Kathryn Jean Lopez interviews Robert P. George: Sex and the Empire State
Losing marriage to sexual liberalism.

The Pursuit of Happiness: Can We Have an Economy of Well-Being? by Carol Graham

Eudaimonia would be the answer but we already have disputes about what constitutes the good life and the its relation to the moral law...

Sandro Magister, Bologna Speaks: Tradition Is Also Made of "Ruptures"

David Boyle, Land tax vs. land redistribution

The Stewardship Economy by Julian Pratt

VoxDay: Eco on Hawking

OpStJoseph: The Spirituality of Blessed John Henry Newman (Part I)


Part 2:


Oratorian? How did it diverge from that of St. Philip Neri?

Blessed are the Peacemakers
by Peter Kwasniewski

James Chastek, Notions of the Soul

The first real account we get of what the soul is – which is still firmly materialistic – is that the soul is some arrangement of parts which, of themselves, are not living. The Greeks called this the theory that the soul was a harmony, and it is still the simplest theory of the soul (though we would probably dump “harmony” in favor of something more scienecy- sounding). The theory is continually abandoned for various reasons, the simplest being that arrangement is a feature of position or place, but if all one does is change the position or place of something, it doesn’t cease to be what it is. If all there was to being alive was arrangement, then death wouldn’t change what a thing was – which would mean that a cow doesn’t cease to be a cow when it dies.

How does "arrangement" differ from the contemporary concept of "organization"?

Two critical reviews of Jesus of Nazareth

CRC
Robert Sungenis

Honor Harger: A history of the universe in sound


Related:

radioqualia

Pertinacious Papist: The Political Problem of Religious Pluralism. PP republishes a review, originally published in Latin Mass Magazine, by Christopher Oleson of Thaddeus Kozinski's The Political Problem of Religious Pluralism. (archive for the review)

Related:
A review at NDPR

Byzantine, Texas: A favorite Orientale Lumen Conference podcast - Sr. Dr. Vassa Larin.

Zenit: That I May See You
A Look at Benedict XVI's Catecheses on Christian Prayer
By Kevin M. Clarke

medievalists.net: Man and nature in the Middle Ages By Christian Rohr

A report on the Aquinas-Barth conference

Op-StJoseph: Thomas Aquinas - Karl Barth Dialogue

Pope Paul VI, Honor St. Thomas by studying his thought (via Rorate Caeli)

For those who cannot receive the Holy Eucharist under either species because of allergies, would the frequent reception of the Anointing of the Sick be a suitable or permitted alternative for fostering their sacramental life?

John Finnis on the Good of Marriage

Marriage: A Basic and Exigent Good (via Mirror of Justice)

I have something in the works on the difference between "traditional" Thomistic moral theology/philosophy and the New Natural Theology regarding human goods. I maintain that in the former, the good to which we aim or which we intend is understood [primarily or exclusively] as an activity (or action), while it is understood within the NNLT as some sort of state or quasi-habit. This has an impact on the question of whether there is a single good which constitutes human happiness (and how various goods are integrated).

One could ask whether a model of practical reason is descriptive or normative. Some features of human practical reasoning are universal -- means-ends, the relationship of human desire to a (perceived) good (even if this is denied in a particular moral theory), the nature of practical reason as being focused on human action. Some aspects are present only to those educated (or raised) within a specific tradition.

Dr. Peter Gilbert writes an apology for his blog and gives a statement about his future plans.

Ancient Faith Radio podcasts Orientale Lumen

Here (via Mere Comments)

Daniel Tammet: Different ways of knowing


The speaker's homepage.

Emmaus Patch: Local Priest and Author Explores Orthodoxy in new Book
He says theology is not just theory and doctrine matters.

Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy

The FB page for CUA press announces that Fr. Emery's book, The Trinity: An Introduction to Catholic Doctrine on the Triune God has been released.

Pope: Man Cannot Live Without Searching for the Truth.

If bread is not a substance in itself, but a union of [substances] that constitute the bread, flour, salt, etc., then what happens when the bread is transformed into the Body of Christ? Is an accidental union replaced by a substantial union, with each part of bread a potential substance only when it is separated from the rest? Or is each part a substance unto itself?

Filioque: A Response to Eastern Orthodox Objections (via ML)

Orientale Lumen Conference

OL XV
Washington, DC
June 20-23, 2011

Peter Moskos on Flogging

Flogging Debate
Peter Moskos: Flogging versus prison

An interview with Peter Moskos

I first blogged about his book here.

Thomistica.net: Reflections on Ralph McInerny

Which reminds me, I should contact St. Augustine Press.

Was looking at the program for this year's New Wine, New Wineskins Conference and this caught my eye: Michael J. Martocchio, “The Ethics of Sustainability”

I assume this is he, listed as a member of the adjunct faculty at Duquesne.

Related:
Catholic Theological Ethics in the World Church
Richard Heinberg, Five Axioms of Sustainability
Kirkpatrick Sale, The Four Pillars of Sustainability
Thriving Beyond Sustainability: Pathways to a Resilient Society by Andrés R. Edwards

Idealism, subjectivity, and Divine Revelation

Kyle R. Cupp: Patriarchy, Theology and Doctrine, More on Power, Patriarchy and Truth, and Am I a Dissenter?

In combating controversy, the Church has refrained from declaring certain philosophical systems or statements or positions as erroneous, except when they manifestly contradict her teachings. Is there a new form of Modernism afoot, which is an attack not on supernatural knowledge directly, but indirectly through questioning of natural human knowledge (and communication, which is dependent upon language). How can a false understanding of human knowledge not lead to some form of neo-Modernism? The Church may need to declare certain propositions concerning human knowledge to be errors in order to safeguard Revelation, the authority of the Church, and Apostolic Succession, if such errors ever gain prominence, instead of being the speculation of academics lacking a solid preparation in philosophy. If the object of the intellect is not the thing but an idea or concept, then how is the idea connected to the thing? How can one possibly know that the idea represents reality?

Epistemology, knowledge, truth: what is the relationship between what one believes about human knowledge and Divine revelation here? Communication or teaching is meditated through human language, which is grounded upon human knowledge. But language is also grounded upon custom; hence part of education lies in untangling the two. Belief or faith doesn't require that the proposition is evident for one to assent to it; in fact, belief or faith is only possible when the proposition is not evident. Nonetheless, that the mind can have opinions is an indication that the mind transcends the material (and sensation)? So how does the modern distinguish between nous, episteme and doxa?

Not all are careful enough to define their terms in their arguments, and so "interpretation" comes into play, especially if there is no acceptable tradition providing definitions for those terms. But with respect to human knowledge (philosophy or science), one does not learn from words alone, but by checking those propositions against reality and what one already knows.


Regardig "realism" -- Aristotelian-Thomism is sometimes said to be "moderate" realism, while Platonism is "radical" or "extreme" realism. Plato does not deny that we have true knowledge, but the things that are the object of our knowledge are the Forms, not the material world. But the realism to which I refer is not with regards to universals, but to our knowledge; the contrast between realism and idealism. Can there be such a melding of realism and idealism so that it is still realism, a la "phenomenological realism"? If we have knowledge of ideas and things, then what makes the connection, and how do we know that such relation is true?

Are some mistaking the way we transition from confusion to knowledge through refining of definitions for something else? Our understanding of things can grow, but our starting point must be the thing, and not an idea of that thing. A "philosophy of hermeneutics" might be plausible if one was dealing with just opinions, and not reality. No wonder scientists scorn philosophers.

SEP: hermeneutics, phenomenology, epistemology
Modernism

Enrico Maria Radaelli on Vatican 2

Sandro Magister, A "Disappointed Great" Breaks His Silence. With an Appeal to the Pope

(via Rorate Caeli)

Fr. Augustine Thompson: Current Status of the Dominican Rite: A Summary
Questions and Answers on the Dominican Rite

Dr. John Cuddeback on Friendship

True Friends
The How-Tos and Joys of Christian Friendship
by Joseph Pronechen

There is a FB page for Dr. Cuddeback's book, True Friendship.

The Public Discourse: The Family: What Is to Be Done?
by Scott Yenor
June 15, 2011
Marital love implies dependence on another instead of autonomy, and it shows that certain goods (sex and procreation, love and marriage, marriage and parenthood) are connected. We must recover the language of self-giving. The second in a two-part series.

I still have to finish that post on love as self-giving. The first part of Mr. Yenor's essay. From the second part:

Unable to find the permanence we need in anatomy, it is necessary to turn to moral philosophy to show how nature, as it manifests itself in marriage and family life, is connected to the permanent human good of betrothed love. For this, we must recover the logic of marital unity and put the necessities that are implicated in marriage and family life in their proper place. This is the logic of marital unity. When marriage concerns serious ends, it makes demands on the time and resources of the couple; the more serious the ends, the more serious the demands. The more time- and resource-intensive the demands, the more members of the family are likely to practice some form of the division of labor to meet those demands. Married couples strive for ends, in other words, that exist in time and space or in life—so they implicate “necessities” within a larger context of meaning.

The necessities of nature gain their dignity by their relation to the ends of marriage. While it is easy for feminists, for instance, to depict the mundane tasks of motherhood and housekeeping as Sisyphean tasks, such necessitous household activities contribute to the building of a home, which is, at least in part, a home of love. In the context of love, the household management of a mother takes on greater dignity and receives higher meaning. Dusting or washing are acts of self-giving that contribute to an environment of nurturing that can best take place in the intense order of family life. There are certainly contractual appearances to this relationship—the husband and wife say “I do” and they agree on how to divide household labors. The contractual appearance, however, is only a moment in the experience of marriage and family life. Marriage may, as Hegel, that oracle of clarity, tells us, “begin from the point of view of contract,” but it does so “in order to supersede it.” This supersession is love, and love is a permanent human good that defines the order of the family.

As we hear so often today, love makes the family. What is love? Most refrain from raising this more significant question, for fear that such a question would give rise to endless controversy or hopeless subjectivity. Here, again, I would suggest that nature or anatomy must be understood in the light of love, the permanent attribute that lends meaning to the natural. Nature points up, toward the love that defines marriage and family life. We see this in sex, which reflects a human search for completion by joining with another, and which cannot be consummated without another. Though sex does not really satisfy that desire for another and sexual desire is soon extinguished when satisfied, this does not mean that one is alone. Sex happens on the level of the passions and the body, but points to something higher than itself. Genuine love integrates and subordinates the moment of sex within this larger unified framework. A relationship based on sex is not a proper marital relationship—though sex is part of a marital relationship—because it does not put sex in its proper place.

Betrothed love also grows from two becoming one in the procreation of children. A couple practices a form of self-giving in their life together, providing a fertile ground for the self-giving of parenthood. Parenthood is a picture of marital unity. A couple’s unified love is literally present in the person of the child, which explains why parents so often love their children more than their children love them: children are living embodiments of marital unity. Married couples are more than parents, yet parenthood points to the betrothed love that makes parents, in part, more than parents.

Modern thinkers, with partial exceptions, initiated a revolution in marriage at the level of betrothed love. They questioned whether self-giving was healthy, possible, safe, or consistent with human liberty and equality. Love implies dependence on another instead of autonomy, and it shows that certain goods (sex and procreation, love and marriage, marriage and parenthood) are connected. When the self-giving of betrothed love is no longer the end of marriage, the preparation ground for parenthood erodes; divorce seems more tenable as partners hold something back; more individualistic principles fill in to justify or define marriage; and sex and procreation, no longer pointing beyond themselves toward a higher good, come to be seen as individual goods or burdens instead of as common goods.

Buzzwords in contemporary [Catholic] moral philosophy (personalism?): "dignity" and "meaning."

Robert George, A visit to Italy to discuss civic values

I have just returned from Italy, where I gave the graduation adddress for the Master of Civic Education program at the Ethica Institute in the charming city of Asti. It was a wonderful opportunity to engage some of Italy's most gifted and promising young intellectuals. Ethica is performing a great service to the Italian nation by promoting the rigorous and appreciative study of civic values that must be in place if a regime of republican liberty is to be sustained. Scholars representing a spectrum of political viewpoints are assisting in the project. Students at Ethica have the great advantage of hearing the best arguments that can be made on different sides of questions that are at the center of Italian politics today. It is often lamented by public spirited Italians that civic discourse in their nation has degenerated into the rankest forms of partisanship. They say that political discussions frequently amount to exchanges of insults and other forms of verbal abuse. Ethica is doing something to change that. Its efforts deserve praise and support.

What would believers in consolidationism have to say about civic values and republicanism? Would Robert George or mainstream Italians be willing to repudiate that project? When the scale of a polity is too great, how can political discourse not degenerate as mass man, who has been unshackled from tradition and the bounds of community, is incorporated into it?

Ethica forum di riflesione sui temi dell'etica e della morale
Maurizio Viroli

CUA Press: The Ultimate Why Question
Why Is There Anything at All Rather than Nothing Whatsoever?
Studies in Philosophy and the History of Philosophy, Vol. 54

John P. Wippel , editor

Zenit:  Benedict XVI's Pentecost Homily
"God Is Reason, God Is Will, God Is Love, God Is Beauty" 

On the Church's Baptism Day
"The Breath of the Holy Spirit Fills the Universe"



Pope Benedict XVI conducts the holy mass of Pentecost Sunday in Saint Peter's Basilica at the Vatican June 12, 2011. (Reuters/Daylife)

Op-StJoseph: You are a Priest forever"
Ordinations to the Priesthood

"You are a Priest forever" from Province of Saint Joseph on Vimeo.

CUA: CUA President Appoints John McCarthy Dean of Philosophy School

Palestrina, Veni Creator Spiritus

Who’s Afraid of Metaphysics? by Matthew O'Brien and Robert C. Koons (the third of their 3-part series on natural law - parts one and two) [via ML]

US Episcopal Churches gaining momentum to form Ordinariate

Sandro Magister, Bishops Or Mandarins? The Dilemma of the Chinese Church

I hadn't seen this connection made between the legitimacy of the Patriotic Association and support of its autonomy before:

On the support given by American and European theologians to the "autonomy" of the Chinese Church

HON: Unfortunately, there is a theology in America and Europe that is also penetrating into the Chinese Church. This theology claims precisely autonomy in the selection of bishops, and independence from the Holy See. And so there are persons in America and Europe who are pushing the Chinese bishops to behave this way. "If you succeed," they say, "we will follow you."

Until a short time ago, these problems of independence and autonomy were only at the level of governance. Now they are also at the theological level.

Once I Was a Clever Boy: Thomist education

Social Practices

What Does it Mean to be a ‘Political Animal’?

Matthew O'Brien and Robert C. Koons, June 06, 2011

A notion of “social practice” should guide the way we think about morality and politics. The first in a three-part series.

In the contemporary American context, too often political and moral debates are cast as winner-take-all contests between the false alternatives of organic collectivism and atomistic individualism. Thus ‘conservatives’ are supposed to be individualists who assert the claims of the individual against society and ‘liberals’ are organicists who want to promote social goods by limiting individual freedom. But the rhetoric of either individualism or organicism renders the full range of human concerns inexpressible. We can see this when individualist conservatives suddenly backtrack towards organicism when, say, they defend the social importance of marriage against assertions of personal autonomy; so, too, when organicist liberals defend an extreme individual right to self-expression that conflicts with their professed concern for social welfare.

The puzzle’s solution lies in the conception of a ‘social practice,’ a conception that has played a central role in much of twentieth-century philosophy. Philosophers as diverse as Tyler Burge, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Alasdair MacIntyre, Joseph Raz, John Searle, and others have shown how social practices are a significant feature of philosophical anthropology. In order to understand what social practices are, and to see their relevance to our problem, we need to shift the focus from human individuals to the acts performed by human individuals. We will also need to draw a technical distinction between what we’ll call social institutions and social practices, although these terms are interchangeable in everyday use.

In brief, the solution to the problem is this: social institutions, like a state or a university, are aggregates of the human individuals who compose them, and so the goods of human individuals are prior to the goods of the social institutions of which they are parts. Social institutions ‘host’ social practices like politics and education. Social practices, however, are comprised not of human individuals themselves, but of the acts of human individuals. Human acts are the parts that compose social practices, and human acts are determined by the social practices they compose. In other words, social practices are not mere aggregates, and the relation between individual acts and social practices is analogous to the relation between cells and the whole organism of which the cells are parts.

Thus both organic collectivism and atomic individualism have their kernels of truth, which the natural law account of social practices and social institutions preserves. The collectivist goes wrong in supposing that all social forms are, like social practices, organic wholes. The individualist goes wrong in supposing that all social forms are, like social institutions, aggregative. But the social world is populated both by aggregative social institutions (the NFL, the American Bar Association, the New York Philharmonic) and by the holistic social practices (football, law, classical music) that the corresponding social institutions promote and sustain.

On the natural law account, then, each individual human act has a dual dependency, both on the individual subject (the human agent) who performs it and on the particular practice (or practices) to which it belongs. The individual act draws its nature and its individuality from both sources: it wouldn’t be the very act it is if it had either a different subject or belonged to a different practice. For instance, consider your pulling of the voting lever in the booth on November 4, 2008; that action was what it was because of the social practices in which you were a participant. It was an act of voting, an exercise in justice of your civic duty, a parent’s teaching his child by example, and so on. You intended to pull the lever, and pulling the lever was part of the aforementioned social practices.

The human nature of each individual human being is the ground both for the capacity of the human being to enter into social practices and for the need to do so. It is in this sense that we are social or political animals. When an individual human being participates in a social practice, he allows himself to become an agent of the practice by taking into his intention the intrinsic end (telos) of the practice itself. For instance, in order to play baseball, I must act as a baseball player, which involves making the intrinsic end of the game (victory of my team in accordance with the rules) the end of my baseball-related acts. The nature or essence of the act does not depend solely on the agent’s internal psychology: it depends also on the essence of the social practice to which the act belongs.

Taking a page or two from MacIntyre's After Virtue, no?

Our actions can and should have a bearing on others and our associations, including that perfect association or community of the polis... the goods of individuals and goods of groups - same or different? I wonder if what is being expressed here through the use of "social practices" could be done more simply. Man is a social nature, and part of his good is living with others. There is o such thing as a "social" life without reference to other people; and that cannot come to be without those people existing first. When we look at groups or associations, we consider primarily the good of the friendship itself, and the good that is the foundation of the friendship, what unites the friends in the first place. We can think of social practices as those actions that are particular to the members of a group, qua members of that group -- either those that bring about the good(s) upon which the friendship is based, or the actions that belong to friendship itself.

Friendships in associations can become participations in the political common good (communal life), or forms of civic friendship. They are ordered to that, but they can also become "exclusive" and thus detrimental to the community.(E.g. the group desires its good at the expense of that of the community and acts unjustly, etc.)  We are more familiar with abstract/institutionalized forms of associations, or we may  not be aware that these are associations ordered towards friendship because of our mobility and lack of social cohesion/community. We treat such associations as merely friendships of utility and cease our participation once they are no longer useful to us.

Not all associations are potentially political? It may be easy of us to think of associations that do not involve Aristotle's "friendship of virtue" but is this because we conceive of those associations incorrectly, living the atomized lifestyles we do? What I mean is that many do associate with others for the sake of utility or pleasure, and there is no enduring basis for their association, but should we not be aiming at permanence in our relationships? Isn't that the "ideal"?

Perhaps it is time for me to re-read After Virtue.

Michael Morland on John Finnis

Spurred by the release of the 5-volume collected essays of John Finnis, Michael Moreland praises Finnis:

Even those who disagree with him must acknowledge that Finnis's work--preeminently Natural Law and Natural Rights but also his other books and these essays--is among the towering achievements in Catholic intellectual life over the past 50 years.

World-wide? Even if one were to limit the area of influence to the United States, it might still be an exaggeration to claim this about the work of John Finnis. Finnis may have had disciples in the Anglophone world, but has he really persuaded non-Catholics of his version of the Natural Law? Aren't there some Catholic intellectuals who might rank a bit higher? Yves Congar? Louis Bouyer? Perhaps they belong too much to the first half of the twentieth century. How about Joseph Ratzinger, then? Or another contemporary theologian. I'm naming people who aren't Dominicans or Thomists, just to emphasize the point-why Finnis? Is he receiving credit (by a disciple) for creating a novel account of natural law and natural law morality? He doesn't present himself as a exponent of the Thomistic tradition in moral theology/philosophy. If this world continues for another 500 years, I'd be surprised if the work of Finnis (or the NNLT) continues to find readers...



Kevin Lee, A Sample of John Finnis

Thomas Merton on St. Bernard of Clairveaux

The Archdruid's latest, In the World After Abundance, called to mind some of the comments for this thread at The Spearhead, Still They Serve, which advocated nuclear energy. We all like our American way of life, the convenience and its easiness. Some would perpetuate it at all costs, dismissing the risks involved as negligible. Some men(?) have even criticized Angela Merkel's decision to move Germany away from nuclear energy as the typical decision-making of a woman, valuing security/safety more than anything else. I haven't done the risk analysis and I question the use of statistics in arguments, but even if safety/health is not the highest good for human beings, can we say that a life of convenience is worth the risk of something really bad happening?

How does the argument from safety against nuclear energy differ from the corresponding argument for gun control/prohibition? Does it follow from whether the fear is reasonable or not? Is inaction therefore justified? (We would then have to deal with the question of risk assessments. Oh, and the commensurability of goods.) Or is it because a gun is not always in use while a nuclear power plant is? The negative effects of nuclear power are always being contained while the plant is in operation. What can the nuclear power plant be protected against, and how many different things could happen to threaten it? Only one bad thing could happen with a gun, its being misused, so in comparison the number of safeguards that are needed for a gun are fewer.

Women are typically more cautious, while men are more willing to take risks.
Each "attitude" or inclination has its place, but one must consider the reasonableness of the inclination by the goods involved. It may be foolhardy to risk death for $50. But for $200 million, if it could help one's family and village?

I haven't really focused on this aspect of moral reasoning before...

(cross-posted at The New Beginning)

The limits of human law

The Western Confucian juxtaposes the view of the state (and law) given by Nicholas Hosford in The Role of the State with John Finnis's interpretation of Aquinas in his SEP article. According to the latter, "coercive jurisdiction extends to defending persons and property both by force and by the credible threat of punishment for criminal or other unjust appropriation or damage[, b]ut it does not extend to enforcing any part of morality other than the requirements of justice insofar as they can be violated by acts external to the choosing and acting person's will."

In his article dealing with the limits of law, Aquinas writes that law prohibits "only the more grievous vices," chiefly grave forms of injustice. But it is not necessarily limited to prohibiting injustice, as Finnis (and liberals) would maintain. Because of the unity of the virtues, one could argue that law can prohibit those "private" vices which could potentially undermine justice and living up to one's obligations to the community. (Is it not the case that disordered desires can lead to the performing of unjust acts for the sake of fulfilling those desires?) Injustice is a direct threat to communal living, but it seems to me that law can be used to protect all that is ordered to virtuous life with others.


One way to counter this is deny this thesis of the unity of the virtues (as Finnis does, I believe - I will have to double-check). One can separate the acquisition of justice from the acquisition of the other virtues. Finnis does this by weakening the notion of virtue to the point that it is simply habitual rule-following. One of his disciples, Robert George, allows for the extent of law to be greater (so that it encompasses the banning of pornography, for example). I will have to see if he diverges from Finnis in his premises. (Making Men Moral and In Defense of Natural Law.)

David Werling, Why Not the Univocal?
A Response to Fr. Cavalcoli in the Ongoing Debate
Regarding Vatican II and the Traditionalist Critique

(Fr. Giovanni Cavalcoli, Why Not Univocal Indeed!)

Does God command genocide?

Two by Kyle Cupp: Genocide and Divine Command Theory and Authoritarian Ethics. See the comments to the first by Dominic Holtz, O.P. and A Sinner.

WIRED: U.N. Report Declares Internet Access a Human Right

Op-StJoseph: New Issue of Dominicana
Journal of the Dominican Students

DSPT: Reflection on Pope Benedict XVI's "Jesus of Nazareth"

View on ExposureRoom

Aquinas Lecture 2011

The Vocation of the Catholic Philosopher: From Maritain to John Paul II
John P. Hittinger , ed.

Will Catholic philosophers in the United States lead the charge for a change in Catholic higher education and how it is being handled? Who will speak the truth to power about the higher education scam? Hiding behind the defense that a Catholic liberal education is not meant to be practical will seem self-serving.

The American Maritain Association

Stefan Sagmeister: 7 rules for making more happiness

bio

I'll have to watch this some other time...

Thomistic Institute

An introduction to the new website.

Thomistic Institute Website from Province of Saint Joseph on Vimeo.

Zenit: Statement on Anglican-Catholic Dialogue
"What Unites Us Is Greater Than What Divides Us"

Salve Project

Dominican Internet Projects

ORDINANDI 2011

Video currently down...

Dominican Province of St. Joseph

Homily for the Mass of Ordination to the Priesthood of Rev. Br Mark Francis Manzano OP and Rev. Br Boniface Willard OP
St Theresa Catholic Church, Oakland, California, 28 May 2011
by the Most Rev. Anthony Fisher, OP
Bishop of Parramatta, Austrailia

CB was talking to Sarge and he recommended 3 faculty members over at UST: Randall Smith, John Hittinger, and Steven Jensen. Perhaps I had forgotten that Hittinger was no longer at the Air Force Academy. I was surprised by his praise of Steven Jensen -- I remember the controversies over the moral object, and I thought he had not prevailed against his opponents (especially in his discussion of self-defense killing). Then again, it has been a while since I read his stuff; would his recent book be worth the price?

Two from Public Discourse

What’s Good? Wherefore Ought?
Thaddeus J. Kozinski, May 11, 2011
Only an ethics rooted in the divinely revealed truth of creation-as-gift and creator-as-love can coherently and adequately make sense of the universal experience of ought.

Thoughts About Oughts
Christopher O. Tollefsen, May 13, 2011
The requirements of natural reason in the pursuit of goods provide a more adequate starting point for moral reflection than the theological considerations in which moral reflection should come to its fruition.

Someone needs to record a better version of O Spem Miram and put it online.

The liturgy for the ordination yesterday was generally acceptable to my tastes, but my friend was left yearning for the old rite.

Against the Grain: Critical Responses to Tracey Rowland's "Culture and the Thomist Tradition: After Vatican II"

The Smithy: How to Understand Scholastic Thought

Ordination announcement for the Western Province.

Sandro Magister, Religious Freedom. Was the Church Also Right When It Condemned It?

Benedictine theologian Basile Valuet weighs in on the dispute over Vatican Council II. Against the traditionalists Gherardini and de Mattei. But also against the "Ratzingerian" Rhonheimer

From God's Word:

Among the sedes apostolicae, there is in turn the sedes apostolica of Rome, which obviously relates to the other sedes apostolicae roughly as these do to the sees that are not directly apostolic. It thereby represents the ultimate and genuine criterion of Catholicity, sufficient in itself.

Taking everything together, we may determine that, at the moment when the theology of the successio apostolica  was first formulated as such, and when the Church first undertook to define her own nature, the "canon" of her being, in a conscious way, this theology was neither episcopal theology nor certainly papal theology; rather, it was dual, insofar as it distinguished between "episcopacy" and the sedes apostolicae--embodied, above all, in the one see of Rome. If the successio is the concrete form of the word, then that paramount--perhaps scandalous--concreteness that lies in the ultimate connection with the Roman line of succession, has been part of it from the beginning: at this point, all anonymity is abolished; the concrete name makes the inescapable demand that one take up a position; it is the most acute form of that extreme concreteness in which God set out by assuming, not just a name for men, but the flesh of man--the flesh of the Church. Must it not also be the most acute form of scandal that this "foolish" action of God provokes?

Let us return. It is clear that the duality of the earliest theology of succession afforded by the emphasis on the sedes apostolicae has nothing to do with the later concept of patriarchates, to which it may well have supplied starting points. Confusion of the original claim of the sedes apostolica with the administrative claim of the city that is a patriarchal see characterizes the tragedy of the dispute beginning between Constantinople and Rome. The concept of the patriarchate, which, especially from the Council of Chalcedon onward, was set in opposition to the Roman claim, and tried to contain it within the patriarchal way of thinking, misjudges the nature of this claim at its most profound level, since it is based on an entirely different principle. The patriarchal principle is post-Constantinian; its significance is administrative; and hence its practice is closely linked with political and geographical realities; in contrast with that, the Roman claim is understood on the basis of the originally theological theme of the sedes apostolica. To the same degree that [new Rome] which could not consider calling itself "apostolic") blurred the old idea of the sedes apostolica in favor [of] the patriarchal concept, old Rome reinforced its references to the completely different origin and character of its own authority.

This authority is in fact quite different from a primacy of honor among patriarchs, because it operates on a quite different level, independent of such administrative concepts. The concealing of the old theological idea of the sedes apostolica, which was after all from the outset a part of the Church's understanding of herself, by the idea of the five patriarchates must be regarded as the real evil in the dispute between East and West, an evil that also had its effect upon the West, inasmuch as--despite the retention fo the concept of the sedes apostolica--a largely administrative and patriarchal concept of the importance of the Roman See developed that could hardly help any outsider to have a clear grasp fo the real essence of the Roman claim, as distinct from any other claims. [33-35]

Pope Retires Title "Patriarch of West" as Obsolete
Communique
Catholic Culture

Aristotelian logic by William Thomas Parry, Edward A. Hacker (GB)

Something to keep track of... It's out of print but maybe a cheap used copy can be had...

Poetic knowledge and classical education

What sort of mind is proportioned to an education in philosophy? Dialectic and contact with the real world are necessary for the student of philosophy, but what else is required for the student to be able to accept the definitions given to him by his teachers and books? I have thought that the best way to stimulate inquiry is through socratic questioning, but what other means are there for the teacher of philosophy? Is it proper to proceed in a "logical" fashion, with definitions/axioms and reasoning from them? This question about how to teach philosophy got me thinking about pedagogy and other modes of knowing... I again recall the complaints lodged by critics of the manuals. Was the seminary and Catholic university education of the early 20th century intellectually deadening because the requisite preparation that is necessary for scientific learning is missing?

John Senior and Poetic Knowledge:

A tribute to John Senior
Our Schoolmaster Remembered
An interview with James S. Taylor (His Poetic Knowledge: The Recovery of Education.)
"The End of Education": John Senior and the Idea of the University

Teaching Classical Literature Classically by Andrew Kern (CiRCE)
THE “GOOD BOOKS” LITERATURE PROGRAM by Elisabeth Carmack, Ph.D., N.D., DiH.
CIRCE Institute

Related:
Inside Classical Education
Institute for Classical Schools
Memoria Press
The Classical Scholar
Classical Academic Press

Institute for Catholic Liberal Education

A critique of certain programs (including Well-Trained Mind) by a Randian.

A piece on peak oil

Entropy, peak oil, and Stoic philosophy by Ugo Bardi

Any other proponents of neo-stoicism out there?

Zenit: Papal Address to Marriage and Family Institute
"In Love Man Is 'Re-created'"

CUA: Catholic University to Host 2012 Conference on 50th Anniversary of Vatican II

Enough talking, time for action? Or maybe the problem is that the talking was mostly for naught, because the authors of the documents didn't really address the problem of "modernity" because they failed to understand it?

If we could ignore the documents of Vatican II for a moment, what is there of pastoral and dogmatic value that could not be presented through what came before the council? American lay people are familiar with what is taught in the name of the council, but what would a summary of the council documents be like?

Metropolitan Kallistos Ware, St. John Climacus and Prayer (mp3)

Sandro Magister, Benedict XVI the "Reformist." The Prosecution Rests

Introvigne replies to de Mattei, a leader of the anti-conciliarists. And Professor Rhonheimer returns to explain how and why Vatican II must be understood and accepted. In the way indicated by the pope

Christian Philosophy

homistica: New book on Christian Philosophy debates

A collection of the original sources; it won't have later and non-French contributors like John Wippel and Ralph McInerny.

I wrote a paper on this once -- I'd have to revise part of it at least. The first question that needs to be answered is: "How are we to define philosophy?" Do we accept the scholastic definition, or do we define philosophy as something less exact, so that the lyrical expressions of wannabe poets can be considered philosophy? Is philosophy about the mode in which it is expressed or the reasoning? Are there universal rules for good reasoning (including how to define well), which are studied in logic? How much logic did moderns like Blondel study? I think the debate is illustrative of what happens when people have lost the art of definition and name without guidance.

Some could interpret those who affirmed that there is such a thing as Christian philosophy as making an apologetical argument - Gilson and Maritain, for example. A last gasp of Christian triumphalism, unwittingly put forth by "existential" Thomists? Or another attempt to discredit scholasticism, with its philosophical compnent as the target.

If we accept that philosophy is reasoned-out knowledge, then there is no such thing as "Christian" philosophy. Some may be referring instead to how faith and reason interact or how grace affects reason, and naming this nexus as "Christian" philosophy; while it is true that the supernatural life does have benefits for those who seek reasoned-out knowledge, to say that this is "Christian" philosophy is potentially misleading, as our starting points or logic are not affected.


(And if it is claimed that the life of grace enables reason to reflect upon truths "natural" reason cannot come to know, then this would not be philosophy at all.)

Humans 'predisposed' to believe in gods and the afterlife

I believe apologists have made use of this "universal" fact in favor of theism.

So what are atheists to do but try to explain this away with evolutionary psychology or some other form of reductionism? Could it be that the simple and the uneducated have some sort of understanding that the operations of the mind transcend the limits of matter?

Cardinal Burke on the liturgy

Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke from Province of Saint Joseph on Vimeo.

Courses by Michel Labourdette op

On the virtues of Hope and Charity. (In French)

Volume 1 of his course is in commercial print! Cours de théologie morale fondamentale

Parole et Silence
Revue thomiste

How much effort should lay people put into discerning God's will?

Everyone should use prudence, and everyone should ask to be better confirmed God's will. Everyone should learn how to abandon themselves to Divine Providence. But does everyone equally need to know God's will? Lay people can discern what they should do, but much of their action is constrained by their duties and the rules and mores of their community. This is true of secular priests to an extent.

But at present it seems to me that those who need to discern God's will the most are those (religious) who no longer participate in the human economy, but wholly serve the Divine Economy. As a result, they need to be enlightened by Him directly as to how they are to serve Him and what they should do. Much of what the laity needs to do in order to fulfill God's will is given to them through the Natural Law, in conjunction with positive laws. The laity need to exercise prudence, as do those in religious life, but I think religious need to check that they are not presuming to be doing God's will, but must in humility ask to know whether this is actually the case.

The young do need to ask the question of whether they have a vocation to the priesthood or the religious life, but after that... maybe only with respect to great or extraordinary things or difficult cass? A parent does not need to question whether God wants him to do what is right for his children?

An old article in the Marquette Law Review, written by Anton Hermann Chroust: The Problem of Private Property According to St. Thomas Aquinas

Lumen Christi Institute: April 27: "The Dignity of Being a Substance" by Gilles Emery, OP

Vimeo

“The Dignity of Being a Substance” from The Lumen Christi Institute on Vimeo.

How great the burden of proof?

Re: torturing people for the sake of getting information

What needs to be be established so that the court (or lawful authority) can find someone guilty of contempt in refusing to answer some question he has been commanded to answer? Beyond a "reasonable doubt"? It seems to me that it would be difficult to show beyond a reasonable doubt that someone knows (or plans) x - I can't imagine there being sufficient incriminating evidence that someone knows x without the needed information being present as well.

I think the burden should be rather great. If it cannot be established without a reasonable doubt that someone knows x, then he cannot be punished for refusing to divulge that information, even if those in authority have reasons for suspecting that he has that information.

Don Paco on St. Thomas's philosophy

Quaeritur: Aren't You Unfairly Criticizing Gilson?

Additional notes on the definition of torture

Begun on March 19.

Some thoughts on the use of "compel" or "coerce" in the definition of torture.

Compel, coerce, force may be synonyms, but their usage may indicate slight (or not-so-sleight) differences in their meanings?

"Compel" may be somewhat ambiguous, as ambiguous as the definition of "torture" can be. After all, torture can be defined as the use of pain or bodily harm to compel obedience, the yielding of information, etc. -- to make someone do what they do not want to do. If a police officer uses pain to make someone resisting arrest comply with his legitimate commands, is he torturing that person? (Or if a child is spanked because he is not obeying his parents' instructions, is that torture?) Pain is used to bring someone to do something the one applying the pain wants. The same is true of force. On the surface, this does not seem like punishment for disobedience, but the use of pain or force is usually a response (and hence justified in the eyes of the law) to prior non-compliance/disobedience of an instruction or order.


"Coerce" may be less ambiguous than the other two words because in the literature the word coercion is often associated with law and government. Law coerces as well as commands. It doesn't necessarily imply a voluntaristic understanding of law; it is how the effects of law are perceived by its subjects, who may have only an imperfect understanding of the purpose of law.Does coercion involve an understanding that the consequences of not following are punishments? Punishments for disobeying a (legitimate) command? In so far as it is tied to law, I think it does. One is given the opportunity to comply, and if one refuses to do so, he is punished.

(The wiki entry on coercion. SEP. IEP on Free Will.)

How do we distinguish morally licit forms of coercion  (if there are any), getting obedience, cooperation, compliance through the application of pain and so on, from illicit forms? One could make an argument from human dignity that no one should be made a tool of another's will, but taken to an extreme, this argument (proper to liberalism) would lead to the sanctioning of disobedience and the outlawing of all consequences for that act. So is compulsion (as in the example of the police officer) to be identified with (legal) coercion and hence punishment?

In coercing the will of another, one is doing so with respect to an external act, and in particular acts of the body, whether it be to say something or to submit to an arrest.One cannot coerce the will to truly choose some opinion or belief, to assent or deny something, because we cannot confirm that this is actually the case. We can only obtain the physical representation of that belief through a verbal or written profession. Nor can we coerce the will's internal acts (desiring or loving some end). "Mental states" are hidden from us. That sort of mind control is impossible for us, and hence a non-believer cannot be effectively compelled from without to embrace the Christian faith. It also goes against the nature of the act of faith because the "grounds for belief" is not relief of pain or one's physical safety or health, but God's revealing of Himself and the acceptance of this. To say that the act of faith is or must be a free act does not go far enough, in my opinion, in explaining why it cannot be coerced. How is it free, that epistemic encounter with God?

Again, even if torture could be morally justified,  it is ineffective (according to various "experts) at procuring truth (confessions of guilt) or information.

*Compulsion presupposes that the original command was lawful - the one giving the command hand the authority to do so, the one being commanded is under his authority, and so on.

Catholic Online: Verbum Domini: Pope Calls the Faithful to Fall in Love with the Living Word of God

Rorate Coeli: A "renewed anthropological foundation to religious freedom" 

I have to agree with those commenting who see no change in the Holy Father's understanding of Dignitatis Humanae. The anthropology is the basis for the freedom and for the right.

Zenit: Mexican Christian Leaders on Religious Freedom [2011-05-06]
"Not a Benevolent Concession of the State But a Fundamental Human Right"

Zenit: Papal Address to Liturgical Institute
"Not Infrequently Tradition and Progress Are Clumsily Opposed"

Pope's Message to Biblical Commission
"Inspiration and Truth as Two Key Concepts"


Pope's Address to Delegation From the "Papal Foundation"
"The Church Is Missionary by Her Very Nature"

Called to Communion: Lawrence Feingold on Freedom of the Will (via ML)

NovAntiqua

Discovered this blog today while doing a search for information regarding the conference dedicated to John Finnis. One of the blog authors, Kevin Feiser, has written a series on the "action theory"/moral psychology of Martin Rhonheimer:

Regarding Rhonheimer…
On Rhonheimer, Part II: Moral Action Theory
On Rhonheimer, Part III: Virtue Ethics

6th Scarpa Conference on Law, Politics, and Culture

Patrick Brennan: More on John Finnis and others at Villanova Law

See also Fr. Rhonheimer is coming to Villanova Law and The Scarpa Conference at Villanova Law: Eskridge, Ferejohn, Finnis, and many others

OUP: The Collected Essays of John Finnis (5 volumes!)

Fr. Tomas Tyn, O.P.

Fr. Giovanni Cavalcoli, O.P. recommends these two websites for more information about the Servant of God Tomas Tyn, O.P. in his Response to the traditionalists of "The Remnant," in defense of Arzillo: Studio Filosofico Domenicano and Arpato.

SD's Youtube Channel




Other links:
Padre Tomas Tyn: un domenicano senza compromessi
Totus Tuus Tools
Servo di Dio Tomas Tyn
a forum thread
another homily on Fr. Tyn





P.Tomas Tyn, OP: La temperanza (Matilde has audio files of Fr. Tyn and videos of Fr. Cavalcoli)
P.Tomas Tyn: Omelia di P.Pilastro, OP (1.1.1991)
P. Tomas Tyn OP (1950-1990) mostra fotografica a Cremona

Now a short comment on Fr. Cavalcoli's response. He writes:

By comparing Descartes with Aristotle, Aristotle did not intend to refer to the dualism of Descartes, of whom he does not speak, but to the Cartesian way of thinking, too attached to clarity and distinction, something that can be acceptable in mathematical thinking, but not in theological, which is a form of thought based more on analogy than on univocality. Now, it is precisely the method of analogy that is characteristic of Aristotle, and not of Descartes.

Analogical thought makes it possible to understand how a concept, while still remaining identical to itself, can however at the same time develop, progress, explicate and clarify itself. This is typical of all vital phenomena, from the biological level to the spiritual. Because of this, Blessed John Henry Newman compared dogmatic or theological progress to the development of a plant, which grows and develops while still remaining itself. A five-foot oak tree is still itself even when it has reached one hundred feet.

Thus the doctrines of Vatican II must not be viewed as a disowning or rupture with the previous magisterium, but as a confirmation and explication of them. In other words, with Vatican II we know better those same truths of faith that we knew before.

The science of] Theology may be characterized by analogical thinking.But is it too much to ask for clarity in a dogmatic statement or formula. We would expect it in a dogmatic definition; otherwise imprecision would render it useless as a tool for teaching the Faith and opposing error. Conciliar documents are not meant for theological speculation; rather, they are there to explicate Sacred Tradition for the sake of the Christian faithful. (I think there is a difference between explication as (re-)defining the truths of the Faith, as opposed to shedding light or giving insight to the principles (supplied by Faith) through reasoning.) It would seem to me that this is a straw man argument.

Roberto de Mattei responds to critics

Sandro Magister, The Church Is Infallible, But Not Vatican II

And it made mistakes, maintains traditionalist historian Roberto de Mattei. The dispute continues for and against the popes who guided the Council and put its innovations into practice

Ryan T. Anderson reviews John D. Mueller's Redeeming Economics: Dismal Science Redeemed: What’s Gone Wrong.

I'm puzzled by this account given by Mueller:

Thus the theory Aquinas outlined—known as “Scholastic” economics—had four key elements: the theory of production, which explains which goods (and how many of them) we produce; the theory of justice in exchange, which accounts for how we are compensated through the sale of goods for our contributing to their production; the theory of final distribution, which determines who will consume our goods; and finally, the theory of consumption (or utility), which explains which goods people prefer to consume.

I think I have the book, but if I do, it's in storage. What he writes here about distributive justice does need to be checked, since distributive justice pertains to common goods. It could be argued that whatever we produce from natural resources, which are clearly "common goods," is also common, but I haven't come across a persuasive argument that this is so.

Vocations Vid for the Eastern Province

Various popes, bishops and theologians have written about what constitutes a good regime (one that governs in accordance with the common good), and they have accepted the classification of regimes taken from the ancient Greeks. Political theorists from Aristotle to Leopold Kohr have talked about the limits to the size of a polity, and how good governance is not possible if a polity exceeds this limit. I would consider this to fall under "Natural Law reasoning" (that is to say, a precept concerning the limit to a size to a polity would be of the Natural Law, touching upon both the common good and good government). But is it something that the Church could ever endorse?

John Allen, Laicizing bishops, a movie flap, Ireland and America, and Vatican II

More often than not, people like to see their own convictions as a middle position between two extremes. We all feel better, I suppose, thinking of ourselves as rational moderates, standing against ideologues on either side.

When it comes to interpretations of the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), some progressive Catholics are tempted to see Pope Benedict XVI’s “hermeneutic of reform,” which stresses continuity with the pre-Vatican II church, as the opposite end of the spectrum from more liberal views. That’s not, however, how most people in the Vatican size things up, where the “hermeneutic of reform” is instead understood as a balanced position between thinking that church history began with Vatican II, and thinking that the council was just plain wrong.

For that taxonomy to work, there have to be credible exponents of the “just plain wrong” position. That’s where Italian historian Roberto de Mattei and Monsignor Brunero Gherardini, a canon of St. Peter’s Basilica, enter the picture.

Both have published provocative books about Vatican II. Last year, de Mattei offered Il Concilio Vaticano II: Una storia mai scritta (“The Second Vatican Council: A Story Never Told”), styling Vatican II as a rupture with tradition comparable to the French Revolution, and faulting every pope since Pius X for allowing it to happen. Gherardini produced Concilio Vaticano II: Il discorso mancato (“The Second Vatican Council: The Missing Discussion”), in which he said some council fathers believed “the church was to be a kind of research laboratory rather than a dispenser of truths from on high.”

Both books were recently reviewed in L’Osservatore Romano, the official Vatican newspaper, and in both cases the verdict was fairly negative. The commentary on de Mattei came from Italian Archbishop Agostino Marchetto, author of a study of the council openly critical of the more liberal “Bologna school” associated with Italian scholars Giuseppe Alberigo and Alberto Melloni. Marchetto wrote that de Mattei’s work is “ideological” and suffers from “extremist tendencies.” Likewise, Inos Biffi, a medieval expert and a frequent writer for L’Osservatore, charged that Gherardini doesn’t so much “discuss” Vatican II as “denigrate” it.

The dividing line is this: If the post-Vatican II period brought some confusion and excess, is that the fault of the council itself? Benedict XVI, and figures in sync with his views such as Marchetto and Biffi, say no; traditionalist critics such as de Mattei and Gherardini say yes.

All this illustrates a core insight about the Catholic Church: Deciding who the moderates are depends on the range of views one takes into consideration. When you see the whole picture, it’s often tougher to conclude that the Vatican, or the pope, represents an extreme.

Again, Allen talks about "moderates" -- this is a unhelpful term, when it comes to evaluating the second Vatican Council or its documents. I think those who are critical are critical primarily of the documents approved by the Council Fathers and of certain ambiguities. As for explaining how the documents came about, that is the job of a historian, not of a theologian or bishop, even if it is up to the theologian or bishop to interpret the documents in light of Tradition and to present them in that manner.

This is also separate from the question of whether the second Vatican Council is the cause of all the problems in the Church from the late '60s through the '70s. Again, I don't think that this is what Gherardini would claim.

The hermeneutic of continuity might be mandated by charity (and fidelity?), but does it not presuppose that the Church must reconcile the documents of the Council with tradition because of their authoritative weight? Are not syllabi and anathemas better?