One Take on Personalism

Since tonight was so relevant, if anyone is somehow interested in my own thoughts on the individual-personal distinction and personalism in general, you can read more here. https://t.co/kcRsCL0tFl

— Taylor Patrick O'Neill (@thomaesplendor) April 28, 2021

Meinvielle Contra Maritain

Julio Meinvielle's book against Maritain's personalism is now available in English: https://t.co/fk98w72xxB

— Pater Edmund (@sancrucensis) April 27, 2021

James Matthew Wilson on Maritain

I'm looking forward to this conversation about the great, fallible Jacques Maritain. https://t.co/FEZ0uU6ULf

— James Matthew Wilson (@JMWSPT) December 2, 2020

Defending Maritain with James Matthew Wilson https://t.co/dkLUYtkWBV via @YouTube

— privepezz (@privepezz) December 2, 2020

Fr. Aquinas Guilbeau on CDK and the Personalists

In this discussion of Yves Simon's General Theory of Authority, @FrAquinasOP touches on the dispute between Maritain and De Koninck on the person and the common goodhttps://t.co/5LiUKDGKsG

— Catholic Culture Podcasts (@CatholicPods) November 18, 2020

James Matthew Wilson on Jacques Maritain

Jacques Maritain was born OTD 138 years ago. Don't miss the large selection of his works available from our friends over at @UNDPress (many of them are linked in the piece).

In Defense of Jacques Maritain Against His Neo-Integralist Critics
by @JMWSPThttps://t.co/tMCHU9sAkQ

— Church Life Journal (@ChurchLifeND) November 18, 2020

CLJ

Jacques de Monleon on Sharing

Jacques de Monleon (Charles De Koninck's best friend) on human sharing, and how it is neither entirely selfish, nor entirely self-diffusive. pic.twitter.com/LVDQFm4w6o

— Pater Edmund (@sancrucensis) June 30, 2020

Fr. Aquinas Guilbeau, O.P.: "Friendship and the Common Good"

Here is the video:

Renewed Attention to the CDK-Maritain Debate

First Things: False Notions of the Common Good by C. C. Pecknold

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.

A Long Essay for Holy Saturday

CWR: This Holy Saturday: Social Distancing, Solitude, Healing by Brad Bursa, Ph.D.
Msgr. Luigi Giussani claims that “the only condition for being truly and faithfully religious…is to live always the real intensely.”i This line stays with me in these solitary days, when “the real” has become surreal. [...]

The author uses "death as isolation" as the first explanatory key, basing it on the writings of Joseph Ratzinger.

Following the Judeo-Christian tradition, Ratzinger does not view death in a one-sided manner, as if it were only an experience of bodily corruption that marks the end of one’s physical life. Instead, “death is present as the nothingness of an empty existence which ends up in a mere semblance of living.”^v Ratzinger says, “Death is absolute loneliness…the loneliness into which love can no longer advance is — hell.”

The second explanatory principle is the definition of Person within the Trinity as "relation":

In God, in the Trinity, person is pure relativity, of being turned toward the other. The concept of person does not refer to substance, but to relationality. God’s substance is one, and person, as the “pure relativity of being turned toward the other” does not lie on the level of substance, but on the “level of dialogical reality.” Thus, Ratzinger concludes that relation is recognized as a third fundamental category “between substance and accident.”^xvii Therefore, in and through Christian faith, theology manifests “the Christian newness of the personalistic idea in all its sharpness and clarity,” for “it was faith that gave birth to this idea of pure act, of pure relativity…it was faith that thereby brought the personal phenomenon into view.”^xviii

Ratzinger argues that the early developments in Trinitarian understanding offer profound insight in the area of anthropology as well. For the human being to be made in God’s “image and likeness,” must, in some way mean that the human being is a personal being. In other words, the human being is “not a substance that closes itself in itself, but the phenomenon of complete relativity, which is, of course, realized in its entirety only in the one who is God, but which indicates the direction of all personal being.”^xix The human being exists as a personal being, precisely because the human being is a spiritual being. God takes the basic material of earth and forms the human being, but human being only enters into existence after God breathes into the formed earth the breath of life. Now, “the divine reality enters in,” for “in the human being heaven and earth touch one another….the human being is directly related to God.”^xx Based upon what has been developed in the area of Trinitarian theology, to be in God’s image, according to Ratzinger, “implies relationality,” setting “the human being in motion toward the totally Other”….“it means the capacity for relationship…the human capacity for God.”^xxi To be in God’s image means to be personal, it means the human being has the capacity for a personal relationship with God and to exist as a personal being, as a social being, in relation to others human beings.

Is sociability a participation in the Divine? Can we say that primates participate in the Divine? Yes, but it may be foreign to some of us. All of His creation participates in God in its own way.

Would Byzantine Christians have any difficulty with using the Divine relations to enhance theological anthropology? I don't know.

Is Personalism Still in Vogue?

Church Life: The Personalist Awakening in 20th Century Catholic Moral Thought written by Jay Martin

Body and Transcendence: The Philosophical Anthropology in John Paul II's Theology of the Body

Body and Transcendence: The Philosophical Anthropology in John Paul II's Theology of the Body.This is the title of the...

Posted by Vatican Radio - English Section on Monday, January 18, 2016

Let's See if We Can Find the Paper

Post by The Charles De Koninck Project.

Russell Shaw on the Need for Vatican II

Did We Really Need Vatican II? by Russell Shaw

Ecumenical council? Or general synod of the Latin churches, with participation of some of the Eastern churches in communion with Rome?

Pope St. John XXIII put it clearly in his opening address to the council on October 11, 1962. The “greatest concern” of Vatican II, he declared, was to guard Christian doctrine and teach it “more efficaciously.” That included the truth about “the whole of man, composed as he is of body and soul” and created by God not only for life on earth but for eternal life in heaven.

The council did its best, and that was pretty good. Central to its teaching was the Christocentric affirmation that it’s Christ who “fully reveals man to himself and makes his supreme calling clear” (Gaudium et Spes 22). The Church has been developing that exalted vision of human dignity ever since, most notably via the personalism of Pope St. John Paul II.

Was personalism and human dignity the answer?

The Personalist Project

Info

Sometimes, all you can do is just wait for a bad idea to run its course and die out.

Making a Mountain...

Aristotle and Aquinas: The Vital Difference by Don DeMarco, Ph. D.

As far as I'm concerned, personalism is not a significant difference between the ethics of Aquinas and that of Aristotle. (We might even ask the question of whether contenmporary personalism is even important to the moral theology of Aquinas, or if we are just trading one word, e.g. human, for another, person.)

"The difference between the ethics of Aristotle and Aquinas has to do with how virtue comes about. It is reasonable to be virtuous. Surely “honesty is the best policy.” That is simply a reasonable statement that does not require love. And virtue, for Aristotle, lies between two extremes. Thus, the virtue of courage, for example, is the midpoint between the vices of timidity and foolishness. This is all very sensible, though something is missing.

Perhaps Aristotle overestimated our capacity to be reasonable and under-estimated the importance of love. Whereas Aristotle links virtue to reason, Aquinas links it more properly to love. Therefore, as the Angelic doctor states, “Love is the form of all virtues.” This means that every virtue derives its degree of virtuousness by its association with love."

The important difference is that Aristotle writes from a non-Christian perspective, one which is unaided by Divine Revelation. Aristotle does not talk about "love" but he does talk about friendship in all of its forms, as it exists between human beings. But not, friendship between man and God. Should we be surprised then that he has no understanding of the beatitude to which we are called, or the grace that is necessary? No account of the "supernatural organism" which is so central to the moral theology of Aquinas (and of good Christian moral theology in general)?

The differences in their ethics is not due to competing accounts of human nature (with respect to the material or formal causes) - but with respect to human nature as it relates to its Creator, God.

A Response to Mary Rosera Joyce on the Soul

New Oxford Review: A True Turnaround, A Real Revolution by Mary Rosera Joyce

It seems obvious that our sexuality is basically biological. When a baby is born, we can tell immediately whether the child is a boy or a girl based on the physical evidence. This fact leads us to believe that sexuality revolves around these bodily organs. But if we were to examine further, we would realize that the function of the genital organs depends upon the brain, the physical source of all the nerves in the body. The earth similarly depends upon the gravity, energy, light, and heat of the sun for its various functions.

We may notice upon further examination that, apart from the brain, every cell in the female body is sexually different from every cell in the male body. The causal power of this cellular difference affects the shape and function of the entire body, including the brain in its three divisions: high, middle, and low.

The high brain, for example, is the cerebrum. There is more connective wiring (corpus callosum) between its two lobes in women than in men. The general effect of this difference on their respective use of logic is that men are generally more gifted for analysis and women for synthesis. Thus, women have been lauded for what is known as their “multitasking” ability. They are able to attend to more than one task at a time. Men are more able to focus on, probe into, and grasp one concept or task at a time.

Besides its centrality in our physical sexuality, the brain is primarily involved in the other dimensions of our personhood: physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual. As a result, the differences between men and women extend into their entire personhood. Human sexuality is not merely biological, or primarily genital. Thus, what seems to be the obvious center of our sexuality — our genital organs — is not the true center. There would be no genital sexuality without the involvement of the brain. And there would be no sexuality in the brain without appropriate sexual causality in the life principle of human personhood, the spiritual soul.

1. I found the essay to be problematic. "Sexuality revolves around these bodily organs"? I think people would be apt to say that the most obvious difference between the two sexes can be found in the reproductive organs.

2. The function depends on the brain? That is prone to reductionism, in so far as the sense organs are not identified with the brain alone. It is true that attraction and desire depend on sense knowledge (not just sight) and instinct, what we found attractive about the other sex, and so on. The brains are differentiated according to sex - sex hormones have an influence on their development.

Sex differences "permeate" the body and its systems (as she somewhat recognizes).

3. As for sexual causality in the soul, what does that mean? That sex differences are the result of differences in form? She goes on to explain:

When we look at a human being as an object, the physical body is the most obvious to our sense of sight. We cannot see the soul. So we are inclined to think of the soul as hidden within the body.

Ordinarily we think that we originate in the union of a sperm and an ovum, and the soul is thought to be infused by God into this newly formed body. Consequently, the soul is considered to be in the body until it leaves at death. But this common idea of the soul “entering” and “leaving,” like the sun rising and setting, is “Ptolemaic” and begs for re-vision.

The idea that the soul enters and leaves the body started to change when Pope John Paul II began, but did not complete, a “Copernican” turnaround in the way we view the human person and human sexuality with his “theology of the body.” In his encyclical “On Faith & Reason” (Fides et Ratio, 1998) he asked philosophers to develop the philosophy of being “without resorting to worn-out formulae” (no. 97). He asked them to complete the revolution he began. Where, then, would we start this process of completion? A plausible point would be the moment of conception.

She seems to be rejecting what might be called a "dualistic" conception of the soul. Fine - let us not attribute more significance to a popular understanding (or, more accurately, imagining) of the soul than it deserves, or mistake it with a more scientific (in the Aristotelian sense) account of the soul. In attributing this problem to Catholic thinkers before John Paul II, she would be exaggerating, no? Unless she is judging the Aristotelian account of the soul to be "dualistic" as well.

Among the “worn-out formulae” that the revolutionary turnaround would abandon is our customary explanation of life’s beginning. We still have a primitive way of interpreting what appears to us to be obvious. That is why pro-abortionists have been able to move in with their seemingly convincing rhetoric, and have successfully cleared the way for the elimination of many millions of new persons. They have even used the “delayed animation” theory of St. Thomas Aquinas to secure their objectives.

St. Thomas was one of the greatest theologians in history. Nevertheless, he believed, along with almost all of his contemporaries, that the earth is the center of the universe. He and many others also thought that human life begins with a vegetative soul, followed by an animal soul, followed by a human soul infused by God into the developing organism. It was this gradualist view that prevented him from acknowledging the immaculate conception of Mary (cf. Summa Theologiae III, q.27, a.3).

In our contemporary world, aided by subsequent developments in science, we now defend the beginning of human personhood at conception. But our interpretation of conception is still philosophically “earth-centered.” We think that the egg and sperm unite; it surely looks that way under a microscope. Actually, these cells interact and die together as a new life begins. We also think that God creates and infuses the soul into the newly “united” sex cells.

This idea of infusion implies that the soul is contained within the body. But the body, as a container, could not possibly express the person. For that purpose we need a turnaround from seeing the soul as inside the body to seeing the body as within the soul. Then, instead of our view being body-based, it would become person-based.

In a person-based view of the moment of conception, we would begin to see the soul as receiving within itself the interacting gametic (generative) cells and expressing itself in the resulting human body. This critical distinction would introduce a reversal in our manner of thinking about conception. The view of the soul as created by God and as receiving the body would replace the previous concept of infusion. In this way, we could better understand how the body, received by the soul, expresses the individual within his being and within the powers of his person.

In our tradition, however, there is no recognition of substantial receptivity in the soul. Instead, the infused soul is viewed as the actuating form of passively receptive matter. But receptivity is not only passive; it is primarily active. By actively receiving the gametic causes of the body, the soul becomes the body’s formative power. Thus, the soul is both receiving and giving in relation to the body. The soul, then, receives the body so that the body can become the expression of the person.

St. Thomas's gradualism seemed to be justified according to what they knew about embryonic development. The science that she claims as support could also be used to support a view of delayed homonization. If we took ideologues at their word and maintained that science is purely empirical then we cannot make a judgment that the rational or human soul is present at fertilization. But we cannot reason to this conclusively either, just based on the evidence alone. (I have maintained that this can be held only through the supernatural virtue of faith.)

But on to the rest of her explanation. Can matter act upon form? (This sloppy thinking about receptivity reminds me of a certain brand of Catholic phenomenology - did the author go to FUS?) How can the soul "receive" without being further actualized? As it it is somehow changed by actualizing the body? Her account destroys any proper understanding of form as act.

The human soul, by actively receiving the interacting gametes at conception, becomes sexually differentiated in its spiritual depths. Seeing the source of our personhood in this way is the beginning of a true sexual revolution.

At conception and thereafter, the inner causal source of human sexuality would be properly understood as spiritual, not physical. The person is basically spiritual, and has a soul that receives physical causes and expresses itself physically. Not only Freud, but many Aristotelian traditionalists, however, would be unwilling to accept such a radical departure. Hugh Hefner and his kind would simply turn their backs. Like those intellectuals who refused to look into a telescope to see the evidence of the Copernican revolution, many twenty-first-century intellectuals would likewise insist that the physical sex urge is the center of human sexuality. But this is the equivalent of saying that the earth is the center of the universe.

The center and source of our sexuality is our spiritually-based being as expressed in our body. True sexual freedom is not genital-centered, but person-centered. It is the freedom to develop well, as a man or woman, by chastely receiving the energy of the sex urge for interior sexual maturation. This process is meant to re-center, in the inner “sun” of awareness, the growing person’s experience of the sex urge. In other words, some degree of spiritual, intellectual, and emotional sexual maturity is meant to precede and prepare the person either for celibacy or marriage, genital intercourse, and children.

Interior sexual maturation results from a special way of thinking about the physical sex urge. Since all nerves in the body receive their impulses from the brain, our way of thinking affects the nerves to the organs of the body, especially those related to our freedom. A re-centering in our thinking, then, affects the powers of the brain and eventually increases our sense of freedom for sexual integration.

But this re-centering cannot happen while our view of sexuality remains fixed on the physical aspect alone. By seeing our sexuality as person-based, we can deepen the premises of our traditional conclusions, and strengthen them. And so, when the earth begins to revolve around the sun in our way of thinking about our personhood, manhood, and womanhood, a true sexual revolution can begin. Pope John Paul II’s deep desire for further development in our understanding of ourselves would be on its way to fulfillment.

The author is trying to root the differences between the sexes within the soul. But she is imagining the soul to be some sort of thing which is subsequently "shaped" by being receiving the body, rather than understanding the soul as being proportioned to the body. Insofar as it is spiritual, the souls of males and females are the same. But in so far as they are proportioned to a specific body in actualizing it as the form, with certain sex organs and so on, then they are distinct. She is critical of Aristotelianism without understanding its hylomorphism. It is perhaps telling that she rejects accounts that locate the soul "in" the body, and yet she still uses the language of "inner source." A Thomist will agree that sexual freedom is not genital-centered but person-centered in so far as we have reason, and our sense appetites should be ordered by it. There are differences in the bodies of males and females and also in their behaviors - these differences are "taken up" or "ratified" by the soul but the soul does not "receive" anything as if it is somehow further actualized. (We only need to compare the souls of animals with the souls of human beings to better comprehend this, though perhaps we may need to better understand how the universal is instantiated in the individual.)

If she were merely speaking metaphorically about the soul receiving the body, it would be more acceptable, but it would also renders the account less useful as a way of understanding reality. The soul is, by definition, the form of the body - if it is present at conception then it is the formal cause of development and all of the specification and differentiation of the parts that ensue.

4. Can the gametes said to be "interacting" at fertilization? Only improperly since they no longer exist as distinct entities. There is only the conceptum, which now has the matter that was previously present in egg and sperm.

5. As a result of her premises, her account of chastity (and by implication, sin) seems excessively intellectualistic. "Interior sexual maturation results from a special way of thinking about the physical sex urge." No doubt training in chastity benefits from a proper understanding of human sexuality and its telos, and how this is ordered by love or caritas. But what Thomist would deny this? Our problem with sex does not primarily arise from an erroneous understanding of sex and the person.

Nor should a affective maturity entail a false understanding of members of the opposite sex, such as putting women on a pedestal. This stance can be harmonized with her words here, but proponents of theology of the body may be too "romantic" or "idealistic" in their understanding of relations between men and women and female sexuality.


I'll ignore her characterization of the Copernican revolution and the reaction of "conservatives" to that, for now, but it does seem inaccurate on many levels.

James Chastek, Marriage and mortal sin

Brandon digs out a fantastic text from STA’s commentary on Corinthians:



…that the conjugal act is sometimes meritorious and without any mortal or venial sin, as when it is directed to the good of procreation and education of a child for the worship of God; for then it is an act of religion; or when it is performed for the sake of rendering the debt, it is an act of justice. But every virtuous act is meritorious, if it is performed with charity. But sometimes it is accompanied with venial sin, namely, when one is excited to the matrimonial act by concupiscence, which nevertheless stays within the limits of the marriage, namely, that he is content with his wife only. But sometimes it is performed with mortal sin, as when…

So guess: what is he going to say? Is sexual activity a mortal sin when “it is not open to procreation” (an answer that is at hand from what he says at the head of the quotation) or when “it is performed in an unnatural way”? Don’t we expect St. Thomas to mention some obvious perversion? Yet, in the casual way that he says all his revolutionary things, he says that sexual activity is a mortal sin when…
…the husband approaches the wife with the idea that he would just as gladly or more gladly approach another woman.

Aquinas has a "full" account of marriage, but some may criticze him for focusing only on the sexual act. One can start with the analysis of the external act and whether it is good or not, but one than moves "upward" and looks at the intention which may modify the act. In this case, one looks at the presence (or absence) of marital friendship/love or charity. The mistake of those who look solely at the intention is that they deny the sexual act is intrinsically moral. Elsewhere he touches upon the roles of husband and wife (citation?) - while the personalists are right to focus on the "context" of the sexual act in marriage and to talk about the married life, were they so bold as to claim that this aspect had been ignored by previous generations of Catholic theologians? Or were they blind to the limitations of their own historical situation? How many of them were reacting to atomism of mass society (or liberal society) and yet espousing some of the principles of such a social de[form]ity? While some personalists assumed a "traditional" understanding about the complementarity of the sexes and the differences in roles did others fall into the error of radical egalitarianism? Did others have a msitaken or exaggerated notion of marital friendship (borrowed from those who advocate "companionate marriage", one that failed to take into account sex differences (especially the role of the husband as leader)?

thenyssan said, raises a question about concupiscence. If one is motivated purely by carnal desire then the sexual act is a venial sin?

Mr. Chastek writes:

"[S]ense goods as sensed are peculiar to a subject as opposed to being common. But the very intensity of sexual desire is from the contact it has with the common good – we really do touch something of the divine (De Anima, 2:4). To enjoy this purely out of concupiscence is to cheat the good we touch and to act against its nature, since we want to enjoy common goods as mere particular goods. If this is right, then there is a certain mercy in saying it is only a venial sin! Shouldn’t we have a harsher judgment on someone who want to appropriate common goods to his own peculiar good?"

I don't know if I'd take this line of reasoning. I think I'd focus more on the psychological aspect behind concupiscence - how it diminishes the moral agency that should be present? Human beings are animals, but they should not be "too" carnal? Reason (and will) should operate in tandem with sense appetite? If appetite does not raise above the sense level, if it is not sublimated by reason...

Emmanuel Mounier

(source of image)

A Theory of Personalism (New York: Lexington Books, 2005, by Thomas and Rosita Rourke (Google Books)
Reviewed by John Francis Burke, Professor of Political Science, University of St. Thomas, Houston

Roots of the Movement: Emmanuel Mounier and Personalism:

Personalism


Personalism requires an affirmation of value, viz., the affirmation of the absolute value of the human person. We are not asserting that the human person is an absolute, although for a Christian believer the Absolute is indeed a person, and in strict terminology the spiritual does not exist except as personal. But we do assert that the human person as defined by us is an absolute in comparison with any other material or social reality and with any other human person. It can never be considered merely as part of a whole, whether of family, class, state, nation or even humanity. God himself, in the doctrines of Christianity, respects the liberty of the person, even while vivifying it from within. The whole theological mystery of free will and original sin is based on the dignity of free choice conferred on man. The Christian accepts it because he believes that man was in his very nature made according to the image of God, that he is called to perfect that image by an ever increasing participation in the supreme liberty of the children of God.


Any discussion of personalism must thus begin at the basic roots of all human existence. If our efforts were confined merely to a defence of man's public liberties or to any rights not further grounded, then our position would be weak indeed; for there would then be danger of defending only individual privileges.

Emmanuel Mounier, Personalism, and the Catholic Worker movement
Association des Amis d'Emmanuel Mounier
The Personalism of Emmanuel Mounier (pdf)
Personalism (Hardcover, from Boughton Press)

SEP: European Personalism (from the entry on Personalism)

Links:
Personalismo

A New Wrinkle

Or just something I had forgotten...

For the discussion on torture over at WWWTW, I went back and reread what the CCC says about torture:

Torture which uses physical or moral violence to extract confessions, punish the guilty, frighten opponents, or satisfy hatred is contrary to respect for the person and for human dignity. Except when performed for strictly therapeutic medical reasons, directly intended amputations, mutilations, and sterilizations performed on innocent persons are against the moral law.[90]

2298 In times past, cruel practices were commonly used by legitimate governments to maintain law and order, often without protest from the Pastors of the Church, who themselves adopted in their own tribunals the prescriptions of Roman law concerning torture. Regrettable as these facts are, the Church always taught the duty of clemency and mercy. She forbade clerics to shed blood. In recent times it has become evident that these cruel practices were neither necessary for public order, nor in conformity with the legitimate rights of the human person. On the contrary, these practices led to ones even more degrading. It is necessary to work for their abolition. We must pray for the victims and their tormentors.

So torture as defined in the CCC includes its use for punishment.

Is Christian personalism just a variant of liberal moral theory? I wrote that this is a novelty and the appeal to human dignity and respect for the person is not reducible to what has been written by Thomists about the virtues of charity and justice. So how much weight should the CCC carry? I do not hold it to be an infallible document, and while it should be respected, I think there is a break with the past with regards to punishment. Now it might be that Sacred Tradition does not explicitly maintain the infliction of pain as punishment is licit. But it would seem that various moral theologians (and bishops?) have taught it.

Again, how is torture as it is broadly defined here different from corporal punishment by parents or lawful authorities?

Fr. Brian Harrison has an article from 2006 for This Rock, but I would think it has been superceded by his addendum.

Edit. I vaguely recall an attempt to harmonize the CCC with "traditional" teaching on the infliction of pain as a punishment, but I can find no record of having written about it on this blog. I may have written it somewhere else, or just done it mentally. One could interpret the CCC as prohibiting the torture of those who have already been sentenced and punished for an offense -- torture (or any sort of maltreatment) would in their case be going beyond what has already been determined to be a proper punishment for their offense. (Maltreatment might be justified on the grounds that they have lost human dignity, etc., but I do not think that this would be in accord with a traditional understanding of justice.)

Still, I think the more obvious sense of the sentence in the CCC is that it prohibits torture as a form of punishment. But this would only be a problem if the CCC were represent the highest teaching authority of the Church and protected by infallibility.

A Dominican personalist?

From Fr. Michael Sweeney's first post for his blog, Re-visioning Society -- A modest proposal:

I would like, therefore, to make a modest proposal: that we insist upon civil conversation concerning what our public figures actually say, and refuse judgment based upon hearsay, or, what amounts to the same thing, partisan politics.

So, for example, anyone, no matter how staunchly Republican, ought to take issue with a remark of President George W. Bush in his Memorial Day speech (May 26, 2008): "In a world where freedom is constantly under attack and in a world where our security is challenged, the joys of liberty are often purchased by the sacrifices of those who serve a cause greater than themselves." There is no cause greater than the human person; no one can serve a cause greater than himself. What the President said is not true.

Final causes greater than the private good of the individual human person? Yes, there is God, for one, and then there is the common good of the political community. So on what side of the debate between De Koninck and the personalists is Fr. Sweeney? (According to his public FB profile, he likes Catholics for the Common Good.) Both God and the political common good are goods of the individual, that is true, but they are common goods, not private goods. What George Bush means may be worded poorly for Fr. Sweeney's tastes, but I think we know what the former President is getting at.

DSPTOnline
Catherine of Siena Institute