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Christopher Blum's Review of Fr. Augustine's biography of St. Francis

The Francis We Never Knew: Surprising Revelations About the Man From Assisi

Mark Martin's Microbiology Blog

via Dr. Helen - All Creatures Great AND Small: Preaching Microbial Supremacy!

Zenit: On the Law of God
"It leads man out of the slavery of egoism and brings him into the 'land' of true freedom and life"

In the Liturgy of the Word this Sunday the theme of God’s Law, of his commandment emerges. This is an essential element both in the Jewish and Christian religions. In the latter the Law of God finds its complete fulfillment in love (cf. Romans 13:10). God’s Law is his Word that guides man on his life’s journey, it leads him out of the slavery of egoism and brings him into the “land” of true freedom and life. For this reason in the Bible the Law is not seen as a burden, an oppressive limitation, but as a precious gift of the Lord, the witness of his paternal love, of his will to be near his people, of being their ally and writing a history of love with them.

Two from Medievalist.net

The Making of Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae - Bernard McGinn



Science and the Medieval University

John Paul II on the Right to Citizenship

A reader left a link to Javier Hervada's The Principles of the Social Doctrine of the Church in the combox. It's been a while since I've looked at the essay. Professor Hervada is probably a good man (indeed I owe him for an act of generosity), and I may have even recommended his introduction on this blog at some point, but I wanted to call attention to one part which is probably problematic:

6. THE NATURAL RIGHTS OF THE HUMAN PERSON. One characteristic of the human person is self-mastery. This dominion has two aspects. First, control by reason and will over the other faculties makes a person's acts free and responsible; second, his being and the natural ends proper to it entitle the person to rights and liberties, as well as to duties, in his relations with others. These rights (and duties) a-e called natural rights (or fundamental rights--an expression much used by John XXIII) or inalienable rights of the human person (as John Paul II often calls them).

Usually these rights are stated in general terms; it then belongs to the interpreter to explain them more precisely. The main fundamental rights are as follows (MM 11-27; UN--Address of John Paul II to the 36th General Assembly of the United Nations, Oct. 2. 1979):


...

18) the right to citizenship.

So Professor Hervada is not offering his own opinion or giving his own synthesis of liberalism with CST - rather, he is citing a speech given by Pope John Paul II. Does Pope John Paul II endorse universal democracy as the most just form of government as well? I would argue that this opinion goes against an Aristotelian-Thomistic political theology, and probably against the dominant Catholic theological opinion before the 20th century.

Given Professor Hervada's institutional affiliation one would expect that he not be critical of the opinion of a Roman pontiff. But there is something to be said about ultramontanism being an obstacle to the reforming of the Church.

(Is there a basis for the charges given by certain groups and personages against John Paul II?)

I was reminded how weak our current conception of citizenship is because a friend mentioned that he had passed the citizenship test not too long ago - a test based merely on "knowledge" rather than on demonstrated virtue.

The concept of dominion is used as a theoretical foundation for rights. Something I'll have to remember when reviewing his book on rights.

CST and the United States

Catholic intellectuals and their quest to show how CST transcends the platform of both major political parties in the United States:
The Idol of Liberty
The Role of Government and the Battle over Catholic Social Teaching
The Unity of the Catholic Moral Vision

Let's get beyond the lecturing and start building some real community. Appeals to solidarity and the common good are rather useless if there is very little community to begin with; rather it is a mass aggregate of individuals who are strangers to one another. If they really got to know one another, you might be surprised how many divisions might appear, and while this may not be "ideal," it would be a necessary corrective, much to the dismay of those who live on sentimentalism.

William Carroll on Evolution

Exploring evolution at the Rimini Meeting (via OP website)

Too Little, Too Late?

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

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

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

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

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

An allusion to a "remnant" Church?

Maybe, maybe not?

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

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

Pope explains how doubt was created in Judas


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

Feast of St. Augustine of Hippo, 28 August

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

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

The extended trailer for Restless Heart:


A review of the movie.

Byzantine, Texas: The explosive growth of Orthodoxy in Guatemala

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

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

Can we define what we mean by modernity, please?

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

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

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

Metropolitan Hilarion in town?

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

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

Fort Ross 2012 Bicentennial
Diocese of the West

From February: An Interview with Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev





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

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

Clarifications on the Political Common Good

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Purpose of Education: A Catholic Primer by Stratford Caldecott

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

His Beauty in the Word is published by Angelico Press.