Aquinas and Hobbes on Law

Hobbes and Aquinas differed not only concerning human nature but also concerning the nature of law. https://t.co/dn50vSK0xZ pic.twitter.com/n8EX6nabig

— Public Discourse (@PublicDiscourse) September 11, 2020

The Public Discourse

Literacy in the Kingdom of Judah

Study confirms widespread literacy in biblical-period kingdom of Judah https://t.co/xfq0HmWPKN. #History

— Kathleen O'Neal Gear (@GearBooks) September 11, 2020

50th Anniversary

Russian Church’s Patriarchal Parishes in North America Celebrate 50th Anniversary of Founding https://t.co/2b0uioZt9w pic.twitter.com/iGtc5aqouC

— Russian Faith (@Russian_Faith) September 11, 2020

Fr. Peter Heers

LIST OF LINKS to our Online Work
Thanks to St Kosmas Orthodox Christian Education Association for their fervent support of our work. They have a page with a full list of links to our work! Great site! Scroll down for all the links. And share! https://t.co/JI9diCqO2z

— Orthodox Ethos (@frpeterheers) September 11, 2020

Interview with Fr. Alexander Laschuk

True Light – A Podcast by the Sheptytsky Institute

Season 3, episode 1 - From Vision into Action - A New Director at MASI

Landon Coleman interviews Fr. Alexander Laschuk. Fr. Alex is the new interim executive director of MASI.https://t.co/E3isHZEWqy#easternchristianpodcast pic.twitter.com/cj39oAdypg

— Sheptytsky Institute (@Sheptytsky) September 11, 2020

I'm afraid people are not coming back to churchhttps://t.co/0Yq1b2bpi0

True Light – A Podcast by the Sheptytsky Institute
Season 3, Episode 1

Landon Coleman interviews Fr. Alexander Laschuk (@byzkanonist)#easternchristianity #catholicpodcast

— Sheptytsky Institute (@Sheptytsky) September 11, 2020

St. Savas Cathedral

Have you seen our episode on the Basement of St. Savas Cathedral? if you haven't here's the link! This was our first episode and we are looking forward to many more! May St. Savas be with us all! https://t.co/TMGcjwK9MF pic.twitter.com/ZBZOF7A3Wf

— Trisagionfilms (@TrisagionFilms) September 10, 2020

"Good Luck"

Pastors need to internalize the challenge: we cannot simply resume, we must renew https://t.co/7qa8rakgaT

— La Croix Int. (@LaCroixInt) September 9, 2020

Bissera Pentcheva Interview with AFR

Live from Ancient Faith https://t.co/BE0BITG0C3

— Ancient Faith (@ancientfaith) September 10, 2020

More on Latin Integralism

"As Catholics, let’s have the courage to stand not merely for individual choice or for an ephemeral “neutrality”, but for a full-fledged vision of what is really good for individuals and society." – By @niall_gooch https://t.co/ON8ytbND8y

— Catholic Herald (@CatholicHerald) September 8, 2020

An Abuse of the Term "Child of God"

We are made children of God through Christian initiation, and we have no grounds for using that term of anyone who has not been initiated into Christ. To use it to refer to any human being regardless of whether they have been incorporated into Christ is to deviate from the normative usage set by the apostles and Scripture.

Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus commands us to love our enemies. It is a Christian conviction that all of that evil is not telling the deepest truth about the enemy.

The deepest truth is that he or she is a child of God, and thus worthy of our love.https://t.co/gl9pSxVWfT pic.twitter.com/JoA3jpXsh9

— Bishop Robert Barron (@BishopBarron) September 10, 2020

Vatican II as a Ressourcement Project

CWR: A Deeper Context: Overlooked book provides insight into Vatican II debates by Conor Dugan Why I think there is no better book to help put the Council in context than Robert Royal’s tour-de-force A Deeper Vision: The Catholic Intellectual Tradition in the Twentieth Century.

Dugan writes:

But, now, with Vatican II in the dock, Royal’s book takes on increased importance. He helps put the Council in context and to see the trends that were already at work in the Church prior to the Council and that continued after it closed. In particular, his highlighting of the emphasis on nuptial mysticism—a “theme” that “had long existed in the tradition”—prior to the Council is a key insight. His description of the advances—and hiccups—in biblical studies is another. Still another insight is that pre-Conciliar Catholicism was much more disparate than many want to admit. And many of the Conciliar themes were simply the fleshing out of work that predated the Council. Certainly, after reading Royal’s careful study of 20th century Catholicism, one could not claim that “what the Council produced was not remotely in continuity with the past” or that after the Council there was not “the faintest desire to carry on the Catholic religion as existed before,” as one recent commentator on the Vatican II debates recently put it.

Indeed, to accept the thesis that the Council should be rejected requires a rejection not just of the Council itself, but the work of figures such as Guardini, Chenu, Congar, de Lubac, Ratzinger, and Balthasar. Many traditionalists seem to be fine with this move but they should be clear that they are not asking simply for the Council to be declared anathema but much (or most?) of the 20th century Catholic intellectual tradition to be declared anathema as well. This raises the question of to which date the clock should be reset. 1950? 1940? 1910? Earlier?

I don't have a problem with Vatican II being understood primarily as a Ressourcement project of renewal or reform, a project nonetheless affected by other intellectual and "spiritual" trends within the Patriarchate of Rome. But it was a project necessary not for the Church Universal, only the Patriarchate of Rome.

Fr. Robert Imbelli on Vatican II

CWR Dispatch: Christ at the center of the Council by George Weigel
Why has the great promise of Vatican II been frustrated so often?

According to Weigel:

In “No Decapitated Body,” a bracing essay published In the current issue of Nova et Vetera, Father Imbelli develops his argument for a more radically Christ-centered Church, sheds light on a host of current Catholic controversies and concerns, and does so with an authorial calm that nonetheless conveys his passion for Christ and the Gospel. Why has the great promise of Vatican II been frustrated so often? In a word, according to Father Imbelli, because of apostasy: a drastic dissolution of the Christ-centeredness that theology sought to recover in the first half of the 20th century and that the Council affirmed. The greatest of Vatican II’s documents, the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, begins, Imbelli reminds us, with the ringing affirmation, “Christ is the light of the nations.” And the entire Council, he suggests, must be interpreted through the prism of that confession of faith – “In many ways, the Council’s achievement could be read as a prolonged meditation upon the meaning and implications of Saint’s Paul’s confession – ‘For no other foundation can anyone lay that that which has been laid: Jesus Christ’ (1 Cor. 3:11).”

Is there a problem with such a simplistic explanation of the reasons for the council and what happened afterwards? What of Latin churches were Christ is the focus, even if the message is distorted? Imbelli seems to recognize that there are deeper problems with Latin ecclesial culture and praxis:

Father Imbelli explores how this forgetting of Christ shows up in various ways: in liturgy that does not begin from the premise that “the prime agent of the celebration [is] the Head of the Body,” on whom every sacramental act is totally dependent; in a dissecting room approach to the Bible and to preaching that does not convey the living presence of the one who is “the Word” (John 1:1) in the divinely-inspired Word of God; in attempts to set “doctrine” against “pastoral practice.” Certain voices in the Church incorrectly blame all of this on Vatican II. Yet it was the Council that taught that Jesus Christ is the one who acts in Baptism, the Eucharist, and the other sacraments, and it was the Council that insisted on the reality of God’s self-revelation in Scripture. As for the juxtaposition of the “doctrinal” and the “pastoral,” or “truth and mercy,” well, as Father Imbelli reminds us, the Synod of 1985 taught that “it is not licit to separate the pastoral character [of Vatican II] from the doctrinal vigor of the documents.”

The question remains, what is to be done if even a Latin synod could not reform the patriarchate? How many more years do Latins have to wait for the fruits of the council to appear?

Douglas Farrow on Bishop Schneider's and Archbishop Viganò's Objections Regarding Vatican II

Dethroning Christ? The error at the root of the Viganò controversy (Part I)

Part 2

Farrow seems to admit this much:

Now, surely there is nothing wrong with a document promulgated in a political context being on its way to a political rather than an evangelical end, so long as that end is understood to be proximate rather than ultimate. There’s the rub, however. For the Abu Dhabi Declaration seems to be evangelically deficient in a way no political aim can justify. Its call to “come together in the vast space of spiritual, human and shared social values,” and to do so in such as way as to avoid “unproductive discussions,” might reasonably be taken to rule out the very thing Paul was doing on Mars Hill!

But Farrow cannot get beyond the parameters set by Latin ecclesiology, taken by Latins to be dogma:

When we keep this in mind, we can see more easily that to give the answer we ought to give, the answer we must give if we do not intend to be schismatic – the answer that Vatican II was indeed an authentic ecumenical council, engaged in the work of God and of the magisterium of the Church under God – is not to commit ourselves to the untenable notion that its fathers were uniformly faithful or that its documents, despite the flaws of their authors, were themselves essentially flawless.

As a Latin he must accept the claim by Rome that Vatican II is an ecumenical council. Because he must accept that, he must uphold the hermeneutic of continuity, much as Benedict XVI. Part 2 is better in so far as he responds to certain misconceptions (held by some Latin integralists and Latin traditionalists) regarding nature of the Kingship of Christ.

Historicizing Vatican II by Roberto Pertici

One cannot focus just on those proximate years right before Vatican II, if one is going to examine the historical causes of Vatican II. One must look at how the papacy developed in the second millenium and how it reoriented itself after it loss the papal states, and how it dealt with European polities after the loss of Western Christendom. The weakness of the patriarchate of Rome, as witnessed in the life of its churches and its failures in directing secular European polities, must be understood in lack of proper ordering, for which we can find evidence in Church history, Latin theology or dogma, and Roman canon law. The crisis of the patriarchate of Rome was not a sudden development that happened after Vatican II, and it has a longer history that goes back to before Pope Pius X.

Magister: Historicizing Vatican Council II. Here’s How the World of Those Years Influenced the Church

Essays by Fr. Vincent McNabb

NLM

A Dedication to Bessarion

And you can hear a hymn that Cretan cleric, composer, and scribe John Plousiadenos dedicated to Bessarion (in its acrostic) as edited by Ioannis Arvanitis and sung by @cappellaromana here: https://t.co/Mobbjm07lr https://t.co/9PjuuOawcz

— Alexander Lingas (@ALLingas) September 8, 2020

Meeting of the Vladimir Icon of the Theotokos

Nativity of the Theotokos

Our friend and board member Amy Hogg @AmyHogg20191493 again leads the Psaltic Sisters in a virtual choir project for the feast of the Nativity of the Theotokos. Congratulations and lovely work, everybody! Joyous feast!
https://t.co/bKnKkE4jRr via @YouTube

— S. John Dam. Soc. (@StJohnDamSoc) September 8, 2020

On September 8th we celebrate the birth of our mother the Theotokos! It is also our very own father Panayiotis name day. His grandfather dedicated him to the nativity of the theotokos at his baptism. May Christ bless his work for many years to come!https://t.co/mWK7WLi7L0

— Trisagionfilms (@TrisagionFilms) September 8, 2020

NLM

Does the Theotokos Experience Pain in Heaven?

Mary, the Mother who cared for Jesus, cares with maternal affection and pain also for this wounded world.

— Pope Francis (@Pontifex) September 8, 2020

Spinning the New Directory for Catechesis

Check out the second episode of our podcast, Echoing Faith Today, in which @BishopBarron joins host Dr. Jem Sullivan for an enriching discussion of the new Directory for Catechesis, emphasizing the link between Revelation and evangelization! https://t.co/FJXZ0ONGZT

— CatholicU Theology and Religious Studies (@CUATheology) September 6, 2020

If such an essential connection between kerygma and catechesis needed to be emphasized again, even though many were writing about it before Vatican II and after, then how is the patriarchate of Rome or the Roman Curia not just spinning its wheels?