James Chastek, From truth to ideology:

We can see this dialectic between truth and ideology quite clearly in the progression of thought after Parmenides. It’s almost impossible for us to exaggerate the exhilaration of hearing Parmenides in his own day. Think of how excited we get when we do nothing but make a machine runs faster than the one that came before it, then think of what a thrill it would have been to discover for the first time all of the following: being as the subject of discourse, the force of logical argumentation, the principle of contradiction, the identity of being and thought, the unity of being and truth and the one, etc. Inseparable from this, however, is the conclusion that motion and change must be considered mere opinions – that is, they are not features that the world has of itself. To put this in modern terms, motion and change are merely “subjective”. The disciple of Parmenides is thus torn between wanting to hold the premises and deny their conclusion. This situation can last for centuries and reach no adequate resolution despite the best efforts of many very brilliant persons.


Enter Aristotle. With a single distinction that everyone knew but no one ever managed to notice, get a hold of, or name (the division between the per se and the per accidens) he manages to resolve the whole Parmenidean problem in a single stroke, and in such a way that preserves and even illuminates more fully logical argumentation, being as a subject of discourse, the various ways in which being and thought are one and many, etc. The solution is so simple and elegant we wonder how no one could have noticed it before. Once someone points it out and we get a clear view of the solution, we feel like fools for not having noticed it before. Over time, it becomes harder and harder for us to see why Parmenides could have even thought what he did.


Ideology and dogmatism have already begun to creep in. We flatter ourselves with the thought that Parmenides was simply a stage of thought that we have moved beyond. And isn’t this true? The difficulty is that Aristotle’s distinction is essentially a solution to a Parmenidean problem, and so in the measure that we no longer see Parmenides as a problem, Aristotelianism becomes the answer to a question that no one is asking. At this moment, the basis of the system is in some measure irrelevant and even arbitrary. Our great truth and great synthesis becomes words that we ask the students to memorize. “The truth” quickly becomes a principle of ignorance and arbitrary will.

A delayed addendum

To this post on abortion -- if those who believe that abortion should be legal make use of the claims that I have laid forth (namely that it can not be demonstrated by reason alone that ensoulment happens at conception), they cannot claim that abortion is therefore permissible because the life that is being ended is not that of a human being. They cannot, on the basis of the "no harm principle," justify abortion because it cannot be demonstrated either that ensoulment has not taken place. From my argument it is the case that one can only be a committed agnostic, and if one cannot know for sure whether the life of a human being is at stake or not, one cannot end that life since one is potentially committing murder (e.g. the hunter in the woods who does not take due precaution that his target is actually a deer and not another hunter).

Besides, even if it could be shown that the conceptum is not human, this would not completely take away from the gravity of the sin of abortion. Abortion would still be a mortal sin, for the reasons given by theologians who accepted that ensoulment took place much later after conception.

Mysteries of the Jesus Prayer

website

High Up, Let Down by Pope Benedict
They are some of the leading traditionalist thinkers. They had wagered on him, and now they feel betrayed. The latest disappointments: the Courtyard of the gentiles and the encounter in Assisi. The accusation that they make against Ratzinger is the same that they make against the Council: having replaced condemnation with dialogue

by Sandro Magister

Death amidst Life: Lenten Gregorian Chant

Death amidst Life: Lenten Gregorian Chant from Province of Saint Joseph on Vimeo.

David Hart on the proper Christian attitude towards capital punishment

The Power of the Sword by David Bentley Hart

Edward Feser, Catholicism, conservatism, and capital punishment

You claim that definitions can only be relative and subjective

But how could this be the case unless you knew you were talking about the same thing?

Another attempt at a Thomistic appropriation of rights discourse

Equal Basic Rights for All, Born and Unborn by Christopher Kaczor

Study in the Dominican Tradition

Study in the Dominican Tradition from Province of Saint Joseph on Vimeo.

(via op-stjoseph)

First Things: Giving Caesar His Due
A review of Defending Constantine by Robert Louis Wilken

The ordination of Joseph Ratzinger to the priesthood

(via NLM)

gloria.tv

Zenit: On St. Alphonsus Liguori
"Priests Are a Visible Sign of the Infinite Mercy of God"

Ave Maria U conference on rights

A report at First Things: Catholic Contributions to Human Rights.

The proceedings will be published in the Ave Maria Law Review.

Thaddeus Kozinski, The Good, the Right, and Theology (via Peter Hawthorne)

Jacques Maritain’s "Democratic Faith": Heretical or Orthodox?
By Thaddeus J. Kozinski

First Things: The Beauty of the Ethical
A everyday ethics that brings grace to life
Ross McCullough

A new group blog for Catholic moral theology

Catholic Moral Theology (via MOJ)

The only one I've heard of is John Berkman. This one hits close to home:

Thomas Bushlack
Thomas J. Bushlack (Ph.D., University of Notre Dame) is an assistant professor of moral theology at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, MN. He recently defended his dissertation titled Justice in the Theology of St. Thomas Aquinas: Rediscovering Civic Virtue, and he is also an Oblate of St. Benedict

Not sure if I ran into him during one of my visits to UND.  He is still listed here. Is he publishing his dissertation, or is it available online? Not yet. Not surprisingly he is associated with ">New Wine, New Wineskins

Thomistica.net: Gilles Emery, OP, to speak at Lumen Christi Institute (UChicago)

The ordinary magisterium's infallibility
Theological Studies, Dec, 1994 by Germain Grisez,
(pdf)

"Master of the Sacred Palace" trailer

"Master of the Sacred Palace" trailer from Province of Saint Joseph on Vimeo.

How many zeroes are there in a trillion? On economics, neoliberalism and economic justice by Nitasha Kaul (EB)

What is the author's alternative to neoliberalism? I suspect it would not be a third way.

Ite Ad Thomam: Commemorating the Last of the Fathers, the First of the Scholastics

CE
Some of his writings.

From 2009:


Something for the Sunday of Orthodoxy:

Ecce Virgo concipiet

Philotheus Boehner, Medieval Logic: An Outline of Its Development from 1250 to c.1400
(via The Smith)

Google Books
Amazon

op-stjoseph: The Pritzl Chair - Endowed Philosophy Chair to Be Named for Friar

Insight Scoop: Jimmy Akin carefully considers Benedict XVI's thoughts on the conversion of Jews

Insight Scoop: New: "What Is Dogma?" by Charles Cardinal Journet

The Divine Will and Human Freedom: A Thomistic Analysis by Dr. Kevin G. Rickert (via Insight Scoop)

Rorate Caeli: Vatican orders reforms in the philosophical formation of seminarians

Another article covering the same decree mentioned in the Zenit article linked here.

Dominican Salve Regina and O Lumen Ecclesiae

First Things: Inevitable Scholasticism
A review of Introduction to Scholastic Theology
Thomas Joseph White

Zenit: Vatican: Priests Can't Skip Metaphysics


(via The Hermeneutic of Continuity)

Vox Nova: The Vocation of the Theologian: An Interview with Matthew Levering, Part II


Predestination: Biblical and Theological Paths
Matthew Levering

Thomistica.net: International Congress on Medieval Studies (Kalamazoo, MI May 12-15, 2011)

Fordham's upcoming conference: the metaphysics of Aquinas and its modern interpreters
More on the 46th International Congress on Medieval Studies (Kalamazoo, MI May 12-15, 2011)

Pope Benedict XVI and the Failure of “Oinkonomics” by Rupert J. Ederer

OUP: The Biblical Interpretation of William of Alton by Timothy F. Bellamah

OUP: Civic Virtues: Rights, Citizenship, and Republican Liberalism by Richard Dagger

(alt)

(Google Books)

The author's faculty page.

Ite ad Thomam: Gardeil, OP on Aristotelian Mixtures as Substances

MOJ: Introduction to Retributivism: Essays on Theory and Policy

Oxford University Press

The author's faculty page, and this.
He contributes to this blog.
Psychology Today

Rome Reports: Cardinal Marc Ouellet and Claudio Magris speak about the Pope's new book in the Vatican

Rome Reports: François-Marie Lethel explains what he is saying to the pope in spiritual retreat

Is Aquinas a liberal?

In this one respect -- how he defines injustice.

Lydia McGrew: Contract killing

As Wesley J. Smith points out, when he was in law school he was taught that X's agreeing to be murdered does not make killing X legally something other than murder. And a good thing, too. Well, as usual, the UK is leading us into a new world. In Brave New Britain, that isn't true anymore, evidently.


Michael Bateman put a bag over the head of his wife Margaret and pumped in gas to kill her. She was in a lot of pain that wasn't getting properly treated because the moronic medical establishment didn't diagnose her broken pelvis. (It was discovered after her death.) She was also depressed about not being able to do normal things like taking showers. That's it. She wasn't dying, if you think that's a relevant consideration. (I don't.) So she and Michael planned her death, and he killed her, because she apparently couldn't do it herself. The prosecutor has declared that it "isn't in the public interest" to prosecute Michael, presumably because Margaret agreed to be murdered.


In the current context of recent posts, I'm almost afraid to ask whether mere libertarianism would mean that agreeing to have yourself killed with plastic bags and gas means that everything is A-okay and no prosecution should be carried out against your killer. I'm pretty sure I know the answer. And that, folks, is just one reason that, while I'll defend small government all over the place, I don't carry a libertarian card.

Aquinas asks, "Whether we can suffer injustice willingly?" Is it no longer injustice if we suffer the action willingly? In the body, Aquinas argues that no one can suffer an injustice except involuntarily. But he adds in the response to the third objection:

Suffering is the effect of external action. Now in the point of doing and suffering injustice, the material element is that which is done externally, considered in itself, as stated above (Article 2), and the formal and essential element is on the part of the will of agent and patient, as stated above (Article 2). Accordingly we must reply that injustice suffered by one man and injustice done by another man always accompany one another, in the material sense. But if we speak in the formal sense a man can do an injustice with the intention of doing an injustice, and yet the other man does not suffer an injustice, because he suffers voluntarily; and on the other hand a man can suffer an injustice if he suffer an injustice against his will, while the man who does the injury unknowingly, does an injustice, not formally but only materially.

And so the agent may nonetheless be guilty of committing an injustice, even if the victim consents to it. How is this so? Because the action in itself is unequal. That is to say, injustice is not defined by consent, but by the lack of what is due.

More from Miller on MacIntyre

He writes in response to David Schaengold's Defending Alasdair MacIntyre’s Economics: On Aristotle’s Wide Applicability.

(The link to the First Things piece that started this discussion can be found here.)

Interview with Matthew Levering

Over at Vox Nova: The Vocation of the Theologian: An Interview with Matthew Levering

OP Vocations: Salve Regina - Ordo Praedicatorum

Evidence against heliocentrism?

Japan’s earthquake shifted balance of the planet

Unless plate tectonic theory is incorrect or incomplete for understanding earthquakes and the shift of the earth's axis.

Fr. Anthony mentioned this book in his homily today: The Cruelty of Heresy: An Affirmation of Christian Orthodoxy, by C. FitzSimons Allison

A public police force: a fitting republican institution?

ARE COPS CONSTITUTIONAL? by Roger Roots

The Object of the External Act

A source of confusion for some trying to understand Catholic moral theology. St. Thomas teaches that the object is the term of the act--what it brings about. We often have an implicit understanding of this, as is shown by our use of a name for both a thing and the action that leads to the making of that thing. For example, section and partition. What are some other examples of this analogical naming?

Swinburne on science

BQO: The True Morality.Is science capable of providing a common morality? Philosopher Richard Swinburne answers.

Richard Swinburne, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Oxford, answers the question, "Is science capable of providing a common morality?"

"An historic book, which inaugurates a new era of theological exegesis"
The new "Jesus of Nazareth" by Benedict XVI explained by a cardinal theologian raised in his school

by Marc Ouellet

"Attende Domine"

Video: The 21st Annual Aquinas Lecture
The Dead in Christ Will Rise: Thomas Aquinas and Current Ideas on the Time of the Resurrection by Fr. Bryan Kromholtz, OP

Arete Initiative at the University of Chicago

MOJ: "A New Science of Virtues"

Arete Initiative at the University of Chicago
Stuck with Virtue Conference Series
Science of Virtues
Defining Wisdom

Michael Sandel's Liberalism

From Oz Conservative: Hank Pellissier criticises male-identified males

In the preface, Sandel defines the liberal conception of the person this way:


According to this conception, my dignity consists not in any social roles I inhabit but instead in my capacity to choose my roles and identities for myself. (xiv)

Do all academic liberals believe this, and are they this blunt? Amazing -- no obfuscation here, and Sandel deserves to be labelled an enemy of the true and good.

Justice With Michael Sandel
faculty page


Playlist
itunes



Michael Sandel on Markets and Morals

Michael Sandel’s Reith Lectures.
Chautauqua Institution

Benedict XVI: Our World Needs a New Heart

(via DSPT FB)

Re: the discussion of (public) unions, collective bargaining, and benefits, what does CST say about renumeration for labor? Does it extend to benefits after employment? Fostering the ability to provide the highest level of health care? I don't see anything in that particular section of the Compendium. One could argue that pension and other retirement benefits are included under remuneration, but that would appear to be stretching the meaning of the word remuneration -- what is owed is payment for services rendered only while employed. If the pension is actually something owed for labor that has been provided, then to take it away would be unjust. But it is commonly understood not to be such?

Living in a welfare state, we may think of entitlements and pensions as being owed to us (out of justice) but we may be wrong on these points.

Father Gabriel (Bunge) “Orthodoxy is the Fruit of My Whole Life as a Christian and a Monk”
By Archpriest Pavel Velikanov

A link to a copy of the next Orthodoxy in the World post, part two of this interview, was already posted by me here.

OP Vocations: The New Wine of Dominican Spirituality: A Drink Called Happiness

CNN: How the human penis lost its spines

thomistica.net: Pdfs available of the first thirteen volumes of the Leonine edition

St. Alphonsus Liguori on the Order of Charity?

Found what I was looking for. From Volume 1 of Theologia Moralis.

OP Vocations: Preaching the Gospel of Life as Dominicans

I've been looking for an outline of St. Alphonsus Liguori's Theologia Moralis so I can search the contents of his multivolume work more easily, but no luck so far.

How does this work compare?
Compendium theologiae moralis Sancti Alphonsi Mariae de Liguori

First Things: Waiting for St. Vladimir
An admirer of Alasdair MacIntyre’s moral philosophy rejects his political economy
by Robert T. Miller

Mr. Miller's treatment of MacIntyre and capitalism merits a response, but there are so many things that need to be countered and clarified that I do not think I have time. First Things has not changed its basic economic beliefs, even though it may have a new editor?
MacIntyre on money

Ancient Faith Radio: Lectures by Metropolitan Kallistos Ware

here

Archbishop Hilarion on Music and Faith

Russian Orthodox Archbishop on Music and Faith

video (flv)

Chant - Music for paradise - Music for the soul - Stift Heiligenkreuz

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

Catholic Moral Tradition by David Bohr

Wipf and Stock
Liturgical Press

The other survey on happiness I had in mind

Gross National Happiness Index

op-srjoseph: "I Shall Go Forward, Stripped and Trembling"
Yves Simon on the Daily Struggle for Freedom
by Fr. Aquinas Guilbeau, O.P.

CRC 21st ce: TO PREPARE VATICAN III
THIRD DOGMATIC CONSTITUTION OF THE COUNCIL
WHAT LITURGY FOR TOMORROW?

Zenit: JOSEPH RATZINGER'S PRIMER ON ECCLESIOLOGY (PART 1)
Interview With Ave Maria University's Father Matthew Lamb

(Part 2)

Related:
The Benedict Blog

O VOS OMNES . TOMAS LUIS DE VICTORIA . CAMERATA ABULENSE

SANCTUS BENEDICTUS - TOMAS LUIS DE VICTORIA - CAMERATA ABULENSE

Medievalists.net: Why Medieval? with Philip McDonnell

Russell Hittinger was recently at the University of St. Thomas to give a lecture on St. Benedict. Will he repeat this lecture elsewhere?

If I recall correctly, MacIntyre advances the thesis that Renaissance Aristotelians brought discredit to academic moral philosophy (and to Aristotelian moral philosophy in particular) with their claim that what they taught was sufficient by itself to make a student good. With a proper understanding of human nature (and of sin) we know that this claim is wrong.

Still, it is "natural" (even if fallacious) to judge a moral philosophy to be false if its teacher lived a rather immoral life. Or, we would think the teacher to lack any credibility and his teaching suspect.

Homily at the National Shrine by Fr. Ed Gorman OP for the Funeral Mass for Fr. Pritzl

pritzl gorman from Province of Saint Joseph on Vimeo.

Vimeo

Hmmm

Relativity and the Priesthood of Science by Tom Bethell

Petr Beckmann
memorial page

Review: A History of Pi, by Petr Beckmann (Google Books)

Canterbury Cathedral Choir - Song of Wisdom

The World Database of Happiness

Compiled by Dutch researcher Ruut Veenhoeven.

Related:
Cato Unbound profile
Thoughts on Happiness





See this previous post.

Dominican Liturgy: "Life in A Monastery": St. Albert the Great Priory, Oakland CA, 1961

“The Blessed Passion of Holy Love”: Maximus the Confessor’s Spiritual Psychology By Bronwen Neil (via Medievalists.net)

Reminder: DSPT 2011 Aquinas Lecture on March 2

Aquinas Lecture 2011: Fr. Bryan Kromholtz, OP "The Dead in Christ Will Rise: Thomas Aquinas and Current Ideas on the Time of the Resurrection"

His Doctoral dissertation: On the Last Day - The Time of the Resurrection of the Dead according to Thomas Aquinas.

Aquinas Lecture 2011:"Got Freedom?"

Via the Aquinas Institute of Theology's FB page --



The Most Reverend Daniel Flores

Op-St. Joseph: Prayer and Study
A Talk by Fr. Kurt Pritzl, O.P

Prayer and Study from Province of Saint Joseph on Vimeo.

Juan R. Vélez, Newman's Idea for Catholic Higher Education

Parts 1 and 2.

Tu es Petrus, Feast of the Chair of St. Peter by Fr. Bruno M. Shah, O.P.

h2o news: Reflections on the Common Good and Catholic Social Teaching



Wish I had the full paper to read.

Fr. William Rehg's faculty page
MIT Press
Crossing Boundaries: Contexts of Practices as Common Goods
Solidarity and the Common Good: An Analytic Framework (Journal of Social Philosophy)

Fr. Aidan Nichols on the Second Volume of Joseph Ratzinger's Jesus of Nazareth

The Beauty of the Pope’s New Book – Aidan Nichols O. P

Canterbury Tales: The Two Marian Maxims of St Bonaventure

First Maxim: "One should carefully beware of decreasing, even in the slightest, the honor that is due to Mary."


Second Maxim: "One should be ready to defend the privileges of Mary even at the risk of his life."

Where are they to be found in his corpus of writings?

Fr. Pritzl, RIP

Kurt Pritzl, O.P., RIP (via Mirror of Justice) (See also the post at Thomistica.net.)

He was the head when I was accepted at CUA. He sounded a bit disappointed on the phone when I told him that I would be going back on my acceptance and going elsewhere for my graduate education. But when I met him in person several years later over at Notre Dame he was friendly. May he rest in peace.

This article by Thomas Osborne is available online: MacIntyre, Thomism, and the Common Good.

Orthodox Thoughts on Capital Punishment
By Peter-Michael Preble

What do other Orthodox priests and theologians make of the following statements?

1. "Without dwelling on the facts of the case mentioned above, let us look at the view of the Orthodox Church regarding capital punishment. First, no single official speaks for the Orthodox Church; each bishop is entitled to interpret church teaching and Scripture as he sees fit for his particular jurisdiction."

2. "The entire theory of capital punishment is based on retribution. All systems of law as far back as one can be certain espouse this right of the state. However, Jesus teaches that retribution is not right in the love that we are to have toward our neighbor.

In Matthew 5, Jesus says, "You have heard that it was said, 'An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.' But I say to you, do not resist one who is evil … love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you."

3. "Christians have always been opposed to capital punishment because it is the taking of a life – life that is created in the image and likeness of God. The clearest statement comes from the early Christian author Lactantius, who lived between 240 and 320 A.D:

'When God prohibits killing, He not only forbids us to commit brigandage, which is not allowed even by the public laws, but He warns us not to do even those things which are regarded as legal among men… and so it will not be lawful for a just man… to accuse anyone of a capital offense, because it makes no difference whether thou kill with a sword or with a word, since killing itself is forbidden. And so, in this commandment of God, no exception at all ought to be made to the rule that it is always wrong to kill a man, who God has wished to be regarded as a sacrosanct creature" (Institutes VI, XX, 15).'

4. "The bottom line in all of this is that each and every life is precious from conception until its natural death. Capital punishment not only plays into retribution, but it eliminates the possibility for reconciliation – another very important aspect of the life of a Christian. We now have the ability to keep a person incarcerated for the rest of his or her natural life, so the need for capital punishment no longer applies."

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.