For the occasion of the coronation of King Charles III in Westminster Abbey, The Josias asked contributors and friends to share their reflections on the event. The contributions to this symposium cover a variety of topics from a variety of perspectives, all of them Catholic.
Continue reading “The Coronation: A Josias Symposium”Prayer as (Still) a Political Problem
Christians throughout the world are facing various levels of persecution and maltreatment from purportedly secular and agnostic regimes. To temper such abuse, there is a tendency to appeal to the regime’s religious indifferentism, to defend Christian practice in the name of neutral “religious liberty.” But might there not be hidden costs to doing so?
Continue reading “Prayer as (Still) a Political Problem”Our Contraceptive Speech
Master Adamo lies a bloated mass of “watery rot.” His amorphous frame bears his diseased paunch and distended limbs, as his lips curl and crack under his parching fever—despite being a waterlogged waste. He lies before Dante the Pilgrim and Virgil and explains how King Minos poured him into the last ditch of the eighth circle of hell. He was a counterfeiter of Florentine florins. He blurred the lines of reality in life and now he lays blurred—a poor counterfeit of his former self.
Continue reading “Our Contraceptive Speech”A Brief Introduction to the Common Good
The common good is an uncommon concept today, and the genuine article is often confused with counterfeits. It may, therefore, be helpful to set out clearly and simply some definitions and distinctions, to explain what ‘the common good’ means to the integralist, as opposed to what it means to the totalitarian, the utilitarian, or the liberal. These notes are mostly gathered from other Josias posts; follow the links and footnotes for more in-depth treatments.
Continue reading “A Brief Introduction to the Common Good”Ecology and the Theology of Creation
On April 22, the St. Basil Institute for the Theology of Creation will be hosting an online conference on ecology and the theology of creation. Pope Francis has spoken about the importance of the current ecological crisis throughout his pontificate. While the Holy Father discussed the need for a uniquely Catholic approach to this crisis in Laudato Si, unfortunately most Catholics who engage with these issues continue to do so from a secular perspective. Why is a uniquely Catholic approach so important?
Continue reading “Ecology and the Theology of Creation”Friendship and Politics
The Nature of Friendship
Aristotle discusses friendship near the end of his Nicomachean Ethics, immediately after a discussion of pleasure, and before the final discussion of true happiness. This order is appropriate, because friendship is both man’s greatest pleasure and necessary for the happiness of man’s earthly life. True happiness is to know the good and to have it, and friendship is among the greatest goods a person can have.
Continue reading “Friendship and Politics”“Legal Marriage” and Legal Positivism
By now, most of the Catholic internet world has heard about the minor blow up concerning Rev. James Martin, SJ and his tweet, which claimed that “Pete Buttigieg is married,” itself a response to a Catholic League article stating that “It is true that Buttigieg is legally married, but that is a legal fiction.”
Continue reading ““Legal Marriage” and Legal Positivism”Uncommon Confusion: The New Natural Law Theory’s Confusion of Predication and Causality Destroys the Natural Order
The following lecture was delivered to the faculty of Thomas Aquinas College in the fall of 2020.
When Aquinas presents his understanding of the natural law, he unifies it under a single precept, “Good is to be done and pursued, and evil is to be shunned.”[1] This precept forms the basis for every other natural law precept—which is why it is a unifying principle for the natural law as a whole[2]—because it expresses the first principle of any action whatsoever. We do not commit a fully human act except insofar as an act seems to be good or to be aimed at a good (or away from its opposite). The precept is universal; it grounds any and every pursuit of goods. But there is a question: What, precisely, is meant by “good” in this precept?
Continue reading “Uncommon Confusion: The New Natural Law Theory’s Confusion of Predication and Causality Destroys the Natural Order”The Child as a Common Good
by Michael Berndt
For my wife.
The title of this essay is “The Child as a Common Good,” which would seem to be an unfortunate topic to defend, for at least two reasons. The first is that the notion of a common good requires a degree of universality that the child, as a particular subject, apparently fails to attain. The second reason follows from the principle that because a common good is more universal than a singular good, it is also more communicable. As Charles De Koninck has put it, the common good “reaches the singular more than the singular good: it is the greater good of the singular” (16). Now if the child as a good is held in common by anyone, then it is certainly by the child’s parents; but in practice it is perhaps rare to hear parents echoing De Koninck’s words with respect to their children. The reality, in fact, seems closer to the opposite: many parents would describe the relationship between their own singular goods and their children in sacrificial terms—and every sacrifice, however willing, must imply some opposition between goods. The child as a good, therefore, seems not to “reach the singular more than the singular good,” and so the child appears not to fit the definition of a common good for his or her parents.
Continue reading “The Child as a Common Good”Integralism and the Hermeneutic of Reform
The term integralism does not describe a movement or a philosophical school. It is simply a word coined in the nineteenth century to describe the opposite of a grievous error condemned by the Church— liberalism. It is thus analogous to terms such as dyophysite, iconodule or transubstantiationist. It names orthodoxy in a particular area of Catholic teaching.
Continue reading “Integralism and the Hermeneutic of Reform”