Markets and Morality

Markets and Morality

Debating the Role of Self-Interest

By Father John Flynn

ROME, JAN. 8, 2006 (Zenit.org).- Economic issues figured prominently among the end-of-year summaries offered by the media and commentators. The Christmas frenzy always brings with it concerns over excessive consumerism, added to which were reflections about inequality and the need for greater opportunities for developing nations.

Among the many analyses of these issues a couple of recent books are of interest. The first is "The Moral Ecology of Markets: Assessing Claims about Markets and Justice," by economist and theologian Daniel Finn.

The market economy is criticized for many shortcomings, but amid this debate most economists prefer to concentrate on empirical analysis, leaving aside questions of moral judgments. Nevertheless, Finn observes, morality forms an ineluctable part of our daily lives.

One problem when it comes to debating the morality of economic issues is the great variety of positions. The starting points and assumptions vary widely, according to what part of the political spectrum people occupy. Finn hopes to achieve in his book a common framework in which to examine key issues related to the market economy.

He starts by arguing that an adequate analysis of markets, whether it be from a supportive or critical perspective, must include a consideration of the moral underpinnings. The most obvious starting point for this is to look at the concept of self-interest.

Defenders of markets, Finn explained, follow in the footsteps of Adam Smith, and claim that good results can arise from complex systems of human interaction even when the individuals are not intending to generate those good outcomes. Egoism and greed no doubt exist, but through the mediation of markets, self-interest can work for the good.

Saints or sinners?

The concept of self-interest is not without its critics, continues Finn. For example, a theory that makes no distinction between a Mother Teresa and a thief -- positing that both are acting to further their respective self-interests -- is deficient. A description of the world that cannot distinguish between vice and virtue, saint or sinner, martyr or murderer, is seriously lacking in the ability to describe life's realities.

Other critics of self-interest point to problems such as large inequalities in wealth, and insufficient protection for the weak as evidence of the limitations of a system based on the pursuit of self-interest. Critics respond, Finn observes, by arguing that it is wrong to blame the market for all the evils in our society, which can stem from a variety of causes and cultural factors.

But defenders of the market face greater difficulties in responding to the accusation that a system based on self-interest foments greed. Defenders of the market point to its role in promoting virtues such as hard work, initiative and creativity, but critics point out that the utilitarian habit of basing actions on self-interest tends to spread into all areas of life, eventually undermining the moral standards on which the market itself depends.

When it comes to economic tasks such as the allocation and distribution of resources the free market does indeed have many advantages, concludes Finn. But economic production is just part of our lives and the application of behavior based on self-interest in other areas can create problems.

Even within the economic realm, acting solely on self-interest can sometimes not be enough. Finn cites the case of a consumer faced with the option of choosing between two products, one cheaper than the other because it is produced in a sweatshop. Self-interest would lead the consumer to opt for the cheaper product, but if the producer has success in selling these goods, it could reinforce the existence of exploitative work conditions.

This leads Finn to conclude that it is wrong to automatically suppose that it is either always morally wrong or right to act out of self-interest. The moral evaluation of any action in the market depends on a series of factors related to the context and the results.

Similarly, when it comes to a judgment of the market itself, Finn points out that it is not a simple choice between a free market or a centralized planning system. In practice, markets exist within a complex system of boundaries, or "fences" as he terms them, regarding their operation. The decision as to where these fences should be placed varies widely from situation to situation. In addition, markets exist within a social, political and cultural context that cannot be ignored.

Economic theology

Another recently published book on the subject of markets is "Adam's Fallacy: A Guide to Economic Theology," by Duncan Foley, economics professor at the New School for Social Research.

Like Finn, this author examines in detail the concept of self-interest in relation to markets, albeit in a more historical and less rigorously analytical way. The Adam referred to by Foley is Adam Smith, author of the classic economic text, "The Wealth of Nations."

The fallacy, according to Foley, "lies in the idea that it is possible to separate an economic sphere of life, in which the pursuit of self-interest is guided by objective laws to a socially beneficent outcome, from the rest of social life, in which the pursuit of self-interest is morally problematic and has to be weighed against other ends."

In his analysis of how markets work, Foley admits that the concept of pursuing self-interest proposed by Smith has a lot of sense and realism, but to describe it as a positive good is another question, he argues. The bulk of the book is then devoted to a synthesis of economic ideas put forward by a number of economic thinkers in the last couple of centuries.

In concluding, Foley comments that Smith himself realized better than many subsequent economic thinkers the limits of self-interest and the market. In addition to defending the advantages of a market system, Smith also recognized the need for political institutions to channel and control the operations of capital.

Contemporary capitalism is a successful system for the creation of wealth, but, Foley maintains, it is not some sort of automatic process inherent in human nature. Economic institutions are fragile and contingent and need to be shaped and guided. In addition, understanding how an economy works does not mean we should subsume our moral judgment to the logic of the market. Economic development brings with it many changes for society and culture, but the mistake would be to accept all these changes as something inevitable.

Charity

In the spirit of looking to complement and shape the operation of a market system, the Catholic Church proposes the virtue of charity. Benedict XVI, in his encyclical "Deus Caritas Est," explained that: "Building a just social and civil order, wherein each person receives what is his or her due, is an essential task which every generation must take up anew" (No. 28).

This is essentially a political task, in which the Church does not play a direct role, the Pope said. Yet the Church can contribute to this effort. "She has to play her part through rational argument and she has to reawaken the spiritual energy without which justice, which always demands sacrifice, cannot prevail and prosper."

One of arguments put forward by the Church concerns the role of love. "There is no ordering of the state so just that it can eliminate the need for a service of love," stated the Pontiff. "Whoever wants to eliminate love is preparing to eliminate man as such." This is worth keeping in mind when looking at how markets work.

Music and order

Music as a type of making.

In music, order is imposed onto matter (progression of notes or sounds). This is not a form of naturalism--one is not replicating within the musical composition some order within nature. Still, can one chord be said to be better than another? Or is a tonal system better than an atonal system? Can there be order within an atonal system? Or is atonality an arbitrary restriction imposed by the mind, which goes against something else that is more proper to beauty?

How do notes amplify one another? Work with or harmonize?

What about rhythm? Do some combinations sound more pleasant than others? For a reason? What of harmony and dissonance? Tones and pitches? Can quantity be used to discover "natural" relationships between tones and values?

SCU Dept. of Philosophy News

here

Robert Audi coming to SCU... I don't think SCU will switch away from analytic philosophy back towards the Catholic intellectual tradition any time soon...

Professor Robert Audi, University of Notre Dame, will be giving a series entitled, "Emotion and Motivation, Obligation and Virtue," on Tuesdays, Jan. 9th, 16th, 23rd, and 30th, 4-5 pm, Bannan Engineering, Room 325. Co-sponsored by the Dept. of Philosophy & the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics. Supported in part by the Fagothey Fund. Questions: Contact Janis Davis, jldavis@scu.edu, or David DeCosse, ddecosse @scu.edu.

Paul Hurley, Professor of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Claremont McKenna College, will be the Austin J. Fagothey Professor in Spring quarter 2007. Professor Hurley was in the Dept. of Philosophy at Pomona College from 1988 until 2006. He is a three-time teaching award recipient. His specialties are Ethics, Political Philosophy, and Philosophy of Law.

Aimee Milburn on Habermas

"Jurgen Habermas: A Secular Atheist Changes His Mind on Religion in the Public Sphere"

Stuff for Jensen paper

Against criminal armed with weapon is one obligated to use only a effective long-distance taser, a weapon that could fire some sort of electric bolt? What if the use of this weapon increases the likelihood of resistance by the assailant and hence the chance that one might be killed?

If armed assailant is coming to kill me and the only way to stop him is to let go of a heavy weight that would fall on him and kill him, is one allowed to use this, even though death is certain? It seems so.

Older article against creationism by Dermott Mullan

HOW OLD IS THE EARTH?
Fundamentalists Inside The Catholic Church

April 2003By Dermott J. Mullan

Dermott J. Mullan is a professor of astrophysics at the University of Delaware, and the father of 10 children.

Since 1988, the book Catholicism and Fundamentalism by Karl Keating has helped prevent Catholics from being lured out of the Church by Fundamentalists. Where Fundamentalists attack the Church from outside, that book provides important and useful service.

But what if there are Fundamentalists inside the Church? How is the Church to respond to such a situation?

I submit that Fundamentalism is now beginning to infect the thinking of certain Catholics who are loyal members of the Church. The clearest symptom of infection is the belief that the Earth is young, no more than a few thousand years old. This calls for a change of plan from what has worked so far if Catholics are to be defended against Fundamentalism.

Is Fundamentalism Creeping Into the Lives of American Catholics?

Fundamentalists trace their roots to a series of books called The Fundamentals, published by certain Protestants between 1909 and 1915. These books contained (among other topics) accounts of "heresies" (including Catholicism) and "critiques of scientific theories." To be sure, no one should object to criticisms of scientific work as long as the criticisms are based on sound reasoning. But the critiques that are associated with Fundamentalism at times involve what is in essence a rejection of rational thinking.

Three events indicate to me that American Catholics are now being exposed to Fundamentalist ideas from within the Church.

First, in the process of home-schooling some of our children about five years ago, my wife and I encountered a serious dilemma in connection with certain science textbooks. We did not want our children to be swept along by the erroneous ideas about Darwinian evolution that permeate much of American culture. We therefore selected biology textbooks that reject Darwin's ideas about evolution. In this regard, the textbooks met our needs admirably. However, we were startled to find that the textbooks also contained the following claim: The Earth is only a few thousand years old. One textbook was Protestant, the other Catholic.

Second, in 1999 one of the leading American publishers of orthodox Catholic books released a book entitled Creation Rediscovered by G.J. Keane. This book contains not only a well-written criticism of Darwinian evolution, but also an extended attack (60 pages long) on the results of modern astrophysics concerning the age of the Universe. The book suggests that astrophysicists have misinterpreted the evidence because of their belief in evolution. The book states that the evidence actually points to an Earth and a Universe no more than a few thousand years old.

Third, in 2001 a meeting that advertised itself as the "First International Catholic Family Conference on Creation" was held in Manassas, Virginia. In the first talk at the meeting (entitled "The Catholic Doctrine on Creation"), the speaker argued for a literal interpretation of the six days of creation, implying that the Earth is young. The written version of this talk includes the claim that "contrary to modern theory, the Earth is the center point of the Universe." In another talk at the meeting, a speaker discussed 15 points of evidence from physical science which (he concluded) prove that the Earth is only a few thousand years old. (These talks are available on tape.) However, a critical examination of the 15 points shows that in each case the physical processes at work by no means force one to the young-Earth conclusion.

An Astronomer's Viewpoint

Why do I find the young-Earth development troubling? Because it flies in the face of reason.

In my profession as an astronomer, I am familiar with abundant evidence from the physical world indicating that the Earth and the Sun and the Universe have ages that are measured in billions of years.

The evidence for these ages comes from at least five distinct and independent areas of research in astrophysics: expansion of the universe, stellar structure, isotope dating, white dwarf cooling, and properties of the cosmic microwave radiation. The concordance of these five methods is impressive because they rely on completely distinct types of observations, and different laws of physics, to arrive at their conclusions.

It is beyond the bounds of reason to suppose that, if the Universe were actually no older than a few thousand years (as the young-Earth proponents claim), many hundreds of researchers from diverse countries and all religious backgrounds would discover five completely different methods which all yield multi-billion-year ages.

Dilemma for a Catholic

In school, the Christian Brothers taught me the maxim: "The Church has nothing to fear from the truth." It should not matter by what means the truth about the world is discovered: Catholics should be willing to look it squarely in the face. But the message of the Fundamentalists is very different. They claim that when science establishes certain truths about the age of the world, Christians should reject those truths.

What is a Catholic home-schooler to think about statements in otherwise acceptable textbooks that the Earth is young? What is an orthodox Catholic to think when his favorite publishing company says that the Earth is young? What is a Catholic parent to think when a Catholic Family Conference teaches that modern physicists are misleading the public in a multitude of ways?

In particular, has the Church taught doctrinally on this issue?

In order to answer these questions, it is worthwhile first to be clear about how the claim for a young age for the Earth arises.

Claims for a Young Earth

The origin of the young-Earth theory is easy to identify. It emerges from a strict calculation when one adds up the ages of all the patriarchs who are named in the book of Genesis, and then adds six days to the result. (In the writings of the Fathers of the early Church, one can find indications that many of them also believed that the Earth was created in six literal days.)

The young-Earth theory results from one particular interpretation of the text of Genesis. However, this interpretation overlooks the fact that the Church has some significant teaching about the way in which Catholics are to approach the reading of Scripture.

How Does the Magisterium Approach the Early Chapters of Genesis?

Young-Earth proponents approach the precise numerical values of ages that appear in Genesis as if the contents of Scripture were exactly equivalent to a modern history book or a modern science textbook. This is one way to approach the Bible.

But it is not the way that the Magisterium of the Catholic Church teaches us to approach the question of historical matters in Scripture. Pope Pius XII addressed this key point in his encyclical Humani Generis in 1950. He wrote: "It has been clearly laid down...that the first eleven chapters of Genesis do pertain to history in the true sense. However, it is not right to judge them by modern standards of historical composition.... In what exact sense Genesis 1-11 comes under the heading of history is for the further labors of exegetes to determine."

Obviously, Pope Pius's approach to Genesis is quite different from that of young-Earth believers. The question is: Do Catholics have to believe the Pope's teaching on how to read Genesis 1-11? Or can they adopt a "take-it-or-leave-it" attitude to this teaching?

Clear answers to these questions can be found in Humani Generis itself: "What is expounded in encyclical letters of itself demands consent, since in writing such Letters, the Popes exercise the ordinary teaching authority, of which it is true to apply Christ's words ‘He who hears you, hears Me' (Lk. 10:16)." The fact that Catholics should follow the "mind and will" of the Pope has been repeated by Vatican II in no uncertain terms (see Lumen Gentium, No. 25).

Church Fathers & Church Teaching: Is There a Difference?

But what about those saintly and wise Fathers of the Church who wrote about the "young Earth"? What are we to make of their claims? To answer this, we note that the Fathers wrote many centuries before Pope Pius XII set forth the above teaching about how Catholics should approach Genesis 1-11. Now, it is true that Catholics rightfully pay respect to the writings of the Fathers of the Church. However, those writings are not in themselves infallible.

Just because a certain Father calculated the age of the Earth by adding up the ages in Genesis, does not mean that the Church teaches that age as part of her doctrine. In fact, Pope Leo XIII addressed this explicitly in his 1893 encyclical Providentissimus Deus: "The unshrinking defense of the Holy Scripture does not require that we should equally uphold all the opinions which each of the Fathers have put forth in explaining it. For it may be that, in commenting on matters where physical matters occur, they have sometimes expressed their ideas of their own times, and have thus made statements which in these days have been abandoned as incorrect" (Denzinger, 1948).

Magisterial Teaching on Creation

When it comes to a question of formal Church teaching about the age of the Earth, one point is clear: No official magisterial document from either Pope or Council has ever taught that the Earth is a certain number of years old.

This is not to say that the Church has taught nothing about creation. Far from it. The Magisterium taught formally about creation at the fourth Lateran Council in the year 1215. Lateran IV made it official Church teaching that the world (and all of creation) had a beginning in time. In other words, the world has not been in existence forever. This was a huge break from ideas that dated back to Aristotle.

Subsequently, when the first Vatican Council met in 1869-1870, the Council fathers were confronting some of the new ideas of modern science, including Darwin's theory of evolution. On the topic of the creation of the world, Vatican I repeated word for word the teaching of Lateran IV (see Denzinger, 1783): "From the very beginning of time [Latin: ab initio temporis], God has created both orders of creatures (the spiritual or angelic world, and the corporeal or visible universe) in the same way out of nothing. And afterwards [Latin: deinde], He formed the creature man, who in a way belongs to both orders, as he is composed of spirit and body."

Note the phrases that are used by both Lateran IV and Vatican I: "FROM (Latin: ab) the very beginning of time." The formal teaching does not include the phrase "AT (Latin: in) the beginning of time." A Catholic is not required to believe that everything was created in the same instant, at the very beginning. This nontrivial distinction allows a Catholic to believe in good conscience that God's creative work has been in process ever since time began.

Note also that neither Lateran IV nor Vatican I makes any mention here of a specific time at which creation occurred. Nor is there a mention of how much time elapsed between the beginning of time and the creation of man: The Councils merely use the generic term "afterwards" (Latin: deinde). There is no mention of a certain number of days.

Moreover, Vatican I also teaches (see Denzinger, 1805): "If anyone does not admit that the world and everything in it, both spiritual and material, have been produced in their entire substance by God out of nothing, let him be anathema." Two features of this teaching are noteworthy. First, there is (once again) no mention of a particular time at which God created spiritual and material things. Second, the term "entire substance," also used by the Church in her teaching on the Eucharist (Denzinger, 877), is a technical term that stands in distinction to the "accidents" (i.e., the outward appearances). Vatican I does not say that the accidents of everything in the world were produced by God out of nothing. In fact, although the creation of each man's soul certainly involves a direct creation by God out of nothing (indicating ongoing creation to this very day), this is not true of man's body. Each of us received a body from our parents. And even the body of Adam himself, as God reveals (Gen. 2:7), was created using pre-existing material ("dust of the ground").

God Made the World Rationally -- Therefore Science Is Possible

One of the triumphs of the work of St. Thomas Aquinas was to point out that God (who is a rational Being) created the world in such a way that man (a rational creature, made in the image and likeness of God) could understand the world. God did not create the world capriciously, giving different properties to different particles of the same type. Instead, God created an orderly world based on particular quantities of "number, weight, and measure" (Wisd. 11:20). The ability to use the gift of reason in order to discover the wonders of God's world is as much a talent as any of His other gifts to us. And we will one day render an account of how we used that talent.

It is precisely because God made a rational world according to "number, weight, and measure" that scientists have a chance of discovering some specific truths about the material world. If truth were inaccessible to human reasoning, then science would make no sense.

As it is, science does provide access to certain truths about the world. When scientists use their reason to discover something about the material world, it is as if God allows them a glimpse of part of the blueprint He used when He, in His capacity as divine Architect (St. Augustine's phrase: De Civitate Dei, ii, 3), created the world.

The Church & Human Reason

The young-Earth theory brings to a sharp focus an important question to which all Catholics should give some thought. Namely, can faith and reason contradict each other?

Surprising as it may seem, there have actually been certain people in the world who believe that the answer to this question is yes. For example, in the Middle Ages, the Muslim philosopher Averroes taught that something that is true in religion is not necessarily also true in philosophy. Averroes believed that a religious truth might be a philosophical falsehood. Averroes was apparently not concerned by this violation of the principle of non-contradiction. So troubling did Thomas Aquinas find this assault on human reasoning that he wrote an entire treatise specifically to demonstrate that Averroes was wrong about this. Thomas established that once an element of truth is discovered, it makes no difference whether it was faith or human reason (including science) that discovered it.

At the time of Vatican I, materialism was firmly entrenched as the order of the day in scientific circles. Moreover, Darwin's theory of evolution had burst on the world only a few years prior to the Council. So the fathers of Vatican I perceived a need to give a clear teaching on the relationship between faith and science.

To achieve this, they essentially elevated Thomas's ideas about faith and reason to the level of magisterial teaching. This teaching of Vatican I is quoted verbatim in the Catechism of the Catholic Church (No. 159): "there can never be any real discrepancy between faith and reason. Since the same God who reveals mysteries and infuses faith has bestowed the light of reason on the human mind, God cannot deny Himself, nor can truth ever contradict truth."

The Church paid a great compliment to human reason at Vatican I, when it taught that unaided human reason could arrive at an item of information that has also been revealed by faith -- i.e., the fact that God exists (Denzinger, 1806).

Shortly after Vatican I, in the year 1893, Pope Leo XIII extended Vatican I's compliment concerning human reason to scientists in particular. In his encyclical Providentissimus Deus, Pope Leo acknowledged that certain truths about the material world can be established by scientists with "irrefutable evidence" (Latin: veracibus documentis) (Denzinger, 1947). So much respect did Pope Leo have for scientific truth that he insisted that the Church must be careful in her teachings not to contradict any truths that are based on "irrefutable evidence."

Clearly, Pope Leo was not referring here to arcane scientific truths such as the theory of atomic structure. The latter theory is certainly based on irrefutable evidence, but it has no overlap with Church teaching, and cannot possibly be relevant to Pope Leo. Instead, the Pope was obviously referring to scientific truths that are pertinent in one way or another to the contents of Genesis 1-11. It has become evident in recent decades that modern astronomy is an area in which Pope Leo's words are highly relevant. And Pope Leo put his money where his mouth was: He expanded the Vatican Observatory so that the Church would not be left behind by the discoveries of modern astronomy.

Where did Pope Leo obtain his respect for scientific truths? The answer is clearly stated in Providentissimus Deus: The Pope simply followed some reasonable guidelines that had been laid down many centuries previously in the writings of St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas. For example, in the Summa Theologiae, Thomas addressed the question of the Genesis account of creation as follows (Question 68, Reply 1): "In discussing questions of this kind, two rules are to be observed, as Augustine teaches. First, to hold the truth of Scripture without wavering. Second, since Holy Scripture can be explained in a number of ways, no specific explanation should be held so rigidly that one would presume to maintain this explanation if it can be proved with certainty to be false. Otherwise, Holy Scripture would be exposed to the ridicule of unbelievers, and this would block the unbelievers' way to belief."

The possibility of ridicule from unbelievers was of serious concern to Augustine and Thomas, and also to Pope Leo. It is undoubtedly a matter of concern for American Catholics in our day as well.

By including the guidelines of Augustine and Thomas in an encyclical, Pope Leo raised those guidelines to the level of magisterial teaching. As a result, since 1893, Catholics have had an obligation to honor the truths that are established by means of science, provided that the evidence is irrefutable.

But What About Faulty Science?

It goes without saying that scientists are not infallible. Scientists can and do make mistakes. Indeed, large groups of them may at times espouse ideas that are incorrect. For example, during the 18th century, the French Academy of Sciences denied the evidence that meteorites are objects that fall from the sky.

Closer to our own time, Darwinian evolution is a case in point. There is a widespread belief among biological scientists in the English-speaking world that Darwinian evolution (i.e., the theory that numerous slight successive modifications occurring at random can cause a new species to appear from an older one) embodies the absolute truth about living things. In fact, it can be plausibly argued that, since the "monkey trial" in Tennessee in the 1920s, Darwinian evolution has become the best-known scientific theory in America. Interestingly, in other parts of the world (such as China and France), Darwin's ideas are not treated with the sort of quasi-dogmatic reverence that is found in our Anglo-Saxon culture.

And yet, there is an increasing body of scientific evidence to suggest that Darwinian evolution is incorrect. Processes that are truly random are simply not capable of creating the high level of information content that is present in living things. Certain biological systems cannot simply be assembled by numerous slight successive modifications occurring at random. For example, Michael Behe, in his book Darwin's Black Box, describes details of the blood-clotting system and of the "propeller" in certain bacteria that could not have been assembled in the way Darwin proposed.

Distinctions Between Physics & Biology

Now that evidence against Darwinian theory is growing, there is a danger that people may begin to regard all science as suspect. This would be unfortunate.

Just because science does not have access to the charism of infallibility does not mean that science is incapable of determining certain pieces of the truth. Pope Leo appreciated this point explicitly. But this raises an obvious question: How are we to decide whether a scientific theory is true or not? The answer is that we need to rely on probability. The probability that the theory is correct can be increased by performing experiments to test certain predictions of the theory. The more specific the prediction, the more valuable the test. And as more and more tests are performed, with a successful outcome for each, the theory is regarded as progressively more likely to be true. At some point, rational people agree that the theory provides a reliable description of certain aspects of the world. To be sure, this is not infallibility, but it does provide a credible basis for the criterion enunciated by Pope Leo: "irrefutable evidence."

Newton's laws of motion, for example, which were proposed in the 1600s, have been subjected to a great number of tests. So reliable are these laws that NASA has put them to superb use in its exploration of our solar system. For example, when one of the Voyager spacecraft was launched in 1977, it required 12 years to reach Neptune. At the end of that 12-year journey, Voyager arrived at Neptune within a minute of the time that had been predicted by Newton's laws. As a result, even though Newton was not infallible, Newton's laws qualify as a theory that is based on "irrefutable evidence."

As pointed out by Behe and others, Darwinism fails to satisfy the criterion of "irrefutable evidence." The difficulty with Darwin's ideas is that biological systems are extremely complex in their organization, and nothing whatsoever was known about the molecular structure of cells in Darwin's time. As a result, it is not surprising that, in devising a theory concerning living organisms, some of Darwin's ideas turned out later to be incorrect.

On the other hand, physics deals with material bodies in the simplest possible terms. As a result, it is much easier for physicists to perform detailed and extensive tests of their theories. Newton's laws of motion are an example. As a second example, we note that after Einstein developed his Special and General Theories of Relativity, there were at least a dozen specific experiments that suggested themselves as ways to test the theories. The predictions that were made for each experiment were quite specific. Many decades were to go by before the technical difficulties of testing the various predictions could be overcome. But overcome they were, one by one, and by the mid-1980s, 11 tests had been performed by various groups of scientists around the world. (The 12th is to be tested by means of a special satellite still in development.) All 11 of Einstein's predictions that have been tested to date have been confirmed by experiment.

This is an astounding tribute to the genius of Einstein. Surely Einstein glimpsed a true image of a piece of God's blueprint for the physical universe. There is simply no comparison between Einstein's theory and Darwin's theory: The former has been tested in multiple ways, and has passed each test with flying colors, whereas Darwin's principal prediction (concerning macro-evolution) has still not been observed to happen.

In view of the extensive evidence in favor of Einstein's theory, it is reasonable to conclude that the evidence for the Theory of Relativity deserves Pope Leo's adjective "irrefutable." And according to this theory, the Universe is between 10 and 20 billion years old.

There are other theories in physics that are also based on equally solid evidence. For example, calculations of stellar structure are based on the laws of conservation of momentum and energy. These have been widely tested over the past few centuries, and have been found to be accurate descriptions of the physical world. As a result, when calculations of stellar structure indicate that the oldest stars have ages between 10 and 20 billion years, these results are reliable. Other theories that have been used by physicists in arriving at similar estimates for the age of the Universe are also based on thoroughly tested evidence.

What Does Pope Leo's Teaching Mean for a Catholic?

Does Pope Leo's teaching make any difference for a Catholic when it comes to the young-Earth/old-Earth controversy? I submit that the answer is yes: It makes a lot of difference.

As mentioned above, evidence from five distinct fields of physics point to a universe with a multi-billion-year age. Because five completely independent methods all point to essentially the same age, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that this evidence deserves the label "irrefutable" in Pope Leo's sense.

Based on this, it is inconceivable that the Church could teach that the Earth is young.

If the Church were to proclaim the young-Earth theory as an item of Church teaching, in the words of Thomas Aquinas, "Holy Scripture would be exposed to the ridicule of unbelievers, and this would block the unbelievers' way to belief."

Does the Old-Earth Theory Favor the Theory of Evolution?

Almost everyone who discusses evolution and the age of the Earth can be classified into one of two categories: (1) Evolution occurs, and the Earth is old, or (2) evolution does not occur, and the Earth is young. I have never met an evolutionist who believes in a young Earth. Nor have I met a young-Earther who believes in evolution. The question is: Are these the only two groups that people can be classified in? No. I suggest that there is a third possibility: (3) The Earth is old, but evolution did not occur (at least not the way Darwin suggested).

In other words, I make the following claim: Just because the Earth is old does not mean that Darwin's ideas must necessarily be true.

My reasons for making this claim are based on the fact that evidence for an old Earth comes from the laws of physics, pure and simple. These claims have nothing whatsoever to do with biology. In particular, they have nothing to do with the theory of Darwinian evolution.

Unfortunately, some Fundamentalists suspect that physicists are in collusion with evolutionists. Thus, when physicists announce ages of 10 to 20 billion years for the Universe, the Fundamentalists claim that the physicists are actually misinterpreting data so as to (secretly) provide support for the theory of evolution. (This approach is evident in G.J. Keane's book Creation Rediscovered.)

To counteract this suspicion, opponents of evolution sometimes choose to fight against evolution by opting for the young-Earth theory. The argument goes roughly as follows: If we limit the Earth's age to no more than a few thousand years, then evolution will not have had enough time to do its work.

However, in making this argument, the opponents of evolution are surrendering unnecessarily to the Darwinians. In fact, the claim of the Darwinians is erroneous. Even if 10 billion years have elapsed since the Earth began, this is not enough time for even the first living cell to appear as a result of chance. Nowhere near enough time.

The phrase "billions and billions of years" (that was made famous by the late Carl Sagan) sounds like a long time to us because it is much longer than a human life. But "long" is a relative term. The relevant scientific question as far as evolution is concerned is: How "long" would it require for random encounters between amino acid molecules in the primordial Earth to create even a single living protein? Even if we choose the smallest known protein, consisting of a chain of 50 amino acids arranged in a specific pattern, then it is easy to show from probability theory that 5 or 10 billion years is not nearly enough time to create this protein by chance.

If not even a single protein can be created by randomness, the possibility of creating by chance even one cell (which requires many different proteins to function) is astronomically small even if the Earth is 5 or 10 billion years old. The first cell could not have come into existence by chance: It requires the intervention of an Intelligent Designer. Even if the Earth were a billion times a billion years old, the first cell could not have occurred by chance. Scientists who claim that mere access to "billions and billions of years" guarantees the success of random evolution are misleading the uninitiated public.

Thus, admitting that the Earth is 5 billion years old does not mean that the evolutionists have "won." There is still a strict and unavoidable need for God to create life in an old Earth.

Despite this, our culture continues to give a lot of credence to the power of random events. An oft-cited example of the success of random changes is contained in the phrase: "if you put a billion monkeys in front of a billion typewriters for a few billion years, they would type out the entire works of Shakespeare." This claim has been made so persistently and so confidently over the years that it has taken on the nature of dogma in some peoples' minds. And yet this claim is demonstrably false. To see this, note that, if each monkey pecks once a second randomly at a 27-letter keyboard (including a "space" as a letter), it will take on average a year for a meaningful string of a dozen letters to appear on even one of the typewriters. After a year, one of the monkeys will have by chance typed the sequence "MARY HAD A." And it will take 10 billion years, the entire lifetime of the Universe, before one of the monkeys will type out the full line: "MARY HAD A LITTLE LAMB." This is a far cry from the works of Shakespeare.

Does God 'Test Our Faith' With Scientific Evidence?

When Fundamentalists are presented with scientific evidence that suggests the Earth is old, they sometimes respond with the following argument: God can do anything; therefore, He can (if He chooses) make fossils look much older than they actually are. Or He can place the stars at a million light years' distance, but start their light traveling toward us at an initial distance of only a thousand light years, so that the light can reach us today even though the Earth is only a few thousand years old.

In other words, they say, the world has the appearance of certain properties, although in actuality, God created the world with very different properties. In this way, the Fundamentalists claim, God is testing our faith in His ability to do anything.

Fundamentalists claim that support for God's ability to create the appearance of age (e.g., in fossils) comes from the following thought experiment. Suppose someone met Adam and Eve the day after they were created. Presumably, since God created them as adults, they would have the appearance of being, say, 25 or 30 years old. And yet they were actually only a day old. In view of this, the Fundamentalists claim, appearances of age can be deceiving.

On these grounds, they suggest that scientists have been deceived by the appearances of great age in the fossil evidence, and in the astrophysical evidence.

However, such arguments are subject to serious doubt. For example, when Adam and Eve were created, God's original plan for them did not include death. It was only if they chose to disobey Him that death would enter the picture ("in that day, you shall die"). Before sin was committed, God's plan was for Adam and Eve to live in the Garden for a time, and then go to be with God in Heaven. In such a situation, the absence of death would have meant that the processes of bodily decay associated with aging would not have occurred while they lived in the Garden. Therefore, the questions "What age is this man? What age is this woman?" would have had very different meanings in the Garden from those that we ascribe to them in our day. Before the Fall, the aging process (whatever it was) must have been very different from the process with which all of us are familiar in everyday life. Adam and Eve might have lived in the Garden for a hundred years and still not have "aged" (according to our standards). However, once Original Sin occurred, death entered into the lives of Adam and Eve. From that point on, they were driven from the Garden into the world that we live in now. And in our world, an aging process began in earnest for Adam and Eve in preparation for the separation of body and soul in death.

Moreover, why would God trick us by setting up an elaborate system of multiple physical clues that point consistently to a Universe that has an age between 10 and 20 billion years? What would God achieve by deceiving us on such a massive scale? Such activity seems entirely out of character for Someone who (according to the standard theological definition) can neither deceive nor be deceived. It also seems entirely out of character for Christ, who proclaimed Himself to be "the Truth," to engage in worldwide trickery with scientists who are honestly and earnestly seeking the truth about the world.

The Claim for a Young Earth: What Is a Catholic to Believe?

What am I to tell my home-schooled children about the claim that the Earth is young? How should they regard such a claim? Should they interpret Genesis in a literal sense?

It seems to me that I have an obligation to teach my children that literalism is not the way the Church approaches the interpretation of Genesis. In this regard, Catholics are guided by the encyclicals of Pope Leo XIII and Pope Pius XII. Catholics certainly need to "hold the truth of Scripture without wavering" (as Aquinas said). The difficult part is to determine what exactly is the "truth of Scripture."

Pope Leo XIII established the Pontifical Biblical Commission (PBC) in 1902. The PBC was an official organ of the Magisterium until 1971, when it was made an advisory commission of scholars enjoying the confidence of the Church's teaching office. In the early 1900s, the PBC was asked if it is permissible to interpret the Hebrew word yom ("day") in the first chapter of Genesis in two distinct ways: either in its strict sense (as the natural day) or in a less strict sense as signifying a certain space of time. The PBC answered on June 30, 1909: "In the affirmative." In other words, the "truth of Scripture" does not mean that Catholics must regard the "days" of Genesis 1 as identical to intervals of 24 hours, as we experience time. Catholics in good standing may interpret the "days" of Genesis as spanning periods of time other than 24 of our hours.

Moreover, in 1993, on the 100th anniversary of Pope Leo's encyclical, the PBC issued a document entitled Biblical Interpretation in the Church. This document included a long introduction by Pope John Paul II. The 1993 PBC document pointed out that a Fundamentalist approach to the Bible is not adequate as far as the Catholic Church is concerned.

Why is a Fundamentalist approach inadequate? Pope John Paul spells out the reason in his Introduction. He points out that although God certainly uses human language inerrantly (as Pope Pius XII reiterated in no uncertain terms in his 1943 encyclical), God also uses the language in ways that are flexible. God is not locked in to using human language in one and only one way. Because of this flexibility, the words of Scripture are sometimes hard to understand. This is not a new teaching by the current Pope; in fact, the very first Pope made the identical point in one of his inspired writings (2 Pet. 3:16). In order to find the "truth of Scripture," the words of Scripture need to be interpreted properly. In most cases, the interpretation is obvious. But there are certain cases where the interpretation is in dispute. In such cases, it is the task of the Magisterium to provide the correct interpretation. An individual's interpretation, even if supported by the Fathers of the Church, may be in error.

In short, the interpretation of genealogies in Genesis in such a way as to arrive at an age of only a few thousand years for the Earth is not part of magisterial teaching.

Therefore, when I teach my children that the Earth is between 4 and 5 billion years old, I am not contradicting any currently defined doctrine of the Catholic Church. Nor am I giving credence to Darwinian evolution. On the contrary, I am teaching my children to respect what Pope Leo said in 1893: Scientists really do have access to truths about the world that God created.

The necessity of the theological virtue of faith

Charity is the love of God or friendship with God.
But in order to know the object of love one must first have the virtue of faith, so faith is prior to charity in this way.
Does knowledge of the existence of God obviate the need of the virtue of Faith? No, because there are revealed truths which are inaccessible to natural human reason, such as there are Three Divine Persons.

Can one know at two different levels? According to Aquinas, once one knows that God exists, one cannot have faith that He does exist. But is this really the case? Can the intellect assent 'twice' insofar as there are two reasons for it to assent -- one according to the dynamism of faith, one according to its own natural power? Or does the latter completely remove the necessity of the former?

How is faith a gift? Does the act of faith surpass the natural capacity of the intellect? (No.) How is it supernatural? (Efficient causality alone?)

Happiness and contemplation

Acquired contemplation versus infused contemplation: see Garrigou-Lagrange on what he says on how the former can prepare one for the latter, even if it doesn't necessitate it, since infused contemplation is a special grace.

Compare adoration, contemplation, and prayer--what does St. Thomas say about each? Of what virtue are they acts of?
Infused contemplation is a gift, and hence is due wholly to God's grace, but it is still a human activity, being the act of the intellect.

What activity is the best? Theoretical contemplation? Or prayer? (ordered by the natural love of God)
natural happiness = ?
(Response to Finnis and Grisez and Boyle.)

Mere Comments discussion of the death penalty

initiated by Dr. Podles

Duties Before Rights

Duties Before Rights


Interview With Director of Van Thuan Observatory

VERONA, Italy, DEC. 15, 2006 (Zenit.org).- By promoting a culture of rights without first promoting a culture of duties, society creates a "babel" of rights in which the strong prevail over the weak, says the director the Van Thuan Observatory.

Stefano Fontana, who heads the institute that promotes the social doctrine of the Church, is also the author of "Per una politica dei doveri dopo il fallimento della stagione dei diritti" (For a Politics of Duties After the Failure of the Season of Rights), published in Italian by Cantagalli of Siena.

In this interview, which also appears on the Web page of the observatory, the author explains why it is necessary for a society to not only promote duties, but to make them a priority.

Q: Two questions immediately come to mind when reading the title of your book. The first is: Has the season of rights failed already? Are we still far from the complete fulfillment of human rights?

Fontanta: It is true that many people in the world do not enjoy even the most basic human rights. But I wonder: Isn't this because other people in the world have sped up the race for the state of the art rights to the point that they have transformed all their desires into rights?

Q: But the Church, and especially Pope John Paul II, has been a leading advocate for human rights for a very long time.

Fontana: The question is not to deny rights, in fact the opposite is true. The point is that we have to understand that without duties rights spiral upon themselves, they annul each other. In the end, the babel of rights leads to the triumph of the right of the strongest. The rights themselves, in order to be truly such, must accept the priority of duty over them. This is the right way to protect rights and the Church has always done that.

Q: Why talk about the priority of duty? Isn't it enough to reaffirm the complementarity between duties and rights?

Fontana: Any right has a corresponding duty and vice versa, this is absolutely true but it is not sufficient. It is easy, in fact, to artificially fabricate a duty that can be used as a justification for a new right. In Italy, the right to abortion is recognized by a law that starts from the duty to nurture life. The right to euthanasia is based on the duty to relieve suffering. The complementarity between rights and duties is true but is susceptible to ideological manipulation. We really have to go back to the priority of duty.

Q: And this priority of duties would be grounded on what?

Fontana: On the priority of receiving and accepting over producing. We do not produce ourselves but we receive and accept ourselves. We do not produce nature but we receive and accept it, we do not produce culture but we receive and accept it. Of course, we also do produce, but on the basis of an original receiving and accepting.

Q: Receiving and accepting implies a duty?

Fontana: Duty is "being available" while a right is "to have the availability of" something. This is why duty does not come from within us but from the outside. Now we have to decide if we are our own masters and the masters of our own being or if we, ourselves, and our own being are entrusted to us as a task. Modern thought holds the first belief and therefore absolutizes rights, I hold the second belief and thus I start from the duties, i.e., from a call, from a task that has been entrusted to us.

Q: It seems to me that the "I" is a rather risky concept: Isn't the "I," i.e., the subject, the place of free creativity? After all, we are who we want to be. We are the architects of our lives.

Fontana: According to the modern notion of consciousness, this is true: the "I" is a pure consciousness that shapes itself as it wishes. However, according to Christian philosophy, from Augustine to Wojtyla, the "I" is not pure consciousness, but is consciousness of being, i.e., it is a subject that becomes aware that it is something that is given to itself. I am first and foremost also a task for myself, I am a duty to myself, I cannot even dispose of myself, as well as of others, as I wish.

Q: In other words, the priority of duty over rights is the response to a call that comes from outside, from transcendence that is?

Fontana: Rights refer to the right to do something. Thus, they refer to having the availability of something. Instead, duty is to be available. Thus, it refers to a dimension that is unavailable to me, which I cannot use but which I must serve. Since it refers to the unavailable, duty always refers to the transcendent. As Dostoevsky said, without God there is nothing a man is bound not do; i.e., there are only rights and not duties.

Q: In the title we see the word "politics." What does politics have to do with duties?

Fontana: Our society is dying from rights. The right to produce man in laboratories and, in general, the right of doing any action is absolutizing technology, and technology alone is deadly. Rights will never put a limit on themselves. Rights are the right to do something; there will always be new things to do and therefore new rights, without any limits. Limits stem from duties. A politics of duties is a politics of sense and of limit.

Q: A politics of duties, where do we start?

Fontana: A politics of duties concerns all social spheres. However, if I were to suggest a starting point, I would say it is the theme of life. It is the first duty we are entrusted with, the first duty that is placed in our hands. When life is denied, all the subsequent duties are weakened and at the end only the rights prevail.

Q: Could you suggest other realms where a politics of duties might be urgent?

Fontana: I think about the fact that we have many universal declarations of rights but none of duties. I think about the fact that no community identity can be created without duties and therefore the dialogue between cultures is extremely difficult. I think about the crisis of citizenship if it does not become an ethical citizenship, i.e., one that is grounded on sharing duties. I think about the many subjects of civil society that would be ready to take on new responsibilities, i.e., duties.

Devopment of Doctrine East and West

Scott Carson's post

Again, thanks to Dr. Liccione.

Ancestral sin and original sin

Ephrem Hugh Bensusan on original sin and ancestral sin

See also his Original Sin in the Eastern Orthodox Confessions and Catechisms and Fr. George Mastrantonis on Ancestral Sin.

Thanks to Dr. Liccione.

Plus, he writes:

An excellent example of the traditional schema for rejecting the Immaculate Conception can be found in the book The Orthodox Veneration of Mary the Birthgiver of God, by St. John Maximovitch, the relevant chapter of which can be found here.

If one aspect of original sin is inheritable corruption of the body, why should the Blessed Mother not be preserved from it? After all, she contributes 1/2 the matter at conception; if God were to purify the matter miraculously, one could make the case that the Blessed Mother is not really a mother at all, just a womb or incubator.

Plato, The Laws

The Internet Classics Archive Laws by Plato
Alfred Edward Taylor's translation
Banjamin Jowett's translation
unknown translation
Perseus: English, Greek

OUP: The Laws of Plato

Other links:
Plato's Laws in the Hands of Aristotle (pdf)

Steven Pinker, The Blank Slate

Evolutionary psychology vs... Aristotelian physics. Two alternate explanations of how something is what it is? Is Aristotelian physics committed to a view of efficient causality that precludes neo-Darwinism? I have written on that elsewhere... just some comments.

If the matter is proportioned to form and function, then should we not expect that the body and its tools, including the brain, are hard-wired in a certain way, and differently for the sexes, if being of a certain sex entails a certain role and function within Creation?

Links:
book website; Amazon
Biology vs. the Blank Slate
Edge; interview
Tanner lecture
MIT world
Q&A with Steve Sailer; Pinker's Progress
The Great Debate
Observer review
age-of-the-sage

Master

Used to translate dominus or kurios (and a synonym of lord in this sense).

But also used to translate magister (but not exactly a synonym of teacher).

Which sense is being used to refer to one's teacher? I would think the second. I believe master in the second second is what translates the degree and title conferred upon those who received the appropriate university education in the middle ages and thus had a license to teach.
One is a teacher of some science or skill or art, having 'mastered' it.

It is not the same as being called a master because one is the master of some person. Today in our egalitarian age this meaning of master is unpleasant. I should look up the meaning of si, as in si fu.

Ckhnat has a post on the use of master or lord to refer to one's husband (after the example of Sarah in the OT. This would make me a bit uncomfortable, and seems to me to be an example of illegitimate or sinful patriarchy. A wife is not a slave or maid of the husband. Still, the Church teaches that is a rightful exercise of authority by the husband over the family (as a social unit).

John Finnis critiques Aquinas' account of the husband-wife relationship in his Aquinas, Moral , Political, and Legal Theory, pages 171-5. What would Finnis make of Fr. Check's The Authority of the Husband According to the Magisteruim?

From Christian Order, Karol Wojtyla and the Patriarchal Hierarchy of the Family by G.C. DILSAVER

Edited, 5 April 2007:
Holy Thursday at St. Columkille was a mixed English-Spanish Mass. During the Mass I was thinking of master again, and was look at the Spanish maestro, which seems to be derived from magister. Though the etymology of master is not as obvious to me, I came home to check and see what info was available online. This is what I found at Online Etymology Dictionary:

master (n.)
O.E. mægester "one having control or authority," from L. magister "chief, head, director, teacher" (cf. O.Fr. maistre, Fr. maître, It. maestro, Ger. Meister), infl. in M.E. by O.Fr. maistre, from L. magister, contrastive adj. from magis (adv.) "more," itself a comp. of magnus "great." Meaning "original of a recording" is from 1904. In academic senses (from M.L. magister) it is attested from 1380s, originally a degree conveying authority to teach in the universities. The verb is attested from c.1225.

I don't think Master should be used as a synonym for Lord (Kurios, Dominus), but if the etymology dictionary is correct, it gained the sense of "one having control or authority" rather early.

Access from BC?

The following work when accessed from BC.

An article by Fr. Cessario:
http://sce.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/19/3/305

A review of Fr. Sherwin's book By Knowledge and by Love by Daniel Westberg.
http://sce.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/19/3/426

an article about autonomy
http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/0384-9694.00072

Solomon's prayer

Liber Sapientiae, IX

1 “ Deus patrum meorum et Domine misericordiae,
qui fecisti omnia verbo tuo
2 et sapientia tua constituisti hominem,
ut dominaretur creaturis, quae a te factae sunt,
3 et disponeret orbem terrarum in sanctitate et iustitia
et in directione cordis iudicium iudicaret,
4 da mihi sedium tuarum assistricem sapientiam
et noli me reprobare a pueris tuis,
5 quoniam servus tuus sum ego et filius ancillae tuae,
homo infirmus et exigui temporis
et minor ad intellectum iudicii et legum.
6 Nam, et si quis erit consummatus inter filios hominum,
si ab illo abfuerit sapientia tua, in nihilum computabitur.
7 Tu elegisti me regem populo tuo
et iudicem filiorum tuorum et filiarum;
8 dixisti me aedificare templum in monte sancto tuo
et in civitate habitationis tuae altare,
similitudinem tabernaculi sancti,
quod praeparasti ab initio.
9 Et tecum sapientia, quae novit opera tua,
quae et affuit tunc, cum orbem terrarum faceres,
et sciebat quid esset placitum in oculis tuis
et quid directum in praeceptis tuis.
10 Emitte illam de caelis sanctis tuis
et a sede magnitudinis tuae mitte illam,
ut mecum sit et mecum laboret,
ut sciam quid acceptum sit apud te.
11 Scit enim illa omnia et intellegit
et deducet me in operibus meis sobrie
et custodiet me in sua gloria.
12 Et erunt accepta opera mea,
et diiudicabo populum tuum iuste
et ero dignus sedium patris mei.
13 Quis enim hominum poterit scire consilium Dei?
Aut quis poterit cogitare quid velit Dominus?
14 Cogitationes enim mortalium timidae,
et incertae providentiae nostrae:
15 corpus enim, quod corrumpitur, aggravat animam,
et terrena inhabitatio deprimit sensum multa cogitantem.
16 Et difficile conicimus, quae in terra sunt,
et, quae in prospectu sunt, invenimus cum labore;
quae autem in caelis sunt, quis investigabit?
17 Consilium autem tuum quis sciet,
nisi tu dederis sapientiam
et miseris spiritum sanctum tuum de altissimis?
18 Et sic correctae sunt semitae eorum, qui sunt in terris;
et, quae tibi placent, didicerunt homines
et salvati per sapientiam sunt ”.

"Principles of Doing Philosophy"

Never engage someone in a discussion of someone else's thought, even if he believes in it wholeheartedly.

1. He may be misunderstanding or misrepresenting what the author/text is saying. An example: a discussion last week of how AM defines modernity.

2. In a dialogue, one is concerned not with what some accepted authority teaches, but whether that teaching is true or not. So if the other person says, "I believe that x's teaching on y is true," the reply is to see whether this teaching has sufficient support or not, not whether he is reporting the teaching correctly because presumably he believes in this teaching, regardless of whether it is actually that of the author or not.

If it turns out that he's just a yes-man, then a different approach must be taken.

3. This principle is even more important if you yourself are not familiar with the texts or authors to which he refers. So a common basis for dialogue must be sought elsewhere--our knowledge of reality, which should be the primarily resource anyway.

Some articles by Fr. John Behr

Fr. John Behr is a member of the faculty at St. Vladimir's Orthodox Seminary.

The Trinitarian Being of the Church
The Paschal Foundation of Christian Theology
Orthodoxy

Fr. Oliver Herbel makes references to Fr. Behr in the discussion of St. Maximos and the filioque at Energetic Procession.

(SVS photo gallery)

Worker's paradise?

Today I read an article on the Jesuit Reductions of South America, and posted it over at The New Beginning. Was the evangelization of the Guaraní halted with the destruction of these Jesuit missions? How many Guaraní today are Catholic? How much of the current state of S. American countries is due to the injustices perpetuated by those with power? How great of an impediment to evangelization has been created by these so-called "Catholics"? Did the Church fail to excommunicate when it should have, even at the risk of persecution? And what have the liberal revolutionaries done to improve the situation for the poor? (How anti-Church and anti-clerical were they?)

Should the Reductions be considered to have been truly self-sufficient polities? What sort of crops did they cultivate for food? Did they domesticate animals? What can the transition of these hunter-gatherers to agriculture teach us about limiting the ecological footprint of our communities? While their adoption of European culture (especially music) as their own is well-known, is this an example of cultural imperialism? Or is it the case that the Guaraní found European music to be truly beautiful?

The Reductions were an example of communes--property was owned in common, I believe--though it is not clear to me if there was no private property whatsoever. Were they Communist? Not at all--they were Christian in inspiration. I do not know if the Guaraní owned things in common as hunter-gatherers, and if this was something they carried over into the Reductions, or if it was introduced by the Jesuits. Who exercised leadership in the Reductions? The Jesuits? The Guaraní? A select group among the Guaraní? The Jesuits and the Guaraní jointly? I should see if there are any good histories that would provide the answers to these sorts of questions.

Was this sad event an example of just polities being destroyed by empire? The oppression of the peaceful and relatively powerless by the powerful and the rich?

Tonight I checked out Fr. Augustine Thompson's Cities of God from O'Neill. I will be looking to the Italian city-states to see what sort of lessons can be drawn for the science of politics. Does the conversion of peoples lead to the formation of healthier political communities? And if so, why did it not happen, especially with the Germanic tribes? How does one account for the rise of monarchies and the feudal system? Would not tribes be more likely to have some sort of democratic government? Or did the Germanic tribes grow too big in size for this to be practically possible? Was the feudal system rooted in the customs proper to tribal alliances/subordination?
When did the Germanic tribes start practicing agriculture? Were there different social strata/classes within the tribes?

So many questions for me to find answers to...