Saturday, April 25, 2020
Trolling Liberals
Some thoughts on abuse of power, addressed to my fellow classical liberals https://t.co/dGbtsxRiN2— Adrian Vermeule (@Vermeullarmine) April 25, 2020
Having written about one challenge that integralists face, I find today that Adrian Vermeule posted the following over at MOJ: Abuses of Power. He gives a list of abuses of concern, and ends with "Worst of all, the very grave abuse of state power identified by a defender of true liberty," citing Pope Leo XIII's Libertas:
Those who are in authority owe it to the commonwealth not only to provide for its external well-being and the conveniences of life, but still more to consult the welfare of mens’ souls in the wisdom of their legislation. But, for the increase of such benefits, nothing more suitable can be conceived than the laws which have God for their author; and, therefore, they who in their government of the State take no account of these laws abuse political power by causing it to deviate from its proper end and from what nature itself prescribes.
Of course those who are secular or anti-Christian would not accept that this is an abuse, nor is it the case that the imposition of a Catholic integralist state by force alone will solve this last abuse or any of the others. Changing the law through raw power is not sufficient. Is Vermeule trolling classical liberals, or is this just an inside joke, if Vermeule knows that serious classical liberals aren't paying attention to what he writes at MOJ?
It is one thing to use rhetoric or even dialectic to discredit intellectuals who are threats to a good political or social order. But I doubt a post like Vermeule's is going to convince someone to convert to Christianity or make Latin integralism more appealing to non-Christians.
There is also the theological issue of using an individual text of a pope of Rome as sufficiently authoritative in itself, but I will write more about that in a different post.
As for this abuse:
* The abuse of power by state and local governments, especially when abusively resisting attempts by the federal government to prevent or remedy abuses;
Liberals who are nationalists with respect to the powers of the Federal Government may agree that this is an abuse. Are there any liberals, other than libertarians and paleolibertarians, who still believe in states rights? Given what I have read of Vermeule's writings on the Constitution, I don't think he accepts the Constitution as it was ratified.
Related:
Pope Leo XIII, Sapientiae Christianae
Against the New Integralists by Raphael Fernandes
NOR: Dungeons and Dragons and Jurisprudence By Kevin D. Williamson
Fr. Alexander Men on Pascha
Pravmir: The Essential Meaning of the Paschal Feast by Archpriest Alexander Men
LSN on That Survey
Here LifeSite's report on the leaked letter (by @RorateCaeli) of the CDF concerning the Traditional Latin Mass, with responses from several good sources (among them Dr. Kwasniewski, Mr Nardi), some of whom are concerned, and some of whom are not concerned:https://t.co/GynMCIwL4Z— Maike Hickson (@HicksonMaike) April 24, 2020
LSN
Coercive Authority
In which @thomaspink1 discusses the profound differences between the Catholic view of coercive authority (as represented for example by Suárez), and modern theories such as that of Hobbes. https://t.co/upw3Pmp0VV
— Pater Edmund (@sancrucensis) April 25, 2020
More on the Common Good
Me: “Authority is held in trust for and exercised on behalf of the community ... not for the benefit of individuals taken one by one.”
— Adrian Vermeule (@Vermeullarmine) April 25, 2020
Patheos blogger, just making stuff up: Vermeule argues for aggregative utilitarianism! https://t.co/GYBvijIsMd
“A society constituted by persons who love their private good above the common good, or who identify the common good with the private good, is a society not of free men, but of tyrants.” — @ccpecknold
— Sohrab Ahmari (@SohrabAhmari) April 25, 2020
Exactly. A host of mini-tyrants is still a tyranny. https://t.co/Vq3Zwe2hs6
Friday, April 24, 2020
L’Islam mis à nu par les siens: Anthologie d’auteurs arabophones post 2001, edited by Maurice Saliba
Riposte Laïque
CWR: Islam Up Close by William Kilpatrick
A new book containing essays by 46 former Muslims joins the ranks of recent works revealing Islam from the inside.
Maurice Saliba
Maurice Saliba : « Qu’ont fait les responsables musulmans pour voir émerger un jour un « islam des lumières ? » [Interview]
Critique de « l’islam mis à nu par les siens » dans « Nous sommes partout »
CWR: Islam Up Close by William Kilpatrick
A new book containing essays by 46 former Muslims joins the ranks of recent works revealing Islam from the inside.
Maurice Saliba
Maurice Saliba : « Qu’ont fait les responsables musulmans pour voir émerger un jour un « islam des lumières ? » [Interview]
Critique de « l’islam mis à nu par les siens » dans « Nous sommes partout »
Thursday, April 23, 2020
The 1955 Reform of Palm Sunday
NLM
First Mr. DiPippo begins with a claim about the 1955 Holy Week reform:
As the Church teaches, or the patriarchate of Rome?
This divorce communicates the Protestant idea that the Last Supper, and the rite which Christ instituted thereby, were merely a commemoration of the Sacrifice of the Cross, rather than the anticipation of the Sacrifice and its perpetuation in time, as the Church believes and teaches. I then explained how the post-Conciliar reform undid this change in some respects.
The rest is useful information, especially the comparison of the Roman rite with other rites with respect to Palm Sunday, and it is probably the case that the texts of the 1955 reform are deficient in comparison with what preceded them.
Renewed Attention to the CDK-Maritain Debate
First Things: False Notions of the Common Good by C. C. Pecknold
But what does an explicit ordination to God require? Not necessarily a version of the Catholic state as the integralists would advocate. Not necessarily the state at all.
Thus De Koninck’s most powerful claim is that human dignity can only be truly defended by embracing the primacy of the common good “expressly ordered to God.” Without an “explicit and public ordination” to God, our debates about the common will devolve into mere debates between tyrants, and “society degenerates into a state which is frozen and closed in upon itself.”
But what does an explicit ordination to God require? Not necessarily a version of the Catholic state as the integralists would advocate. Not necessarily the state at all.
What Checks Against Absolutism?
The integralist understanding of authority is anti-liberal, but it is also against modern state-absolutism and totalitarianism. This is true not only of contemporary integralists, but has been true throughout integralist history.
— Pater Edmund (@sancrucensis) April 22, 2020
The integralist understanding of authority is anti-liberal, but it is also against modern state-absolutism and totalitarianism. This is true not only of contemporary integralists, but has been true throughout integralist history.
Integralists can say that they are opposed to modern state-absolutism and totalitarianism, but what safeguards would they advocate? What forms of resistance by the Church and citizens (or subjects) are possible, and how are they to be reconciled with integralist claims regarding authority? Where is their development of "just resistance theory"? And to which Latin theory of the origin of authority do they subscribe?
Wednesday, April 22, 2020
James M. Patterson on Roman Catholic Integralism
After Republican Virtue
Too much reliance on Tocqueville for a description and explanation of republican virtues in early America in this essay? But typical of a certain kind of American conservative.
Or tldr?
Too much reliance on Tocqueville for a description and explanation of republican virtues in early America in this essay? But typical of a certain kind of American conservative.
Or tldr?
In the end, this is all integralism really is. It is an internet aesthetic of mostly young men alienated from the public life and consumed with the libido dominandi. In the absence of those institutions that had once made America a place of deep faith and committed to liberty, these young men have had recourse to the Internet and attach themselves to the sublime historical experience of sacramental kingship, Iberian Falangism, or straight-up fascism supported by the general ideas purveyed by Vermeule and the like. The only alternative is for the Church to train and appoint new bishops committed to participating in public life with their congregations and raising them up in the republican virtue that so defined American Catholicism.The author is wrong to identify some of friendship or social virtue as "republican virtue." Republican virtue will include friendship and the social virtues, but it is more than those two, and his example of parish life doesn't even come close to giving a full illustration of what republican virtue involves and requires. He is correct to criticze the Latin integralists but he is ignorant of his own precarious situation vis-a-vis the state.
Repeating a Latin Error
Which is based on ignoring the plain sense of scripture.
CWR Dispatch: Rediscovering baptism in plague time by George Weigel
As the Catholic Church has understood it for two millennia, baptism is far, far more than a welcoming ritual: baptism effects a fundamental change in who we are, what we can “see,” and what we must do.
(also published at First Things)
Being reborn by water is not the same as being reborn by the Holy Spirit - there are two distinct actions required, the latter being the laying on of hands by the Apostles (or their successors), which act was subsequently replaced by the anointing of oil (though some rites still have the laying upon of hands).
This is just a poor attempt at a theological justification for the continued separation of Baptism and Confirmation, made necessary by the Latin practice of reserving Confirmation to the bishop. Latins should be afraid to ask the question of what is the effect of their infant neophytes not receiving the gift of the Holy Spirit later in life, if ever. Thus there is a psycholigical need to pretend that the Holy Spirit is given at Baptism, even if this is not warranted by Apostolic practice or the Apostolic understanding of our participation in the Mystery of Christ.
CWR Dispatch: Rediscovering baptism in plague time by George Weigel
As the Catholic Church has understood it for two millennia, baptism is far, far more than a welcoming ritual: baptism effects a fundamental change in who we are, what we can “see,” and what we must do.
(also published at First Things)
As the Catholic Church has understood it for two millennia, baptism is far, far more than a welcoming ritual: baptism effects a fundamental change in who we are, what we can “see,” and what we must do.
Being born again by water and the Holy Spirit in baptism, we become far more than [fill in the name] of a certain family, address, and nationality. We become living cells in the Mystical Body of Christ: members of the New Israel, the beloved community of the New Covenant, destined for eternal life at the Throne of Grace where the saints celebrate what the Book of Revelation calls the Wedding Feast of the Lamb in the New Jerusalem (Revelation 19:7, 21:2). We become the people in whom humanity’s greatest hopes, incapable of fulfillment by our own devices, will be realized.
Being reborn by water is not the same as being reborn by the Holy Spirit - there are two distinct actions required, the latter being the laying on of hands by the Apostles (or their successors), which act was subsequently replaced by the anointing of oil (though some rites still have the laying upon of hands).
This is just a poor attempt at a theological justification for the continued separation of Baptism and Confirmation, made necessary by the Latin practice of reserving Confirmation to the bishop. Latins should be afraid to ask the question of what is the effect of their infant neophytes not receiving the gift of the Holy Spirit later in life, if ever. Thus there is a psycholigical need to pretend that the Holy Spirit is given at Baptism, even if this is not warranted by Apostolic practice or the Apostolic understanding of our participation in the Mystery of Christ.
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