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

James Chastek has something somewhat relevant to my latest post: Objections to the possibility of Thomistic metaphysics.

Some abstracts for papers for the 31st Annual Conference of the Center for Medieval Studies, "The Metaphysics of Aquinas and its Modern Interpreters: Theological and Philosophical Perspectives," are available.

Is John Knasas still the most prominent proponent of existential Thomism?

It is not clear to me that the existential Thomists are so apart from the neo-Thomists (including the Aristotelian Thomists) with regards to their understanding of St. Thomas's metaphysics. But since I am barely a student of metaphysics, this is only a guess. I do not know if Ralph McInerny wrote anything about Maritain on this point of controversy. I do know the existential Thomists and Aristotelian Thomists differ as to whether metaphysics needs physics as a preparation in the order of learning. (Fr. Ashley's paper.) It has been a while since I took that undergraduate course in metaphysics, which was with an existential Thomist. It seems to me that for the class, we were simply taking it for granted that God existed because we were all believing Catholics. The act of faith replaced proof of God's existence. I'll have to look again at how Gilson, Maritain, and Knasas deal with this point.

Being and Some Twentieth-Century Thomists

John Knasas on Thomist Metaphysics: Past, Present and Future

Alasdair MacIntyre: On Having Survived Academic Moral Philosophy

Parts 2, 3, 4

Back to Arkes

Kant the Bogey Man: "I would simply claim, in a comparable way, that I’m drawing upon parts of Kant’s teaching that explain better than anything else the properties of our moral judgments."
Mr. Arkes uses Kant to explain moral judgments about racial discrimination and racial preferences.

When we make laws, we sweep away the private preferences of people, and impose a public rule made binding on everyone. Hence the connection between the logic of morals and the logic of law: when we legislate for other people, we need to say something more than, “most of us here think this is desirable,” or “most of us have strong ‘feelings’ that this is the just thing to do.” We would need rather to establish that we are acting on the basis of propositions that would hold their validity for everyone, even if not everyone recognizes why they happen to be true. And that is what we do when we seek to trace our judgments back to anchoring “first principles” as Thomas Reid understood them: propositions that were true of necessity. John Marshall and Alexander Hamilton referred in this way to the “axioms” of our judgment, meaning essentially the same thing. And yet O’Brien writes as though it were odd or eccentric—or on the face of things implausible—to say that our judgments find their firmest ground when they are anchored in propositions of that kind, which cannot be denied without falling into contradiction.

Comments: Arkes is trying to using Kantian (or liberal) reasons to justify a position on racial discrmination/racial preferences? I had forgotten if he is considered a proponent of the NNLT. Is he a liberal in his presuppositions, like John Finnis?

From an Aristotelian pov - moral science is helpful for lawmakers in understanding how human laws are derived from first principles. It is the task of the philosopher (or theologian) to supply the argumentation. (See William Wallace's The Role of Demonstration in Moral Theology.) The acquisition of moral science is a perfection for those who are to rule, since it is better than relying upon opinions about customs and laws. (This suffices for those who only need to obey in order to act rightly.) Moral science provides the answer to those seeking the ratio for particular precepts or laws.

The NNL theorists attempt to reason out rationale for moral precepts, but from different starting points. I don't know if anyone has ever examined the logic of their arguments to determine if they are valid. I suspect that the arguments are valid, just not sound.

On to Kozinski's piece

The Good, the Right, and Theology by Thaddeus J. Kozinski

I did find this difficult to read -- if his book is like this I may have to reconsider purchasing it. Typical of postmodern American English theological discourse? Does it share something in common with analytic philosophy in this respect? Is it merely style and diction or something more? I had to concentrate in my reading.

The inseparability of faith and reason, in both theory and practice, is one of the main points of Benedict XVI’s encyclical teachings. We can debate the political and philosophical ramifications of the affirmation that we are made in the image of God, that God loves us, and that He commands us to “be perfect as His father in heaven is perfect”; however, in the end, we either affirm these truths or we do not, based upon whether we have or have not encountered the living Christ, caritas in veritate, or perhaps just encountered those Christians who have. So, if human acts are a matter of experience, choice, and grace—not just logic, evidence, and demonstration, whether Aristotelian-eudaimonistic or Kantian-deontological in mode—then any debate about the metaphysical, epistemic, and rhetorical aspects of ethics must invite theology as an interlocutor. And this neglect of theology is the reason that the debate between Arkes and O’Brien is, as it stands, irresolvable.

Would an Aristotelian ethics deny that human acts involve experience (which builds up prudence) or choice? (Aristotle may not talk about voluntas but he does talk about rational appetite and choice.) The key here is grace. If we are oriented to a good that we cannot attain on our own but need of God's grace, then it is not theology that we need first of all, but Divine Revelation and the sacraments. (The witness of the Church in her life in this world.)

The problem is that they are both right. O’Brien is correct that arguments about and declarations of principled moral prescriptions and proscriptions, even rigorous and true ones, cannot ensure a public commitment to and embodiment of Christian or even humanistic values in our post-Enlightenment, neo-pagan, pluralistic political culture. Moral principles are experiential, cultural, and historical in their genealogy and in the subjective apparatus of human recognition. But Arkes is right that we can and must transcend these contingencies to see and act on principles in an absolute, universal, and eternal way. In other words, although reason is tradition-dependent (pace Kant), it is also tradition-transcendent (cum Kant). Somehow we must hold these together, and I don’t think we can outside of a theological narrative and discourse.

In other words, paideia is not accomplished through [academic] discussions of moral questions. One generation forms the next, both within the family and the community as a whole.

"But Arkes is right that we can and must transcend these contingencies to see and act on principles in an absolute, universal, and eternal way." What does this mean? Arkes explains that positive law cannot be based on emotion or ingrained preference, but must be anchored to first principles.

After reading the rest, I find that I don't have much about which to quibble. (Dangling prepositions?) Or do I? I still have to reconsider what MacIntyre says about the relationship between tradition and rationality.

Grisez on the Good of Religion

My Finnis books are not handy, so I will use Germain Grisez's treatment of religion* as a reference for the New Natural Law Theory:

[1] "We experience sin and alienation from God; the goods are the peace and friendship with God which are the concern of all true religion."

[2] "Religion is a great blessing, for nothing in life is more important than liberation from sin and friendship with God. However, harmony with God should not be confused with God himself nor with the divine life in which Christians share by adoption. The human good of religion—that harmony with God which perfects human persons as human—is only one human good alongside others (see GS 11). St. Thomas Aquinas makes this point by distinguishing the virtue of religion from the theological virtues. The former, concerned with specifically religious acts, such as prayer and sacrifice, does not bear upon God himself as the latter do (cf. S.t., 2–2, q. 81, a. 5)."

[3] Finally, in his summary of the seven basic categories of human goods Grisez writes:
"(4) religion or holiness, which is harmony with God, found in the agreement of human individual and communal free choices with God’s will."

Friendship with God is charity, and should not be confused with the virtue of religion. It is not clear to me that Grisez does not muddle the two in [1], as he says that peace and friendshipw ith God are the concern of all true religion. In [2] the differentiation is clearer.

In his discussion of religion and its act, devotion, Aquinas seems to be saying that there cannot be the virtue of religion without charity, since religion is concerned with the means to the end which is the object of charity, God Himself. In the response to the first objection, he says:

The power or virtue whose action deals with an end, moves by its command the power or virtue whose action deals with matters directed to that end. Now the theological virtues, faith, hope and charity have an act in reference to God as their proper object: wherefore, by their command, they cause the act of religion, which performs certain deeds directed to God: and so Augustine says that God is worshiped by faith, hope and charity.

Can one will something to God as an end without first loving Him? Can there be the act of religion without the virtue of charity? It seems not: charity is the proximate cause of devotion [religion]. How can someone will something as a means to an end without his will first being referred to the end? Without willing the end, how can the means be a means?

Is religion, then an infused virtue, and not an acquired one? It is apparent that there must be an infused virtue of religion that corresponds to the theological virtue of charity.** But is there a natural, acquired virtue of religion matching the natural love of God? Here we enter into the thicket of controversy: the relationship between the natural order and the supernatural order and the consequences of the Fall and effects of original sin.

I tend to think that there is not an acquired virtue of religion after people attain the use of reason. Either they accept God's grace or they do not.

Germain is clearly doing moral theology in his books. But if he follows Aquinas (or this understanding of Aquinas) and implicitly admits in his account of natural law that religion is thus tied to charity, then its usefulness ends. What is needed for non-believers beyond this point, as I said earlier, is not more discourse about the precepts of the natural law, but grace and Christ.

I should compare this with what Finnis writes about the good of religion...

I note that a special issue of the American Journal of Jurisprudence was devoted to Grisez on the question of human fulfillment, and iirc, some of the contributions examined his treatment of religion.


On religion as "belief system" or "worldview":
In a comment to a previous post from today JBS gives a definition of religion:

Religion - that set of rules by which I know I'm ok...and you're not.

This definition allows for many belief-systems not normally thought-of as 'religious' to function, allowing for everyone to have a religion, apart from a real relationship with God.

It seems that here religion is synonymous with belief system or world view. Everyone has a belief system or worldview, which is a mixture of knowledge and set of beliefs about reality. But it is not the same as religion as it is defined by Grisez or Aquinas. People act in accordance with certain first principles, but these first principles may not include God.

What about the pagans and their beliefs and attitudes? Is God or are the gods superior to us? Hence we must give them the proper respect and may even need to placate their anger. Or are they merely used by us? That is, they are servants of our happiness. Whom must we please? Ourselves or the gods?

If the virtue of religion is tied to the love of God, then what motivates those who do not love God but are "imperfect" to perform certain acts of religion? The fear of punishment or the promise of reward (or a certain good of reason), which can be harmonized with the love of self. One does not need the love of God to fear punishment, etc. Similarly, non-Christians do not need charity in order to perform the rituals that they have learned from their elders. Just because certain acts associated with a virtue are being done does not imply that this virtue is present in the agent.

We can use Aquinas's treatment of the Old Law as a model for understanding non-Christian religions*** before the coming of Christ and relate their proximity to the truth through the supposition of a Primitive Revelation. See Journet's The Meaning of Grace for his account of grace before the Incarnation and "God in Search of Man" by Patrick Beeman for more about Wilhelm Schmidt.

Some thoughts of my own on the topic of authority and consent of the governed...

Is withdrawing consent the same as disobedience? Is consent identical to designation, so that withdraw of consent is the removal of authority? Even if one is a good ruler does that by itself give him the right to rule?

In disobeying one may not necessarily be designating one's self as the ruler, though in effect that is what he is doing. Can there be disobedience without recognition that obedience is owed?

One is not guilty of disobedience if a sin is enjoined.  

There is a difference between designating another ruler as opposed to designating one's self, in effect, through disobedience. One should follow the law in the changing of rulers but I can imagine that if there is a grave threat to the common good, this law may be ignored. What if the process for selecting the ruler is itself unjust? For example, hereditary succession seems to violate distributive justice, even if it has a long history and is found in many cultures.

Law is ordered to the common good, but following the law is not always identical with the common good? Obeying the law is a component of the common good, as can be submission to an unjust ruler. But in replacing an unjust ruler with a just ruler, even if one is not following the established custom in doing so, might it not be that one is obeying a "higher" law?
 Is a ruler, once he becomes a ruler, above judgment? Who can judge whether he is acting in accordance with his office or if he has exceeded it? If all powers related to the common good reside in the community as a whole before they are delegated to one or some, can those powers be recovered by the community? Does it matter whether they are virtuous or not?

Has someone resisting an unjust ruler not already made a judgment about the ruler? It may not be binding on the public; is private judgment sufficient to ground a claim of legitimate self-defense? Or must he be acting in some public capacity, even if he is acting as lone individual? (Acting as a lone individual is not the same as acting as a private individual.)

(The origin of government.)

Should it be presumed that one is unqualified to rule until he qualifies himself (military service + property + family)? Or should one be reckoned qualified until it is established that he is vicious? The former qualifications are rather low, since the appearance of virtue, such that it garners the trust and respect of others, is sufficient, and may be compatible with the latter stance.

There is also the pragmatic question of effectiveness -- even if a ruler is virtuous and right, if the people do not agree to his being the ruler, how can he rule except with the use of force? What if he does not have sufficient force?

RJ Snell on the New Natural Law Theory

Anamnesis has a symposium on Natural Law:
God, Religion, and the New Natural Law by R. J. Snell and The Good, the Right, and Theology by Thaddeus J. Kozinski.

This post will have my comments on Mr. Snell's essay. Mr. Kozinski's essay I leave to another post.

I find the essay on othe NNLT too short and uninformative. NNLT as an account of Natural Law solely from the perspective of the moral agent, prescinding from metaphysical or theological considerations? I don't have a problem with that and I think the debate about whether natural law has a metaphysical basis or is tied to metaphysics because of the "good" has largely been a pointless one. It depends on the science in which the definition of natural law is being used. (Dr. Berquist gave me this nugget.)

I think the more traditional Thomists would hold that the goods which are assumed in ethics and can be "proven" only through dialectic can be demonstrated in metaphysics.
However, the Natural Law as considered within ethics would only be under the aspect of the first principle(s) of practical reason and what can be elaborated from them?

NNL correctly claims religion as a good knowable to reason, but reason claims religion as a good from within the mode of natural or proportionate reason—religion known according to the mode of the knower. So reason can indicate the desirability of knowing God from the standpoint of reason, and, further, reason also tells us the desirability and goodness of knowing God in a mode transcending our proportionate nature. Aquinas, for instance, is able to argue that beatitude or union with God is our complete happiness and ultimate end, just as he’s able to argue that we cannot attain beatitude without a relationship with God transcending our causal power.

Thus, natural law can tell us that (1) union with God is our final end, and (2) that attainment of this final end transcends what is proportionate to us. We can reasonably distinguish our natural desire to have religion from our desire to have union with God. Our apprehension of the good of religion is a wholly natural desire expressed in our dynamism to know all things; we can, by our own power, seek to know everything about everything including knowledge of God insofar as God is knowable by reason. This desire is human, proportionate, and natural.

Natural law is not identical to human reason itself; human reason can tell us something about God and our orientation to Him. But our natural desire to have "religion" (whatever that may mean in NNLT) is not the same as the natural love of God, or God as our ultimate end. Religion is not merely knowing about God. So what happened to the natural love of God? This is the wound that is forgotten in "purely natural" accounts of the natural law or attempts to explicate a natural morality or comprehensive philosophical ethics. So in that respect, NNL theorists such as Mr. Snell do overlook the Fall. (I believe that the same charge could be levelled at Maritain in so far as he has a seemingly contradictory notion of a Christian philosophical ethics.)

Natural reason can only get us so far in deepening our moral understanding. We can demonstrate that we ought to love God above all other things and that we fail to do so for some reason. If NNLT goes beyond elaborating the precepts of morality that we can know by reason alone, then it is no longer philosophy but theology. As a tool used by Christians for dialogue with non-Christians it is useful, but one should be careful with one's ascriptions, predications, or claims about natural morality.

Galileo Was Wrong: Feature Articles

Galileo Was Wrong: Feature Articles: "David Palm on Geocentrism More Trouble in Tom's Bubbles by Robert Sungenis Answer to Lawrence Krauss' Youtube Cosmology by Robert Sunge..."

Related: A recent "discussion" between Mark Shea, Robert Sungenis, and others on geocentrism...

Matthew Levering's latest book is on charity

Patheos Book Club: The Betrayal of Charity
The Sins That Sabotage Divine Love
by Matthew Levering

(via Vox Nova)

Baylor University Press

Rorate Caeli: On the coercive authority of the Church: a response to Fr. Martin Rhonheimer by Dr. Thomas Pink

Robert Sungenis on the recent popes

From Robert Sungenis's review of Jesus of Nazareth:

In the history of the Church it’s not often that a private book is published by a reigning pope, but Vatican II popes apparently started a trend. John XXIII published a couple of books; Paul VI doubled that; John Paul II doubled Paul VI, and now Benedict XVI has almost doubled John Paul II, and in half the time. Prior to Vatican II hardly any pope wrote a private book on theology. I’m not sure of the reason for this trend. I am more concerned with the fact that it tends to foster what E. Michael Jones calls the “I/We dichotomy” which “demeans the papacy by allowing the pope to become a celebrity” for the purpose of “establishing the bounds of permissible discourse according to a political agenda…”1 In other words, what cannot be said officially because of ecclesiastical constraints is said unofficially in order to achieve a desired result. Paul VI apparently saw another side to this potential duplicity when he said: “Is it really right for someone to present himself again and again in that way and allow oneself to be regarded as a star?”2 Perhaps this same temptation also hampered our first pope. It was Pope Peter in Galatians 2:11-21 who, when he decided to engage in some private and unofficial commentary on the Gospel under the name Cephas, eventually shunned his Gentile converts and instead bent over backwards to placate the hostile and unbelieving Jews, upon which he was severely upbraided by Paul for “perverting the Gospel.” This is an ever-present danger for a pope when he is wearing the papal tiara; how much more when he dons a hat with the title “private theologian”? As we shall see, it may be no coincidence that the Jews who made the Cephas-side of Pope Peter stumble in proclaiming the Gospel are eerily similar to the Jews today who are making the Joseph Ratzinger side of Pope Benedict XVI stumble as well. It’s uncanny to see such a resemblance between the first century and the twenty-first century. In light of the dire warnings from our saints; the Fatima message; and Scriptures that speak about the rise of antichrist, who will now win this battle on earth between the popes and the Jews remains to be seen.

Be that as it may, when the pope writes a book that is disseminated all over the world and refers to the author as “Pope Benedict XVI,” and which carries an emblem of the papal seal embossed on the
hardcover edition, is this to be considered an “I” book written by Joseph Ratzinger or a “We” book written by Pope Benedict XVI? As Jones says, this question is especially significant when, for example, the pope addressed the use of condoms and gave the wrong answer in his private book Light of the World: The Pope, The Church and the Signs of the Times. Perhaps for the book Jesus of Nazareth the issue is much simpler because there the pope explicitly states that it “is precisely not a book of the Magisterium. It is not a book that I wrote with my authority as Pope….I very intentionally wanted the book to be, not an act of the Magisterium, but an effort to participate in the scholarly discussion,”3 adding that “everyone is free, then, to contradict me.” Fair enough. But I don’t think the masses see it that way. If the pope says or writes something, it is like Gospel, regardless if he temporarily assumes the alias “Joseph Ratzinger.” Popes need to be very careful with the impressions they create. Benedict XVI must realize he is no longer Joseph Ratzinger and he cannot go back there, at least not without confusing the rest of Catholicism. He is the pope, the vicar of Christ, the head-hauncho, and the whole world hangs on his every word; and that, whether he likes it or not, will remain the case until he dies. The days of Joseph Ratzinger and his speculative theology are over; and it is very dangerous for Benedict XVI to try to revive them. If he is going to speak on an issue as sensitive and important as condoms then he must only speak from his magisterial chair.

The job of each Catholic is to protect the papacy and Joseph Ratzinger is no exception to that mandate. He cannot put the papacy in precarious positions and exploit it for future book sales. The Church has had enough opinions from the prelature. It is time for hard and fast decisions about what the Church is and what it meant by what it officially stated, especially what it “officially” stated at Vatican II. Wouldn’t it be nice if the pope, after 50 years of turmoil created in the wake of Vatican II, actually wrote an official document with the express purpose of clearing up the inordinate amount of ambiguities in the major documents of Vatican II? THAT would be something to get excited about! But another book, like Jesus of Nazareth, which spends 300 pages delving into the finer points of historical criticism and arguing about which of the four Gospel writers got his facts right, we need like we need vinegar on our teeth.

Some have claimed that the book exemplifies the best of the historical-critical method, but Mr. Sungenis disagrees with that assessment.

So can a bishop or pope be a theologian? Some may believe that the task of handing on of the Faith cannot be separated from theology. Others may draw the limit at speculative theology or the use of modern tools of interpretation.  Are we just disagreeing with the results of their "research" or arguments? The unfolding of the truths of the Faith can be called theology. Is this so different from the theology of the Church Fathers or monastic theology? Is the problem, then, with advancing (tentative?) theological opinions, especially in a time of poor catechesis?

Adam Curtis -- The Century Of The Self

Cornelio Fabro

Thomistica.net: Aquinas the Italian

Mark Pagel: How language transformed humanity



Mark Pagel

How was a certain trait generated? Selected for? What advantage did it confer? This time, it's a discussion of human language.

OpStJoseph: Do Dogs Have Souls?
A Talk on the Nature of the Soul

Do Dogs Have Souls: The Nature of the Soul from Province of Saint Joseph on Vimeo.

Edward Feser, On some alleged quantifier shift fallacies, Part III

We’ve been looking at alleged cases of the quantifier shift fallacy committed by prominent philosophers. We’ve seen that Aquinas and Locke can both be acquitted of the charge. Let’s now look at the common accusation that Aristotle commits the fallacy in the Nicomachean Ethics. Harry Gensler tells us that “Aristotle argued, ‘Every agent acts for an end, so there must be some (one) end for which every agent acts.’” But what does Aristotle actually say? And need it be interpreted the way Gensler interprets it?

More on authority at WWWTW

Zippy Catholic, No theory is better than bad theory
Jeff Culbreath, Revolution and unthinkable thoughts

Tu Wei-Ming's blog.



Parts 2 and 3.

old bio
"Is there an innate sense of morality?"