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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

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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Ralliement: Two Distinctions

by Adrian Vermeule

A few analytic notes on ralliement — a notion stemming originally from Leo XIII’s 1892 encyclical Au Milieu des Sollicitudes, which urged French Catholics to rally to the Third French Republic in order to transform it from within. The idea has become more general, suggesting that Catholics would do well to rally to and work within a liberal-democratic political order. I have two conceptual distinctions to sketch, merely in the hope of clarifying the terms of the conversation. Continue reading “Ralliement: Two Distinctions”

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Hans Urs von Balthasar’s Critique of Integralism

by Edmund Waldstein, O.Cist.

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”

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The Josias Podcast, Episode V: Liberalism (Part 2)

Restlessly seek power after power ceasing only in death, or just try to be a little crueler every day? Wherein the gang flows along the surface of life’s path as they please; unleash Newman’s critique of political liberalism; ponder what it means for liberal education that Basil and Julian were fellow-students at the schools of Athens; decry the shortcomings and superficialities of great books educations; and ask whether Christians can be gentlemen in the end.

All this and much more!

Bibliography for pts 1 & 2:

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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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”

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The Josias Podcast, Episode V: Liberalism (Part 1)

 

The philosophers have only interpreted liberals in various ways. The point, however, is to own them.

Wherein liberalism is said in many ways, and revealed in Strauss’s war on the Redemptorists, and whether or not the Abbot of Heiligenkreuz should have the power of life or death over local peasants. The hosts are joined by Felix de St Vincent, for a rousing discussion over what liberalism is, when it began, and whether it is necessary to be “cruel to be kind, in the right measure.”

Stay tuned for part 2 where we determine whether opposing liberalism means embracing cruelty, discuss Cardinal Newman’s definition of a gentleman, and much more.

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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The Philosophy of Art

by Thomas Storck

The word art generally suggests to most people some actual artistic creation, a sculpture or painting or the like. Or it might suggest a technique for making such an object. Either of these could be meant by a phrase such as, He is studying art, meaning either that he is studying works of art, art history, or that he is studying how to create works of art himself. The second of these two senses of art is closer to the classic definition of art as given by Aristotle in his Ethics VI, 4 as “the reasoned state of capacity to make” or “a rational faculty exercised in making something.”[1] This definition was repeated and made his own by St. Thomas Aquinas, who expressed it in Latin by the phrase recta ratio factibilium, the right conception or reason or understanding of a thing that is to be made.[2] The twentieth-century philosopher Jacques Maritain explains this definition in these words: Continue reading “The Philosophy of Art”

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The Josias Podcast, Episode IV: Nature, Natural Ends, and the Enlightenment (Part 2)

Building off our previous conversation, this episode (iTunes, Google Play) takes the question of nature and natural ends more into the modern era. What’s going on with natural order in the work of modern philosophers like Descartes, Hume, and Kant? What should we think about all of this? What does Pope Francis say? We promise it won’t put you to sleep, unless you’re trying to fall asleep.

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.

 

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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The Josias Podcast, Episode IV: Nature, Natural Ends, and the Enlightenment (Part 1)

Do rocks have purpose? Are they essentially headed somewhere? What about plants? Humans? The stars? In part one of this episode (iTunes, Google Play) we touch on a bunch of questions related to the idea that the universe is ordered and things have intrinsic ends. The episode kicks off with some awesome music taken from the film Koyaanisqatsi, and continues with a riveting discussion of Aristotle, celestial bodies, and the implications of the idea of intrinsic ends for our worldview at large.

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.

 

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Spotify | Android | Blubrry | Email | RSS

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On the City of God Against the Pagans

by Alan Fimister

The doctrine of the two cities, which finds its greatest expression in the work we are to examine today, is not the construct of some theologian, however great. It is an essential element in God’s revelation to mankind, vital to the correct understanding of the personal and institutional history of each individual and society and of every book of scripture from Genesis to Revelation. The great Pope Leo XIII frequently alluded to this doctrine in his encyclical letters, not least in the thundering opening of Humanum Genus promulgated in 1884.

“The race of man, after its miserable fall from God, the Creator and the Giver of heavenly gifts, ‘through the envy of the devil,’ separated into two diverse and opposite parts, of which the one steadfastly contends for truth and virtue, the other for those things which are contrary to virtue and to truth. The one is the kingdom of God on earth, namely, the true Church of Jesus Christ; and those who desire from their heart to be united with it, so as to gain salvation, must of necessity serve God and His only-begotten Son with their whole mind and with an entire will. The other is the kingdom of Satan, in whose possession and control are all whosoever follow the fatal example of their leader and of our first parents, those who refuse to obey the divine and eternal law, and who have many aims of their own in contempt of God, and many aims also against God. This twofold kingdom St. Augustine keenly discerned and described after the manner of two cities, contrary in their laws because striving for contrary objects; and with a subtle brevity he expressed the efficient cause of each in these words: ‘Two loves formed two cities: the love of self, reaching even to contempt of God, an earthly city; and the love of God, reaching to contempt of self, a heavenly one.’ At every period of time each has been in conflict with the other, with a variety and multiplicity of weapons and of warfare, although not always with equal ardour and assault.”

Continue reading “On the City of God Against the Pagans”