A second Honorius?

Like his predecessor Honorius, Pope Francis failed clearly to uphold traditional teaching at a time the Church was sick from heresy.  So I argue in my contribution to a symposium on Francis in the latest issue of The Lamp.

Aquinas and prudential judgment

In contemporary debates in Catholic moral theology, a distinction is often drawn between actions that are flatly ruled out in principle and those whose permissibility or impermissibility is a matter of prudential judgment.  For example, it is often noted that abortion is wrong always and in principle, whereas how many immigrants a country ought to allow in and under what conditions are matters of prudential judgment.  But exactly what does this mean, and how do we tell the difference between the cases?