Timothy Troutner recently published a thought-provoking essay in Church Life Journal, a publication of the the Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame, in which he argues against Catholic Integralism. Our own Pater Edmund Waldstein responded in the same publication, defending integralism. Another response was posted by the integralist blog Abrenuntio. The responses take the opportunity to make some clarifications of the integralist position.
The Josias Podcast, Episode XV: Deconstructing Integralism
The editors return and deconstruct integralism by taking on the post-structuralism of Jacques Derrida, but in the end discover they were metaphysicians all along. Along the way, the discussion veers into Nietzsche, 19th century interpretations of Bach, internet meme culture, vaccinations and the anti-vax movement, Jacob Klein, David Foster Wallace, and so much more.
Bibliography
- Roland Barthes, Elements of Semiology, 1916;
- Roland Barthes, The Pleasure of the Text, 1973;
- Jacques Derrida, “Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences,” in Writing and Difference, 1967;
- Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, 1967;
- Jacques Derrida, On the Name, 1995;
- Martin Heidegger “Nietzsche’s Word: God is Dead” (1943) in Off the Beaten Track, 2002;
- Joshua Kates, Fielding Derrida: Philosophy, Literary Criticism, History, and the Work of Deconstruction, 2008;
- Jacob Klein, Greek Mathematical Thought and the Origin of Algebra, 1968 [Reprint: New York: Dover, 1992];
- Jacob Klein, “Phenomenology and the History of Science,” 1940;
- Claude Levi-Strauss, The Savage Mind, 1962;
- E. Milco, “Michel Foucault and Thomas Aquinas in Dialogue on the Basis and Consummation of Intelligibility,” 2013;
- Friedrich Nietzsche, “On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense,” 1896;
- Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics, 1916;
- Michel Serres, “The Algebra of Literature,” 1979;
- Edmund Waldstein, O.Cist. “Charles de Koninck, Jacob Klein, and Socratic Logocentrism”;
- Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 1922.
Music:
Johann Sebastian Bach – Chaconne, Partita No. 2 BWV 1004
- performed by Hillary Hahn;
- arranged for piano by J. Brahms for Left hand performed by Daniil Trifonov;
- Bach-Busoni performed by Benjamin Grosvenor;
- arranged for piano by J. Brahms performed on harpsichord by Jean Rondeau;
Header Image: Franz Rösel von Rosenhof, Wolf und Fuchs.
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The Josias Podcast, Episode XIV: The Virtue of Fortitude
A familiar voice returns after a long absence. Three voices discuss what it means to be brave, the cowardice of Dr. Proudie, the softness of clerics more generally, the brilliance of Monteverdi, and the exquisite comedy of Plato’s Laches.
Bibliography
- Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, IIa-IIae 123-140.
- Plato, Laches.
- Josef Pieper, The Four Cardinal Virtues.
- Anthony Trollope,Barchester Towers
Music:Claudio Monteverdi, Sanctorum Meritis II, from Selva morale e spirituale (text)
Header Image: Leonardo da Vinci, Dragon Striking down Lion
If you have questions or comments, please send them to editors(at)thejosias.com. We’d love the feedback.
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Podcast production is not free—if you would like to help us out or show your support for The Josias, we have a Patreon page where you can set up a one-time or recurring donation in any amount. Even $1 a month would be splendid.
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The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen: Against Natural Law
Guillaume de Thieulloy
A PhD in political science (EHESS), Guillaume de Thieulloy is the publisher of a group of French conservative media properties. He’s also a former staffer of the vice president of the French Senate, Jean-Claude Gaudin. This paper was originally presented at the Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture fall conference, November 3, 2018. An Italian translation of this essay can be found here.
It is striking for historians of the French Revolution that, a few months after the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (26 August 1789), the Terror began and, with the Terror, the first experiment of massive murders decided by a political power against its own population—especially in the Vendée. This huge gap between human rights and Terror seems strange: one cannot easily understand how, after the public recognition of human dignity, the same political power can organize massive slaughters of human beings.
Continue reading “The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen: Against Natural Law”Das Gute, das Höchste Gut und das Gemeinwohl
Edmund Waldstein, O.Cist.
Übersetzt von Johannes Moravitz
Die folgenden 37 Thesen geben einen allgemeinen Überblick über die aristotelisch-thomistische Darstellung vom Guten, wie sie in Interpretationen von Thomisten der Laval-Schule, wie etwa Charles De Koninck, Duane Berquist und Marcus Berquist zu finden ist. Eine Druckversion ist hier zu finden. Eine englische hier und eine spanische hier.
Teil I: Das Gute im Allgemeinen und das Menschliche Gut[1]
1. Das Gute ist, was alle wollen.
Das Wort „gut“ scheint zumindest zwei verschiedene Bedeutungen zu haben. Fragte man einen kleinen Buben, nennen wir ihn Thomas, was gut sei, so könnte er Folgendes antworten: „Eis ist gut, Pizza ist gut, fernsehen ist gut, Fußball ist gut, Urlaub ist gut.“ Ein anderer Bub, nennen wir ihn Eustachius, vielleicht ein Musterkind, könnte hingegen antworten: „Den Eltern zu folgen“, oder „die Regeln nicht zu brechen“, oder sogar „Gott zu gehorchen“. Es scheint einen großen Unterschied zwischen diesen beiden Wahrnehmungen des Guten zu geben. Tatsächlich aber sind beide nicht so unterschiedlich.
Continue reading “Das Gute, das Höchste Gut und das Gemeinwohl”The Josias Podcast Episode XIII: Leo Strauss
«To reject natural right is tantamount to saying that all right is positive right, and this means that what is right is determined exclusively by the legislators and the courts of the various countries. Now it is obviously meaningful, and sometimes even necessary, to speak of “unjust” laws or “unjust” decisions. In passing such judgments we imply that there is a standard of right and wrong independent of positive right and higher than positive right: a standard with reference to which we are able to judge of positive right. Many people today hold the view that the standard in question is in the best case nothing but the ideal adopted by our society or our “civilization” and embodied in its way of life or its institutions. But, according to the same view, all societies have their ideals, cannibal societies no less than civilized ones. […] If there is no standard higher than the ideal of our society, we are utterly unable to take a critical distance from that ideal. But the mere fact that we can raise the question of the worth of the ideal of our society shows that there is something in man that is not altogether in slavery to his society, and therefore that we are able, and hence obliged, to look for a standard with reference to which we can judge of the ideals of our own as well as of any other society.» (Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History).
Pater Edmund talks to Gabriel Sanchez about Leo Strauss’s defense of natural right against historicism and positivism. The discuss questions such as: Who is Leo Strauss and why should integralists care about him? Was he esoterically a nihilist? Why did he criticize Thomists? Is he better than Alasdair MacIntyre?
Bibliogaphy
- Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1953.
Idem, “Introduction to Political Philosophy: Plato’s Meno,” Lecture Course, 1966. - Idem, “An Unspoken Prologue to a Public Lecture at St. John’s [In Honor of Jacob Klein, 1899-1978],” Interpretation 7.3 (1978).
- Seth Benardete, Encounters and Reflections, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2002.
- Jacob Klein, Greek Mathematical Thought and the Origin of Algebra, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1968 [Reprint: New York: Dover, 1992].
- Idem, “History and the Liberal Arts,” The Saint John’s Review 47.2 (2003).
- Gladden J. Pappin, “The Mutual Concerns of Leo Strauss and His Catholic Contemporaries: Passerin d’Entrèves, McCoy, Simon,” in: Geoffrey M. Vaughan (ed.), Leo Strauss and His Catholic Readers, Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2018, pp. 137-166.
- Gabriel Sanchez, “Have the Principles of the Right been Discredited? Leo Strauss’s Rome and Ours,” The Josias (2014).
- Idem, “MacIntyre, Strauss, and Some Voegelin,” Opus Publicum (2018).
- Edmund Waldstein, O.Cist, “Leo Strauss’s Objections to Thomism,” Sancrucensis (2013).
- Idem, “Die griechische Logistik und die Entstehung der Algebra,” Sancrucensis (2016).
Music: Morten Lauridsen, O Magnum Mysterium.
Header Image: Matteo di Giovanni, Massacre of the Innocents (detail).
If you have questions or comments, please send them to editors(at)thejosias.com. We’d love the feedback.
Follow us on Facebook and Twitter.
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.
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The Relations of the Spiritual and Civil Powers
Henry Edward [Manning], Archbishop of Westminster
Henry Edward Manning (1808-1892) was one of the most important figures in the formation of modern Catholic Social teaching. A convert from Anglicanism, Manning was enthroned as the second Archbishop of Westminster in 1865, fifteen years after the restoration of the Catholic hierarchy in England. In 1875 he was made a cardinal of the Holy Roman Church. Manning had a life-long interest in political economy, and his intervention in the London dock-strike of 1889 was one of his many contributions to the Catholic response to the ‘social question’ of the 19th century.
But another life-long interest of his was the relation of Church and state. He often discussed this question with the politician William Ewart Gladstone (1809-1898). As young men Manning and Gladstone had been friends, and they continued corresponding for most of their lives—their correspondence fills four volumes. But in their positions the two men grew apart—Gladstone’s shift from Toryism to liberalism occurring at approximately the same time as Manning’s conversion from Anglicanism to Catholicism.
Gladstone was enraged by the First Vatican Council’s definition of Papal infallibility in 1870. In 1874 he published a polemical pamphlet entitled The Vatican Decrees in their Bearing on Civil Allegiance: A Political Expostulation, in which he argued that the Council had laid down ‘principles adverse to the purity and integrity of civil allegiance’. Manning responded with a pamphlet of his own entitled The Vatican Decrees in their Bearing on Civil Allegiance, in which he refutes Gladstone by showing that in part Gladstone misunderstands the Roman position, and in part is simply wrong about the nature of the Church.
In the second chapter of his pamphlet Manning lays out the Catholic position on the relation of the spiritual and temporal powers. While there are a few disputable points—Manning accepts the positions of Bellarmine and Suarez on the origin of civil society and the indirect nature of the pope’s temporal authority (both possible but disputable positions)—the chapter is on the whole a good summary of ‘integralism’. The whole of the chapter is reproduced below.
The relations of the Catholic Church to the Civil Powers have been fixed immutably from the beginning, because they arise out of the Divine constitution of the Church and of the Civil Society of the natural order.
Continue reading “The Relations of the Spiritual and Civil Powers”Despairing of Integralism
by Jonathan Culbreath
One hears a good dose of defeatism recently expressed by Catholics who, though serious about their faith, are pessimistic about the practicability or desirability of seeking the integralist ideal in the current political climate.[1] The confessional State is deemed too lofty a goal to be worth seeking in the present circumstances. Accordingly, such Catholics (or non-Catholics, as the case may be) may read a simple statement about the relationship of temporal and spiritual power, and their reaction will be very similar to the reaction of two well-known commentators on twitter: “The prospects for integralism politically are almost too fantastical to make contemplating them a good use of time.” and “Can Catholic integralists come up with a successful modern example of their theories at work?” But such a defeatism involves a dual error originating in liberalism: it effectively banishes both grace and nature from the public sphere.
Vatican II and Crisis in the Theology of Baptism: Part III
by Thomas Pink
This is the third and final part of a three-part series. Parts one and two can be found here and here respectively.
The efficacy of grace – through or apart from explicit faith and visible participation in baptism and other sacraments
Even before Vatican II the magisterium taught that salvation is possible, at least in principle, even for those who are not Catholic. Pius XII taught that non-Catholics may be related to the Church through some kind of unconscious desire, and implied that this may be a (less than certain) help to their salvation: Continue reading “Vatican II and Crisis in the Theology of Baptism: Part III”
Vatican II and Crisis in the Theology of Baptism: Part II
by Thomas Pink
This is the second part of a three-part series. Part one is available here, and part three here.
3. Vatican II and revolution in the official theology of baptism
Vatican II may not have introduced any new teaching about baptism in its formal magisterium. But even so, the Council event is deeply associated with a revolution in baptism’s official theology.
Aspects of this revolution were already occurring before the Council, in some cases with roots going back to the nineteenth century. The Council event still deepened or confirmed these theological changes. Other aspects of the revolution involved official liturgical changes brought about thanks to the Council. These liturgical changes were not in general directly called for by any document of the Council. But they were introduced by Paul VI in the name of applying the Council, and opposition to them is characteristically treated in official circles as opposition to the Council. Continue reading “Vatican II and Crisis in the Theology of Baptism: Part II”