Sunday, April 01, 2012
Saturday, March 31, 2012
Has Wolfgang Smith gone too far?
I only noticed that he had written this book today: Christian Gnosis
From the description:
From the description:
Smith maintains that Eckhart has not in fact transgressed a single Trinitarian or Christological dogma; what he does deny implicitly, he shows, is none other than the creatio ex nihilo, which in effect Eckhart replaces with the Kabbalistic creatio ex Deo. In this shift, moreover, Smith perceives the transition from ‘exoteric’ to ‘esoteric’ within the integral domain of Christian doctrine.
More notes on the virtue of religion
You can see evidence for the evolution of my answer to the question of whether the virtue of religion is possible if one is not in the state of grace and in possession of the virtue of charity on the blog. In my most recent post addressing this question I maintain that one cannot have the virtue of religion without charity. Now it is clear that Aquinas maintains religion is a moral virtue and not a theological one. Is it also an infused virtue? (It seems that this ordering is required both respect to the will and practical reason. One must first know and will the end [God] before one can will the means [the acts of religion] to that end .)
If religion is not an infused virtue, but an acquired virtue, can one not still have the acquired virtue even if the infused virtue of charity is lost? Yes, but I would maintain it would not be exercised (or strengthened) when one is ostensibly performing the acts proper to it. One can perform those acts out of a sense of duty, but it is motivated by his concern with what is right/fitting (and ultimately self-love), and not out of the supernatural love of God. There would be something missing in the ratio of those acts to render them something than true acts of religion. I hesitate to call them acts of some counterfeit habit. Quasi-acts of religion? "Paying lip service." Rendering what is due to God without the proper spirit seems futile, since acts of religion are not required for God's benefit but ours. This realization would be a reminder to us, if we are in a state of sin, that we should be converted unto Him instead of resisting.
Still, maybe I will switch back to my previous position after some more thought.
It reminds me that I should peruse Anscombe's Intention. (IEP entry on that topic)
An Anscombe bibliography.
If religion is not an infused virtue, but an acquired virtue, can one not still have the acquired virtue even if the infused virtue of charity is lost? Yes, but I would maintain it would not be exercised (or strengthened) when one is ostensibly performing the acts proper to it. One can perform those acts out of a sense of duty, but it is motivated by his concern with what is right/fitting (and ultimately self-love), and not out of the supernatural love of God. There would be something missing in the ratio of those acts to render them something than true acts of religion. I hesitate to call them acts of some counterfeit habit. Quasi-acts of religion? "Paying lip service." Rendering what is due to God without the proper spirit seems futile, since acts of religion are not required for God's benefit but ours. This realization would be a reminder to us, if we are in a state of sin, that we should be converted unto Him instead of resisting.
Still, maybe I will switch back to my previous position after some more thought.
It reminds me that I should peruse Anscombe's Intention. (IEP entry on that topic)
An Anscombe bibliography.
Rome excommunicates four bishops in Ukraine- Constantinople deposes two bishops in America
Doctrinal Congregation Statement on "Greek-Catholic Bishops of Pidhirci"
"These priests continue to challenge ecclesiastical authority, causing moral and spiritual damage"
Catholic Culture
CNA
Fr. Z
Would there be any Orthodox objections to this action or to the ecclesiology it represents?
wiki
Doctrinal Congregation Statement on "Greek-Catholic Bishops of Pidhirci"
"These priests continue to challenge ecclesiastical authority, causing moral and spiritual damage"
Catholic Culture
CNA
Fr. Z
Would there be any Orthodox objections to this action or to the ecclesiology it represents?
wiki
Zenit: Vatican Approves Blessing for Child in the Womb
Iraq: Our land Is a Land of Abraham
Chaldean Archbishop of Erbil Speaks About His Suffering Church
Iraq: Our land Is a Land of Abraham
Chaldean Archbishop of Erbil Speaks About His Suffering Church
Friday, March 30, 2012
Thursday, March 29, 2012
I usually wouldn't post a Michael Voris video, but this may be of interest --
There are probably some valid criticisms of traditionalists, but the fact that often their community is weak is not due to their fault alone, especially with the issue of Summorum Pontificum. (And given the homeschooling networks that exist, traditionalist parishes may be as strong or stronger than your typical American NO-only parish.) If bishops were concerned to foster communities of traditionalists Catholics, they should make the extraordinary form of the Roman rite more readily available in their parishes, so that traditionalists would not have to travel so far in order to attend a liturgy in the rite to which they are legitimately attached.
There are probably some valid criticisms of traditionalists, but the fact that often their community is weak is not due to their fault alone, especially with the issue of Summorum Pontificum. (And given the homeschooling networks that exist, traditionalist parishes may be as strong or stronger than your typical American NO-only parish.) If bishops were concerned to foster communities of traditionalists Catholics, they should make the extraordinary form of the Roman rite more readily available in their parishes, so that traditionalists would not have to travel so far in order to attend a liturgy in the rite to which they are legitimately attached.
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
Committed to salvaging the legacy of the council?
Benedict XVI: " The Second Vatican Council is a true sign of God"
Given the lack of new dogmatic definitions in addition to the confusion following the council, the cynic or traditionalist may say that the fact that there hasn't been a complete abandonment by Roman-rite Catholics is a sign of God's presence. The Church is always in need of renewal and purification as its members are burdened by sin and struggle for holiness, but did the council really understand the problems of the Church as it confronted "modernity"? But might not that be part of the problem, the overintellectualizing of a spiritual and moral crisis in the Church? (Bad intellectual history leading to an incorrect assessment of both the problem and its causes?)
Given the lack of new dogmatic definitions in addition to the confusion following the council, the cynic or traditionalist may say that the fact that there hasn't been a complete abandonment by Roman-rite Catholics is a sign of God's presence. The Church is always in need of renewal and purification as its members are burdened by sin and struggle for holiness, but did the council really understand the problems of the Church as it confronted "modernity"? But might not that be part of the problem, the overintellectualizing of a spiritual and moral crisis in the Church? (Bad intellectual history leading to an incorrect assessment of both the problem and its causes?)
Tuesday, March 27, 2012
Monday, March 26, 2012
The new definition of the common good
Repeated here, and which finds support in various documents of the Church after Vatican 2: Why I am Not a Libertarian by Nathan Schlueter
The common good of the political association consists in the ensemble of conditions in which persons and associations can more easily flourish. These are nicely summarized in the Preamble to the Constitution of the United States: “to . . . establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.”It seems to be implicitly tied to the modern conception of the (nation-)state, in which associations are not identical to the state. (An implicit recognition that the nation-state is too large?)
Sunday, March 25, 2012
Saturday, March 24, 2012
So much to read
Liberty Fund's Online Library of Liberty is rather useful for someone studying the development of natural law theory and rights?
Jean-Jacques Burlamaqui, The Principles of Natural and Politic Law [1747]
Samuel von Pufendorf, The Whole Duty of Man According to the Law of Nature [1673]
Hugo Grotius, The Rights of War and Peace (2005 ed.) 3 vols [1625]
American conservatives are supposed to be familiar with these texts; can they be harmonized with Catholic moral and political theology?
There are some other texts of the Scottish Enlightenment I should read...
Pufendorf condemning anger wholly: "ANGER is the most violent, as well as the most destructive of all the Passions, and is therefore to be resisted with our utmost Strength and Endeavour. It is so far from exciting Men’s Valour, and confirming their Constancy in Dangers, as some alledge, that it has a quite contrary Effect; for it is a Degree of Madness, it renders Men blind and desperate, and runs them headlong into their own Ruin."
Jean-Jacques Burlamaqui, The Principles of Natural and Politic Law [1747]
Samuel von Pufendorf, The Whole Duty of Man According to the Law of Nature [1673]
Hugo Grotius, The Rights of War and Peace (2005 ed.) 3 vols [1625]
American conservatives are supposed to be familiar with these texts; can they be harmonized with Catholic moral and political theology?
There are some other texts of the Scottish Enlightenment I should read...
Pufendorf condemning anger wholly: "ANGER is the most violent, as well as the most destructive of all the Passions, and is therefore to be resisted with our utmost Strength and Endeavour. It is so far from exciting Men’s Valour, and confirming their Constancy in Dangers, as some alledge, that it has a quite contrary Effect; for it is a Degree of Madness, it renders Men blind and desperate, and runs them headlong into their own Ruin."
Sacred Ambivalence: A Reflection on Remi Brague’s “Are Non-Theocratic Regimes Possible” by Thaddeus Kozinski
How is temporal welfare defined by May? The ultimate end imperfectly realized here in this world, or some good different from the ultimate end but ordered to it? (Is it the same as the intrinsic common good of creation?)
The political common good = living [well] with others --> loving them truly, and not being an obstacle to their attainment of the ultimate end.
Yet, it is not clear that Christians can make complete peace with a thoroughly desacralized political order, though the Catholic Church has come a long way toward rapprochement from the time of Gregory XVI’s Mirari vos and Pius IX’s Syllabus of Errors. The question still remains, however, as to the limits an integrally Christian worldview places on full reconciliation with secular modernity and liberal democracy. According to St. Thomas, men cannot adequately understand in theory, let alone fulfill in practice, the detailed precepts of the natural law without the help of its author, God, and its divinely appointed interpreter, the Roman Catholic Church. With regard to a non-sacral foundation for political order, Thomist Joseph May in the 1950s stated: “The only true doctrine is that civil society cannot prescind from the ultimate end [emphasis mine] both because the temporal welfare implies an ordering to the spiritual and supernatural, and because the individual citizens are directly and positively bound to tend to it” And even Dignitatis Humanae insists that it “leaves untouched the traditional Catholic doctrine about the moral duty of men and societies toward the true religion and the one Church of Christ” (Sec. 1). As Pope John Paul II often reiterated, the face of Jesus Christ is the only true mirror in which man can fully and accurately contemplate and comprehend his own nature and destiny; thus, only therein can he discern the moral values and goods most perfective of himself and the political order.
How is temporal welfare defined by May? The ultimate end imperfectly realized here in this world, or some good different from the ultimate end but ordered to it? (Is it the same as the intrinsic common good of creation?)
The political common good = living [well] with others --> loving them truly, and not being an obstacle to their attainment of the ultimate end.
Angry Words By Tom Bartlett
Will one researcher's discovery deep in the Amazon destroy the foundation of modern linguistics?
Will one researcher's discovery deep in the Amazon destroy the foundation of modern linguistics?
Friday, March 23, 2012
Thursday, March 22, 2012
James Chastek, Right and violence
He quotes the CE (the new one?): "Every perfect right, i.e. every right involving in others an obligation in justice a deference thereto, to be efficacious, and consequently a real and not an illusory power, carries with it at the last appeal the subsidiary right of coercion. A perfect right, then, implies the right of physical force…"
He quotes the CE (the new one?): "Every perfect right, i.e. every right involving in others an obligation in justice a deference thereto, to be efficacious, and consequently a real and not an illusory power, carries with it at the last appeal the subsidiary right of coercion. A perfect right, then, implies the right of physical force…"
The Conjugal Debt and Medieval Canon Law
What is the author's ultimate point of view on Church teaching on marriage? I hesitate to read what she writes.
What is the author's ultimate point of view on Church teaching on marriage? I hesitate to read what she writes.
Wednesday, March 21, 2012
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
Monday, March 19, 2012
Archdiocese School of Byzantine Music - Arise O Lord
The Archdiocese School of Byzantine Music of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America presents Arise O Lord, from the Archdiocesan Cathedral of the Holy Trinity. Sunday, May 8, 2011.
Sunday, March 18, 2012
More from OUP
The Lost History of the Ninth Amendment by
Kurt T. Lash
Justice: A Reader by Michael J. Sandel
C. Vann Woodward
Politeness and Politics in Cicero's Letters by Jon Hall
New Comparative Grammar of Greek and Latin by Andrew L Sihler
When Dead Tongues Speak: Teaching Beginning Greek and Latin by John Gruber-Miller
Ancient Greek Scholarship: A Guide to Finding, Reading, and Understanding Scholia, Commentaries, Lexica, and Grammatical Treatises
From Their Beginnings to the Byzantine Period
Eleanor Dickey
From Gibbon to Auden
Essays on the Classical Tradition
G.W. Bowersock
Character Strengths and Virtues
A Handbook and Classification
Christopher Peterson, Martin E. P. Seligman
Psychology? Or ethics?
VIA Character: Welcome to the VIA Institute on Character
VIA Manual Intro
wiki
Kurt T. Lash
Justice: A Reader by Michael J. Sandel
C. Vann Woodward
Politeness and Politics in Cicero's Letters by Jon Hall
New Comparative Grammar of Greek and Latin by Andrew L Sihler
When Dead Tongues Speak: Teaching Beginning Greek and Latin by John Gruber-Miller
Ancient Greek Scholarship: A Guide to Finding, Reading, and Understanding Scholia, Commentaries, Lexica, and Grammatical Treatises
From Their Beginnings to the Byzantine Period
Eleanor Dickey
From Gibbon to Auden
Essays on the Classical Tradition
G.W. Bowersock
Character Strengths and Virtues
A Handbook and Classification
Christopher Peterson, Martin E. P. Seligman
Psychology? Or ethics?
VIA Character: Welcome to the VIA Institute on Character
VIA Manual Intro
wiki
Saturday, March 17, 2012
Friday, March 16, 2012
Thursday, March 15, 2012
Sandro Magister, Gregory the Great Speaks English
The encounter in Rome between Benedict XVI and the primate of the Anglicans has taken place under the banner of the great pope who evangelized Britannia. With Ratzinger and Williams, ecumenism is abandoning tactics and getting to the substance
The encounter in Rome between Benedict XVI and the primate of the Anglicans has taken place under the banner of the great pope who evangelized Britannia. With Ratzinger and Williams, ecumenism is abandoning tactics and getting to the substance
Who said the spirit of Latinization was dead?
Rorate Caeli: Are the traditional Eastern liturgies an obstacle to the "New Evangelization"?
When members of ecclesial movements that were formed within the Roman rite enter the East, do they bring a Vatican II chauvinism with them? Do they appeal to the Holy Spirit to claim that their brand of spirituality is superior to what has been sustaining those who have been living under oppression for so long?
When members of ecclesial movements that were formed within the Roman rite enter the East, do they bring a Vatican II chauvinism with them? Do they appeal to the Holy Spirit to claim that their brand of spirituality is superior to what has been sustaining those who have been living under oppression for so long?
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
TAC: “The Pope’s Theologian”
An Interview with Rev. Wojciech Giertych, O.P., Theologian of the Papal Household
An Interview with Rev. Wojciech Giertych, O.P., Theologian of the Papal Household
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
Been wondering if I should buy some Bertrand de Jouvenel. Liberty Fund publishes some of his books, and ISI has an introductory guide.
Bertrand de Jouvenel’s melancholy liberalism by BRIAN C. ANDERSON
Bertrand de Jouvenel’s melancholy liberalism by BRIAN C. ANDERSON
CNA: Bishop Aquila receives Pope's praise for reordering sacraments by David Kerr
The beginning of the change in order in which sacraments are received by Roman-rite Catholics?
The beginning of the change in order in which sacraments are received by Roman-rite Catholics?
Dr. Fleming's latest: Afghan Justice:
Here in the enlightened West, we know that the purpose of a criminal justice system is two-fold: to rehabilitate the criminal and protect the public. It was not always so. The ancients believed that a criminal act--murder, assault, robbery, rape--put the universe out of joint. The purpose of punishment was to put it right again. Killers are killed, robbers robbed, beaters beaten.
It was not always so simple as "an eye for an eye," and Roman and Christian law made allowances for motives, circumstances, and appropriateness of punishment, but they never forgot the primary purpose of punishment was retribution or, to use a simpler word, vengeance.
Leftist Christians will howl in protest, citing, "Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord," little understanding that the same Lord, according to St. Paul, delegates the power to punish evil to the rulers of the world. Not in vain, Paul declared in an authoritative chapter of Romans, does the ruler hold the sword, nor is it a terror to the good but only to the wicked. It follows that a ruler who casts away the sword on a humanitarian whim is no longer a legitimate ruler. The Church always begged for mercy in specific cases, but never disputed the right and duty of kings and parliaments to execute criminals.
Even Imanuel Kant, who got most things wrong, saw through the lies of all the liberal theories of punishment:
"Judicial punishment can never be used solely as a means to promote some other good for the criminal himself or for society, but instead must in all cases be imposed on a person solely on the ground that he has committed a crime....woe to him who rummages around in the winding paths of a theory of happiness looking for some advantage to be gained by releasing the criminal from punishment or by reducing the amount of it....Even if civil society were to dissolve itself by common agreement of all its members...the last murderer remaining in prison must be executed, so that everyone will duly receive what his actions are worth and so that the bloodguilt thereof will not be fixed on the people because they failed to insist on carrying out the punishment; for if they fail to do so, they may be regarded as accomplices in this public violation of legal justice.”
Monday, March 12, 2012
Chiara Luce Badano Movie Trailer
From 2010: Chiara Luce Badano to be Beatified Just 19 Years After Her Death
Beatification of Chiara Luce
Chiara Luce - The Wave
Focolare
From 2010: Chiara Luce Badano to be Beatified Just 19 Years After Her Death
Beatification of Chiara Luce
Chiara Luce - The Wave
Focolare
Rob Vischer reviews Rights Gone Wrong: How Law Corrupts the Struggle for Equality by Richard Thompson Ford (via Mirror of Justice)
Sunday, March 11, 2012
Saturday, March 10, 2012
Ancient Faith Radio podcasts
Doctrine Matters - Part 1 (mp3)
Fr. Andrew points out there are 3 disciplines of Orthodoxy - Doctrine, Piety, and Morality. However he is concerned that the first - Doctrine - occupies a back seat in many Orthodox circles.
St. Ephraim's Prayer
Fr. Andrew points out there are 3 disciplines of Orthodoxy - Doctrine, Piety, and Morality. However he is concerned that the first - Doctrine - occupies a back seat in many Orthodox circles.
St. Ephraim's Prayer
Friday, March 09, 2012
Thomistica.net: New Document from the International Theological Commission
The document: “Theology Today: Perspectives, Principles, and Criteria” (also at Zenit)
The document: “Theology Today: Perspectives, Principles, and Criteria” (also at Zenit)
Via Insight Scoop: Tough Questions, Timeless Moral Truths
An interview with Fr. Brian Mullady about same-sex marriage, contraception, the death penalty, and other pressing moral issues
An interview with Fr. Brian Mullady about same-sex marriage, contraception, the death penalty, and other pressing moral issues
Thursday, March 08, 2012
Wednesday, March 07, 2012
James Chastek, The Kettlewell Principle and Deductions from nature being caused by hae hou heneka
A conversation on Ted: Will we ever truly be able to model nature?
A conversation on Ted: Will we ever truly be able to model nature?
Fr. Z with a statement by Joseph Ratzinger in 1969: “The Church will become small and will have to start afresh …”
Tuesday, March 06, 2012
Tonight at the DSPT
The 22nd Annual Aquinas Lecture
Albert the Great and the New Aristotelianism: A Turning Point in the Western Intellectual Tradition by Dr. Michael Tkacz
The lecture will probably be recorded and then uploaded to the DSPT website.
Response to Michael Tkacz's Critique of ID
Albert the Great and the New Aristotelianism: A Turning Point in the Western Intellectual Tradition by Dr. Michael Tkacz
The lecture will probably be recorded and then uploaded to the DSPT website.
Response to Michael Tkacz's Critique of ID
Monday, March 05, 2012
Mary Victrix: Traditionalism and Liturgy
Can theologians do this? And can the laity make judgments as to what is Catholic doctrine and what is not?
By traditionalism, then, I mean that ideology by which Catholics, in the name of conserving Tradition, take it upon themselves to determine what magisterial act does and does not belong to Catholic Tradition.
Can theologians do this? And can the laity make judgments as to what is Catholic doctrine and what is not?
Sunday, March 04, 2012
Speaking with and about God - In March, the Dominican church of St. Vincent Ferrer will present its annual lecture in honor of St. Thomas Aquinas, OP. (March 6, 2012)
Saturday, March 03, 2012
Friday, March 02, 2012
DSPT Fellow - Barbara Elliott's Presentation on Catholic Imagination and Contemporary Culture
Via The Imaginative Conservative:
Imagine That by Tony M. (on Anthony Esolen's Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child)
DSPT Fellow - Barbara Elliott's Presentation on Catholic Imagination and Contemporary Culture from DSPT on Vimeo.
Imagine That by Tony M. (on Anthony Esolen's Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child)
Thursday, March 01, 2012
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
I think this is the movie about which DN informed me a while back: Fetih 1453 (wiki). It was just released this month?
official website
Apparently a movie glorifying the Ottoman conquest of the imperial city.
An Orthodox alternative?
From 2010: The text of the film “The fall of an empire—the Lesson of Byzantium”
A Byzantine Warning.
On the new documentary film, The Fall of an Empire—the Lesson of Byzantium
An Interview with Archimandrite Tikhon Shevkunov on “The Fall of an Empire: The Lesson of Byzantium”
official website
Apparently a movie glorifying the Ottoman conquest of the imperial city.
An Orthodox alternative?
From 2010: The text of the film “The fall of an empire—the Lesson of Byzantium”
A Byzantine Warning.
On the new documentary film, The Fall of an Empire—the Lesson of Byzantium
An Interview with Archimandrite Tikhon Shevkunov on “The Fall of an Empire: The Lesson of Byzantium”
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
Monday, February 27, 2012
James Chastek's appraisal of Aristotle's natural science: Note on Aristotle’s Physics
How can metaphysics then be a science rather than tentative opinion?
I wouldn't be so quick to jettison Aristotelian physics in favor of the reasonings of contemporary physicists, but it deserves a longer and better defense than I can give at the moment.
How can metaphysics then be a science rather than tentative opinion?
But in turning to the Physics in search of such truths, all one finds is a series of conclusions that are either false or of no value, and by “of no value” I mean the term as Aristotle himself used it: “definitions which do not enable us to discover the derived properties, or which fail to facilitate even a conjecture about them, must obviously be… futile (De anima, I:1)” If the value of definitions is from the power they give us to derive new properties and facilitate conjecture, then we must admit the truth of any number of things that nullify the supposed truth of common experience. For example, it is more valuable to identify rest and motion (as happens in inertia) or magnitude and time (as happens in Relativity). Again, we should affirm that things with no parts can move (Like electrons. The premise is not inconsequential – it grounds Aristotle’s proof for the existence of God) and we should deny that anything in motion needs a subject of notion (a light wave is not some thing waving – like aether) and that, as a consequence to this, magnitude is not the foundation of physical things, that is, a sort of substrate that supports all activity.
I wouldn't be so quick to jettison Aristotelian physics in favor of the reasonings of contemporary physicists, but it deserves a longer and better defense than I can give at the moment.
Sunday, February 26, 2012
The Secular Character of the Laity and the DSPT College of Fellows by Fr. Michael Sweeney, OP
A couple of other links:
Black or white - on the Augustinian cappa
Ancient Heresies and Their Modern Forms
A couple of other links:
Black or white - on the Augustinian cappa
Ancient Heresies and Their Modern Forms
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