Category: Blogposts

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The Josias Podcast, Special Episode: The Politics of Hell

Urban Hannon’s “The Politics of Hell,” narrated by James T. Majewski of Catholic Culture Audiobooks.

Header Image: Neil Packer.

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The Josias Podcast, Episode XXX: Queen Elizabeth II

Pater Edmund speaks with Pater Ælred Maria Anthony John Howard Davies, Subprior of Stift Heiligenkreuz, about the late Queen Elizabeth II.

Music: Henry Purcell, Thou Knowest, Lord 

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The Josias Podcast, Episode XXIX: The Movies

Contributors to The Josias and Ius & Iusitium pick their favorite movies and discuss them. 

The result of the draft:

To vote for a winner click here.

Bibliography

Tertullian, De Spectaculis (On the Shows)

John Francis Nieto, A Study of Film.

Music: Max Steiner, “Tara Theme” from Gone with the Wind. 

If you have questions or comments, please send them to editors(at)thejosias.com.

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The Josias Podcast, Special Episode: Lecture on Rights

Do rights exist, or are they moral fictions? What is the significance of the distinction between objective and subjective rights? In this lecture, Pater Edmund Waldstein, O.Cist. Gives an account of rights and their relation to the common good.

Bibliography and Links

Hispanus, Petrus. “Notes on Right and Law.” The Josias (2017).

Legge, Dominic O.P. “Do Thomists Have Rights?” Nova et Vetera, English Edition, 17.1 (2019): pp. 127–147.

MacIntyre, Alasdair. After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, 3rd ed. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007.

Pappin, Gladden J. “Rights, Moral Theology and Politics in Jean Gerson.” History of Political Thought 36.2 (2015), pp. 234-261.

Pinkoski, Nathan J. “Alasdair MacIntyre and Leo Strauss on the Activity of Philosophy.” The Review of Politics 82 (2020), pp. 97-122.

Rosenblatt, Helena. The Lost History of Liberalism: From Ancient Rome to the Twenty-First Century. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018.

Strauss, Leo. Natural Right and History. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1953.

Tierney, Brian. The Idea of Natural Rights: Studies on Natural Rights, Natural Law, and Church Law 1150-1625. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997.

Header Image: Giovanni di Paolo, The Creation of the World and the Expulsion from Paradise (1445).

If you have questions or comments, please send them to editors(at)thejosias.com.

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Announcement: The Josias in Print

Readers of The Josias will be pleased to learn that a number of the articles we have published over the years are being published in two volumes by the ever-interesting Angelico Press. The first volume is now available to be purchased on Amazon, and it contains a number of excellent essays and reflections on issues relating to the family, the city, and the state. In addition, the volume includes some important philosophical reflections on first-order concepts such as the good, freedom, and virtue. The volume is co-edited by our own editor-in-chief, Pater Edmund Waldstein, O. Cist., and one of our contributors, Dr. Peter Kwasniewski. The official title is Integralism and the Common Good.

Integralism has received some modest publicity these days, and its (slow but steady) emergence on the stage of political discourse signifies a possible shift in the political possibilities available for the future. While much of this public discourse centers around the controversies of current politics, nonetheless enough confusion remains about the precise nature of political Catholicism that it is still necessary to return sometimes to the first principles. From the beginning, it has been the mission of The Josias to expound just these principles, in the light of both natural reason and supernatural faith, with the aim of providing reliable guidance to citizens who are concerned about the current state of politics under the regime of liberalism. We hope that the publication of this volume will be educational and informative for those interested to learn more about the principles underlying a truly Catholic politics.

— The Editors

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The Josias Podcast, Episode XXVIII: Socialism (Part 2)

The debate on socialism continues, with Pater Edmund playing the socialist and Alan Fimister taking the anti-socialist side. Joel is joined by Chris to moderate the discussion.

Bibliography and Links

Leo XIII, Rerum novarum (1891)

Pius XI, Quadragesimo anno (1931)

Ernest Fortin, “Sacred and Inviolable: Rerum Novarum and Natural Rights“

Karl Marx, Theories of Surplus Value, ch. 9

Beatrice Freccia, “Aristotle’s Account of the Relationship of the Household to the State”

Charles De Koninck, “The End of the Family and the End of Civil Society”

Jacques de Monléon, “Short Notes on the Family and the City”

Scott Meikle, “Aristotle and Exchange Value”

Tři oříšky pro Popelku

Music: Prokofiev – Cinderella Suite – Cinderella’s Waltz

Header Image: “Das ist eine wunderschöne Wiese“

If you have questions or comments, please send them to editors(at)thejosias.com.

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Many thanks to our generous supporters on Patreon, who enable us to pay for podcast hosting. If you have not yet joined them, please do so. You can set up a one-time or recurring donation in any amount. Even $1 a month would be splendid.

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John Zmirak’s Liberalism

In a piece written a number of years ago and in another more recent offering John Zmirak purports to explain the folly of integralism and to propound instead a doctrine fit for ‘patriotic Christians’ which reconciles liberalism in its true sense with the creed of Catholics. The first objection to Zmirak’s patriotic Christianity is his overt endorsement of liberalism. No Catholic is free to embrace liberalism. Zmirak does not mean by liberalism support for democratic institutions but he very explicitly means by the term precisely the error condemned by the Church’s magisterium. Liberalism purports to advocate a public sphere and constitutional order which prescinds from questions of revealed truth and rests solely upon reason. This posture is disingenuous and is firmly condemned as nothing less than Satanic by Leo XIII in his great encyclical Libertas. For, as the Catechism of the Catholic Church explains  “every institution is inspired, at least implicitly, by a vision of man and his destiny, from which it derives the point of reference for its judgment, its hierarchy of values, its line of conduct.” In rejecting its obligations of public worship the liberal state becomes necessarily totalitarian in form and hedonistic in content. As St John Paul II observed “the rights of God and man stand or fall together” and as he said of the teaching of Leo XIII in Libertas it “called attention to the essential bond between human freedom and truth, so that freedom which refused to be bound to the truth would fall into arbitrariness and end up submitting itself to the vilest of passions, to the point of self-destruction.” This is the social order that reigns today and for which Zmirak insists, contrary to the teaching of John Paul II and Leo XIII, liberalism cannot be held accountable. Let there be no doubt it is the Satanic doctrine condemned in Libertas which John Zmirak expressly espouses.

Continue reading “John Zmirak’s Liberalism”
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The Josias Podcast, Episode XXVII: Socialism (Part 1)

Alan Fimister comes on the podcast to debate socialism with Pater Edmund. For the purposes of the debate, Pater Edmund takes the socialist side, arguing that the injustices of modern capitalism, which orders all things to the private interests of capitalists, requires the adoption of socialism to subordinate economic matters to the common good of the political community. Alan Fimister takes the anti-socialist side, arguing that the individual and the family are prior to the state, and have the antecedent duty and right to provide for their subsistence, which requires private property. The debate is moderated (not entirely impartially) by Joel: There are no rules.

Bibliography and Links

Leo XIII, Rerum novarum (1891).

Pius XI, Quadragesimo anno (1931).

W. Borman, “Thomism and Private Property,” The Josias (2017).

Thomas Crean and Alan Fimister, Integralism: A manual of political philosophy (2020).

David Graeber, Debt: The First 5000 Years (2011).

Henri Grenier, “The Lawfulness and Social Character of Private Ownership,” The Josias (2015).

C.W. Strand, “A Catholic Socialism,” Tradinista! (2016).

Edmund Waldstein, O.Cist., “Use Values and Corn Laws, Aristotelian Marxists and High Tories,” Sancrucensis, 2015.

Edmund Waldstein, O.Cist., “Dialogue with a Catholic Leftist,” Sancrucensis (2016).

Edmund Waldstein, O.Cist., “Robin Hood Economics: How should the wealth of the world be distributed?” Plough, 2019.

Music: Дми́трий Шостако́вич, Jazz Suite No.2 – 6. Waltz II.

Header Image: New Harmony, Indiana, as proposed by Robert Owen. Engraving by F. Bate, 1838.

If you have questions or comments, please send them to editors(at)thejosias.com.

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Many thanks to our generous supporters on Patreon, who enable us to pay for podcast hosting. If you have not yet joined them, please do so. You can set up a one-time or recurring donation in any amount. Even $1 a month would be splendid.

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Building a Common Life

It is almost, if not absolutely, impossible for people who view each other with deep suspicion concerning morality to build a common life. And this is completely rational. A difference in moral orientation means that the normal trust in a community that members will not harm each other is not present. Not only physical harm, but intellectual harm. When there is disagreement about how to live morally with each other, children will be morally confused. As intellectual and moral habits form, these children will either act in ways that some approve and others disapprove, or else their confusion will lead to chaotic moral habits that destroy any chance that the community will continue unharmed.  To avoid this, parents may choose to isolate them from opposing moral standards (and thus isolate them from their neighbors.) But unless they live in a community agreed on morality, these children will not benefit from the natural and good diversity of perspective on practical and prudential matters that comes from living in a community of people with different talents and occupations. Instead of either self isolation or a live and let live attitude which hides the deep divides in our communities, we must meet this moral division head on and seek to convince each other to reject the immoral and live together in unity. It does us no good to hide the seething repressed disagreements that occasionally surface on social media behind the thin facade of “basic community goods” which renders our cities essentially shared utilities rather than places for a shared life.

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The Josias Podcast, Episode XXVI: Historicism

Historicism seems to be a challenge to an integralist account of politics, because it denies that there is an unchanging truth about the human good accessible to our minds. In this episode the editors talk to Felix de St. Vincent and Brett Favras about Collingwood’s historicism, Leo Strauss’s critique of Collingwood, and Alasdair MacIntyre’s much more positive response to Collingwood and historicism.

Bibliography and Links

R.G. Collingwood, An Autobiography, 1939.

Felix de St. Vincent and Brett Favras, “Integralism, MacIntyre, and Final Ends: Towards a Secular Account of Christian Politics,” The Josias, 2018.

Alasdair MacIntyre, A Short History of Ethics, 1966; After Virtue, 1981.

Nathan Pinkoski, “Alasdair MacIntyre and Leo Strauss on the Activity of Philosophy,” Review of Politics, 2020.

Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History, 1953; On Political Philosophy: Responding to the Challenge of Positivism and Historicism, 2018; “Lectures on Plato’s Meno,” 1966.

Music: W.A. Mozart, Die Entführung aus dem Serail, Act 3 “Nie werd’ ich deine Huld verkennen,” Les Arts Florissants under the direction of William Christie.

Header Image: William Hogarth, “The Seraglio.”

If you have questions or comments, please send them to editors(at)thejosias.com.

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Many thanks to our generous supporters on Patreon, who enable us to pay for podcast hosting. If you have not yet joined them, please do so. You can set up a one-time or recurring donation in any amount. Even $1 a month would be splendid.

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