Catholicism Archives
August 14, 2007
Augustine on Infancy
I have recently begun a rereading of Augustine's Confessions, a fine work when considered purely as literature, but finer still when read as high theology, and yes, even as philosophy. Theologically, the work is structured in accordance with one of the great motifs of Patristic thought - man as microcosmos, a recapitulation in miniature of the cosmic drama of redemption.
But one must begin at the beginning:
September 26, 2007
Behind the Ate Ball
This is what happens when Wesley J. Smith goes on vacation. I start missing pro-life-relevant news items. Just now heard about the Vatican's responses on administering nutrition and hydration, even to people in a so-called persistent vegetative state. They sound perfectly sensible to me, particularly the emphasis on this as "ordinary and proportionate" care.
December 15, 2007
The Formationator: "Profess Chalcedon or take a Beatin'"
March 9, 2008
Lent: Some Catholics deface it while some Evangelicals embrace it
That's the headline of Carl Olson's latest entry on the Ignatius Insight Scoop blog here. It is an interesting read.
March 23, 2008
Pope Benedict XVI Baptizes Convert from Islam
Read about it here. Let us not forget that if this had happened in Saudi Arabia, this Christian brother could soon find himself without a head. (HT: Steve Ray)
March 30, 2008
Philosopher Robert Koons on Monday's The Journey Home
My friend, Robert C. Koons, and former blog brother of Lydia and me on Right Reason, will be the guest on Monday's episode (March 31) of EWTN's The Journey Home. Rob will be on the show to discuss his conversion to Catholicism from Lutheranism. He has produced a wonderful treatise in which he explains why he became Catholic. Entitled, "A Lutheran's Case for Catholicism," you can find it online here.
A professor of philosophy at the University of Texas, Rob is one of the truly great Christian philosophers of our time. If I just had half his intellect, I would be happy.
April 3, 2008
Rob Koons' Journey Home interview audio online
You can find it here on the EWTN site here.
April 16, 2008
Benedict XVI and Catholic Higher Education
Unless you're living on Mars or in West Hollywood, you probably know that the Pope is in America this week. On his itinerary is a talk to Catholic educators. My colleague, Thomas S. Hibbs, in this morning's National Review Online, offers some reflections on "Benedict and the Catholic Universities." Here is an excerpt:
Continue reading "Benedict XVI and Catholic Higher Education" »
May 2, 2008
Speaking in Las Vegas at my High School Alma Mater - May 7
I am a 1978 graduate of Bishop Gorman High School in Las Vegas, Nevada. Soon after I returned to the Catholic Church in May 2007, I was invited by Gorman's Faith Formation Committee to speak to the school's students, parents, teachers and administrators about my spiritual journey. I will be giving that talk next Wednesday on May 7, 2008 at Gorman's new campus in Summerlin (a suburb of Las Vegas). Information about the talk can be found here.
If you are in the Las Vegas area, I encourage you to attend. It is free and open to the public.
This is as good a time as any to announce that I have signed a contract with Brazos Press to publish a book about my pilgrimage. I am just about finished with the nearly 65,000 word manuscript. It will be released in November 2008, with the tentative title, Confessions of a Vain Philosopher: Reflections on My Return to the Catholic Church.
July 9, 2008
Arkes on Kmiec and Obama-Supporting Catholics
On a wonderful new blog, The Catholic Thing, my dear friend, Hadley Arkes, offers, in his own elegant way, an assessment of the reasoning of Doug Kmiec and other like-minded Catholics who have come out in support of Senator Barack Obama. Here are some excerpts from Hadley's entry:
Continue reading "Arkes on Kmiec and Obama-Supporting Catholics" »
Las Vegas Catholic Church Stained Glass Window
This can be found in the Guardian Angel Cathedral off the Las Vegas Strip, where I served as an altar boy in elementary school. I found it in the photobucket page of someone named Mansfield Fox. I had been looking for a photo of this unique stained glass since having completed the manuscript for my forthcoming book, Return to Rome: Confessions of An Evangelical Catholic (Brazos Press, 2009), which will be released in November of this year. I've created a website for the book, ReturntoRome.com, which you can find here.
Return to Rome Cover is Out
While putting together my previous post, I discovered that Brazos Press has now created a page for my forthcoming book, Return to Rome: Confessions of an Evangelical Catholic. Here's the cover:
That's me in the bottom right corner in 1968 at my First Holy Communion.
July 11, 2008
Professor Myers, Academic Freedom, and Intellectual Virtue in a Civil Society
I just submitted this to the combox on a blog entry on HigherEd.com (My comments will not appear on the blog until they are vetted by the editor):
Continue reading "Professor Myers, Academic Freedom, and Intellectual Virtue in a Civil Society" »
July 13, 2008
Excerpts from Return to Rome on Website
Update: I've taken the excerpts down until the final galleys are done.
In the combox in the post about my forthcoming book, Return to Rome: Confessions of an Evangelical Catholic, Aristocles suggested I post some excerpts from the book. I have done so at the website returntorome.com. I have also included a detailed table of contents on the site. Just click "Excerpts" or "Table of Contents" at the top of page.
July 14, 2008
Professor Myers and the Danish Cartoons
(HT: Lex Communis).
Contrast Professor Myers' public treatment of Catholics and their beliefs with his public posture when, over two year ago, Muslims were upset about Danish cartoons published that depicted Muhammed in unflattering ways. He writes:
Continue reading "Professor Myers and the Danish Cartoons" »
August 19, 2008
We're off to Notre Dame for the 2008-09 school year
Tomorrow my wife, Frankie, and I begin our trek to the University of Notre, where I will serve on its faculty for the 2008-2009 school year as the Mary Ann Remick Senior Visiting Fellow in Notre Dame's Center for Faith & Culture. My home institution, Baylor University, was more than generous in providing me research leave. My department chair, Michael Beaty, deservers particular thanks for his support of my work.
During my time at Notre Dame I will be working on a book critically evaluating the modern Supreme Court's epistemological assessment of religious and moral beliefs. I will bring to bear in that analysis much of what has gone on in Anglo-American philosophy of religion over the past 4 decades. Another problem I will address--something to which I alluded in my blog entry on Andrew Sullivan--is the a priori denigration of religious and moral claims by those who proudly assert that they are the guardians of liberal democracy.
August 26, 2008
New Blog: Catholics Against Biden
August 30, 2008
Catholic means Prolife
That's the subtitle of an essay by Fr. Thomas D. Williams, recently published on National Review Online. Here's how it begins:
September 20, 2008
The Parable of the Dollar Auction
A guy walks into a bar.
He slaps a $100 bill on the table and says "I'm auctioning off this $100 bill. Bidding starts at a dollar. The only rule is that the next highest losing bidder has to pay me too."
Bill and Ted can't help themselves. Bill would love to have some extra money to donate to Catholic Answers, and Ted is planning on using the proceeds to renew his subscription to Commonweal. A hundred smackers with bidding starting at a buck? What's not to like about that?
So Bill bids a dollar. Ted tops him by bidding $2. (Heck, who wouldn't put $2 on the line for a hundred?)
When the bidding gets up to $99, something interesting happens. Bill realizes that he is out $98 if he doesn't bid $100, but if he bids $100 he can still break even. Being Catholic, he consults the USCCB document on game theory. It says something to the effect that if he has a proportionate reason it is fine to make a decision to limit his losses. It doesn't mention Martin Shubik.
So he bids $100. Then Ted realizes that if he bids $101, he will only be out a buck instead of $99.
And so it goes. At some point the knife fight starts.
(Cross-posted)
October 29, 2008
Obama and the Catholic Vote: read that memo that should be in every church bulletin this Sunday
Just received this. Before voting next Tuesday, Catholics should take this very seriously:
Catholics Urged to Consider Obama Record Weekend Before Election Urgent Memo Released to Catholics NationwideCHICAGO – CatholicVote.com has released an urgent national memo addressed to all American Catholics urging them to consider the record of Sen. Barack Obama as they head toward the final weekend before the Election Day. The memo outlines a series of statements and facts taken from Obama’s public record dealing with the issues of life and marriage.
This Sunday thousands of Catholic parishes across the country are expected to address the importance of voting, and the moral responsibilities of Catholics to defend and protect human life and marriage. The memo is intended to assist Catholic priests and the laity as they preach on and discuss the issues involved in the coming election.
Brian Burch, President of CatholicVote.com commented, “The protection of innocent human life and the institution of marriage are of fundamental concern, and Catholics deserve to know exactly where each of the candidates stand on these issues. We encourage every Catholic to distribute our memo throughout their dioceses and particularly to their local pastor or priest.”
The memo released today has been distributed directly to priests, pastors and the national network of CatholicVote.com members.
CatholicVote.com has received national attention for its 3:30 minute voter education film. The film has recorded over 3.1 million viewers since its launch in early September. According to Quantcast.com, CatholicVote.com now ranks #719 among all major websites, and is now more popular than websites such as United.com and Ford.com.
“As a result of the success of our film, we have been registering thousands of new members every day willing to assist in voter education and outreach. We are mobilizing these members to distribute today’s memo,” said Burch.
The memo is intended as a summary of facts from the public record of Sen. Obama relevant to the issues of life and marriage. The memo does not advocate voting for or against any candidate.
To download a copy of the memo, visit: http://www.scribd.com/doc/7606214/Barack-Obama-on-the-Issues-of-Importance-to-Catholics
CatholicVote.com is a project of the Fidelis Center for Law & Policy.
November 7, 2008
Return to Rome released
I found out yesterday that on November 5, Brazos Press officially released my new book, Return to Rome: Confessions of an Evangelical Catholic. Brazos has posted an online excerpt from the book (as a PDF), which you can retrieve here. As of November 12 Amazon.com will have copies in stock. But you can now order the book through the Brazos web site here.
An audio book version will be released soon. It will be read by none other than Grover Gardner, a frequent commentator on southernappeal.org. Grover, oddly enough, will be my voice. What a country!
Background information, including photos, can be found on the book's website, Returntorome.com.
November 14, 2008
R.I.P. Fr. Clarke (1915-2008)
I just found out today that W. Norris Clarke, SJ died on June 10 of this year. Fr. Clarke was one of my professors at Fordham University, where I earned my PhD in philosophy in 1989. One of the philosophical giants of Thomistic philosophy in the 20th century, you can read more about Fr. Clarke here. Here is what I write about hin in Return to Rome: Confessions of An Evangelical Catholic (Brazos Press, 2009):
My professors included the great Thomist philosopher W. Norris Clarke, SJ, from whom I took courses on both Thomas Aquinas and Metaphysics. There were no assigned textbooks for those classes except Fr. Clarke’s mimeographed notes, of which I still have copies and occasionally consult. It was up to the students to acquire the writings of the works we covered, which meant that I spent an enormous amount of time combing Fordham’s library shelves. Fr. Clarke was an amazing teacher. He not only knew his subject well and how to communicate it effectively, he exuded a sense of Christian joy and contentment that set a wonderful example for young aspiring Christian philosophers.
Eternal rest grant unto them him, O Lord.
And let perpetual light shine upon him
May his soul, and the souls of all the faithful departed, rest in peace.
Amen.
November 15, 2008
First Review of Return to Rome
Boy, that was quick. A review of Return to Rome just appeared online today. It is written by Dr. Michael A.G. Haykin, director of the Andrew Fuller Center for Baptist Studies. You can find it here.
(Cross-posted at Return to Rome and Southern Appeal)
November 16, 2008
Another review. Not so nice.
Here's another review of Return to Rome. IMHO, I do not believe that this review is the consequence of reading the book very carefully. In one place, for example, the reviewer confuses Protestantism with comments I made at a Boston College conference about anti-creedal Protestantism. In another place he misses my analogy between grace-works and God-man by thinking that I was referring to Jesus' works. But I wasn't. What I was suggesting is that Christ's humanity no more diminishes his deity than do our works performed in grace diminish God's grace. In a yet another place he thinks my comments about the scope of the Protestant canon is part of a defense of the Catholic canon. It is not. It is an analysis of the problem with the reconciling of two claims in terms of the ETS press release concerning my resignations from ETS: (1) that all theological knowledge is derived exclusively from Scripture, and (2) that the scope of the canon, an item of theological knowledge, is not derived from Scripture since it is logically prior to Scripture. As I write in the book, "[B]ecause the list of canonical books is itself not found in scripture—as one can find the Ten Commandments or the names of Christ’s Apostles—any such list, whether Protestant or Catholic, would be an item of extra-biblical theological knowledge." (p. 123).
Ironically, tomorrow the online magazine Inside Catholic will be publishing an essay of mine entitled, "Evangelical and Catholic," in which that portion of the book is excerpted. I will post a link to it tomorrow. In any event, this review is loaded with many, many mistakes like these. It seems that this well-meaning fellow has let his anger get the best of him. That's a real shame, since the spirit in which I offer the book was intended to inspire dialogue not diatribe. As I write in Return to Rome:
November 19, 2008
Pope Benedict XVI on St. Paul and Justification
Continue reading "Pope Benedict XVI on St. Paul and Justification" »
December 1, 2008
A Neo-Scholastic revival?
Neo-Scholasticism was a movement within philosophy and theology which sought to revive, develop, and defend Scholastic thought in general and Thomism in particular as an alternative to the various schools of modern thought. It flourished from the years just prior to Pope Leo XIII’s 1879 encyclical Aeterni Patris to the close of Vatican II in 1965. As those temporal markers indicate, it was mostly a Catholic movement, but there were several prominent non-Catholic thinkers who sympathized with the Aristotelian themes emphasized by most Neo-Scholastics. Mortimer Adler, John Wild, and Henry Veatch would be three examples. (Adler did finally convert to Catholicism not long before his death.)
December 12, 2008
Avery Cardinal Dulles, S. J., (1918-2008)
From Joseph Bottom at First Things:
"Word has reached us that Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J., died here in New York early this morning.
Created cardinal for his theological work by John Paul II, Avery Dulles was one of the great figures of the twentieth century: a theologian, an intellectual, a teacher, a writer, a lecturer, and a kind and gentle man.
In his long life, he wrote more than 700 articles and twenty-two books, and it is hard to imagine how anyone today can fill the roles he played in the Catholic world and American public life. As the disease that took his life progressed, his final months were a trial that took away his powers to speak, write, and move. But he seemed, in those months, to live even more serenely, more spiritually, and more beautifully. May God welcome him home."
Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord; and may Your perpetual light shine upon him. May he rest in peace
(cross-posted on Southern Appeal and Return to Rome)
January 9, 2009
Fr. Neuhaus' note to me
Soon after my return to the Catholic Church became public in early May, 2007, I found in my email inbox a message from Fr. Richard John Neuhaus. Dated 7 May 2007, it reads:
Dear Frank Beckwith,As you will appreciate, the metaphor is inescapable: Welcome back home.
Do such decisions complicate our conversations with evangelicals? No doubt. Complicate and enrich. Your decision and the admirable way in which you have explained it will be welcomed also by evangelicals who understand that we are all called to exemplify fidelity and courage as we conscientiously discern the course of fidelity and courage.
The intentions of you and your family will be remembered at the altar.
Yours in Christ and his Church,
Fr. Richard John Neuhaus
Lord, I was not worthy to receive that. Eternal Rest grant unto him, O Lord, and let Perpetual Peace shine upon him.
(Cross-posted on Southern Appeal)
January 24, 2009
Will President Obama offer Vatican ambassadorship to Catholic denied communion?
According to the student paper of the school on whose faculty he sits, Pepperdine University:
....Kmiec, who has also served as legal counsel under Presidents Ronald Reagan and [George] Herbert Walker Bush, confirmed that Obama may be considering appointing him to the position of Vatican Emissary. "The President is nowhere close to determining such things because of the order of events … everyone's first order of business is economic recovery," Kmiec said. "At the appropriate time, when diplomatic relations through the State Department need to be addressed, I think my name would be part of the discussion."
Continue reading "Will President Obama offer Vatican ambassadorship to Catholic denied communion?" »
January 28, 2009
Talk at St. Matthew Cathedral in South Bend, Indiana (Jan. 28)
For those in the area, I want to bring to your attention a talk I am giving on January 28, the Feast Day of St. Thomas Aquinas, at St. Matthew Cathedral in South Bend, Indiana. I will be speaking on my return to the Catholic Church, the topic of my new book, Return to Rome: Confessions of An Evangelical Catholic (Brazos Press, 2009). The talk is scheduled for 7-8:30 pm. Perhaps I will see some of you there.
(Update: I just found out that there is a sample of the audio version of Return to Rome. You can listen to it here)
March 4, 2009
Hypotheticals Don't Exist
One of the things that Paul Cella laments about the current economic crisis is all of the abstractions. There are certainly a great many abstract and complex structures involved. At the same time we've learned (I only just learned) that Aquinas viewed lending money at interest as morally wrong because it involves, in his view, selling something which does not exist.
We confidently reply (as thoroughgoing capitalist moderns) that contra Aquinas, money has a time value. It turns out upon reflection, though, that while it is true that (contra Aquinas) money has a time value, it is true in an equivocal sense: that is, it is sometimes actually true that money has a time value, and it is sometimes only hypothetically true that money has a time value.
March 5, 2009
A comment on contemporary politics
You understand, venerable brethren, that We speak of that sect of men who, under various and almost barbarous names, are called socialists, communists, or nihilists, and who, spread over all the world, and bound together by the closest ties in a wicked confederacy, no longer seek the shelter of secret meetings, but, openly and boldly marching forth in the light of day, strive to bring to a head what they have long been planning - the overthrow of all civil society whatsoever.
Surely these are they who, as the sacred Scriptures testify, "Defile the flesh, despise dominion and blaspheme majesty." They leave nothing untouched or whole which by both human and divine laws has been wisely decreed for the health and beauty of life. They refuse obedience to the higher powers, to whom, according to the admonition of the Apostle, every soul ought to be subject, and who derive the right of governing from God; and they proclaim the absolute equality of all men in rights and duties. They debase the natural union of man and woman, which is held sacred even among barbarous peoples; and its bond, by which the family is chiefly held together, they weaken, or even deliver up to lust. Lured, in fine, by the greed of present goods, which is "the root of all evils, which some coveting have erred from the faith," they assail the right of property sanctioned by natural law; and by a scheme of horrible wickedness, while they seem desirous of caring for the needs and satisfying the desires of all men, they strive to seize and hold in common whatever has been acquired either by title of lawful inheritance, or by labor of brain and hands, or by thrift in one's mode of life. ...
For, indeed, although the socialists, stealing the very Gospel itself with a view to deceive more easily the unwary, have been accustomed to distort it so as to suit their own purposes, nevertheless so great is the difference between their depraved teachings and the most pure doctrine of Christ that none greater could exist: "for what participation hath justice with injustice or what fellowship hath light with darkness?" Their habit, as we have intimated, is always to maintain that nature has made all men equal, and that, therefore, neither honor nor respect is due to majesty, nor obedience to laws, unless, perhaps, to those sanctioned by their own good pleasure. But, on the contrary, in accordance with the teachings of the Gospel, the equality of men consists in this: that all, having inherited the same nature, are called to the same most high dignity of the sons of God, and that, as one and the same end is set before all, each one is to be judged by the same law and will receive punishment or reward according to his deserts. The inequality of rights and of power proceeds from the very Author of nature, "from whom all paternity in heaven and earth is named."
March 9, 2009
Aborting a Miscarried Argument
As far as we know, lots of babies die in natural miscarriages. This fact is often cited by pro-abortion apologists as evidence that pro-lifers don't themselves think that embryos are fully human, deserving of legal protection from murder. The sophistry often appended to this "argument" is the notion that since presumably aborted children and miscarried children go the the same eternal fate, Christian pro-lifers should be acting as though miscarriage were as high a priority as abortion.
I don't understand why anyone would take this so-called argument seriously.
Suppose two million Catholics in a state of grace die, and all presumably go to the same eternal fate.
Now suppose one million of those Catholics were murdered in a mass genocide. The other million died of old age or some other natural cause.
As a political matter, a matter of the exercise of temporal power to protect the common good, which of these two groups of "deaths" - we always have to use language scrubbed of moral implication when speaking to abortion apologists, you see - are a higher priority? Is the genocide of a million people inside our legitimate political jurisdiction a higher or lower political priority than the natural deaths of a million? When we ourselves face judgment, in part for our political actions, are we more likely to be judged harshly because a million people died of natural causes in our jurisdiction, or because a million people were murderd in our jurisdiction as a direct result of policies we supported?
To ask the questions is to answer them.
March 13, 2009
The Low Man, Redux
I just wanted to mention in light of this:
Sometimes one has the impression that our society needs at least one group for which there need not be any tolerance; which one can unperturbedly set upon with hatred. And who dared to touch them - in this case the Pope - lost himself the right to tolerance and was allowed without fear and restraint to be treated with hatred, too.... that I appreciate the Holy Father reading What's Wrong with the World.
April 13, 2009
Speaking at Notre Dame's Catholic Student Fellowship, Four:7, on April 14
For those in the South Bend, Indiana area, I will be speaking on my return to the Catholic Church at the weekly gathering of Notre Dame's Catholic Student Fellowship, Four:7. It is scheduled for 8:30 pm in the chapel of Cavanaugh Hall on the campus of the University of Notre Dame. For more information, go here.
(cross-posted on Return to Rome)
April 14, 2009
Protestant Pastor Chris Castaldo's review of Return to Rome
Forthcoming in Christianity Today is Pastor Chris Castaldo's review of Return to Rome. Castaldo, a Pastor of Outreach and Church Planting at College Church in Wheaton, IL, has posted a pre-publication version on his website here.
(Cross-posted on Return to Rome)
April 23, 2009
William McGurn's Talk: "A Notre Dame Witness for Life"
As I noted elsewhere, Wall Street Journal columnist Bill McGurn was scheduled to speak this evening at the University of Notre Dame. I just returned from the talk. It was outstanding and powerful. Mr. McGurn, who I had the privilege to speak with after his lecture, offered a principled defense of his point of view while being charitable to those with whom he disagrees.
The Notre Dame Center for Ethics & Culture has published the text of the talk online, which you can find here. The following are some excerpts:
The precipitate cause of our gathering tonight is the honor and platform our university has extended to a President whose policies reflect clear convictions about unborn life, and about the value the law ought to place on protecting that life. These convictions are not in doubt. In July 2007, the candidate spelled them out in a forceful address to a Planned Parenthood convention in our nation’s capital.Before that audience, he declared that a woman’s “fundamental right” to an abortion was at stake in the coming election. He spoke about how he had “put Roe at the center” of his “lesson plan on reproductive freedom” when he was a professor – and how he would put it at the center of his agenda as president.
He invoked his record in the Illinois state senate, where he fought restrictions on abortion, famously including one on partial-birth abortion. He said that the “first thing” he wanted to do as President was to “sign a Freedom of Choice Act.” And he ended by assuring his audience that “on this fundamental issue,” he, like they, would never yield....
Continue reading "William McGurn's Talk: "A Notre Dame Witness for Life"" »
April 27, 2009
Notre Dame to Regift Professor Glendon's Laetare Medal
According to the Notre Dame web site:
The following statement from Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C., president of the University of Notre Dame, is in response to the decision by Mary Ann Glendon to decline acceptance of the University’s Laetare Medal:“We are, of course, disappointed that Professor Glendon has made this decision. It is our intention to award the Laetare Medal to another deserving recipient, and we will make that announcement as soon as possible.”
I am no expert in public relations, but regifting a prestigious medal should not even have been on the table. It runs the risk of adding injury to insult. For whoever is the runner-up recipient of the 2009 Laetare Medal will now undergo a level of scrutiny that would have not occurred if he or she were the first choice under different circumstances. Very, very strange.
(cross-posted on Southern Appeal)
June 14, 2009
Anniversary of G. K. Chesterton's death
Today, June 14, is the 73rd anniversary of the death of the great Catholic writer, G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936). My colleague, Ralph C. Wood, has a wonderful online collection of articles and links about and by Chesterton. You can find it here. The following are some Chesterton quotes. You can find a larger collection here.
Continue reading "Anniversary of G. K. Chesterton's death" »
June 22, 2009
June 22 - Feast Day of St. Thomas More (1478-1535)
From the website of St. Thomas More Catholic Church in Austin, Texas:
He was, of course, a man for all seasons......a classical scholar, a humanist, a statesman, a politician, a man of prayer, the author of the famed Utopia, a theologian, and a lawyer by profession.
And yet, St. Thomas More is also a man for our times and a model for us today as we strive to serve God in our social, religious, and familial relationships.
His contemporaries knew him to possess a keen wit, a merry sense of humor, and a great common sense. He was a warm and friendly man who always seemed more concerned about the needs of his friends than his own needs. His friendship extended to looking after the poor in his village and to singing in his church choir.
Continue reading "June 22 - Feast Day of St. Thomas More (1478-1535)" »
July 7, 2009
The usury crisis and Catholic social teaching
Paul Cella's post Biblical Solutions is especially timely not just in light of the current recession, but also because of the publication of Pope Benedict XVI's new encyclical Caritas in Veritate. I'll have more to say about CV once I've read the whole thing. In the meantime, it would be useful to issue a little primer about how Catholic social teaching applies in today's dire circumstances.
What I've seen of CV so far is quite in line with how Catholic social teaching (see here for its official "compendium") has been developing since Leo XIII's Rerum Novarum (1891). By endorsing private property and the pursuit of profit, it is compatible with some forms of capitalism and thus needs no defense around here. But it also insists on conditioning those goods by such principles as "the universal destination of goods," "solidarity," "subsidiarity," and "the preferential option for the poor." As moral injunctions for the faithful, those principles are not terribly controversial either, at least among Christians. Most of the debate about applying Church social teaching concerns the extent to which such conditioning principles call for civil legislation and regulation, especially concerning the economy. On that question, the political (and theological) Left is generally maximalist; the political (and theological) Right is generally minimalist.
As a conservative in the American sense of the term, I come down mostly with the minimalists. Thus I believe that the principle of "subsidiarity" calls for private over public solutions when the former are feasible. From a theological standpoint, though, the question whether to be a political minimalist or a political maximalist is a matter of prudential judgment, rather than doctrine, about what's "feasible." The question is essentially empirical, and boils down to how to balance, in practice, the principle of subsidiarity with the other principles "conditioning" the goods of private property and profit. Subsidiarity is generally more popular with the Right than with the Left. But for Catholics, and a fortiori everybody else, Rome generally treats the balancing act as a matter of opinion. For the social teaching of the Church is logically compatible with a rather broad range of prudential judgments about how to implement it in the concrete.
In fact, what conservative critics of the Church's social teaching often fail to realize is that, seen as a whole, it is less palatable to the Left than to the Right. Liberal Catholics generally embrace Church teachings on, e.g., the death penalty, health care, and the treatment of immigrants, and want them enshrined in secular legislation; but on abortion, euthanasia, same-sex "marriage," and other issues called "social" in American political parlance, the song changes dramatically. True, the precise converse holds among many Catholics who are politically conservative, especially in the U.S.; but in my view, the conservatives hold the theologically stronger position. As Fr. Robert Sirico of the Acton Institute notes:
It is quite a spectacle to see Catholic progressives — who in other circumstances contort themselves into exegetical pretzels when they want to undermine clear, emphatic, authoritative, and repeated magisterial prohibitions on same-sex relations, female “priests,” and contraceptive acts — morph into virtual Ultramontanists on prudential matters such as the precise level of a minimum wage.
And the same could be said, mutatis mutandis, about many other political issues, such as whether the advantages of government-run health care would outweigh the disadvantages. As I argued in this post, the trouble with the Catholic Left is that it often presents as morally binding certain political proposals which, from Rome's standpoint, are really matters of opinion, and presents as matters of opinion certain political proposals which, again from Rome's standpoint, are morally binding. So not only is the Catholic Right's general sense about Church social teaching theologically sounder than the Left's; said teaching is more easily reconciled with American "conservatism," or at least with some strains thereof, then with American "liberalism."
But in some cases, applying the Left/Right dichotomy is simply unilluminating. The "usury crisis" Paul has described is a good example. Although people can debate from now till doomsday how much state regulation of debt instruments is wise, and probably will, it cannot be denied either (a) that some degree of regulation is necessary, and (b) that the explosion of public and private debt, all slated to be repaid with interest, has been bad for everybody. Ignoring the traditional moral strictures of the Church about debt and interest fosters a systemic greed which is eventually self-defeating. We are now in a situation where bankrupt governments are shoring up bankrupt sectors of the economy with funny money that will burden the next generation and beyond with unsustainable debt service. That wouldn't have been necessary if both the private and public sectors hadn't reduced themselves to pigs feeding at the trough. Because both private and public greed have driven this crisis, it's really not a Left/Right issue. It's a rather elementary moral issue.
July 10, 2009
Faith, Reason, and the Christian University: What John Paul II Can Teach Christian Academics
That's the title of an article I just published in Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture 12.3 (Summer 2009): 53-67. You can find it online on my website here. Here are some excerpts (endnotes omitted):
My take on Caritas in Veritate published in Christianity Today
Christianity Today just published my take on Pope Benedict XVI's latest encyclical, Caritas in Veritate. Here is an excerpt.
Although mainstream media outlets have already spun this encyclical as one that focuses on the global economic crisis—and it most certainly does address that—that is clearly not the pope’s point of departure. For those who have eyes to see, the animating principle of this encyclical is virtually on every page of it: theological anthropology is the only proper starting pointing from which we can come to know the common good....
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July 26, 2009
Return to Rome interview tonight on Pittsburgh diocese radio show, Amplify
This evening I will be a guest on Fr. Ron Lengwin's Sunday night radio program, Amplify. It is broadcast from KDKA in Pittsburgh (1020 on the AM dial). You can listen to the show from 9-11 pm EDT online here. I will be on the program to talk about my new book, Return to Rome: Confessions of An Evangelical Catholic (Brazos, 2009)
(Originally posted on First Thoughts)
August 7, 2009
James Allen Show Return to Rome Interview - August 8, 9 pm MST
Following in the footsteps of my What's Wrong With the World blog brethren Ed Feser and Lydia McGrew, I will be a guest on the James Allen Show. It will be broadcast Saturday August 8 at 9 pm MST (that's 9 pm PDT, 11 pm CDT, and 12 am EDT). Mr. Allen will be interviewing me about my book Return to Rome. (Above: if Return to Rome were a comic book).
(Originally posted on Return to Rome blog)
August 10, 2009
"The Catholic Channel" Interview, August 11, 9:40 am EDT
On August 11 I will be a guest on Gus Lloyd's "Seize the Day" on Sirius-XM's "The Catholic Channel" (channel 159). It is scheduled for 9:40 am EDT. I will be talking about Return to Rome.
"The Catholic Channel" is part of the Archdiocese of New York. It is broadcast online to 18.5 million listeners throughout the continental US, Canada and around the world.
(Originally posted on Return to Rome blog)