El integrismo católico es una tradición de pensamiento que sostiene que el poder político debiera ordenar al hombre a su fin último, rechazando la separación liberal entre la política y la preocupación por el fin de la vida humana. Puesto que el hombre tiene tanto un fin temporal como uno eterno, el integrismo defiende que existen dos potestades que lo gobiernan: una temporal y una espiritual. Y ya que el fin temporal del hombre se encuentra subordinado al eterno, la potestad temporal ha de estar subordinada a la espiritual.
The Josias Podcast, Episode IX: Before Church and State
How ought we to think of our common life as human beings created in the image of God? Do our modern habits of thought prevent us from understanding what was going on in the Middle Ages? And more importantly: can the Middle Ages help us to escape the errors embedded in our common life today and thus open a path towards unfeigned peace? What is sovereignty? Is it necessary for peace? How do nature and grace relate, and what follows from that for the relation of temporal and spiritual power? Pater Edmund is joined by Alan Fimister and Andrew Willard Jones to discuss the later’s book Before Church and State.
Bibliography
- Andrew Willard Jones, Before Church and State: A Study of Social Order in the Sacramental Kingdom of St. Louis IX (Steubenville: Emmaus Academic, 2017).
- Francis Fukuyama, The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011).
- R. W. Southern, Western Society and the Church in the Middle Ages, vol. 2 of The Penguin History of the Church (London: Penguin, 1970).
- Adrian Vermeule, “Some Questions about Sovereignty for Andrew Willard Jones,” Mirror of Justice (blog), June 10, 2018.
- Edmund Waldstein, O.Cist, “An Integralist Manifesto,” review of Andrew Willard Jones, Before Church and State (q.v.), First Things (October 2017).
If you have questions or comments, please send them to editors(at)thejosias.com. We’d love the feedback.
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The Josias Podcast, Episode VIII: Basic Concepts – Virtue
A freewheeling discussion in which our editors have a very TAC moment discussing the connection of the music of the spheres and the virtues, and then set out to discuss Aristotle’s Virtue Ethics, but somehow talk more about Plato. Important topics are covered such as, how much virtue does it take to refrain from throwing a baby from an upper-story window? Is there any sense in which Bertrand Russell has virtue? All this, and so much more!
The editors had so much fun that the time slipped by without even getting to the supernatural virtues or the post-enlightenment revolt against virtue.
Bibliography
- Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics.
- Plato,
- St. Thomas Aquinas,
- Summa Theologiae, Ia-IIæ, Q 49-89 (“Treatise on Habits”).
- Summa Theologiae, IIa-IIæ, Q 47-122 (“Treatise on Prudence and Justice”).
- Summa Theologiae, IIa-IIæ, Q 123-170 (“Treatise on Fortitude and Temperance”).
- Duane Berquist, Lectures on Ethics.
- The Good, The Highest Good, and the Common Good, The Josias (2015).
If you have questions or comments, please send them to editors(at)thejosias.com. We’d love the feedback.
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P.S. Podcast production is not free—if you would like to help us out or show your support for The Josias, we now have a Patreon page where you can set up a one-time or recurring donation in any amount. Even $1 a month would be awesome. Click here for more.
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Politics and the Church
by Scott Hahn
The following is an excerpt from Scott Hahn’s new book The First Society. Posted here with the kind permission of the author.
The Western world has spent much of the last few centuries trying to find or form a replacement for the unifying catholicity of the Catholic Church. But the project has always been doomed to failure. No purely human idea or institution can replace the sacramental solidarity of the Church. Continue reading “Politics and the Church”
Hard Liberalism, Soft Liberalism, and the American Founding
1. Hard Liberalism: Patrick Deneen on Thomas Hobbes
In Why Liberalism Failed, Patrick Deneen identifies a double principle underlying the liberal conception of liberty: 1) an anthropological individualism and a voluntarist understanding of choice, and 2) a view of human beings as separate from and opposed to nature.[1] The two principles are intimately connected. Both are bound up with the Enlightenment’s rejection of the objectivity of the good, expressed with unrivalled clarity by the protoliberal Hobbes: “Good, and Evill, are names that signifie our Appetites, and Aversions.”[2] Choice is therefore “voluntarist” in the sense that it is not elicited by the objective goodness of things, but is rather the arbitrary fixing of the will on some object. Such an anthropology is individualistic, since there is no common end uniting different human beings. Human life, under this conception, is indeed radically irrational: there is no final goal, and therefore no reason to do one thing rather than another: Continue reading “Hard Liberalism, Soft Liberalism, and the American Founding”
The Josias Podcast, Episode VII: Atonement and Salvation
That Christ died for our sins is at the heart of of the Christian faith: “For I delivered unto you first of all, which I also received: how that Christ died for our sins, according to the scriptures” (1 Cor 15:3). But what does it mean that He died for our sins? How did Christ’s death save and redeem us? Prof. Michael Waldstein and Professor Timothy Kelly join the editors to contemplate the mysteries of salvation.
The theme of today’s episode is closely linked to our project at The Josias, as we write in our About page, “A truly Catholic account of politics cannot be understood except with reference to the whole perennial wisdom of practical and speculative philosophy, and to the integral tradition of Sacred Theology.” Today we contemplate the “vertiginous heights” of Sacred Theology.
Bibliography
- St. Anselm of Cantebury, Cur Deus Homo.
- St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, IIIa Q 48.
- Norbert Hoffmann, “Atonement and the Ontological Coherence Between the Cross and the Trinity,” in: Toward a Civilization of Love, trans. Erasmo Leivo (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1985) 213-66.
- Edmund Waldstein, O.Cist., Desire, Deicide, and Atonement: René Girard and St. Thomas Aquinas, Sancrucensis (2016).
- Michael Maria Waldstein, Harmony and the Scriptures: Lenten Reflections on Harnoncourt and Bach, First Things (Web Exclusive, 2017).
If you have questions or comments, please send them to editors(at)thejosias.com. We’d love the feedback.
P.S. Podcast production is not free—if you would like to help us out or show your support for The Josias, we now have a Patreon page where you can set up a one-time or recurring donation in any amount. Even $1 a month would be awesome. Click here for more.
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Christianity, Just War, and Just Punishment
Can Christians take part in war? The Christian life is participation in the life of Christ. Christ gives us this participation through the free gift of grace. He is both the sanctifier, the divine workman, who works grace within us, and the plan, the exemplar cause and model, according to which He conforms us in His work of sanctification. He conforms us to His Eternal Sonship, by giving us the beginning, the inchoatio, of eternal life through the infused virtues. And He also conforms us to the works and virtues of His earthly life. He conforms us especially to His patience and mildness under suffering. He was led like a lamb to the slaughter and opened not His mouth. He Himself lived the precepts that He gives in the Sermon on the Mount; He turned the other cheek and suffered injustice without defending Himself. And we are called to do the same: Continue reading “Christianity, Just War, and Just Punishment”
The Josias Podcast, Episode VI: Ralliement
Historian and theologian Alan Fimister joins the editors to discuss whether Pope Leo XIII was right to ask French Catholics to recognize the Third Republic. And more generally: does political engagement in modern parliamentary politics engender liberalism in Catholics? What form of government is best anyway? Alan defends the Lancastrian theory of the English Constitution as a mixed-form republic as the best.
Bibliography
- Alan Fimister, Robert Schuman: Neo-Scholastic Humanism and the Reunification of Europe (Brussels: Peter Lang, 2008).
- Alan Fimister, Interview: Catholic Origins of the European Union Zenit (2008).
- Petrus Hispanus, The Primary Political Question: A Response to Milco on Liberalism, The Josias (2016).
- Pope Leo XIII, Au milieu des sollicitudes (1892).
- Roberto de Mattei, The Ralliement of Leo XIII: A Pastoral Experience That Moved Away from Doctrine, Rorate Cæli (2015).
- Pius VI, Quare lacrymae (1793).
- Adrian Vermeule, Ralliement: Two Distinctions, The Josias (2018).
- Felix de St. Vincent, Four Catholic Political Postures: Lessons from Leo XIII and Ralliement, The Josias (2017).
- Catholic Action and Ralliement, The Josias (2016).
If you have questions or comments, please send them to editors@thejosias.com. We’d love the feedback.
P.S. Podcast production is not free—if you would like to help us out or show your support for The Josias, we now have a Patreon page where you can set up a one-time or recurring donation in any amount. Even $1 a month would be awesome. Click here for more.
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Hans Urs von Balthasar’s Critique of Integralism
On recent uses of the term “integralism”
In July of last year, Antonio Spadaro and Marcelo Figueroa published an essay in La Civiltà Cattolica criticizing the cooperation of conservative Evangelicals and Catholics in American politics. Among conservative American Christians, Spadaro and Figueroa argue, religion ceases to be the force for reconciliation and peace that it ought to be, and becomes an instrument of division, forcing a sectarian agenda on society by main force. One of the many things that puzzled readers in the essay was the use of the term “integralism” as a Catholic analogue to Evangelical “fundamentalism.” Integralism is not a term that is used much in an American context. Integralism in the strict sense in which we use it at The Josias, has never played much of a role in American political life, which has always been committed to the Enlightenment ideal of religious liberty. Spadaro and Figueroa never explain very clearly what they mean by “integralism.” A blog-post from September by Keith Michael Estrada, however, points us to an author who does give a very detailed account of integralism that in some ways fits the usage of Spadaro and Figueroa: Hans Urs von Balthasar. Continue reading “Hans Urs von Balthasar’s Critique of Integralism”
Debemus: In Defense of Fr. Cessario, Bl. Pius IX, and the Catholic Faith
by Frater Asinus
J.M.J.
Despite its having taken place in 1858, the so-called “Mortara Affair” has recently caused much debate to erupt in Catholic circles. This recent debate was occasioned by Fr. Romanus Cessario’s book review in First Things, “Non Possumus,” which examines a newly released translation of Fr. Edgardo Mortara’s memoirs. Mortara was the child of a Jewish family living in the Papal States in the city of Bologna. As an infant he fell ill, and the doctors were convinced that he was about to die. The Mortara’s maid, Anna “Nina” Morisi, a Catholic woman, baptized Edgardo, without his parents’ knowledge. Some years later, when Edgardo was six years old, officials were made aware of Edgardo’s baptism. Accordingly, they went to the Mortaras to assure that their son Edgardo was educated in accordance with his baptism. The Mortaras refused to allow him to be educated at a local boarding school, so instead, Edgardo was taken and essentially raised under the care of Pius IX himself. In his review, Fr. Cessario defends Pius IX in his handling of the Mortara Affair. Continue reading “Debemus: In Defense of Fr. Cessario, Bl. Pius IX, and the Catholic Faith”