Religion versus relationship

All-Merciful Saviour Orthodox Monastery posts the following on FB:

Orthodoxy is NOT a religion, but a way of life that is centered in Jesus Christ. Orthodoxy, as a way of life, has the cure to what ails us and can return us to that state of wholeness that was God's original intent for human kind. Because Orthodoxy is not about religion, it can offer the transformation of the heart that comes with entering into a relationship with our creator. This transformation begins with repentance, that moment when we decide to return to that pure state of communion with God, for which we were created. When we renounce ourselves, we become a difference person through the action of God's grace. Where we were corrupt because of the fall, through repentance we are returned to that state for which we were created.

It's the second time I've seen such a distinction being made in recent days on the Internet.

A Thomist could agree with this in so far as religion (being concerned with practices or rituals and other actions in the service of God) does not have God as its object, as it is not a theological virtue, but has God for its end (and is thus concerned with the means). One needs charity (or perhaps the natural love of God) for religion to be enlivened. Religion by itself does not give the motivating force, nor can it substitute for a living union with God. But this does not mean that for the Christian the virtue of religion is not necessary either.

If, however, religion is defined as faith or belief system then we would have to distinguish between the infused theological virtue and some acquired virtue that is not dependent upon God for the revealing authority, along with an explanation of how faith and charity differ.

Edit. Remembered that this video has been making the rounds on FB, and Catholics and other Christians have been putting up responses. I don't think I'll be responding to that.

Edward Feser & Jonathan Sanford - Science and Faith Conference

Dominican friars appointed to the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas

New books from Liturgical Press:
On the Historical Development of the Liturgy
Anton Baumstark; Translated by Fritz West

At the Heart of Christian Worship: Liturgical Essays of Yves Congar

True and False Reform in the Church
Yves Congar, OP; Translated with an Introduction by Paul Philibert


Spirituality of the Premonstratensian: The Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries
François Petit, O. Praem.
Translated by Victor Szczurek, O. Praem. and edited with an Introduction by Carol Neel

Issues in Eucharistic Praying in East and West
Essays in Liturgical and Theological Analysis
Edited by Maxwell E. Johnson

Early Christian Worship
A Basic Introduction to Ideas and Practice
Paul F. Bradshaw

Essays on Early Eastern Eucharistic Prayers
Paul F. Bradshaw, Editor

The Eucharistic Liturgies: Their Evolution and Interpretation
Paul F. Bradshaw and Maxwell E. Johnson

The Origins of Feasts, Fasts, and Seasons in Early Christianity
Paul F. Bradshaw and Maxwell E. Johnson

Reconstructing Early Christian Worship
Paul F. Bradshaw

Rule of Prayer, Rule of Faith
Essays in Honor of Aidan Kavanagh, O.S.B.
Nathan Mitchell, OSB, and John F. Baldovin, SJ, Editors


Related:
1998 - Colloque - Comparative liturgy - Baumstarck
West, Fritz. The Comparative Liturgy of Anton Baumstark

Ensemble Ad Libitvm, Oruro - Bolivia. Versa est In Luctum

The Smithy: Marilyn Adams on History of Philosophy and A Definition of Scholasticism

Homiletics

An apparent weakness of IVE formation of priests is homiletics. Their homilies tend to verbosity, comparable with papers for a popular conference with all of the references. (The opposite extreme is the short homily that gives very little instruction or catechesis, when these would be necessary for the uninformed faithful in the parish.)

But what of the great homilies or sermons of the past, the Cure of Ars or St. John Chrysostom? Or priests like Fr. Rutler? Am I suffering from ADD or some acquired deficiency in my attention span? What about the delivery of the homilies?

Is it the case that priests should be learning rhetoric and this is what is missing from university education? While we cannot count on the art of persuasion alone to produce Christian living, can it not work in concert with the Holy Spirit? Can the emotions be influenced in a way to make people more open to the gospel? After all, are the emotions of Christians not grounded upon the life of grace and faith?

A homily or speech is not a spoken essay. Seminarians (and students of the liberal arts in general) should be learning how to compose and give oral presentations effectively. If not from a rhetorician then from whom?

Insight Scoop: The new HPR site is up, running, and accessible to all

MoJ: McConnell: "Is There Still a 'Catholic Question' in America?"

"The important question facing the nation was not whether forty million Americans baptized into a certain religion are excluded from the presidency, but whether many more millions of Americans are excluded from full political participation because they ground their understanding of justice and morality in the teachings of their faith."

What does he mean by this? I don't think I'll trudge through the whole speech to find out; it seems like he is tackling the political problem from the wrong premises.

Skimming through Matthew Levering's The Betrayal of Charity, I find that he follows Aquinas's treatment of the sins against charity. However, as far as I can tell, he does not deal with the problem of the loss of the ordo caritatis, so prominent in the United States, but perhaps present to a lesser degree in Europe. If there is to be a return to communal life, there must first be a recovery of the ordo caritatis. The bishops American are wasting their time with making political statements since they are apparently unaware that the biggest problem lays at the foundation of political life.

Is there a similar lacunae in the moral theology of Joseph Ratzinger?

Responsorio Graduale Gregoriano, Epifania, Giovanni Vianini, SCHOLA GREGORIANA MEDIOLANENSIS

Because we're too busy to celebrate Epiphany on Friday and go to Mass then...

Michael Sullivan, Ockham and Scotus and Natural Theology

James Chastek, The intentional as other than being, or Nothing and Puzzling over definitions

Séquences choisies - Messe de Noël à Fribourg
Première messe de Noël célébrée par Mgr. Charles Morerod en tant qu'évêque en la cathédrale de Fribourg dimanche

January 26, 2012 Special Lecture by Dr. Russell Hittinger: Can You be the Imago Dei on Your Own? Modern Thomism on the Social Character of Human Existence

I was listening to an Extraenvironmentalist interview with John Michael Greer, and it struck me that his epistemology is subjective, not quite Kantian but related. Still, that doesn't necessarily vitiate what he has to say about economics and our failure to consider the primary economy.

From the Spring 2011, volume 10, number 1 issue of Tidings:

Second Liturgical institute Student Successfully Defends Doctoral Dissertation


On May 4th, 2011, Institute Student Fr. Anthony Putti successfully defended his doctoral dissertation, becoming the second graduate of the Liturgical Institute to complete the degree of Doctor of Sacred Theology. The culmination of five years of research and writing, his doctoral dissertation, entitled "Theosis Through Liturgy in the Theologies of Alexander Schmemann and Dumitru Staniloae," was written under the direction of faculty member Fr. Emery De Gaal.


Fr. Putti explained that the Eastern notion of theosis, often called divinization in the West, has strong biblical and patristic support, as in St. Athanasius' famous statement that God became man so that man might become God. In particular, the dissertation focused on comparing the understanding of theosis in two of the twentieth century's great Orthodox theologians.

Schmemann, who served for over 40 years at St. Vladimir's Seminary in New York, is known for his writings on the sacred liturgy, many of which have been available in English for decades. Fr. Putti argued that Schmemann's model saw the Church as the enablign agent of theosis through the sacred liturgy, making theosis the goal of the Christian life in God by the Holy Spirit.

The doctoral defense board spoke highly of Fr. Putti's introduction of the important work of Staniloae to the English-speaking world. A Romanian priest, Staniloae (1903-1993) proposed a mystical-dogmatic approach to theosis centered on the vision of God as three divine persons, envisioning the mystery of the Incarnation as the basis for the transfiguration of the entire cosmos.

The Liturgical Institute congratulates Fr. Putti for his careful academic work and intellectual rigor, and look forward to his scholarly contribution to the Church's liturgical life.

Related:
Father Dumitru Staniloae:Orthodox Spirituality





Dumitru Staniloae: An Ecumenical Ecclesiology by Radu Bordeianu


His obituary in The Independent.

Was about to finish some comments on a piece at The Public Discourse, but the website is down (or the account has been suspended)...

Sandro Magister, Inside the Crisis. With the Society of Jesus
The analysis of the European financial disaster written by "La Civiltà Cattolica" with the approval of the Vatican secretariat of state. Special focus: Italy and Germany

Zenit: Traditional Proclamation of Christ's Birth
"Today Is the Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ"

James Chastek, Accounting for what a substance is

Byzantine, Texas: Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy, an abbreviated review

What does doctrine matter, as long as you're a theist. Or you believe in God? (Or worse, as long as you believe something and are a good person?) But some forms of ignorance can be excused; the rejection of charity cannot. Non-Christians (apart from the Jews) know nothing about loving God more than one's self.

But back to dogma - what if God has revealed Himself to us? Shouldn't we then be concerned with what He has actually revealed, instead of relying upon our own possibly mistaken ideas?

(Isn't everyone's faith the same? Isn't all just tradition? But what is the ultimate source of the tradition? And what do we know through the tradition? How is Christianity set apart from Judaism and Islam on this point? I do not think Islam would claim that the object of faith for a Muslim is God Himself.)

Nativity Compline--"God is With Us"


St. Elias Church

Annie Murphy Paul: What we learn before we're born (mp3)


Related:
What Do Babies Think?

St. Nicholas, Santa Claus, and the Nativity: An Interview with Metropolitan Hilarion (Alfeyev)

Dominicana: 795 Years of Preaching: There Still is Work to be Done

MoJ: Kramer on the "Purgative" Justification for Capital Punishment

Moral Absolutes and the Divine Command by Robert T. Miller

(see also God and Moral Absolutes by Matthew O'Brien)

Thaddeus Kozinski has some posts over at ISI reviewing Sertillanges and his recommendations for cultivating the intellectual life.

Thomistica.net: The Catholic Theological Society of America--and St. Thomas Aquinas

No Intentional Killing of the Innocent: A Response to Miscamble and O’Brien by Christopher O. Tollefsen

Montesinos 500th Anniversary

John Zmirak, Gifts of the Spirit: What’s the Return Policy?

Immigration and American Exceptionalism (via MOJ)

Immigration and American Exceptionalism from Center for Vision and Values on Vimeo.

Rorate Caeli: New Secretary General of International Theological Commission
Saint Thomas and the historical method

The Smithy: New Doctor and A Ramble on Ockham, Scholarship, and Other Matters

Chief tells Pope: we must revive soul of Europe

And how, exactly, is this going to be accomplished? Another empty ecumenical gesture? Are Jews going to pray for Christians to be better Christians?

He called on Christians and Jews to open a "new chapter" in their relationship: "If Europe loses the Judeo-Christian heritage that gave it its historic identity and its greatest achievements in literature, art, music, education, politics, and economics, it will lose its identity and its greatness.

One might have thought that the claim of a "Judeo-Christian" identity or culture was limited to Americans. Christianity is rooted in Judaism but that is not the same as the Judaism that came into being through the rejection of Christ.

Affirmative Action in the Church?

Given how feminized the Church and hierarchy are already, is this such a wise move?

Rome Reports: Pope to canonize and name Hildegard of Bingen as Doctor of the Church



How influential has she been on theology?

Rorate Caeli

James Chastek: Philosophies of Nature, Old and Modern

Thomistica.net: Christ and Spirituality in St. Thomas Aquinas: A New Book by Fr. Torrell

Switzerland’s newest bishop ready to evangelize

Zenit: Prelate's Address on the Holy See as Member of the International Organization for Migration


"The Ethical Implications of the Current Situation Seem to Require a Renewed Discussion"

Rorate Caeli: Msgr. Gherardini: Vatican II is not a super-dogma
The importance and the limits of the authentic Magisterium

The Smithy: Scotus' Razor

MoJ: Review of Taylor & Maclure, "Secularism and Freedom of Conscience"

Journal en continu - Séquences choisies - Ordination de Charles Morerod

Related:
Sandro Magister, Theologians, Apologists. What the New Bishops Have To Be

Edward Feser on Frank Pastore (link via his blog) - mp3

The Smithy: Robert Prentice and Illuminationism

MoJ: Koritansky ed., "The Philosophy of Punishment and the History of Political Thought"

(Koritansky's book on Aquinas)

Christopher Kaczor - Pro-Life Aristotle

Tota pulchra es Maria by Durufle performed by Vox Reflexa

Rorate Caeli: The words of Monsignor Ocáriz and Conciliar innovations

Zenit: Papal Address to International Theological Commission
"A Truly Catholic Theology ... Is Necessary Today More Than Ever"

James Chastek, On what can be meant by “there is no morality without God”

The clearest way to show this is to give the various arguments that have actually been used to prove the claim there can be no morality or moral action without God.


1.) Morality is rational, but the existence of God is a necessary practical postulate for rational morality. (Kant)


2.) Human nature is wounded, by which we mean incapable of acting morally without some exterior supernatural aid. (St. Paul, interpretation 1)


3.) Human nature is called to live with a being whose existence exceeds what it can discovered by its own rational power, therefore human nature cannot achieve what it is called to unless this being reveals itself to him. But moral action consists in achieving that which one is called to do, in the sense of perfecting ones nature. (St. Paul, interpretation 2)


4.) Morality requires keeping the weak-minded in line. But one cannot keep the weak minded in line without scaring them with the idea of divine things. (A common opinion of the Roman consuls who killed the Christians)


5.) Justice, the form of the virtues, is nothing but gazing upon the good itself, that is, the philosophical gazing on the divine absolute. (Plato)


6.) The action of anything is its way of trying to become as much like God as possible, and morality is human action (Aristotle)


7.) Of itself, nature is meaningless. But morality of itself is not meaningless. Therefore morality is from a supernatural source, and whatever is from a supernatural source is from God (William Lane Craig)


8.) Of itself, nature is meaningful. But the meaningfulness of artifacts must be reduced to some intelligent being, therefore the meaningfulness of nature must be reduced to an intelligent being. But morality is meaningful action.


9.) Morality is partaking in justice itself, good itself, etc. But God is subsistent justice itself, goodness itself, etc. (Neo-Platonism, sympathetic with Thomism)


10.) Here are the most celebrated atheist regimes. Almost all of them are moral monsters.


11.) Moral action is doing what the herd does. But the herd of Western civilization is founded on belief in God and has not yet given itself a new foundation (suggested by Nietzsche, but not him exactly)


12.) Moral action must satisfy natural desires. But man has a natural desire for God.


13.) Moral action requires knowing what you were made for and what your purpose is. But only your maker and creator knows what your purpose is, and you were specially made and created by God.


So that’s a baker’s dozen, in no particular order. All of them have enjoyed widespread popularity for one reason or another, either by being preacher’s enthymemes or by being the thoughts of a major school or popular thinker. Yet only one of them is a divine command theory (7) and it is not even the paradigm case of the divine command theory (which we find, as Brandon has been saying for years and deserves to be listened to, in William Warburton) There is, in fact, a “default setting” in the Western mind to tie morality to the divine, but divine command theory is only one attempt to articulate this default setting. And so the desire of the Western man’s psyche (and, as Wilkins suggests, this might be a more universal desire) to tie his morality to the divine seems less like a theory and more like a universal sense that articulates itself imperfectly in many different theories.

and

Morality consists in doing ones conscience, conscience is the voice of God (Newman and Frankl)

NASA Telescope Confirms Alien Planet in Habitable Zone

Peter Gilbert, Notes on Liberal Education and Eastern Christianity

Francisco Guerrero - In Exitu Israel

Westminster Cathedral Choir

"The Orthodox Rejection of Doctrinal Development"by Daniel Lattier

Wish I could get my hands on a cheap copy of Criticising the Critics by Fr. Nichols. There was one at Amazon UK but I forgot to complete the order so someone else bought it.

New Blackfriars

Solitude and Political Friendship by Anthony Esolen

"True solitude is the contemplation of the true, the good, and the beautiful, and such solitude is essential to maintaining communities of friendship oriented towards non-quantifiable goods."

SALVE REGINA - Hernando Franco (1532 - 1585)

Westminster Cathedral Choir

I saw at Hearts of Love that St. Benedict Press has published a translation of Fr. Phillipe's The Mysteries of Mary. I hate to say it, but the allegation of scandal has decreased my enthusiasm for his books.

Can the Church Ban Capital Punishment? by Christopher A. Ferrara

Let’s End the Death Penalty, Now
Most Rev. Charles J. Chaput

First Things: Natural Rights Trump Obamacare, or Should by Hadley Arkes

Only the natural law can explain the deep wrongs of the recent health-care bill.

Russell Kirk:

Justice means that every man and every woman have the right to what is their own—to the things best suited to their own nature, to the rewards of their ability and integrity, to their property and their personality. Civilized society requires that all men and women have equal rights before the law, but that equality should not extend to equality of condition: that is, society is a great partnership, in which all have equal rights—but not to equal things. The just society requires sound leadership, different rewards for different abilities, and a sense of respect and duty.

Problems with Fr. Robert Barron?

Carl Olson, Advent with Jean Cardinal Daniélou

Medievalists.net: Customary law before the conquest

Rorate Caeli: The nature of the intellectual assent that is owed to the teachings of the Council

"The following article, written by Monsignor Fernando Ocariz Braña, Vicar General of Holy Cross and Opus Dei (also one of the Vatican representatives in the doctrinal talks with the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Pius X), was published in this afternoon's (dated tomorrow) edition of the official daily of the Holy See, L'Osservatore Romano."

Zenit: Pope's Message to Ecumenical Patriarch for Feast of St. Andrew
"The Present Circumstances ... Present to Catholics and Orthodox the Same Challenge"

Zenit: Pontiff Lauds Efforts to End Death Penalty
Notes Human Dignity of Prisoners

European intellectuals and humanists... or those who are naturally sensitive. Too soft? After all of the deaths and destruction of the 20th century an aversion to killing is understandable.

Rorate Caeli: Marmion - Charity for neighbor: avoid judging others

Joseph Bottum, The Authority to Kill (via MoJ)

(see also The Most Controversial Decision: Challenging Pro-Life Witness by
Christopher O. Tollefsen)

Christopher West is at it again...

Zenit: Our Bodies Are Theological (Part 1)
Christopher West on Striking Down a False Sacred-Secular Divide

Part 2

Humanum review

Humanum (via Beauty in Education)

Mark Brumley, "Should We Seek Economic Equality?" (via Insight Scoop)

Is it easier for us to accept the pushes for changes in mores because the consequences are physically remote from us or hidden due to our ignorance? Or because they are taken care of by someone else (e.g. the government)? Who cares if she's a single mom? It's not our problem -- she can get aid from the government and the schools will give child care. We can see how the no harm principle of liberalism would harmonize with this -- if the harm is not obvious and all consent, then why shouldn't it be allowed? Who cares about what they do in the privacy of the bedroom? But we don't know what the impact of their actions on their own psychology or their relationship with others is like. Those who push for the normalization of homosexual relationships are bound to say that there is nothing subjectively wrong.

Zenit; Dropping Out: Why Young People Leave the Church
20-Somethings Cite Many Reasons for Disconnect

An important factor influencing young people today is the cultural context in which they live. No other generation of Christians, he affirmed, has lived through so many profound and rapid cultural changes, Kinnaman argued.

During the last few decades there have been massive changes in the media, technology, sexuality and the economy. This has led to a much greater degree of complexity, fluidity and uncertainty in society.

Summing up these changes, Kinnaman used three concepts to describe them: access, alienation and authority.

Regarding access he pointed out that the emergence of the digital world has revolutionized the way in which young adults communicate with each other and obtain information. This has led to significant changes in the way in which the current generation relates, works and thinks.

This has a positive side, in that the Internet and digital tools have opened up immense opportunities to spread the Christian message. However, it also means there is more access to other cultural views and values and it invites people to question more their beliefs. There is also less emphasis on linear and logical thought.

Alienation, Kinnaman observed, means that many teens and young adults feel isolated from their families, communities and institutions. High levels of divorce and childbirth outside marriage mean many have grown up in non-traditional family structures.

Moreover, the transition to adulthood has stretched out, with marriage and parenthood being put off to a later age. Many churches do not have the pastoral solutions in place to effectively help those who are not following the traditional path to adulthood, according to Kinnaman.

In addition, many young adults today are skeptical about the institutions that in the past have shaped society. Grassroots networks and collaborative efforts are prized over hierarchical institutions.

This skepticism becomes then a distrust of authority, the third concept used by Kinnaman. A tendency to pluralism, and even holding conflicting ideas, takes precedence over acceptance of Scripture and moral norms.

A culture of questions can lead people to the truth, and tension between faith and culture can also have a positive outcome, but, Kinnaman noted, it requires new approaches by churches.

James Chastek, Defining torture

There seems to be some sort of silent agreement on both sides that this is an impossible thing to do. I’m missing something here since the action doesn’t seem that hard to define: the use of physical pain to break the will of another, where “breaking the will” (which can mean more than one thing) means “breaking ones self possession”. The definition manifests why such an action would be intrinsically evil, since to be in possession of ones own power to choose or of ones own will is necessary for human dignity. A man is a lord of his action, so much so that to attempt to break this lordship is, in a very real sense, worse than murder. It is the attempt to kill what is most of all human in a human being.

Puzzling, as this is a definition that those adhering to a "liberal" version of Natural Law might accept, but it's a poor one, as far as I can tell -- how does one distinguish torture from the deterrent effect of law or legitimate coercion, for example police officers using pain compliance on those actively resisting arrest? (See my previous posts on this topic.)

Torture (or fear) does not destroy voluntariness (see the treatment of voluntary, involuntary, and non-voluntary) , though in some instances fear can diminish responsibility.

Zenit: Theological Commission to Continue Social Doctrine Study
Also Considering Monotheism and Theological Method

English Catholics to Pray for Queen
Bishops Approve Text for Her 60th Anniversary

Obligation of the Liturgy of the Hours
And More on "For Many"

Feast of Blessed Miguel Pro, November 24

A page for Blessed Miguel Pro.

Eastern Christian Books: Ecclesial Hierarchy

Eastern Christian Books: Ecclesial Hierarchy

Eastern Christian Books: Oxford Handbook of the Trinity

Eastern Christian Books: Oxford Handbook of the Trinity

Eastern Christian Books: Books for Christmas: Some Recommendations

Eastern Christian Books: Books for Christmas: Some Recommendations

Revenge of the Neo-Cats by Hilary White

If they have heard of the Oath Against Modernism they hate it and will frequently tell you that Pope (St) Pius X, while he might have had his heart in the right place, was too heavy-handed about the Modernists and accomplished nothing but to drive them underground. (That is if they will concede that Modernists ever existed at all and were not merely the product of the paranoid fantasies of popes given to overreaction, cf: Freemasons, leprechauns and Soviet infiltrators.)

They did a lot of good work in the 70s, 80s and 90s, particularly with founding universities and colleges that more or less teach Catholicism as if it were true. Christendom and TAC are the best examples, with Franciscan U at Steubie bringing up the academic rear. They are often very articulate about the evils of contraception and abortion, but frequently fall into the various intellectual traps designed for them because of their determination that Catholicism and democracy are inherently compatible.

In brief then, neo-Catholics, or neo-conservative Catholics are people who like to think of themselves as conservatives both politically and religiously, who are terrified by the idea of looking like a fanatic, who like to talk a great deal about how the Church has "a place in the public debate". Though they object to being called "moderate", they secretly love the term to be applied to them, and feel like they are at last being taken seriously by The Big Kids at the New York Times, the BBC and CNN when they are invited to comment on debate programmes. In general they are mostly an American phenomenon, with a bit of spillage over the Canadian border. Interestingly, they are almost unknown in Britain, where the divisions are much less ambiguously between Trads and the insane heretics running the show.

Writing a taxonomy for something non-substantial (rather an aggregation of accidents) is difficult, and I don't think faculty members of the small Catholic colleges, who might be "neo-Cats" in other ways, balk at taking the Oath against Modernism. Not all "Neo-Cats" are "theocons (Catholic neo-cons, the biggest examples being Neuhaus and Weigl). They do tend to be ardent Republican part members, though perhaps some are slowly becoming disgusted with the party and are supporting Ron Paul. (I think he gets more support from traddies than mainstream conservative Catholics.) I do think that the rest of the characterization applies, but only because Catholics are culturally Americans, and so they have imbibed certain ideas about feminism, "free market" capitalism, and so on. A failure of catechesis to produce counter-cultural Catholics...

Heinrich Pesch, SJ

Thomas Storck, A Giant Among Catholic Economists

Servants of the Lord: A look at the permanent diaconate in the U.S.

Gifts and Rights by James Schall, S.J.

The tyranny of possession

I'm not a grammarian or logician, so this is probably in need of correction.

In English, and in other languages, one can predicate one thing of another through "to be" but also "to have." "My hair is black" vs. "I have black hair" -- how different is the meaning of these two sentences. But is thinking in terms of possession potentially dangerous because it may be coupled with an erroneous understanding of dominion or ownership?

I have a body. --> I own my body. --> I can do with it as I please.

One can make the first statement about physical reality without having a wrong attitude of self-ownership. But isn't it the case that our moral attitudes can distort our understanding of physical reality, and not just of the ethical life?

What is it to have something? To be able to use or control it, but also to have the first claim (not necessarily an exclusive claim) to its use? To be able to use or dispose of it at will? It is mine, and not yours. To define it in terms of "ownership" does not clarify, since our understanding ownership follows having and is not prior to it?

"To have" may be in different ways, but the problem is to understand it only with reference to absolute sovereignty?

This is related to an ethics grounded upon the good. It can make a significant difference between conceiving of the good as something to be done as opposed to something that is possessed. Striving to possess something as opposed to acting well (or virtuously) -- having God vs. living or being in union with God. Thinking in terms of habitus may foster too much of a subjective conception of happiness that exacerbates self-love?

Daniel McInerny, Moral Absolutes and Foyle's War

The Word on EWTN

Documentary on the new translation of the Roman Missal.

James Chastek, Ending the supposed primacy of fact

Adam DeVille, Not Clerical Celibacy Again

NLM: Book Notice: The Latin Clerk: The Life, Work and Travels of Adrian Fortescue (by Fr. Aidan Nichols)

A new book from Zaccheus Press: Christianus: The Christian Life by Abbot Vonier. Special sale prices until December 31.

Zenit: Address to Pope From Chief Rabbi of Israel
"There Is No Reason Why the Sons of Abraham Should Not Be Able to Live in Peace" [2011-11-14]

The Smithy: Richard Rufus of Cornwall (copy at medievalists.net)

The Richard Rufus of Cornwall Project

I think he was one of Dr. Brown's favorites...

Some recommendations from "JA":

Sovereignty: God, State, and Self by Jean Bethke Elshtain

This may be the most relevant to your interests. Elshtain, a political theorist, considers modern understandings of sovereignty in regard to the state and individual as derivative of certain late scholastic that abandoned Neoplatonic and Aristotelian metaphysics for nominalism/voluntarism.


The Theological Origins of Modernity by Michael Allen Gillespie

Gillespie, a political theorist and philosopher, covers the same general trends as Elshtain, but his focus is not on sovereignty in particular, but broader.

Some rights theorists make a big deal about medieval theological discussions of sovereignty, but does the modern concept of sovereignty really have roots in nominalism/voluntarism?

Patrick Brennan, The rather-larger-than-asserted competence of "the state"

Many leading American Catholic neo-cons are embarrassed by the doctrine of the social Kingship of Christ.  If you have any doubt about that, listen to the silly things George Weigel, Jodi Bottum, and Raymond Arroyo say (and observe the awkward body language and snark on their faces) in this discussion on EWTN .  Weigel concludes by asserting that "The state does not have the capacity to make the judgment that Christ is King."  But this is patently absurd, at least taken as a statement about states as such.  As I've argued before, surely a group of Catholics founding a state would be competent to install leaders who would be competent to recognize what their installers recognize, viz., the Kingship of Christ.  To be sure, many states, including our own, are contingently incompetent to recognize the Kingship of Christ and its social consequences, but the fulfillment of such an unfortunate contingency does not lay a finger on the traditional Catholic teaching that Christ is King over political society.  

Medievalists.net: Theocratic Centralism: The Politics of Boniface VIII during the Thirteenth Century
The Medieval Friaries of London

The Feast of St. Albert the Great

St. Albert the Great - The Church and Science Are Not at War
by Dan Burke


St. Albert the Great Icon
The History of DSPT

Medievalists.net: Man and nature in the Middle Ages

Dr. Hibbs once posed a question about the history of the word "nature" and how its use changed over time. I haven't come across an answer yet.