Maritain's Liberalism vs. "Illiberalism"

What does scholasticism have to say about politics today? Lee Trepanier considers in his latest review of Jacques Maritain’s “Scholasticism and Politics,” a @Liberty_Fund classic: https://t.co/TLyvroDwvh

— Law & Liberty (@LawLiberty) July 6, 2021

Latin Ecclesiology is a Dead End

Conservative Catholics are in a ghastly situation. Confronted by a malicious pope and pro-abortion Biden loyalists, they’re being offered Integralist sectarian fantasies or Vigano Mark of the Beast paranoia. I despair.

— Damian Thompson (@holysmoke) June 26, 2021

McGinley on Danielou's Book on Prayer

Brandon McGinley @brandonmcg and I discuss an interesting/confounding little book by Jean Danielou - it's ahead of its time, before its time, and (irksomely) of its time. Danielou insists that prayer forms a constitutive part of the temporal common good. https://t.co/6GbrVRQYBA

— Catholic Culture Podcasts (@CatholicPods) June 7, 2021

What Is the Grammar Here?

During these days, the Church enters into the great meditation of the Lord's Passion. The suffering Christ is present in the person of the poor, the excluded, the sick, the hungry, those who bear the mystery of the cross with Him. #HolyWeek

— Pope Francis (@Pontifex) March 29, 2021

Is "those who bear the mystery of the cross with Him" an apposition for "the poor, the excluded, the sick, the hungry," or is it the final noun in a list?

In Latin the meaning is more clean, but so is the error. The poor, the excluyded, the sick, the hungry do not bear the mystery of the Cross with Christ simply because they suffer but because they have already been incorporated in Christ.

His diebus incipit Ecclesia magnam Passionis Domini contemplationem. Christus miser adest in paupere, in derelicto, in aegro, in esuriente, qui mysterium Crucis cum Eo gerit. #HebdomadaSancta

— Papa Franciscus (@Pontifex_ln) March 29, 2021

A Reminder: This is Latin Ecclesiology

”It would be impossible to summarize what turned out to be a three-hour conversation with the Holy Father, but there were three dominant themes that emerged.”

In this video, @BishopBarron reflects on his “ad limina” visit with @Pontifex. https://t.co/2RVC4IIEzA

— Word on Fire (@WordOnFire) December 17, 2020

Hm...

Lawrence Feingold is a convert...

Ugh just learned that Feingold teaches that Quanta Cura on religious liberty is invalid, and likewise all of the anti-Modernist teachings about scripture. I feel even more justified for disagreeing with him on Molina and nature-grace stuff now.

— Urban Hannon (@hannonregular) October 21, 2020

Canon 747

Canon Law and Political Discourse: What the Church Can and Must Offer Politics https://t.co/uG26AcDVAX

— Ius & Iustitium (@iusetiustitium) August 24, 2020

If Canon 747 §1 and §2 apply to the Church as a whole, and not just to the bishops, then the canon taken by itself does not imply any sort of Latin integralist theory regarding the authority of the bishops (or the pope) in relation to the political community. As it stands the canon does not tell us what qualifications are needed to "announce moral principles, even about the social order, and to render judgment concerning any human affairs insofar as the fundamental rights of the human person or the salvation of souls requires it." Not all Latins are experts in moral theology, and this is true of Latin bishops as well. And a knowledge of the basic laws or commandments of God does not guarantee that one can reason well from them to derive secondary, positive human legislation or even policy positions.

Eastern Christian Books: An "Eastern" Christology?

Eastern Christian Books: An "Eastern" Christology?

Liberation theology that is grounded in the Eastern Church Fathers?

Herald Press: Jesus of the East: Reclaiming the Gospel for the Wounded by Phuc Lu - Google Books

Questionable Historical Claim

When Jesus first said “Abba,” he meant Joseph.

As with all fathers, the vocation of Joseph was to provide for Jesus as seamless a transition from father to Father as possible.

This Father's Day, reflect upon the spiritually-inspiring role of fatherhood: https://t.co/jI18wMz7Ws

— Word on Fire (@WordOnFire) June 21, 2020

Another piece on the new development of the Latin devotion to St. Joseph:
St. Joseph and Father’s Day: An interview with Fr. Donald Calloway
“The world needs holy men today, especially fathers–both biological fathers and spiritual fathers, priests and bishops.”

Universal Feast of... the Patriarchate of Rome

Urban IV made Corpus Christi a universal feast of the Church in 1264, proclaiming in a new way the Church’s holy and public confession that the Eucharist is Christ's Body and Blood.#CorpusChristi https://t.co/BcWUKn37oK

— C.C. Pecknold (@ccpecknold) June 14, 2020

Uhoh

On Saturday, June 20, I will be joining John Bergsma, Mike Aquilina, and Fr. Boniface Hicks, OSB, for a virtual event in honor of Father’s Day!

We will examine the virtues found in God the Father that all men are called to imitate. Register here: https://t.co/G4ZIFg12y2 pic.twitter.com/INmwNNhxfy

— Scott Hahn (@DrScottHahn) June 8, 2020

An Interview with the Provincial Superior of ICKSP

Crisis: ‘The Love of Tradition Brings People Together’ by Francis Lee



YT Channel

What Notion of Paideia?

CJL: Solidarity and Subsidiarity: Homeschooling Isn't All Risk by Kenneth Garcia

Conflicts over education have a long history, going back at least to ancient Greece. In Sparta education was designed for the benefit of the city-state rather than the individual. The body politic controlled family life and essentially “owned” the child from the time of its birth. At age seven, boys were taken from the home and placed in a state institution for training. There they became children of the state. They lived together and had all things in common. The goal was to train these boys as warriors who would defend the city.

In the Republic, Plato advocated taking children from the home at birth and raising them in common. Children were to be held in common by the city-state, raised and educated by “Guardians” who would engender powerful bonds of loyalty between individuals and the state. No child would know who his or her natural parents were. In Plato’s scheme, the family must be eliminated if the ideal city was to be free of the discord caused by private or kinship loyalties. Aristotle’s Politics presents a similar ideal, but maintains that intermediate associations, between the individual and state, were acceptable as long as the goal of the broader city-state was served.

There is an equivocation on the word "education" -- for Plato, since education was to create citizens and the moral necessarily included a knowledge of the univocal concept of the good, their education had to include "philosophy." But this was not necessarily the case for Aristotle, who recognized that moral education, paideia, did not require a speculative or metaphysical knowledge of the good. In so far as paideia was essentially concerned with the moral formation of citizens, the polis had a role to play in educating the young, even if it was to teach them or enable them to practice the social/political virtues. The norms which they were to learn were not the norms for their households into which they were born, but the norms of behavior for all citizens. It was not necessary for the polis to legislate concerning the acquisition of the speculative sciences need for the life of contemplation. (As for laws regarding the acquisition of skills/techne I will have to double-check but I don't think the polis played a direct role, unless it was necessary to impose consequences for failures or negligence by teachers of techne.)

Latin Devotion to St. Joseph

CWR: St. Joseph: Man and Worker—A Letter to Working Men by David Michael Phelps
Considering our own crises in light of St. Joseph’s example, we can learn to see, even here in our coronavirus exile, an opportunity to offer a more fundamental yes to the work of God in our lives.

Good luck to the Harmel Academy of the Trades. Hopefully it's not too little, too late.

The Psychological Need to Disassociate

from an organization or even a church.

Following up on these posts about the Latin churches:
A Church of "Social Justice" and "Solidarity"
More Disappointing Words from Cardinal Ouellet
How Will SSPX Latin Rad-Trads Deal With This?

What is one to do with a leadership that is out-of-touch, unaccountable, preaching a heterodox alternative to the Gospel, and refusing to observe proper boundaries between men and women?

Catholic leaders to Trump: Coronavirus pandemic not an excuse to crack down on immigration https://t.co/tSYTd7t3oU

— America Magazine (@americamag) April 24, 2020

“It is a policy rooted in the fear of the stranger, the other, the marginalized and the dispossessed,” San Diego Bishop Robert McElroy said.https://t.co/tSYTd7t3oU

— America Magazine (@americamag) April 24, 2020

Women in clericals is about THE most cringe-inducing sight out there! https://t.co/AmQntanReq

— Colleen Eldracher (@ColleenEldrach1) April 24, 2020

Some may be driven for the sake of one's integrity to disassociate from these pastors, because they do not represent Christianity or Christ as he thinks is appropriate. Why be tainted by such an association, or be judged as giving approval to their brand of "Christianity"?

To Love Others

CWR Dispatch: Loneliness, disconnection, and our divine vocation by Brian Jones
Without a reference to human nature, and the specific inclination to live in community as essential for its flourishing, the prescriptive for civic decline can fall on deaf ears.

The reality of our social breakdown seemed to surround us on all sides. Our cities, towns, and neighborhoods have been built in ways that do not appear as though they were designed for human life and flourishing. We have even constructed tall fences around our homes, along with an abundance of trees to surround us in a sort of military fortress. Front porches were once an essential feature of homes, so as to incline us towards fulfilling our vocation as neighbors, and good stewards of those places where we live. These have given way to the back patio, that place of refuge which has conditioned citizens to seek to be removed from others, detached as a further means for celebrating our individual liberty. How many of us actually know the people who live on our street, especially those right next door?

Welcome to suburbia. A look at the social and political factors at work behind the destruction of community would probably be too much for a short internet essay, but they do merit an examination so that Christians know what the causes were and from which they need to be on guard.

[M]uch of the literature that accurately describes the decline of community in American civic life tends to lack a deeper explanation as to why human beings are in need of association at an ontological or metaphysical level.

The author doesn't develop this in the direction of communion ecclesiology and personhood as relation right away, but in the direction of apprenticeship in love [agape]. Later he talks about imitating God and writes  "Human sociality is meant to be an imitation of the Trinitarian Sociality"

What Is the Solution?

The standard Roman Catholic wedding vows do not include a promise for the wife to obey the husband:

Couples wedding in the Roman Catholic Church essentially make the same pledge to one another. According to the Rite of Marriage (#25) the customary text in English is:^[4]

I, ____, take you, ____, to be my (husband/wife). I promise to be true to you in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health. I will love you and honour you all the days of my life.

In the United States, Catholic wedding vows may also take the following form:^[4]

I, ____, take you, ____, to be my lawfully wedded(husband/wife), to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do us part.

The priest will then say aloud "You have declared your consent before the Church. May the Lord in his goodness strengthen your consent and fill you both with his blessings. What God has joined, men must not divide. Amen."^[5]

Even Latin Progressives Are Focused Exclusively on Rome

Pray Tell: An Ecumenical Spring Time in the Vatican? by Brian Flanagan

WCC: The Church: Towards a Common Vision (other languages)

Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity: The Catholic Response to "The Church: Towards a Common Vision" (the document: 2019 Catholic Response to "The Church: Towards a Common Vision")

The typical Roman Catholic continues to conflate the patriarchate of Rome with the Church Universal, just as Latin progressives are ultramontanists when the occupant of the "see of St. Peter" suits them.

I note that the WCC started off as a Protestant endeavor and even today, the patriarchate of Rome is not an official member of that body. Maybe this is to put it in wordly terms, but it is rather presumptuous for Protestants to put themselves on a equal level with Apostolic Churches, when their dispute is first of all with the patriarchate of Rome. Do any of them recognize their denomination in the early Church? Can any of them say that their doctrines are from the Apostles, when there are other Apostolic Churches, not just Rome, that objects to them? Maybe paradoxically they are tied as partners, even if as unequal partners, to the patriarchate of Rome when it comes to engaging the other Apostolic Churches.

When the WCC has as members Christians who are heretical on one or more points that are not included in statements of mere Christianity (which may be reconcilable with Roman Catholicism), do these documents really matter? Orthodoxy with no orthopraxy does not matter. There will be no real reconciliation with Christians who are actually liberals and feminists -- their communities will disintegrate, even those that profess to be "Catholic." (Take a look at the leadership for the Anglican Diocese of London. An ecclesial community that has no future.) There can be reconciliation with conservative and traditional Protestants who have rejected liberalism and feminism, and perhaps the key is not further "agreements" between them and Latins but to take fresh look at Scripture and Tradition, and not through the lens of medieval Western Christianity, whether it is in the form of scholasticism or in a form that rejects scholasticism but doesn't go far enough to question other parts of the inheritance from late medieval Latin ecclesial tradition. Let Protestants recognize the insufficiency of "sola scriptura"  and the need to engage in a discussion about Tradition with the other Apostolic Churches, who need to be recognized as senior members in the dialogue.

Heresy needs to be recognized as heresy, even if this offends the world, and there need to be consequences for those "ecclesial communities" which persist in heresy. I'm not referring to disputes about sacraments or justification or ecclesiology, as those need to be revisited, but that which should be beyond doubt, the commandments revealed by God to His Church, including those commandments pertaining to "gender roles." If an "ecclesial community" embraced same-sex "marriage," but professed a "mere Christianity" that was compatible with Roman Catholic teaching, could there still be dialogue? Or should such denominations be left to wither?

This is a great expression of why ecumenism is so valuable – in addition to following the will of Christ that we would all be one, that the world might believe, our dialogue provides ways for the Catholic Church to more easily receive the practices and wisdom of synodally experienced churches, even as we might share some of the gifts of structures of primacy. But, in the meantime, we can see here more clearly how and where Pope Francis is leading the Catholic Church back to the renewal of synodal structures first renewed in modern Catholicism at the Second Vatican Council.

Maybe synodality needs to be recovered in the west, but what has passed for synodality since Vatican II is really not. Eastern Catholics need to recover synodality as well, but be willing to hold to their synods against any possible interference from Rome.

If we do this – and this, perhaps, is where you the reader come in – if we make TCTCV an object of study beyond academics and ecumenical specialists; if ecclesiologists explore how ecumenical convergence statements like these have a kind of magisterial authority analogous to that of conciliar, papal, and other forms of ecclesial teaching; if pastors and liturgists renew or return to liturgical practices of doing all thing we can do together, together; if parish book clubs and college courses, seminary formation programs and priest study days, take this text seriously – if we do all this, then we might help better form our Catholic Church for dialogue with our fellow Christians, for renewing our Church, particularly as a synodal community that listens to each other and to the Spirit together, and for the day when a common vision of the church will allow it to be more fully a sign of unity and an instrument of God’s peace.

Latins should first reconsider their ecclesiological presuppositions as they relate to other Apostolic Christians, instead of assuming their presuppositions are of Tradition. (They can't help it given their beliefs about the papacy.) More and more non-Latin Catholics will disagree with them. What will Rome do at that point? Start excommunicating them again?

Academics who are insulated in their ivory towers are probably the last ones who should be engaged in any sort of ecumenical dialogue. Perhaps the same could be said of monastics who are completely cut off from the world as well. What skin in the game do any of them have? They can defend themselves by  arguments from authority, and in practice cannot be held accountable by other Christian faithful.

Latins Going to Latin

Another proclamation of a plenrary indulgence.

Rorate Caeli: IMPORTANT: Plenary Indulgence to all faithful caught up in the Coronavirus situation

Dorothy Day: An Introduction to Her Life and Thought

Ignatius Press: Dorothy Day: An Introduction to Her Life and Thought by Terrence C. Wright

CWR: The radical and orthodox faith of Dorothy Day

Terrence Wright’s recent book demonstrates that Day was a radical in her political and social views because she was first a truly radical Catholic in her appropriation of the deepest currents in the Church’s ancient Tradition.