Most Reverend J. Augustine DiNoia,O.P., The Holy Priesthood and the Incarnation

Worth a repost? (via The Chant Cafe)

On Community by Laurel Good

Between us, my husband and I have taught close to a thousand students over the past five years: only a handful of them had grandparents in town. For some reason, people have as much trouble putting down roots here as maple trees do.


I suspect it’s because this isn’t our native earth, because our parents and friends and childhood memories are all settled a thousand miles away. And because no one can truly thrive without the knowledge that they matter in their community.


That’s not to say that no one can matter in Colorado. Out east on the plains you’ll find agricultural towns and small ranching communities that have made their mark on the land, and where people have made their mark on each other. And even in the Springs, there certainly are rare families who settled here several generations ago, and more that might begin to call it home. But my family isn’t one of them.


So we’re leaving now, before Sam spends his whole childhood indoors or on pavement, or before he comes to believe that his grandparents live in a little box called “Skype” on the computer. We’re going back home to the Midwest--Michigan, specifically--to be closer to our families, closer to familiar ground, closer to the grass.

Tradition and the Future

(via The Hermeneutic of Continuity)

Chartres pilgrimmage
Cardinal Burke at the London Oratory

Roger Nutt, Does Thomism Offer a Theory of Doctrinal Development?

Nutt refers the reader to Charles Journet's What is Dogma for a Thomistic explication of doctrinal development.

An excerpt: Dogma and Mystery

Here is my initial shot:
As we are unable to give a real definition of God in this life (as we do not know God as He is in Himself), so His essence has not been captured in a single concept. Hence He reveals Himself to us in a way that we can understand, through His actions and attributes (via analogy). Our understanding of what has been Divinely Revealed can be deepened as we apply our reason to it. (But it seems that our understanding can also be deepened in itself through participation in the Divine Life and the life of the Church? - through both experiential reflection and contemplation?)

Vatican Insider: Jesus died in the 33 A.D., the 3rd of April

On Scientism by Thomas Bertonneau

Ivan Illich, "The Sad Loss of Gender"

the essay (alt)

NYT review of Gender (negative because the book doesn't go the way of feminism and radical egalitarianism?)

Catholic Seminaries and Evangelization: A Commentary by Fr. Barron

MOJ: Teaching Feminist Legal Theory with a Faith Perspective -- and a free book offer!

Elizabeth Schiltz:

As a scholar interested in feminist legal theory, the most interesting thing I thing I learned from this semester was how often the religious feminists made arguments that sounded an awful lot like the arguments of the Dominance Feminists. I expected to see a lot of convergence with Relational and Care Feminists, and I did see those, but the convergence with Dominance Feminists like Catherine MacKinnon really surprised me.

Do I need to look these types of feminism up?

wiki: feminist legal theory

Edward Feser, Natural theology, natural science, and the philosophy of nature

James Chastek, Marriage and mortal sin

Brandon digs out a fantastic text from STA’s commentary on Corinthians:



…that the conjugal act is sometimes meritorious and without any mortal or venial sin, as when it is directed to the good of procreation and education of a child for the worship of God; for then it is an act of religion; or when it is performed for the sake of rendering the debt, it is an act of justice. But every virtuous act is meritorious, if it is performed with charity. But sometimes it is accompanied with venial sin, namely, when one is excited to the matrimonial act by concupiscence, which nevertheless stays within the limits of the marriage, namely, that he is content with his wife only. But sometimes it is performed with mortal sin, as when…

So guess: what is he going to say? Is sexual activity a mortal sin when “it is not open to procreation” (an answer that is at hand from what he says at the head of the quotation) or when “it is performed in an unnatural way”? Don’t we expect St. Thomas to mention some obvious perversion? Yet, in the casual way that he says all his revolutionary things, he says that sexual activity is a mortal sin when…
…the husband approaches the wife with the idea that he would just as gladly or more gladly approach another woman.

Aquinas has a "full" account of marriage, but some may criticze him for focusing only on the sexual act. One can start with the analysis of the external act and whether it is good or not, but one than moves "upward" and looks at the intention which may modify the act. In this case, one looks at the presence (or absence) of marital friendship/love or charity. The mistake of those who look solely at the intention is that they deny the sexual act is intrinsically moral. Elsewhere he touches upon the roles of husband and wife (citation?) - while the personalists are right to focus on the "context" of the sexual act in marriage and to talk about the married life, were they so bold as to claim that this aspect had been ignored by previous generations of Catholic theologians? Or were they blind to the limitations of their own historical situation? How many of them were reacting to atomism of mass society (or liberal society) and yet espousing some of the principles of such a social de[form]ity? While some personalists assumed a "traditional" understanding about the complementarity of the sexes and the differences in roles did others fall into the error of radical egalitarianism? Did others have a msitaken or exaggerated notion of marital friendship (borrowed from those who advocate "companionate marriage", one that failed to take into account sex differences (especially the role of the husband as leader)?

thenyssan said, raises a question about concupiscence. If one is motivated purely by carnal desire then the sexual act is a venial sin?

Mr. Chastek writes:

"[S]ense goods as sensed are peculiar to a subject as opposed to being common. But the very intensity of sexual desire is from the contact it has with the common good – we really do touch something of the divine (De Anima, 2:4). To enjoy this purely out of concupiscence is to cheat the good we touch and to act against its nature, since we want to enjoy common goods as mere particular goods. If this is right, then there is a certain mercy in saying it is only a venial sin! Shouldn’t we have a harsher judgment on someone who want to appropriate common goods to his own peculiar good?"

I don't know if I'd take this line of reasoning. I think I'd focus more on the psychological aspect behind concupiscence - how it diminishes the moral agency that should be present? Human beings are animals, but they should not be "too" carnal? Reason (and will) should operate in tandem with sense appetite? If appetite does not raise above the sense level, if it is not sublimated by reason...

Dominicans visiting Chevetogne several years ago: The Sacraments as Liturgy

Rorate Caeli: Saint Hildegard and Saint John of the Cross, Doctors

Chant Cafe: "To chant, to sing, engages one's whole being, really." - NPR

Choeur des Moines de Chevetogn - Pentecôte

Simonopetra Manastir!

Insight Scoop: The uniqueness of Saint Philip Neri, the "Apostle of Rome"

Byzantine, Texas: French documentary on Valaam to be subtitled in English


Related:
Valaam "Step to the Skies" part 1 of 7 (English Subtitles)



Parts 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

Grand canon pascal, choeur des moines de Valaam


Archimandrite:

Rome Reports: President of the Vatican's Bank, Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, ousted by board



Is the bank in need of reform? Is it involved in usury in any way?

FSSP ordinations vid

(via Rorate Caeli)

What is Natural Law Like? by Jeremy Waldron (via MoJ)

Abstract:
“The State of Nature,” said John Locke, “has a Law of Nature to govern it, which obliges every one.” But what is “a law of nature”? How would we tell, in a state of nature, that there was a natural law as opposed to something else — like positive law, a set of customs, natural morality, natural ethics, a set of natural inclinations, the truth of certain prudential calculations, a widespread but perhaps false belief in some transcendent law, the voice of God, or just a natural disposition on the part of some pompous people to make sonorous objective-sounding pronouncements? What form should we expect natural law to take in our apprehension of it? This paper argues three things. (a) John Finnis’s work on natural law provides no answer to these questions; his “theory of natural law” is really just a theory of the necessary basis in ethics for evaluating positive law. (b) We need an answer to the question “What is natural law like” not just to evaluate the work of state-of-nature theorists like Locke, but also to explore the possibility that natural law might once have played the role now played by positive international law in regulating relations between sovereigns. And (c), an affirmative account of what natural law is like must pay attention to (1) its deontic character; (2) its enforceability; (3) the ancillary principles that have to be associated with its main normative requirements if it is to be operate as a system of law; (4) its separability form objective from ethics and morality, even from objective ethics and morality; and (5) the shared recognition on earth of its presence in the world. Some of these points — especially 3, 4, and 5 — sound like characteristics of positive law. But the paper argues that they are necessary nevertheless if it is going to be plausible to say that natural law has ever operated (or does still operate) as law in the world.