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?

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)

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.

The Pascha Exapostilarion

NLM

2020 St. Thomas Aquinas Lecture at Villanova University

Mary Hirschfeld, PhD, an associate professor of economics and theology at Villanova, presents the Office for Mission and Ministry's annual St. Thomas Aquinas Lecture, titled St. Thomas’s Views on the Economy and Human Happiness.