op-stjoseph: St. Thomas Aquinas and the Church: Theo-Centric Ecclesiology

Peter Moskos, In Defense of Flogging

Surprised to see this published in the CoHE. The book. Publisher.

OP Vocations: Fr. Romanus Cessario OP: St. Catherine on Dominican Preaching

Who's Betraying Tradition. The Grand Dispute

The discussion is becoming heated over how to interpret the innovations of Vatican Council II, above all on freedom of religion. The traditionalists against Benedict XVI. An essay by philosopher Martin Rhonheimer in support of the pope

by Sandro Magister

Fr. Paul Murray, O.P. on contemplation

Part 1 and Part 2

TEDx: Angela Belcher: Using nature to grow batteries

faculty page
Biomolecular Materials Group
TIME

The uses and abuses of 'happiness' by William Davies (EB)

There are at least four ways in which the term ‘happiness’ can be used to augment public policy debate. No doubt these overlap in certain ways, but confusions and conflations between them are doing considerable harm to the quality of public debate in this area, which impacts upon the credibility of bodies such as Action for Happiness.

The first is philosophical, and harks back to Aristotle. A good life, Aristotle argued, is a virtuous and happy life. It is one that fulfils us as human beings, marking us out from other animals. Aristotelians are not necessarily averse to engaging in technical, economic debates, as Amartya Sen’s wonderfully expansive intellectual career has demonstrated. But nor is the ethical concept of happiness – something that surely concerns all of us – collapsible into statistical, economic or psychological questions of what is measurable or what precise actions will ‘deliver’ a pleasant chemical hit to the brain.

CUA: CUA to Host Conference on 120th Anniversary of Rerum Novarum

Philip Sutton, Same-sex attraction: science and philosophy

2011 Paschal Message of His Eminence Archbishop Demetrios of America

A Blessed Pascha to all of you!

Pope John XXII and the Franciscan ideal of absolute poverty by Melanie Brunner (via medievalists.net)

If you think community is so important, then why aren't you living in accordance with what you teach?

More thoughts on the topic of this post.

What about the scholastics? Is their witness diminished because so many of them did not labor where they came from, but were instead teaching at "international" centers of learning? They can be defended because they had been excused from family and communal duties because they had been set aside for God and His work.

I also note that it seems that the treatment of community and its origins in their political treatises and commentaries on Aristotle is short, if not "dry"short if not "dry" because the nature of communal life and how it came to be was not at issue in that day; it was simply taken for granted. Could they have imagined the various social and technological changes that have made modern atomistic living possible? As Fr. Cessario pointed out in class one time, the reason why the medievals didn't write much on the community is because they were living it. It is a more developed topic for us and the subject for so much spilled ink precisely because we don't have it.

I think it is correct to say that the teachers at the medieval universities were all clergy, secular priests or religious. When did lay masters first appear at the European universities, and when did they become a significant minority? How did they live up to their duties to family and community? What institutions were there, other than the state, for forming the laity? How much resistance was there to the centralizers of modern Europe, and was any of it found outside the nobility? Was there a lack of training among the elites in political science, or was alienation from the masses a greater factor? That is, the elites fought against centralization in order to maintain power and status, not to protect the communal life of those subordinate to them.

Stabat Mater

Dominican Liturgy: Dominican Chants of Good Friday

Wired: Gut-Bacteria Mapping Finds Three Global Varieties
NYT
Science Daily
Press release

An article from 2010.

Query: According to what laws or standards can a reform of the papal government be carried out? It would seem that a reform of the Roman Curial offices is needed, but could they be abolished? Or does the coordinating function of the papacy require some form of the curia to help it? What functions do the various offices serve? It does seem that they exist for the good of the Church Universal. Can we speak of constitutional law with respect to canon law and the various papal decrees on the congregations?

Knowledge and Love - Saint Thomas Aquinas

The Happiness Manifesto

Via the FB page for The New Economics Foundation:

TEDxDanubia 2011 - Nic Marks - The Happiness Manifesto


The Happiness Manifesto
Amazon

Lack of moral witness by academics?

I'd rather live as a member of a community than as someone who just talks about community but doesn't live it. Academics may have some sort of communal life, with their colleagues at their institutions or with fellow congregants at church, but I suspect it is rather limited. If they talk about community and political reform then, on what basis can they be credible witnesses to the way of life they are advocating? Their voting record? Their community activism or advocacy? How do they treat their neighbor? The parable of the good Samaritan applies not only to our treatment of (guest-)strangers we find in our midst (the ancient Greeks knew of hospitality as a duty to the gods) but to those with whom we live or have daily dealings.

The American Thing

Some additional thoughts to this post, but on the American polity, or rather, polities.

I wonder, those American Catholics (especially those who adhere to the Nationalist understanding of the Constitution) who talk about subsidiarity, how many of them live in a real community?

I would argue there can be real authority only when there is a real community, and there is shared commitment to the community and the common good. I would question whether those who are prepared to leave, for the sake of better economic opportunity or advancement, can really be considered members of a local community. Without community, can there be real self-rule or real authority at the "lower levels," rather than rule by a "fortunate" few. Even if one is attached to a romantic notion of democracy (i.e. the capacity of most people for self-rule), do they recognize that in such a situation, when true community is absent, that the regime is usually a bad one, with those who rule doing so for the sake of a few and not for the good of the whole? (What whole?)

It may be the case that most states no longer have a real basis for sovereignty (as they lack autarky and true citizenship), but it seems better for us to recover constitutional order for the sake of reform, rather than attempting to start from scratch. There is something to turning to the Constitution and our own legal and constitutional history for the devolution of power. It may be the case that true subsidiarity can only be brought about when the assumption that states are the locus of sovereignty is addressed, but this would be a better way to decentralize, rather than waiting for things to fall apart. As it is, many Catholics seem to ignore the traditional role of the states when discussing subsidiarity, holding to a nationalist conception of the Union and seeing the states as nothing more than administrative units, one more "level" of authority.

Holy Wednesday Hymn of Kassiani-Τροπάριο της Κασσιανής

The School of Salamanca (via MoJ)

Bishops as Teachers: A Resource for Bishops

Shawn Tribe, The Italian Debate About Continuity, Rupture, and the Second Vatican Council (which references the most recent Magister article, The Disappointed Have Spoken. The Vatican responds)

op-stjoseph: Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Aquinas: An Imagined Encounter
A talk by Archbishop Augustine Di Noia, O.P.

Another CMT contributor -- Subsidiarity and the Case of the Missing Lunch
By: Jana Bennett

Meanwhile, we non-politicians tend to see only the distinctions between federal and state levels, but much less so at local levels. But if we’re taking the principle of subsidiarity seriously, the feds and the state should be supporting local schools in all the ways it can, but stay out of decisions that schools themselves ought to be making – including whether it is appropriate to “teach to the test,” and how to measure their student populations’ successes. Someone teaching special education on a reservation, which has undoubtedly unique aspects compared to, say, the wealthy school district in my area that everyone wants part in. Or, the impoverished “Teach to the test”, even in statewide measures, make no sense, but because education is big bucks, the state and the feds are involved far more than I think is warranted. We ought to trust each other more – especially the people on the ground.

Just as we ought to trust a principal to know her school and make a determination about lunches. She’s not being unfair or unjust; she’s giving students with very particular needs an out, but she’s also making a fairly-considered decision for her school.

I won't address the question of American federal system and the locus of sovereignty. The problem is that not all authority is the same, just set in hierarchical order. The sphere of authority will differ in accordance with the nature of the good of the group. When it becomes possible that attendance at schools is 100% voluntary for all children then we can talk about what powers a principal may have under contract. Asserting that a principal has authority (even if conceded in law) does not mean that it is true -- tyrants claim the protection of the law.

One should be wary of limiting the authority of parents, even if it is under the guise of protecting children's health or promoting a good learning environment -- the school is not the state, and even the state should be restrained in what it can and cannot legislate for the sake of legitimate liberty.

Perhaps one should not expect much from a blog, including a careful analysis of all of the terms that are involved (though this would be necessary for rigorous argumentation), but professional academics should be careful of writing a blog, less their competence be judged by it.

Is There Still a Male-Female Wage Gap? by Charles Camosy

Though this certainly complicates the issue for me, it still seems that women being primarily responsible for child-rearing puts them at a competitive disadvantage in the workforce…and that this is de facto structural sexism. But I’d be interested in comments from people who know more about this stuff than I do. What is the reply here?

The manosphere has a term for men like this.

On a group blog in which everyone is equal, who will uphold and judge according to Tradition? One can allege that there are novelties in Church teaching concerning the role of the wife and mother, but more work is going to have to be done to show that they are not concessions to the demands of a society in which economic freedom is lacking.

Sunday Night Prime - On the Last Day - Fr. Benedict Groeschel w Fr. Bryan Kromholtz - 04-03-2011

The video begins with Father Kromholtz, O.P. talking about the GTU.

John O'Callaghan, Great God, It's the Great God Debate (via First Things)

Francis J. Beckwith, St. Thomas Aquinas and the Inadequacy of Intelligent Design

"Ethan" comments and cites St. Thomas:

Accordingly, there is diversity and inequality in things created, not by chance, not as a result of a diversity of matter, not on account of certain causes or merits intervening, but from God’s own intention…

The distinction of things is not from chance… those things which are distinct by their forms are not distinct by chance, but perhaps those things are, whose distinction is from matter. But the distinction of species is from the form, and the distinction of singulars in the same species, is from matter. Wherefore the specific distinction of things cannot be from chance…

It follows therefore that theform of the universe is intended and willed by God. Therefore it is not from chance: for we ascribe to chance those things which are beside the intention of the agent. Now the form of the universe consists in the distinction and order of its parts. Therefore the distinction of things is not from chance.

Therefore the specific distinction in things, which is according to their form, is not on account of their matter: but on the contrary matters were created diverse, that they might be suitable for diverse forms. Hereby is excluded… the opinions of any who held the distinction of things to be the result of various material principles.

I'll have to look this up when I get a chance.

Dominican Liturgy: Primitive Hymn for the Feast of St. Dominic

RADICAL EMANCIPATION: CONFRONTING THE CHALLENGE OF SECULARISM

CALL FOR PAPERS
NOTRE DAME CENTER FOR ETHICS & CULTURE
12th ANNUAL FALL CONFERENCE

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