Lumen Christi Institute: April 27: "The Dignity of Being a Substance" by Gilles Emery, OP

Vimeo

“The Dignity of Being a Substance” from The Lumen Christi Institute on Vimeo.

How great the burden of proof?

Re: torturing people for the sake of getting information

What needs to be be established so that the court (or lawful authority) can find someone guilty of contempt in refusing to answer some question he has been commanded to answer? Beyond a "reasonable doubt"? It seems to me that it would be difficult to show beyond a reasonable doubt that someone knows (or plans) x - I can't imagine there being sufficient incriminating evidence that someone knows x without the needed information being present as well.

I think the burden should be rather great. If it cannot be established without a reasonable doubt that someone knows x, then he cannot be punished for refusing to divulge that information, even if those in authority have reasons for suspecting that he has that information.

Don Paco on St. Thomas's philosophy

Quaeritur: Aren't You Unfairly Criticizing Gilson?

Additional notes on the definition of torture

Begun on March 19.

Some thoughts on the use of "compel" or "coerce" in the definition of torture.

Compel, coerce, force may be synonyms, but their usage may indicate slight (or not-so-sleight) differences in their meanings?

"Compel" may be somewhat ambiguous, as ambiguous as the definition of "torture" can be. After all, torture can be defined as the use of pain or bodily harm to compel obedience, the yielding of information, etc. -- to make someone do what they do not want to do. If a police officer uses pain to make someone resisting arrest comply with his legitimate commands, is he torturing that person? (Or if a child is spanked because he is not obeying his parents' instructions, is that torture?) Pain is used to bring someone to do something the one applying the pain wants. The same is true of force. On the surface, this does not seem like punishment for disobedience, but the use of pain or force is usually a response (and hence justified in the eyes of the law) to prior non-compliance/disobedience of an instruction or order.


"Coerce" may be less ambiguous than the other two words because in the literature the word coercion is often associated with law and government. Law coerces as well as commands. It doesn't necessarily imply a voluntaristic understanding of law; it is how the effects of law are perceived by its subjects, who may have only an imperfect understanding of the purpose of law.Does coercion involve an understanding that the consequences of not following are punishments? Punishments for disobeying a (legitimate) command? In so far as it is tied to law, I think it does. One is given the opportunity to comply, and if one refuses to do so, he is punished.

(The wiki entry on coercion. SEP. IEP on Free Will.)

How do we distinguish morally licit forms of coercion  (if there are any), getting obedience, cooperation, compliance through the application of pain and so on, from illicit forms? One could make an argument from human dignity that no one should be made a tool of another's will, but taken to an extreme, this argument (proper to liberalism) would lead to the sanctioning of disobedience and the outlawing of all consequences for that act. So is compulsion (as in the example of the police officer) to be identified with (legal) coercion and hence punishment?

In coercing the will of another, one is doing so with respect to an external act, and in particular acts of the body, whether it be to say something or to submit to an arrest.One cannot coerce the will to truly choose some opinion or belief, to assent or deny something, because we cannot confirm that this is actually the case. We can only obtain the physical representation of that belief through a verbal or written profession. Nor can we coerce the will's internal acts (desiring or loving some end). "Mental states" are hidden from us. That sort of mind control is impossible for us, and hence a non-believer cannot be effectively compelled from without to embrace the Christian faith. It also goes against the nature of the act of faith because the "grounds for belief" is not relief of pain or one's physical safety or health, but God's revealing of Himself and the acceptance of this. To say that the act of faith is or must be a free act does not go far enough, in my opinion, in explaining why it cannot be coerced. How is it free, that epistemic encounter with God?

Again, even if torture could be morally justified,  it is ineffective (according to various "experts) at procuring truth (confessions of guilt) or information.

*Compulsion presupposes that the original command was lawful - the one giving the command hand the authority to do so, the one being commanded is under his authority, and so on.

Catholic Online: Verbum Domini: Pope Calls the Faithful to Fall in Love with the Living Word of God

Rorate Coeli: A "renewed anthropological foundation to religious freedom" 

I have to agree with those commenting who see no change in the Holy Father's understanding of Dignitatis Humanae. The anthropology is the basis for the freedom and for the right.

Zenit: Mexican Christian Leaders on Religious Freedom [2011-05-06]
"Not a Benevolent Concession of the State But a Fundamental Human Right"

Zenit: Papal Address to Liturgical Institute
"Not Infrequently Tradition and Progress Are Clumsily Opposed"

Pope's Message to Biblical Commission
"Inspiration and Truth as Two Key Concepts"


Pope's Address to Delegation From the "Papal Foundation"
"The Church Is Missionary by Her Very Nature"

Called to Communion: Lawrence Feingold on Freedom of the Will (via ML)

NovAntiqua

Discovered this blog today while doing a search for information regarding the conference dedicated to John Finnis. One of the blog authors, Kevin Feiser, has written a series on the "action theory"/moral psychology of Martin Rhonheimer:

Regarding Rhonheimer…
On Rhonheimer, Part II: Moral Action Theory
On Rhonheimer, Part III: Virtue Ethics

6th Scarpa Conference on Law, Politics, and Culture

Patrick Brennan: More on John Finnis and others at Villanova Law

See also Fr. Rhonheimer is coming to Villanova Law and The Scarpa Conference at Villanova Law: Eskridge, Ferejohn, Finnis, and many others

OUP: The Collected Essays of John Finnis (5 volumes!)

Fr. Tomas Tyn, O.P.

Fr. Giovanni Cavalcoli, O.P. recommends these two websites for more information about the Servant of God Tomas Tyn, O.P. in his Response to the traditionalists of "The Remnant," in defense of Arzillo: Studio Filosofico Domenicano and Arpato.

SD's Youtube Channel




Other links:
Padre Tomas Tyn: un domenicano senza compromessi
Totus Tuus Tools
Servo di Dio Tomas Tyn
a forum thread
another homily on Fr. Tyn





P.Tomas Tyn, OP: La temperanza (Matilde has audio files of Fr. Tyn and videos of Fr. Cavalcoli)
P.Tomas Tyn: Omelia di P.Pilastro, OP (1.1.1991)
P. Tomas Tyn OP (1950-1990) mostra fotografica a Cremona

Now a short comment on Fr. Cavalcoli's response. He writes:

By comparing Descartes with Aristotle, Aristotle did not intend to refer to the dualism of Descartes, of whom he does not speak, but to the Cartesian way of thinking, too attached to clarity and distinction, something that can be acceptable in mathematical thinking, but not in theological, which is a form of thought based more on analogy than on univocality. Now, it is precisely the method of analogy that is characteristic of Aristotle, and not of Descartes.

Analogical thought makes it possible to understand how a concept, while still remaining identical to itself, can however at the same time develop, progress, explicate and clarify itself. This is typical of all vital phenomena, from the biological level to the spiritual. Because of this, Blessed John Henry Newman compared dogmatic or theological progress to the development of a plant, which grows and develops while still remaining itself. A five-foot oak tree is still itself even when it has reached one hundred feet.

Thus the doctrines of Vatican II must not be viewed as a disowning or rupture with the previous magisterium, but as a confirmation and explication of them. In other words, with Vatican II we know better those same truths of faith that we knew before.

The science of] Theology may be characterized by analogical thinking.But is it too much to ask for clarity in a dogmatic statement or formula. We would expect it in a dogmatic definition; otherwise imprecision would render it useless as a tool for teaching the Faith and opposing error. Conciliar documents are not meant for theological speculation; rather, they are there to explicate Sacred Tradition for the sake of the Christian faithful. (I think there is a difference between explication as (re-)defining the truths of the Faith, as opposed to shedding light or giving insight to the principles (supplied by Faith) through reasoning.) It would seem to me that this is a straw man argument.

Roberto de Mattei responds to critics

Sandro Magister, The Church Is Infallible, But Not Vatican II

And it made mistakes, maintains traditionalist historian Roberto de Mattei. The dispute continues for and against the popes who guided the Council and put its innovations into practice

Ryan T. Anderson reviews John D. Mueller's Redeeming Economics: Dismal Science Redeemed: What’s Gone Wrong.

I'm puzzled by this account given by Mueller:

Thus the theory Aquinas outlined—known as “Scholastic” economics—had four key elements: the theory of production, which explains which goods (and how many of them) we produce; the theory of justice in exchange, which accounts for how we are compensated through the sale of goods for our contributing to their production; the theory of final distribution, which determines who will consume our goods; and finally, the theory of consumption (or utility), which explains which goods people prefer to consume.

I think I have the book, but if I do, it's in storage. What he writes here about distributive justice does need to be checked, since distributive justice pertains to common goods. It could be argued that whatever we produce from natural resources, which are clearly "common goods," is also common, but I haven't come across a persuasive argument that this is so.

Vocations Vid for the Eastern Province

Various popes, bishops and theologians have written about what constitutes a good regime (one that governs in accordance with the common good), and they have accepted the classification of regimes taken from the ancient Greeks. Political theorists from Aristotle to Leopold Kohr have talked about the limits to the size of a polity, and how good governance is not possible if a polity exceeds this limit. I would consider this to fall under "Natural Law reasoning" (that is to say, a precept concerning the limit to a size to a polity would be of the Natural Law, touching upon both the common good and good government). But is it something that the Church could ever endorse?

John Allen, Laicizing bishops, a movie flap, Ireland and America, and Vatican II

More often than not, people like to see their own convictions as a middle position between two extremes. We all feel better, I suppose, thinking of ourselves as rational moderates, standing against ideologues on either side.

When it comes to interpretations of the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), some progressive Catholics are tempted to see Pope Benedict XVI’s “hermeneutic of reform,” which stresses continuity with the pre-Vatican II church, as the opposite end of the spectrum from more liberal views. That’s not, however, how most people in the Vatican size things up, where the “hermeneutic of reform” is instead understood as a balanced position between thinking that church history began with Vatican II, and thinking that the council was just plain wrong.

For that taxonomy to work, there have to be credible exponents of the “just plain wrong” position. That’s where Italian historian Roberto de Mattei and Monsignor Brunero Gherardini, a canon of St. Peter’s Basilica, enter the picture.

Both have published provocative books about Vatican II. Last year, de Mattei offered Il Concilio Vaticano II: Una storia mai scritta (“The Second Vatican Council: A Story Never Told”), styling Vatican II as a rupture with tradition comparable to the French Revolution, and faulting every pope since Pius X for allowing it to happen. Gherardini produced Concilio Vaticano II: Il discorso mancato (“The Second Vatican Council: The Missing Discussion”), in which he said some council fathers believed “the church was to be a kind of research laboratory rather than a dispenser of truths from on high.”

Both books were recently reviewed in L’Osservatore Romano, the official Vatican newspaper, and in both cases the verdict was fairly negative. The commentary on de Mattei came from Italian Archbishop Agostino Marchetto, author of a study of the council openly critical of the more liberal “Bologna school” associated with Italian scholars Giuseppe Alberigo and Alberto Melloni. Marchetto wrote that de Mattei’s work is “ideological” and suffers from “extremist tendencies.” Likewise, Inos Biffi, a medieval expert and a frequent writer for L’Osservatore, charged that Gherardini doesn’t so much “discuss” Vatican II as “denigrate” it.

The dividing line is this: If the post-Vatican II period brought some confusion and excess, is that the fault of the council itself? Benedict XVI, and figures in sync with his views such as Marchetto and Biffi, say no; traditionalist critics such as de Mattei and Gherardini say yes.

All this illustrates a core insight about the Catholic Church: Deciding who the moderates are depends on the range of views one takes into consideration. When you see the whole picture, it’s often tougher to conclude that the Vatican, or the pope, represents an extreme.

Again, Allen talks about "moderates" -- this is a unhelpful term, when it comes to evaluating the second Vatican Council or its documents. I think those who are critical are critical primarily of the documents approved by the Council Fathers and of certain ambiguities. As for explaining how the documents came about, that is the job of a historian, not of a theologian or bishop, even if it is up to the theologian or bishop to interpret the documents in light of Tradition and to present them in that manner.

This is also separate from the question of whether the second Vatican Council is the cause of all the problems in the Church from the late '60s through the '70s. Again, I don't think that this is what Gherardini would claim.

The hermeneutic of continuity might be mandated by charity (and fidelity?), but does it not presuppose that the Church must reconcile the documents of the Council with tradition because of their authoritative weight? Are not syllabi and anathemas better?

op-stjoseph: St. Thomas Aquinas and the Church: Theo-Centric Ecclesiology

Peter Moskos, In Defense of Flogging

Surprised to see this published in the CoHE. The book. Publisher.

OP Vocations: Fr. Romanus Cessario OP: St. Catherine on Dominican Preaching

Who's Betraying Tradition. The Grand Dispute

The discussion is becoming heated over how to interpret the innovations of Vatican Council II, above all on freedom of religion. The traditionalists against Benedict XVI. An essay by philosopher Martin Rhonheimer in support of the pope

by Sandro Magister