Benedict meets with Women Religious(ENGLISH dub.)WYD 2011

Zenit: Holy Father's Words to University Professors
"You Provide a Splendid Service in the Spread of Truth"

Rorate Caeli: Religious "fervor" and the outcome of the First Session of the Second Vatican Council

Salve Regina

Harry Christophers and the Sixteen

The Church Impotent

I have not yet started The Church Impotent by Leon Podles, but in reading the description of the book  I question the support for his thesis. Is he overreaching in his genealogy?

"In an original and challenging account, he traces this feminization to three contemporaneous medieval sources: the writings of St. Bernard of Clairvaux, the rise of scholasticism, and the expansion of female monasticism."

After all, St. Bernard was instrumental in the creation the Christian knight and the military orders. Thus, I am a bit baffled. There will be an element of the "feminine" in Christian spirituality, for both males and females, in so far as we are the recipients of God's grace. (The Song of Songs) But what men should o when enlivened by charity and grace will be different from what women do, as grace builds upon nature.

As for the criticism of the scholastics... I will have to see what he says. Could his criticisms not also be applied to the monastic theologians?

I think it would suffice to locate the breakdown of Christian spirituality with the destruction of Christendom and the rise of the modern-state, and to look at Church-state relations and how the Church has fared.

Talk of human dignity as a foundation of understanding justice or morality -- is it really necessary? In so far as we need to understand that human beings are not the same as the other animals, having the same nature and end as we do. Beyond that? It seems to be a matter of prudence, whether to use such a term when it has been defined by moderns in conjunction with freedom, as a bare fact (or sovereignty).

Medievalists.net: Why the Medieval Idea of a Community-Oriented University is Still Modern
Health Education Through the Ages

BBC: Medieval priory uncovered in Wombridge

Medievalists.net: Teaching Fifth Graders Science Through the Lens of Medieval Scientific Discoveries and Developments

Fr. Z: Bad or heterodox theologians, a “curse and affliction upon the church”

Bringing the little ones to our Lord.

An internet petition to recall the YouCat (via Ite ad Thomam). I could see why some would fault those behind the petition as being extreme. Even if they're correct in their assessment, they haven't done the work necessary to convince bishops (and theologians and Catholic intellectuals) of this. Wouldn't their money and energy be better spent on alternate forms of catechesis?

Introduction to the Presentation of YOUCAT
Cardinal Christoph Schönborn

This morning I was thinking of Pope Benedict XVI's defense of WYD. Apparently enough had voiced their criticisms of the event that he believed he should respond. Is it just a defense for the legacy of Pope John Paul II?

Even if the youth have the proper mindset, focusing on the liturgy as the center of it all, does it give too much legitimacy to the cult of youth? After all, would they get as excited about the Sunday liturgy? And how is a youth Mass celebrated by the Pope different from a Sunday 5 P.M. Lifeteen Mass? Should the youth be encouraged to think of themselves as being so distinct from their elders? (We have to make Catholicism "cool." I was going to say "hip" but that word is obsolete. "Cool" has been replaced, too, but I won't use the slang currently in vogue.) There has been a history of youth retreats and such. (The late pontiff used to minister to youth groups when he was a priest.)  But does this only encourage our youth to think in accordance with our political economy, instead of struggling against it? Does it promote infantalization? Our young people should be encouraged to cultivate their spiritual life, but this must be tied to a better understanding of the lay vocation, and simply accepting the status quo may only confirm them in mediocrity or frustration.

Just as a long journey precedes the celebration of World Youth Day, a continuing journey follows it. Friendships are formed which encourage a different way of life and which give it deep support. The purpose of these great Days is, not least, to inspire such friendships and so to create places of living faith in the world, places which are, at the same time, settings of hope and practical charity.

Friendships with whom? Those from home who accompanied them? Or with those who live in different countries? Yes, some of these friendships may last, but for the most part, they will just be fond memories of a great time shared by all. Using the cultivation of friendship to justify World Youth Day... or the expression of the universal character of the Church. How about teaching our youth how to better live as members of particular societies, or what friendship entails? Who is going to preach against excessive mobility? (Or resignation to a state of affairs that is far from ideal?)

Virtuous Leadership: I'm curious as to why the author identifies temperance with self-control, when it seems to me that the latter is closer to continence then temperance. I could add something about the marketing of the book and its projected audience, but... I won't. I was also thinking about the adapting of Austen to a modern milieu. Why doesn't it work? Because the virtues of the characters have to be understood with respect to their social roles, and their social roles are quite different from anything that might be seen as analogous today. (Darcy as a businessman? No.) Without those social roles (and the concomitant cultural expectations), would they have acquired the same virtues?

Fr. Z: I hate this book more than any other book ever published.
(A History of the Athenian Constitution to the end of the Fifth Century B. C. by C. Hignett)

Heinrich Isaac, missa Virgo prudentissima, Gloria

The Bellarmine Report: The Vatican’s “YouCat” Catechism: Weak on Homosexuality, Contraception, Euthanasia, Evolution, and Scripture. (via Ite ad Thomam)

Despite being a Dominican before, Cardinal Schoenborn's involvement with many dubious enterprises does make one suspicious. Nonetheless, I think the criticism of the YouCat's handling of homosexuality is excessive:

Implied in the words “homosexually oriented” is the idea that homosexuality is a congenital condition, not a learned behavior or a perverse life-style one decides to enter. By implying that homosexuality is “a lack, a loss or a wound” and not a decision by a mature adult to transgress God’s laws (as Scripture and Tradition say it is), YouCat seeks to elicit pity for homosexuals due to the fact that they are simply “born that way,” as it were, and thus denied the opportunity of sexual “union” that other people possess. YouCat further implies that if the homosexually oriented person “accepts and affirms” this congenital condition, he can do so knowing that God can make good of it because He “lead souls to himself along unusual paths.” Instead of telling the homosexual that his sexual tendencies are an outgrowth of his uncontrolled concupiscence and that he should pray to God to have the power to eradicate this state of mind, he is told, more or less, to accept his condition and hold God to blame for making him homosexually oriented. His only consolation is that God will make up for it by using the condition to lead him back to God. In effect, homosexuality is treated no different than if YouCat were talking about a mongoloid baby, since, similar to YouCat’s understanding of the homosexual, the deformed child can also use his condition as a “springboard for throwing one into the arms of God.” In the end, YouCat neither calls homosexuality a sin, nor does it say that homosexual inclinations are perverse and need to be remedied.

What is the definition of homosexuality? The sexual lifestyle? Or the mere attraction to members of the same sex? Nor do I see the YouCat blaming God for the disorder: "A lack, a loss, or a wound—if accepted and affirmed—can become a springboard for throwing oneself into the arms of God." The lack or loss or wound is a consequence of Original Sin, and can be explained as a bodily defect.

Similarly, with respect to the use of "demonizing" in regards to masturbation. Is it a sin? I think so. But what needs to be avoided is repressiveness that stunts the development of healthy sexuality. Now, I don't have a copy of the YouCat, so I don't know if it deals with masturbation at length or offers good pastoral advice. Maybe it's treatment is insufficient, maybe it isn't -- there's nothing within the critique showing that the paragraph is too brief.

Sentimentality or Honesty? On Charles Taylor by Mark Oppenheimer
(via Mirror of Justice)

But Taylor is no Nietzschean, and he does not want to romanticize what we might call Extreme Catholicism. Not only is that premodern Catholicism unrecoverable, Taylor says; it had to expire in order for us to become a more charitable, humane species. Taylor argues that with the Protestant Reformation came an “affirmation of ordinary life” (the term is discussed at length in Sources of the Self) that refocused religious devotion on the daily acts and works of ordinary people while elevating the sufferings of those ordinary people to a matter of divine concern.

Where exactly is his evidence for this? Sounds like self-loathing Catholicism, if anything. Taylor has not been a priority, and I haven't acquired Sources of the Self yet... Another Canadian to bug me?

Proposition four: “That is the task at hand: how to live a life that is personally authentic—a goal the medieval church would not have understood, much less approved of—while giving that life meaning, spirituality, fullness.” In other words, how can we keep our modern humanity without losing what is best from the more enchanted past?

It is on this question that the personal Taylor and the political Taylor converge, in ways that can be quite satisfying. It might seem that the Taylor who writes about the modern personality (Sources of the Self, The Ethics of Authenticity) and the Taylor who writes about the modern state (parts of A Secular Age and Multiculturalism and “The Politics of Recognition”) are working on two different projects. I don’t think that is so. Although I could not find a place where Taylor connects the two urges, it seems to me that “authenticity,” a word he uses only for the personal project, is actually the word he wants for the political project too.

Philosophers like Rousseau tend to see political community as the natural enemy of personal authenticity; the state is what represses our true selves. (I have to thank my friend Matthew Simpson, the philosopher and Rousseau scholar, for clarifying this point.) But as I read Taylor, he seems to say that just as any given woman in Quebec wants to be true to herself, the Québécois want to be true to their culture. It is the same problem on two different levels. It is the Romantic urge personally and politically, and in both cases it seems to appear, historically speaking, just on either side of the year 1800. The political urge makes no sense without the personal one. Taylor recognizes this equivalence implicitly, and his work argues for it, but he never quite formulates the extent to which, for him, the personal is political.

True to their culture? Or true to their roots? What is Romantic about the desire to maintain one's identity in the face of those who would take it away? Such an urge pre-exists modernity.

Benedict Ashley, O.P. on Natural Law

Mark Latkovic has this essay (pdf) comparing Fr. Ashley and the NNL theorists on natural law.


Reminder: Fr. Ashley's essay, "What is the End of the Human Person? The Vision of God and Integral Human Fulfillment," Moral Truth and Moral Tradition, ed. Luke Gormally. (A response)

Fr. Benedict Ashley on Science and the Fall

CV
"The Biblical Basis of Grisez's Revision of Moral Theology," in Robert P, George, ed., Natural Law and Moral Inquiry: Ethics, Metaphysics, and Politics in the Work of Germain Grisez (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1998).

"The Loss of Theological Unity: Pluralism, Thomism, and Catholic Morality," in Mary Jo Weaver and R. Scott Appleby , Being Right: Conservative Catholics in America (Bloomington/Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1995), pp. 63-87.

Related:
Fr. Koterski's review of some books by Robert George.

Godzdogz: Pilgrimage Patron: St. Vincent Ferrer

Peter Kwasniewski, Dignitatis Humanae: The Interpretive Principles (via Once I Was a Clever Boy)

I may have posted a link to this before...

King's College Choir, Spem in Alium by Thomas Tallis

Sharks

For a minute-and-a-half video, MTV-style editing should be expected...

Archbishop Di Noia's talk on Aquinas and Thomas Jefferson has been published in First Things. (via the Dominican Province of St. Joseph)

Catholic Theological Society of America

website

A related post at "Catholic Moral Theology."

Still waiting for the economic crunch to take its toll on academia.

Ite ad Thomam: Fr. Busa, Architect of Hypertext and Index Thomisticus, Passes Away

Kozinski responds to Snell

Turning to an Empty Subject: A Reponse to R.J. Snell's God, Religion, and the New Natural Law (via FPR)

Some questions for me to keep in mind when I revisit MacIntyre--

(1) The first point of controversy is on the relation between practical reason and speculative reason. I'll ignore this for now.

(2) The subjectivity-shaping role of social practices:
"For MacIntyre individual men qua individuals can neither know nor possess the goods that practical reason recognizes in and through the natural law."

It is not clear to me that this is so for all goods -- unless one is making a broader point about how our exercise of rationality is dependent upon language. Otherwise, feral humans who somehow manage to survive in the wild without human contact -- they may desire and obtain certain goods, but are morally and intellectual stunted because they were not initiated into a language.

Although one can enter into one’s subjectivity to discover the natural law and the goods and ends perfective of oneself, the self and the goods one finds in subjective introspection are not entirely one’s own, as it were. They are present to the soul’s internal purview only as a result of a dynamical interplay between an intrinsic and necessary human nature and set of inclinations, and an extrinsic and contingent experience of social formation and active participation in this formation.

If one is capable of self-reflection, then one can recognize human goods in part by the sadness one feels in their absence. This makes dialectical defenses of such goods possible. We all have histories, and our understanding of our selves is shaped through the influence of others.

Moreover, the criteria for moral evaluation and judgment (and the goods evaluated and judged), which can certainly be discovered subjectively, are not acquired and possessed subjectively. They are socially participated. Individual judgments and actions can only be judged as good or bad, virtuous or vicious according to the moral criteria intrinsic to social practices, not the subjective self. And, to add to the supra-subjective character of the natural-law, actions and the practices in which they occur can only be made intelligible as part of a social narrative: “I can only answer the question ‘What am I to do’ if I can answer the prior question ‘Of what stories do I find myself a part?’”

The link between practice and human actions and narrative. Is MacIntyre overstating the case for narrative? Does a liberal or a radical individualist not have a story of his own? It may be false, in so far as he exaggerates his independence. By what criteria can the narrative one embraces be judged to be incomplete or false? I think it would be more useful to talk about our roles and the duties that we owe others. Only then can such a social narrative be complete. (Or, how can a social narrative not have moral considerations as an integral part of its understanding?) How does MacIntyre deal with someone whose narrative is tied to an intentional community? On what basis, if any, would he say that an intentional community (for lay people) is problematic?

(3) The tradition-constituted-and-constitutive character of practical rationality:
I have an earlier post about MacIntyre's definition of tradition. I need to find it.

Just as individual participants in practices have historical life narratives that characterize their identities, practices have life histories, and these are embedded in the grand narrative of a tradition, including the particular culture(s) in which it developed. To recognize the natural law is to recognize the goods internal to a practice, so we must have participated in that practice for recognition to take place. The turn to the subject is only possible via the good-recognizing power actualized by participation in practices. Moreover, to understand the practice itself, we must participate in the tradition that transmits and shapes that practice.

I think I need some concrete examples for me to grasp this. It's a bit too abstract. (Or I'll have to reread MacIntyre on justice.)

"To recognize the natural law..."  What about human activities that involve very little cooperation with other human beings? Given our social nature, we cannot live well without others, but what is MacIntyre's model for understanding practices? Is there a danger of techne being used to understand hexis?


(4) The indispensability of divine revelation in ethical inquiry and practice.
As he is represented here, I mostly agree with Maritain. But I will have to re-read what he writes about Christian [moral] philosophy.

Because in a practical science ends serve as principles, any practical science that does not know the ends of its subject matter does not possess its own principles. Since man’s ultimate end is unknowable by the light of human reason alone, and since man’s end is the first principle of both moral theology and moral philosophy, then moral philosophy, without the light of divine revelation, does not possess its first principle; therefore, moral philosophy must be subalternated to theology. In this subalternation, moral philosophy makes the data offered to it by moral theology its own, shines the light of human reason on this data, and thus arrives at first principles and conclusions of a philosophical character. In this way, moral philosophy is “superelevated” and perfected so that it can become “adequate to its object,” namely, man’s end.

I don't think subalternation can explain what is going on here -- it seems to me that this new moral philosophy is just theology under another name. The data may be offered to it by moral theology, but moral theology is mediating what is believed through the virtue of faith.

(5) Natural Law and Politics:

Beginning with the natural law is rightly the standard operating procedure for Catholics and other theists discoursing in our relativistic world and deeply pluralistic culture, but this does not mean we should always end with the natural law. Nor does it mean that we cannot or should not offer a compelling, beautiful, reasonable, and coherent supra-rational foundation for the existence, universality, force, and intelligibility of the natural law, the natural law that we indeed discover first by turning within, where, as St. Augustine came to know, God waits for us.

I'll have to read his book, because I don't see what the practical import of this is. Should Christians aim for the conversion of non-Christians, and in doing so transform a polity into a Christian one? Sure. But it is not clear to me that "dialogue" will be such an important tool for bringing this about, exxcept for a certain few.

(6) Turning to an empty subject:

I wonder if the reason for the contemporary popularity of NNL is analogous to the reason for the great, ancient rise and plausibility of Stoicism, another inexorably partial ethics that tended to consider itself the whole. Stoicism became plausible and popular when the ancient Greek polis disappeared, and in the cultural anomie that followed, millions of tradition-and-community starved people felt they could only depend upon themselves for knowledge of their good and to attain virtue. If anything, in our milieu of deeply pluralistic cyber “communities” suffused with zombie-like consumers,[20] we feel even more bereft of the communities and traditions upon which we can depend intellectually and spiritually to shape our subjectivity and communicate truth, goodness, and beauty, and within which we can know and obey the natural and divine laws.

I think it is the claim by NNL theorists for a natural law ethic which can be used in dialogue with non-believers, based on what St. Paul says about the law engraved in men's hearts (Romans 2:14-16). There is also the influence of certain modern philosophers, along with willingness by some theorists to embrace liberalism in their formulation of the NNLT.

Related: A different perspective on St. Paul--St. Paul and Natural Law