Immigration and Natural Law.

At the Aquinas group last night, reading ST II-II, Q. 26 on the Order of Charity, I was surprised to find that Aquinas completely accepted the notion that finite creatures may properly order their charity to those with whom they have the closest ties. This seems like such a difference from modern notions of charity that want charity to be chemically pure from any accusation of personal interest. But Aquinas's philosophy was a human philosophy and therefore based on common sense.

I taunted one of the group's attendees to turn out an essay on the subject, and he obliged. Here it is.

//COMMONSENSE ABOUT ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION

It is my view that there is a lot of muddle-headed thinking about Christian obligations to illegal immigrants in the United States.  This is due to a confused reading of Old Testament laws regarding the "stranger" or "foreigner."  This confused thinking also fails to take into consideration New Testament teaching about family obligations and Christian theological insights about natural law.

The Problem

As I see it, the problem is that some Christians insist that American citizens have a moral obligation to provide welfare benefits, health services, schooling and an array of other services to illegal immigrants who slip across our borders and make their way into our communities.  For these Christians this is a moral imperative or an "ought" based on Scripture or Christian tradition.

Firstly, however, if it is a moral imperative to supply these benefits to illegal immigrants then A) it is a sin (or unjust) to fail to do so, and B) there is no limit to this obligation; hence, these benefits are logically due to the millions upon millions of people that could illegally enter the United States.  Obviously, this could be a crushing moral responsibility placed upon struggling middle class Christians that would impede their ability to care for their own families.  Does God require Christians to provide welfare benefits and services to illegal immigrants?

Old Testament Laws Regarding the Resident Foreigner

Because the Israelites had been foreigners in Egypt, God stipulated divine laws regarding their treatment.  Often the reasoning behind providing welfare benefits to illegals is based on these laws.  But, what do they tell us?

First, Israelites were not to take advantage of or mistreat foreigners (Exodus 22:21 and 23:9).  On the other hand, foreigners residing in Israel were to obey and follow the theocratic laws of the land just like Israelites.  Read this.

Numbers 9:14 “‘A foreigner residing among you is also to celebrate the Lord’s Passover in accordance with its rules and regulations. You must have the same regulations for both the foreigner and the native-born.’

In other words, resident foreigners did not get a "free pass" from the law.  Therefore, we can conclude that an ancient foreigner who broke the law had to suffer the penalties and consequences of those laws he/she violated.  It seems unlikely that a law-breaking foreigner would have been treated the same as a destitute, law-abiding foreigner.  Leviticus 25:35 does indicate that Israelites were to assist fellow countrymen and resident foreigners who fell on hard times.  However, this presupposes the foreigner had legal residence.

Priorities of Care

What is often overlooked by the Christians who make an "ought" out of providing benefits for illegals is that the New Testament lays out a strict order for the care others.  In this regard, family and fellow Christians come first.

Read these verses and notice the descending order of obligations.

1 Timothy 5:4 But if a widow has children or grandchildren, these should learn first of all to put their religion into practice by caring for their own family and so repaying their parents and grandparents, for this is pleasing to God.

1 Timothy 5:8 But if anyone does not provide for his own, and especially for those of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.

Galatians 6:10 Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all, especially to those who are of the household of faith.

The order goes as follows:  first, children and grandchildren are to care for their parents (and grandparents); second, Christians are to care for those in their own household; third, Christians are to do good to fellow Christians; lastly, they are to do good to others as they "have opportunity."  In other words, there is distinct priority of love and care that begins with one's family and gradually extends to those who are strangers to us.  Usurping this priority--in Paul's view--is to deny the Christian Faith.

But let's take this a step further and read what Aquinas has to say about our Christian obligation to love our family and those who we are not tied to us by family relations.  He uses Exodus 20:12 to indicate that Christians must love their family members first and foremost.  Then he adds the following.

[II-II, Q. 26, Art. 8] Accordingly we must say that friendship among blood relations is based upon their connection by natural origin, the friendship of fellow-citizens on their civic fellowship, and the friendship of those who are fighting side by side on the comradeship of battle. Wherefore in matters pertaining to nature we should love our kindred most, in matters concerning relations between citizens, we should prefer our fellow-citizens, and on the battlefield our fellow-soldiers. Hence the Philosopher says (Ethic. ix, 2) that "it is our duty to render to each class of people such respect as is natural and appropriate.

The Christian's Obligation to Fellow Citizens

I quoted Aquinas' words because he extrapolated outwardly from a biblical principle about the priority of our love for family members to then include our fellow citizens.  He clearly shows that Christians are to love and care for their fellow citizens in preference over non-citizens.  Just as it would be wrong for us to neglect the real needs of a family member in order to care for other people; likewise the Christian has a higher obligation to his/her fellow-citizen than to an illegal non-citizen.  So, if welfare benefits, hospital emergency rooms, schools and the like are overburdened and driving up public debt, they must be triaged in favor of citizens.  From a Christian perspective, it is morally wrong to neglect the care of fellow citizens in favor of non-citizens.  It is also wrong to give preference to non-citizens over citizens.  This is commonsensical because--as Aquinas notes--it is rooted in "natural origin" (God's created order).//

Father Barron on Thomas Aquinas and the Argument from Motion.

Catchy!

Reading Aquinas.

A reflection.

Amazon Review - The Conundrum of Jewish Survival in Christian Europe.

Aquinas and the Jews (The Middle Ages Series)
by John Y. B. Hood

Please go here and give me a favorable vote.

The mystery of Christendom's interaction with the Jews, as John Y. B. Hood points out at the end of "Aquinas and he Jews," is, in the light of the fate of heretics and pagans, not "why were there pogroms and persecutions of Jews" but "why any Jews survived in Europe at all?" The answer to this conundrum lies in the deep ambiguity that is woven throughout the history of Christian and Jewish relations from the beginning. The New Testament contains both statements that are susceptible of bitter anti-Jewish invective and expressions of the promise that all Jews would be saved in time. As Hood documents, the history of the Church was to chart a course between these extremes. Thus, while the Catholic Church followed Roman legal precedents that protected the person and property of the Jews, as well as their right to worship and freedom from forced conversions, it also insisted on the legal and social degradation of Jews so that they would in no sense ever be seen to be looking down or mocking Christians or Christianity.

This is a slim book with a tight focus on the circumstances and thinking of Aquinas in relation to the treatment of the Jews. Ultimately, Hood acquits Aquinas of any and every charge of anti-semitism. Aquinas comes across as almost a modern "liberal" in his staunch refusal to countenance the interference of parental rights with respect to the issue of the forced baptism of Jewish children on natural law grounds. Of course, as Hood points out, that wasn't where Aquinas was actually coming from; he was a conservative Catholic providing a defense of the Catholic tradition of finding an accommodation of Jews under the traditional principle of "de his qui foris sunt" ("of those who are [outside the church]") by which the Church abjured jurisdiction over non-Christians.

The first chapter discusses the theological underpinnings of the relationship between Jews and Christians. The chief relationship consisted of the fact that Christians relied upon Jewish texts. Christians and Jews fought over the interpretations of the same texts; Christians developed a method of typological or symbolic interpretation and claimed that the more literal Jewish style of interpretation was overly "carnal" compared to their spiritual style. Nonetheless, some early church fathers, particularly Augustine felt that a continuing Jewish witness to the reality of Judaeo-Christian texts was necessary for the health of Christianity. This insight by Augustine provided an incentive for Christians to differentiate the treatment of Jews from the treatment of heretics and pagans.

Hood next surveys on the "Thirteenth Century Context." Prior to the second millennium, most Jews were artisans and shopkeepers, not professionals or capitalists. Jews lived in semi-autonomous enclaves under their own laws and judicial regimes. Jews had a reputation that awed Christians; Hebrew was a magical language (much as Latin is the preferred magical language of Horror movies today.) Moving into the twelfth century, Jewish intellectuals were ascendant and Jews were moving into lending to Christians. The history of Jews and Christians prior to that time had seen Christians insisting that Jews not be permitted to be placed into positions of authority over Christians - and that Jews and Christian social interactions should be kept to a minimum. The other side of the coin was the protection of Jews by Popes, such as the repeated publication of Sicut Iudaeis - a constitution for Jews - which protected the lives, property and religious rights of Jews and the papal condemnation of the veracity of lurid popular anti-Jewish stories, such as the "blood libel." Jews were made to wear special "badges" at the Fourth Lateran Council, but this policy had been enacted by Muslims several centuries earlier. (p. 32.)

Hood argues that the "foris" principle tended to weaken in the 13th Century as popes pressed their claims. In addition, Christians were becoming better versed in Hebrew and were learning that the Talmud contained some fairly scurrilous stores about Christ and His mother. This tended to induce churchmen to start to claim a jurisdiction over the blasphemies in the Talmud.

With the third chapter we get to Aquinas proper. Hood looks at the fairly scant discussion of Jews contained in Aquinas corpus by first looking at his treatment of the Jewish people as authors and subject of the religious texts that linked Christians and Jews. Aquinas like his fellows was keen on typological analysis by which deeper symbolic meaning was extracted from - or imposed on - literal texts. Aquinas insisted in opposition to Maimonides that the literal meaning had to be supplemented by typology ad symbology. Aquinas' reading of the text put him into a state of cognitive dissonance where Jews were both admirable followers of the Law which improved them morally and the carnal and frequently fallen subjects of a Law that could do nothing more than increase sin. Hood gives the sense that Aquinas didn't seem to be aware of this contradiction, but rather hewed to one line or the other as the circumstances demanded. Hood finds that Aquinas' treatment of the law and Jewish history both demonstrate a "duality" the paints Jews as both holy and degenerate.

In the fourth chapter, Hood addresses the Aquinas' treatment of Jewish responsibility for the crucifixion. Here, as elsewhere, the primary text are schizophrenic, with some passages implying that "Jews" should be held responsible for knowingly killing their messiah, and with others asking for forgiveness of Jews because of their ignorance. Aquinas followed earlier thinkers in applying the former passages to the Pharisees and other Jewish leaders, while excusing the bulk of Jews as ignorant of who Christ was. Aquinas did find a basis for holding to the culpa Iudaeorum in the Jewish rejection of the Resurrection and their continued adherence to Jewish rituals. Jews were punished by God because they "imitate their parents' malice and approve of Christ's killing." (p.74.)

The fifth chapter examines the "Jews in Christian society." The foundation of Christian treatment of Jews rested on the theological doctrine that although God was punishing the Jews, God still loved the Jews and would eventually see them converted. (p. 77.) It also rested on the Augustinian doctrine that Christianity benefited from the preservation of the Jews. In this chapter, Hood examines how these ideas played out in Question 10 of the Second Part of the Second Part of the Summa Theologica. In this Question, Aquinas affirms that the treatment of the Jews should be different from that of pagans and heretics. Aquinas confirmed the traditional teaching that Jews were not to be molested, forced to convert or have their children baptized without their consent, and were to be left free to worship as Jews. Hood observes that although Christian's attitude toward Jews was becoming more inflexible in the face of a rising Jewish role in society, Aquinas' attitude remained "notably free from hysteria." (p. 84.) Hood, in fact, refers to Aquinas as "relatively tolerant."

This tolerance was not modern tolerance. Aquinas argued for keeping interactions between Christians and Jews as limited as possible, and probably a good deal less than what actually occurred. The key point made by Hood is that the Christian attitude toward Jewish policy was essentially manipulative: Jews were to be shunned unless there was something to be gained from them.

In the final chapter, Hood essentially clears Aquinas of the charge of anti-semitism. Nothing in Aquinas implicates him in any tendency to pogrom, slander or forcible conversion. The only spot where Hood tenuously links Aquinas to anti-semitism is in the area of usury. Aquinas comes across as basically moderate except in the area of usury which he condemned whether practiced by Christians or Jews. In one text, De Regimine Iudaeorum, Aquinas observed that the prince could seize the wealth of usurers in order to return money taken from those who had borrowed or for other social goods. This, according to Hood, became a green-light for temporal rulers to seize Jewish property and expel Jews from their territories. To the extent that this is true, it would seem that Aquinas was not the intentional or direct cause of this result. Rather, Aquinas seems to have been in a tradition that led to a long and unprecedented history of accommodation and survival.

Hood concludes:

"When the gap between theory and perceived reality becomes too great, something gives. By the early 1270s, when Aquians wrote the Summa Theologiae and De Regimine Iudaeaorum, such a gap had developed between the traditional policy of tolerating Jews and the social pressures opposed to that policy. First developed by Augustine and Pope Gregory the Great, the policy of limited toleration had remained intact - or rather had survived in dormant form - through some four centuries of Christian intellectual decline and missionary stasis. The revival of Christian learning, in the mid-eleventh century, led to the rediscovery and codification of this principle, and for more than two hundred years it stood virtually alone against a host of social, religious, and economic pressures that militated against European Jews. Modern historians, informed by the ideals of liberal tolerance, always feel compelled to explain instances of oppression and persecution, but in light of ht treatment meted out to heretics and pagans in the Middle Ages, the long period in which Jews were tolerated in Christian Europe is at least as difficult to account for as their eventual expulsion." (p. 109.)

Aquinas comes out of this book as relatively tolerant, calm and reasonable in his attitudes toward Jews. He doesn't seem to have had any personal animosity toward Jews. He did not traffick in the lurid folk stories that others, such as Martin Luther in the 16th Century did.

This book is readable and accessible. It takes a "warts and all" approach to the subject. It provides a good discussion and critique of Aquinas' relevant writings. The book is short, approximately 110 pages, and it provides a useful source for rebutting arguments by those who want to see only the warts in the relationship between Christians and Jews, and Aquinas' position on the same.

Scientists climb to top of mountain, only to...

...discover Aristotle beat them there by 2,500 years.

A recent Time article on recent development in cognitive psychology:

Study co-author Ralph Adolphs, a professor of psychology at Caltech, explains the distinction by way of a grocery shopping example: “Your valuation network is always providing you with information about what’s rewarding around you — the things you want to buy — but also lots of distracting things like junk food and other items popping into your vision off the shelves.”

Cognitive control is what keeps this network in check. “To be able to get to the checkout counter with what you planned, you need to maintain a goal in mind, such as perhaps only buying the salad you needed for dinner,” says Adolphs. “That’s your cognitive control network maintaining an overall goal despite lots of distractions.”

Understanding how the brain parcels out specific decision-making tasks can offer insight into conditions in which such networks go awry, such as in the case of psychiatric disorders. Depressed people, for example, clearly have difficulty with value-based decision making: because nothing feels good or seems appealing, all options appear equally bleak and making choices becomes impossible. Hoarding disorder, in contrast, may involve overvaluation of certain possessions and impairment of the cognitive control needed to shift one’s attention away from them. That explains why hoarding becomes more important than other life goals like maintaining relationships.

So, basically, our decision are based on "reason" and "will." Reason proposes options to our will and our will decides based on its apprehension of the goodness of the choice. If the will doesn't apprehend goodness, it can't decide. If reason doesn't "tee up" the options, the will has nothing to decide upon.

Pure Aristotle.

Incidentally, that last part on "hoarding" sounds "spot on" from my observations. Aristotle and St. Thomas would say that the problem involves an inordinate or disordered desire for a particular good.

Thinking disproves materialism...

..in more ways than one.

According to Professor Feser:

The impossibility of materialism


Now, the reason why intellectual activity cannot in principle be reduced to sensation or imagination is, as it happens, related to the reason why intellectual activity cannot in principle be reduced to, or entirely supervenient upon, or in any other way explicable in terms of material processes of any sort. For like mental images, the symbols postulated by cognitive scientists (“sentences in the head,” “maps,” or what have you), and any other possible purported material embodiments of thought, (a) necessarily lack the universality that concepts have, (b) necessarily lack the determinacy that concepts have, and (c) generally have exactly the loose and non-essential connection to the concepts they purportedly embody that the word “law” has to the concept law or a mental image of Alonzo Church has to the concept logical consistency.


There is no way the materialist is ever going to square this circle. To “explain” intellectual activity entirely in terms of material processes is inevitably at least implicitly to deny the existence of the former, or of some essential aspect of the former. For instance, if you identify thought with material processes, you are necessarily committed to denying, implicitly or explicitly, that our thoughts ever really have any determinate content. A number of materialists have seen this -- Quine, Dennett, and Bernard Williams are three examples -- and have decided to bite the bullet and accept that the content of all thought and language is inherently indeterminate. (This is, for instance, the upshot of Quine’s famous “indeterminacy of translation” and “inscrutability of reference” theses and of Dennett’s “two-bitser” example.)


But such claims are indefensible, for reasons James Ross has trenchantly spelled out. First, if you deny the determinacy of thought, there is no way you will be able to make sense of the vast body of knowledge embodied in mathematics and logic, all of which presupposes that we have determinate concepts. And there will in that case be no way you will be able to make sense of empirical science, which presupposes mathematics and logic, and in the name of which these materialists endorse their indeterminacy theses. Second, if you deny the determinacy of thought, then you are committed to denying that we ever determinately think in accordance with valid forms of inference -- modus ponens, modus tollens, etc. -- or that we ever really add, subtract, multiply, etc. You have to hold that we only seem to do so. But that entails that we never in fact reason logically or in mathematically sound ways. This not only (once again) makes science unintelligible, but it also undermines absolutely every argument anyone has ever given, including every argument for materialism. Third, even to deny that our thoughts ever have a determinate content -- for example, to deny that we ever determinately employ addition as opposed to Saul Kripke’s notion of “quaddition” -- you first have to grasp what addition is and then go on to deny that we ever do it. But that means that you must have a thought with a certain determinate content even to deny that you ever have thoughts with that specific content.


So, anyone who thinks that thought can even in principle be entirely material hasn’t thought carefully enough about the nature of thought. The materialist refutes materialism every time he so much as tries to argue for it. Or so I would argue, and have argued at length elsewhere (e.g. in chapter 7 of Philosophy of Mind, chapter 4 of Aquinas, and at greatest length in my forthcoming American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly article “Kripke, Ross, and the Immaterial Aspects of Thought”). But I’m not going to say anything more about that subject here, because it’s not relevant to the point I do want to make in this post. So, if you want to insist that intellectual activity is material, then fine, that’s another subject. The point for present purposes is that thinking in the strict sense -- grasping abstract concepts, formulating propositions, reasoning from one proposition to another -- is different from forming mental images or the like (even if it is somehow material in some other way).

Which means that science disproves atheism of the New Atheist variety:

Double standard


And this is where so many New Atheist types come to grief. (As I find I keep having to reassure the hypersensitive reader, no, I don’t mean all atheists. I mean the kind of atheist who seriously thinks a Richard Dawkins, Jerry Coyne, or Laurence Krauss deserves to be mentioned in the same breath with J. L. Mackie, J. Howard Sobel, or Quentin Smith.) Those among them who actually know something about science (and not merely how to shout “Science!”) are well aware that you are not going to understand physics properly if you take too seriously the mental images we tend to form when we hear terms like “spacetime,” “particle,” “energy,” and the like. They are well aware that physics requires us to abstract from ordinary experience, to move away from what we can visualize or otherwise imagine. The man on the street may think that whatever is real must be something you could in principle see, hear, touch, smell, or taste, but the more scientifically savvy sort of New Atheist knows that this is a vulgar prejudice, and that it is with the intellect rather than the senses that we truly understand the world.


And yet, when dealing with metaphysical or theological concepts New Atheist types suddenly become complete Philistines, feigning an inability to grasp anything but the most crude and literal physical descriptions. Hence if you claim that the human mind is immaterial, they suppose that you simply must be committed to the existence of a sort of magical goop that floats above the brain; and if you say that the universe has a cause they will insist that you must believe in a kind of super-Edison who draws up blueprints, gets out his tools, and sets to work. And when you object to these preposterous straw men, they will pretend that they cannot understand your language in any other way, that it is mere empty verbiage unless read in such a crassly mundane fashion. Of course, if they held physics to the same narrow, literalistic standard, they would have to dismiss wormholes, quantum foam, black holes, gravity wells, electric fields, centers of gravity, and on and on. (I’ve discussed this double standard before, here and here.)


It is no good to object that the predictive and technological successes of physics justify this double standard, for two reasons. First, the predictive and technological successes of physics are relevant only to the epistemic credentials of physics, but not to its intelligibility. In other words, that such-and-such a theory in physics has been confirmed experimentally and/or had various practical applications is relevant to showing that it is correct, but it is not necessarily relevant to interpreting the content of the theory. Physicists knew well enough what Einstein was claiming before tests like the 1919 and 1922 eclipse experiments provided evidence that he was right. Similarly, though string theory has proved notoriously difficult to test, we know well enough what the theory means; the trouble is just finding out whether it’s true. (No one would make the asinine claim that string theory simply must be committed to the existence of literal microscopic shoelaces unless and until some experimental test of the theory is devised.)


So, even if it were correct to say that metaphysical and theological claims cannot be rationally justified, it simply wouldn’t follow that such claims must be given the crude readings New Atheists often foist upon them, on pain of being empty verbiage. But it is, in any case, not correct to say that they cannot be rationally justified, which brings us to the second problem. That the methods of empirical science are rational does not entail that they are the only methods that are rational. In particular, and as I have pointed out many times, it is simply a blatant non sequitur to claim that science’s success in discovering those aspects of reality that are susceptible of strict prediction and control shows that those aspects exhaust reality. This is like a drunk’s insisting that because it is only under the streetlamp that there is light to look for his keys, it follows that the keys cannot be elsewhere and/or that there cannot be methods by which they might be sought elsewhere.


As I have also pointed out many times, the premises from which the historically most important arguments for God’s existence proceed derive, not from natural science, but from metaphysics and the philosophy of nature. They are, that is to say, premises that any possible natural science must take for granted, and are thus more secure than the claims of natural science, not less -- or so many natural theologians would claim. Obviously such claims are controversial, but the point is that to insist that metaphysical and theological assertions must be justified via the methods of natural science if they are to be worthy of attention is not to refute the metaphysician or theologian, but merely to beg the question against the metaphysician or theologian. Philosophical arguments are different from empirical scientific arguments, but they are no less rational than empirical scientific arguments.

Oikophobia and the friendship.

Glen Reynolds posts:

OIKOPHOBIA UPDATE: Robert Wargas: Behold The Self-Hating White Person.“Since progressivism is largely a status game, in which people compete for social prestige by repeating a set of approved phrases and opinions to other status-seeking mandarins, it’s not surprising that some will go to sado-masochistic lengths to remain part of the alpha group. By now, the increasingly creepy tendency of using the word ‘white’ as a glib insult has become well established in left-wing commentary.”

To be fair, for many the self-hatred is fairly justified.

This seems to follow a recent facebook discussion about the loss of political power by American Protestants and whether Protestants should care:

SJ - I don't claim to speak for Protestants or any other group, just myself. And I am not above being concerned, I'm just not concerned. I've never thought of Protestants as MY team and Catholics as the other team. Is that how people think? Man,

I need to get out more! You may not believe it, or think I'm dodging the issue, and there is really no way I can convince you, but I really don't care what the "balance of power" is between Catholics and Protestants, and have never ever even thought about it. I believe that anyone that names the name of the biblical Jesus Christ is on the same team I'm on. Life was going just fine. Now I find that I lost control of the government and didn't even know it! Now remind me again why I should care.

12 hours ago · Like.

Peter Sean Bradley

You are making my point about the fissiparous future an of atomized Christianity.

Up until very recently, Christians have understood that they live in a community, that they are, in fact, a community. That understanding is
at root a biblical belief. Christ founded a church. The church is the body of Christ. Christians as a community share their faith, the ethical standards, their practices, etc.

It is natural for a community to seek to share its good, insofar as they feel they have a good to share. An aspect of sharing that good is to take pride when a member of the community excels and achieves recognition. We call this feeling “friendship,” particular when it is based on a sharing of some desire for excellence.

It is human to love the things in which we see ourselves. In fact, St. Thomas teaches that love springs from the sharing of the good as part of which we see ourselves in others and we see others as another self. To deny that natural human feeling that we feel when we see members of our community achieve is, well, inhuman, or else it means that the community we purportedly share no longer truly exists.

St. Thomas explains the point I’m making this way:

“Likeness, properly speaking, is a cause of love. But it must be observed that likeness between things is twofold. One kind of likeness arises from each thing having the same quality actually: for example, two things possessing the quality of whiteness are said to be alike. Another kind of likeness arises from one thing having potentially and by way of inclination, a quality which the other has actually: thus we may say that a heavy body existing outside its proper place is like another heavy body that exists in its proper place: or again, according as potentiality bears a resemblance to its act; since act is contained, in a manner, in the potentiality itself.

Accordingly the first kind of likeness causes love of friendship or well-being. For the very fact that two men are alike, having, as it were, one form, makes them to be, in a manner, one in that form: thus two men are one thing in the species of humanity, and two white men are one thing in whiteness. Hence the affections of one tend to the other, as being one with him; and he wishes good to him as to himself….”

Now, obviously, this natural and good human feeling can become distorted and become “chauvinism” and “bigotry.” However, that needn’t be the case, it often isn’t the case, and the attempt to stifle the natural human feeling - which is a virtue when properly ordered in that it permits collective action, orders the community and ensures that people have a stake in the just ordering of their community – is itself a disordering of human feeling and community.

As I said, if you don’t care, you don’t care. However, what that suggests is what I said earlier, the community – as opposed to your atomized, individualistic faith – which you should belong to as a Christian doesn’t seem to be making much of a claim on you.

8 hours ago · Like · .
Peter Sean Bradley -

Finally, I'm curious. Do you recognize the election of Barrack Obama as America's first black president to have a historical significance? Do you think it says something about America at this time?

If not, why not?

If you do, how could you not find the development of Protestants being "shut out" of the control of the institutions of American life, wherein they have had a hegemony for 200 years not to be equally interesting? For 220 years, except for one president who did not complete his term, all of our Presidents have been white Protestants. Historically, there has only been one Catholic on the Court at one time. Now, those rules don't seem to apply. Is that good? Is it bad? I don't know, but it would seem to say something as a cultural and historical matter.

7 hours ago · Like

By the way, it is not the case that such people are "above" having a rooting interest in political outcomes; it's just that they have "re-ordered" the schedule of values by which they root. Hence, progressives aren't above rooting for their kind of people; rather, their kind of people are those with the far narrower social and cultural values of the "progressive block," which is a subset, generally speaking, of the broader and more inclusive category of "white person," a category that unfortunately in their opinion includes the de classe hoi polloi.

Modesty...not always a virtue.

I've never paid attention to the lyrics of this song. At least, not until I read ST I-II, Q.24, art. 4.

Logos to translate three works of Aquinas into English.

From its website:

Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) is certainly one of the most important theologians in history. His immense corpus of work covers every aspect of Christian life and doctrine, penetrating to the core of mankind’s relationship with God. Despite its undeniable importance, much of Aquinas’ work remains available only in Latin. That’s about to change. Logos is going to translate his Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard, Commentary on the Prophet Isaiah, and Commentary on the Prophet Jeremiah into English.

Aquinas wrote three major works of theology. His Summa Theologica (1265–1274) and Summa Contra Gentiles (1264?) have been available in English for almost a century. But his third major piece, his Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard, remains untranslated. Aquinas wrote the Commentary on the Sentences in his twenties as a brand new professor at the University of Paris. The commentary influenced his contemporaries and remains heavily cited by modern theologians. In it, Aquinas broached topics that would dominate his later works, such as the relationship between Aristotelian philosophy and theology. It also offers Aquinas’ most sustained treatments of ecclesiology and sacramental theology.

Translating these works is an extensive, expensive project; that’s where the Logos Pre-Pub system comes in. We can bring together thousands of people from around the world to finally make these resources available in English. This translation will be a major event in Thomist studies, and everyone who places a pre-order is a direct part of it.

Logos’ translations of the commentaries on Jeremiah and Isaiah will likewise have a large impact on the study of Aquinas’ thought. Aquinas is gaining attention as more scholars realize that his thought was built on a profoundly scriptural foundation. Indeed, some scholars have suggested that our whole interpretation of Thomas’ work must be re-visited in light of his biblical commentaries. Logos’ translations of the commentaries of Jeremiah and Isaiah will be a huge contribution to these exciting developments.

Thomas Aquinas’ thought is remarkably valuable, and it is amazing that after 750 years so much of it remains inaccessible to the majority of English speakers. Logos is remedying this. You can help! Place your Pre-Pub orders today.
•Aquinas’ Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard: English and Latin (8 vols.)
•Aquinas’ Commentary on the Prophet Jeremiah: English and Latin (2 vols.)
•Aquinas’ Commentary on the Prophet Isaiah: English and Latin (2 vols.)

The view from the Vatican observatory.

That's right the Vatican has an observatory; has had one for a very long time:

At the “Living The Catholic Faith” conference promoted by the American archdiocese of Denver, the Jesuit Fr. Guy Consolmagno, astronomer for the Vatican Observatory said: “Science is one of the best ways to know God”. He added that his study of the universe through science has helped him to better understand the person of Christ. The Italian American Jesuit brother and scientist, who has been studying comets and asteroids for thirty years (one asteroid bears his name) does not exclude the possibility of intelligent life outside Earth. But the existence of E.T. does not rock the faith: “What we learn does not invalidate what we already know. If one day we discovered we are not alone in the universe, all we believe in will not necessarily be wrong, we're going to find out that everything is truer in ways we couldn't even yet have imagined.” To confirm this Fr. Consolomagno quotes the beginning of the Gospel of John "In the beginning was the Word. The Word is, of course, Jesus, the Word is the second person of the Trinity, the Word is the salvation, the Word is the incarnation of God in the universe, who according to the Gospel is there before the universe was made. The one point in space-time that's the same on every timeline. So that the salvation occurs and is made manifest in the person of Jesus Christ here”.

Before the Universe was created, Christ existed and therefore he embraces not only us and the earth, but also other hypothetical beings. “Modern atheism tends to understand God as being merely a force that fills the gaps in our understanding of the universe” observed the Jesuit who was born in Detroit in 1952. “ To use God to fill the gaps in our knowledge is theologically treacherous”, because it minimizes God to just another force inside the universe rather than recognizing him as the source of creation. Those who believe in God should not be afraid of science, but should see it as an opportunity that God gave humanity to get to know him better.

And:

Other religions and philosophies can give us a rational view of the universe, but “only the Gospel could tell us that Reason itself became flesh and dwelt among us” in the form of Jesus Christ. Thomas Aquinas spoke of many worlds. According to the Gospel the Incarnation happened here, but it could also have happened elsewhere; after all "The Bible is divine science, a work about God” explained Consolomagno “It does not intend to be physical science and explain the making of planets and solar systems”. The limitless universe "might even include other planets with other beings created by that same loving God. The idea of there being other races and other intelligences is not contrary to traditional Christian thought. There is nothing in Holy Scripture that could confirm or contradict the possibility of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe". Human understanding "is always incomplete. It is crazy to underestimate God's ability to create in depths of ways that we will never completely understand. It is equally dangerous to think that we understand God completely," by narrowing his work to Earth and mankind. Observing asteroids, meteorites and celestial bodies “is one of the things that brings me closer to God” Consolomagno said.

St. Thomas Aquinas was always proposed by the Church as a master of thought and model of the right way of doing theology. He too was able to recognize that nature, the object of his philosophical thought, could contribute to the understanding of the divine revelation.

It either really, really matters, or it doesn't at all...

...the Incarnation, that is.

As Flannery O'Connor said about something not so completely different, "“Well, if it’s a symbol, to hell with it.”

Mark Shea answers in a very reasonable fashion a very reasonable question about some seemingly "over the top" Catholic sentiments expressed by St. Louis de Montfort about Mary, aka the Mother of God:

14. With the whole Church I acknowledge that Mary, being a mere creature fashioned by the hands of God is, compared to his infinite majesty, less than an atom, or rather is simply nothing, since he alone can say, “I am he who is”. Consequently, this great Lord, who is ever independent and self-sufficient, never had and does not now have any absolute need of the Blessed Virgin for the accomplishment of his will and the manifestation of his glory. To do all things he has only to will them.

This was very comforting to read, but it’s very short and he continues to say things that just seem kind of weird—heretical sounding to a simple guy like me.

39. Secondly, we must conclude that, being necessary to God by a necessity which is called “hypothetical”, (that is, because God so willed it), the Blessed Virgin is all the more necessary for men to attain their final end. Consequently we must not place devotion to her on the same level as devotion to the other saints as if it were merely something optional.

The key phrase here is “because God so willed it”. Once again, it comes back to the fact of the Incarnation. No Mary, no incarnation. No incarnation, no human nature for the Son to assume. No human nature for the Son, no death on the cross. No death on the cross, no resurrection. No resurrection, no justification. No justification, no salvation. Hence, no Mary, no salvation. So yes, Mary is necessary for us to attain our final end. The Incarnation necessary means that God the Son has chosen to enter into relationship with us through her.

Mary is important because she is, quite simply, the Mother of God by way of the Incarnation, and the Incarnation is important, to put it mildly.

Doctrines about Mary are doctrines about Christ. The reputation of Mary and the honor accorded her are important because Christ is important and because of the Incarnation, which placed God in a human setting with a human language, a human language, a human nationality, and, not incidentally, a human family, our attitudes about Christ are reflected in our attitudes about Mary.

This is a very gritty, very embodied, very practical point; it's hardly the "gnosticized," spiritualized perspective that is assumed by the heirs of the Reformation, who seem to divide Christ from the reality of his humanity, the chief aspect of which is, you know, having a mother. Aquinas explains the importance of the Sanctification of Mary in his responsio of Question 27, article 4:

I answer that, God so prepares and endows those, whom He chooses for some particular office, that they are rendered capable of fulfilling it, according to 2 Corinthians 3:6: "(Who) hath made us fit ministers of the New Testament." Now the Blessed Virgin was chosen by God to be His Mother. Therefore there can be no doubt that God, by His grace, made her worthy of that office, according to the words spoken to her by the angel (Luke 1:30-31): "Thou hast found grace with God: behold thou shalt conceive," etc. But she would not have been worthy to be the Mother of God, if she had ever sinned. First, because the honor of the parents reflects on the child, according to Proverbs 17:6: "The glory of children are their fathers": and consequently, on the other hand, the Mother's shame would have reflected on her Son. Secondly, because of the singular affinity between her and Christ, who took flesh from her: and it is written (2 Corinthians 6:15): "What concord hath Christ with Belial?" Thirdly, because of the singular manner in which the Son of God, who is the "Divine Wisdom" (1 Corinthians 1:24) dwelt in her, not only in her soul but in her womb. And it is written (Wisdom 1:4): "Wisdom will not enter into a malicious soul, nor dwell in a body subject to sins."

When I read that passage for Radio Free Aquinas, I was struck by the part that went:

...because the honor of the parents reflects on the child, according to Proverbs 17:6: "The glory of children are their fathers"...

In other words, as human beings, we don't - perhaps can't - separate the children from the father or vice versa. The reputation of the mother reflects on the reputation of the son and vice versa.

Perhaps, as an abstraction, we moderns might like to think that we are beyond that kind of thinking, but are we? If we were, then how do we explain the political successes of the Kennedy clan? Or for that matter, how do we explain the political successes of the son of George Bush or the son of George Romney?

The answer is that the author of Proverbs was right then and is right now - "The glory of children are their fathers."

Practical Thomas.

Stacy Trasancos finds the scholastic approach useful in dealing with a question that plagues all parents:

“Whether it is fitting that I should be called the mother of these children?”

Objection 1: It would seem not, for mothers are wise, kind, and loving, but when I am reduced to screeching like a deranged heathen, it does not seem fitting that I should be called anyone’s mother.

Objection 2: Further, the essence of a motherhood is gentleness, guiding children in the precepts of moral life, and I often chase quarreling kids out of the kitchen with a wet towel, which is not gentle guidance, so the title of mother is not fitting.

Objection 3: It is written, “Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right.” (Ephesians 6:1) Obey? They don’t even listen, unless they are asking for food, money or transportation.

On the contrary: It is written (CCC 1657) that, “the father of the family, the mother, children, and all members…exercise the priesthood of the baptized in a privileged way.” Yes, this is my family, so they are my children, therefore, it is fitting that I should be called their mother.

I answer that: I know, I know. The home is where children learn first about Christian life, and by committing to “the reception of the sacraments, prayer and thanksgiving” then we will grow in virtue and charity in spite of our sinful natures. The home is the “first school of Christian life.” We have a responsibility to create a home where tenderness, forgiveness, respect, fidelity, and service are the rule. (CCC 2223)

Reply to objection 1: I am their mother in two senses. First I am their physical mother because they depend on me to nurture them. Second, I am their spiritual mother because the family is the domestic church.

Reply to objection 2: “By knowing how to acknowledge their own failings to their children, parents will be better able to guide and correct them.” Alright, there are plenty of learning opportunities.

Reply to objection 3: “Whoever obeys the Lord will refresh his mother.” (Sirach 3:6) Yes, even on the worst days I have but to hear their refreshing little prayers, and realize that truly it is only by God’s grace that is it fitting that I should be called their mother.

Radio Free Aquinas - On the Espousal of the Mother of God.

Amazon Review...

...Memorize the Faith! (and Most Anything Else): Using the Methods of the Great Catholic Medieval Memory Masters
by Kevin Vost

My review is here. As always a helpful vote is appreciated since I'm trying to drive my ranking below 5,000.

I want to add my voice to the cavalcade of five star ratings.

I first heard Kevin Vost explain his memory system - developed, he says, from the insights of St. Thomas Aquinas - on Catholic Answers while I was working out in the gym. He ran through his memory picture for the Seven Deadly Sins while I was doing curls. By the time I got to the next machine, I had all seven deadly sins memorized, backwards, forwards, or in any other order.

I had never thought I could do that, and I have a first rate memory.

My daughter and I made a game out of memorizing the Seven Deadly Sins, the Ten Commandments, the Seven Virtues and the Beatitudes. We got to where we could call out "the seventh commandment" or "the eighth beatitude" and nail the answer with no effort.

Amazing.

We haven't worked our way through the rest of the book, but I intend to start up again.

Vost is also absolutely right about the importance of memory to knowing and then to living the faith. This lists exist for a reason, i.e., because it enables us to reflect intelligently on the life we live and to order our life to the truth.

I highly recommend this book.

Radio Free Aquinas.

Father Barron on Christology.



Father Barron is terrific. I'm not sure, however,  that he is accurately describing the heresies he discusses. For example, the  "Jesus is only human" heresy would be Ebionitism (or maybe Adoptionism.") Nestorianism would be Jesus is human and divine but separately so, as if Jesus was "possessed" by a divine being.

I love the Irenaeus quote, "The glory of God is man fully alive".  How very different from the Calvinist idea that God is glorified by the predestined damnation of souls. As "Hyper-Calvinist" James White once observed:

So the question I have to ask of many who stand behind pulpits today is this: is your preaching so wimpy it would never trouble a religious hypocrite, and never result in such a person fleeing its proclamation so as to run to man's religions for refuge? Do you pull back on those elements of God's truth that are the most offensive to the natural man because you do not wish to see that disdainful look, that annoyed shaking of the head? Do you really distrust the ministry of the Spirit to make the Word of Christ to come alive in the hearts and minds of Christ's sheep, so that you do not need to worry about those who find offense at His truth? Or have you embraced the spirit of the age which places man's fragile emotions upon the seat of prominence, and have bought into the idea that to be "loving" means to never give offense to anyone (well, except for God--it is fine to offend Him by thinking yourself so wise you can edit out what shouldn't be in the gospel in our day)? Would your teaching and proclamation allow a religious hypocrite to remain safely and comfortably ensconced in the congregation for years on end, never offended, never convicted? Finally, if such a hypocrite does leave and make a show of embracing heresy just to spite you, do you sting with embarrassment, or rejoice that God's Word continues to work in the hearts of men and women, some to His glory in their salvation, and some to His glory in their damnation? Think about it.

Ooh-Rah!!! *Thumps Chest." Manly men talk about rejoicing in the idea that God's glory is found in the damnation of souls predestined to Hell!

Particularly if they "make a show" of embracing heresy "just to spite you"!?!?!?

Really? What's the reason for the rejoicing? That souls are predestined to salvation? That God's power is sovereign? Or that people who "make a show" of spiting James White - or, to be fair, anyone who rejoices in the simple fact that some folks are sent to endless torment - gets his deepest earthly desire, i.e., to see his enemies laid low?

How different this perspective is from St. Thomas Aquinas's answer to the question of whether the saints will rejoice in the suffering of the damned. Contrary to what shallow New Atheists would have you believe, Aquinas did not say that the saints would rejoice that the damned were suffering simply because there were damned and they were suffering. To the contrary, St. Thomas Aquinas explained, with a nuance missing among a people who lack the power of concentrating on anything longer than the information contained on a movie poster:

A thing may be a matter of rejoicing in two ways. First directly, when one rejoices in a thing as such: and thus the saints will not rejoice in the punishment of the wicked. Secondly, indirectly, by reason namely of something annexed to it: and in this way the saints will rejoice in the punishment of the wicked, by considering therein the order of Divine justice and their own deliverance, which will fill them with joy. And thus the Divine justice and their own deliverance will be the direct cause of the joy of the blessed: while the punishment of the damned will cause it indirectly.

And:

Reply to Objection 2. Although God rejoices not in punishments as such, He rejoices in them as being ordered by His justice.

God does not "rejoice in his punishments." He rejoices in his justice. His glory, however, is in "man fully alive."

Here is something on the Irenaeus quote and its source:

It is not only in the doctrine of recapitulation by the grace of Christ that Saint Irenaeus wanted to situate the true value of man, which was denied by the Gnostics. He was careful to note the intrinsic dignity of man, let us even say the relative autonomy of the creature capable of freely orienting himself. Certain contemporaries of ours thirty years ago were gladly spreading about the ambiguous formula: "The glory of God is man fully alive".

In fact, this formula was truncated and ended up making the Bishop of Lyon say the contrary of that which he had taught. Man's life is for him the glory of God provided that man remains in contact with his Creator. Shortly after the Council, some theologians and some historians such as Père do Lubac had already protested against this false interpretation. The Holy Father did just as much with the tact which distinguishes him. In his address at Lyon (n. 2), he recalled the authentic and complete text of Saint Irenaeus: "The glory of God is man fully alive, and the life of man is the vision of God. If the revelation of God through creation already brings life to all living beings on the earth, how much more will the manifestation of the Father by the Word bring life to those who see God" (AH IV, 20, 7).

As Father Barron suggests, the heart of the difference may well lie in the Catholic willingness to embrace a "both/and" answer at Chalcedon.

The Use of Forgeries in Protestantism.

One of the evergreen tropes of Protestantism is the "Donation of Constantine." I've been in a few internet debates where all of sudden my Protestant interlocutor will utter something along the lines of "What about the Donation of Constantine?" and then scurry off as if some telling blow had been landed.  My reaction is along the lines of "eh?" or "what?" or "how is that relevant to the price of tea in China?" 

As a lifelong Catholic, I know about the "Donation of Constantine" as an interesting bit of history.  The Donation of Constantine was fabricated in approximately the 8th Century, probably in France, and probably for the purpose of bolstering the Carolingian claim against the Emperor in Constantinople. The Donation of Constantine was picked up in the 12th Century by papal apologists who used it as a way of supporting the already on-going "papal revolution," which was a fait accompli by way of the reform of canon law, not because of fabricated documents from the 8th Century. (See Harold Berman's Law and Revolution.)

Did the papacy use forgeries? Absolutely, but the papacy did not forge the documents and was taken in by them as much as anyone else.  An interesting fact is that the Lorenzo Valla, who famously unmasked the Donation of Constantine as a forgery, subsequently became an apostolic secretary and a favorite of Pope Callixtus.  It seems that Valla's historical revisionism did not entirely poison his career with the Vatican, although he did have some rocky moments.

Similarly, St. Thomas Aquinas was apparently taken in by the "False Decretals of Isidore," although presumably at the time they were merely the "Decretals of Isidore," in his "Against the Errors of the Greeks."  The Decretals was a series of purported quotations from Eastern Church Fathers that were also created in the 8th Century as part of the project of ramping up Western prestige against the powerful Eastern emperor.  However, the fact that the Decretals was itself a forgery, many of the quotes contained in it were authentic, and Aquinas could have sustained his argument by using other quotes from Eastern Fathers.  An example of the former is found in Section 33, where he quotes Chrysostom as saying that "he allocated James a determined territory, but he appointed Peter master and teacher of the whole world." Although this was taken from the Decretals, which was a forgery, in fact, Chrysostem did say in his Homily on John that "And if any should say, "how then did James receive the chair at Jerusalem? I would make this reply that He appointed Peter teacher, not of the chair, but of the world."  An example of the latter is provided by James Likoudis.

So, the significance of these forgeries seems to be overstated, albeit it seems to have a particulalry strong resonance in the mind of some Protestants for whom it is the dispositive evidence of "perfidious Rome."

Mind you, this is all new to me.  I wouldn't have spent time learning this stuff except for the fact that it was brought up on a fever-swamp anti-catholic site on Facebook.  Although I pointed out the above, the stated views of the residents - particularly one individual named Dominic Macelli - was that none of this mattered because a forgery is a forgery.

The conversation turned to the issue of the Deuterocanonical texts.  As part of this discussion, Macelli quoted the following:

“St. Jerome distinguished between canonical books and ecclesiastical books. The latter he judged were circulated by the Church as good spiritual reading but were not recognized as authoritative Scripture. The situation remained unclear in the ensuing centuries...For example, John of Damascus, Gregory the Great, Walafrid, Nicolas of Lyra and Tostado continued to doubt the canonicity of the deuterocanonical books. According to Catholic doctrine, the proximate criterion of the biblical canon is the infallible decision of the Church. This decision was not given until rather late in the history of the Church at the Council of Trent. The Council of Trent definitively settled the matter of the Old Testament Canon. That this had not been done previously is apparent from the uncertainty that persisted up to the time of Trent” (The New Catholic Encyclopedia, The Canon).

That looks like a particularly impressive bit of evidence: the Catholic Encyclopedia appears to be saying that there was no defined canon until Trent in the 16 Century.

But it smelled funny because based on my extensive historical reading it was so wrong.

And there were problems with the quote. First, it is entirely inconsistent with the historical evidence. Second,  I couldn't find it in the Catholic Encyclopedia on the New Advent site.

I pressed Macelli for his source.  He had consistently taken the position that he would not provide jumplinks for his sources because he was afraid of his interlocutors reading his sources and pointing out his errors. Apparently, people were supposed to take his quotes on "faith alone."  After pressing him, he pointed nebulously to a message board.


 "New Catholic Encyclopedia" article on "Canon, Biblical," p. 26.

Another strange thing was that this quote could only be found on anti-catholic sites.


It turns out that there is a "New Catholic Encyclopedia," which is nowhere to be found online.

So, I went to the local library and looked for the quote, and found out that the anti-catholic apologists had done a "False Decretal of Isidore" number and provided a forged and fabricated quote.  



Here is what the relevant passages actually say:

"St. Jerome (A.D. 340 - 420) distinguished between "canonical books" and "ecclesiastical books." The latter, he judged, were circulated by the Church as good "spiritual reading," but were not recognized as authoritative Scripture.  St. Augustine, however, did not recognize this distinction.  He accepted all the books in the LXX as of equal value, noting that those designated as apocryphal by Jerome were either unknown or obscure origin. Augustine's point of view prevailed and the deuterocanonical books remained in the Vulgate, the Latin version, that received official standing at the Council of Trent.

The situation remained unclear in the ensuing centuries, although the tendency to accept the disputed books was becoming all the time more general.  In spite of this trend, some, e.g., John Damascene, Gregory the Great, Walafrid, Nicholas of lyra and Tostado, continued to doubt the canonicity of the deuterocanonical books.  St. THOMAS AQUINAS has for a long time been listed as a dissenter because of his supposed doubts about Wisdom and Sirach, but P. Synave has argued convincingly to clear him of this imputation (Revue biblique 212 (1924) 522 - 533). The Council of Trent definitively settled the matter of the OT Canon. That this had not been done previously is apparent from the uncertainty that persisted up to the time of Trent."

Obviously, this text is far different from the fabricated quote being circulated on such anti-catholic sites as "Just for Catholics."  I would, however, dissent from the New Catholic Encyclopedia's insinuation as to the level of uncertainty.  The deuterocanonical works had been used in the liturgy for over a thousand years by the time of Trent.  In De Libero Arbitrio (Discussion of Free Will), Erasmus directs Luther to the text from the Wisdom of Sirach (aka Ecclesiasticus) 15:14 - 18 that:

"God created man from the beginning, and left him in the hand of his own counsel. He added his commands and precepts: if you will keep the commandments, and keep acceptable faith forever, they will keep you. He set water and fire before you; stretch out your hand to whatever you desire.  Before man are life and death, good and evil; whatever he pleases shall be given him."

Erasmus follows up his quote from Sirach/Ecclesiasticus with the following:

"I do not suppose that anyone will plead here against the authority of this work that it was not originally in the Hebrew canon (as Jerome points out), seeing that the Church of Christ has unanimously received it into its canon, and I see no reason why the Hebrews should have thought this book ought to be excluded from the canon, given that they accept the Proverbs of Solomon and the Amatory Song."

(See Collected Works of Erasmus, Vol. 76, p. 21 - 22.)

In short, Erasmus - one of the leading scholars of Hebrew, Greek and Latin of his age - was aware of Jerome's dissent as a kind of intellectual abstraction, which did not bear a great deal of weight in the face of the actual practice, which was that Christians had been reading Sirach/Ecclesiasticus as part of the divine liturgy throughout Christian history!

In any event, the irony of the situation is that anti-catholic apologists who condemn the Catholic Church on account of the Donation of Constantine seem to have no problem using fabricated documents of their own.

The final irony was that after I pointed out that Dominick Macelli was probably using a fabricated quote, I was ejected from the Facebook group.

Lorenzo Valla received better treatment.

Atheist Physicist says that what is missing from scientific explanation is the answer to "why"...

...or, more technically, the "final cause."

At Bloggingheads:



The physicist - David Deutsch - also asserts that information perpetuates itself, which sounds an awful lot like the "substantial form" of Aristotle and Aquinas.

Father Barron on St. Thomas Aquinas.