Tuesday, November 4, 2025

Cardinal Fernández on doctrinal clarity

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From Twitter/X today , apropos of Mater Populi Fidelis :
30 comments:
Friday, October 24, 2025

There are two sides to the Catholic immigration debate

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Everyone knows that the Catholic Church teaches that wealthy nations ought to welcome immigrants.  It is less well known that she also teach...
78 comments:
Saturday, October 18, 2025

Vallicella on Immortal Souls

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At his Substack Philosophy in Progress , my old buddy Bill Vallicella engages with my book Immortal Souls: A Treatise on Human Nature .  Bi...
98 comments:
Friday, October 10, 2025

Fastiggi and Sonna on Catholicism and capital punishment (Updated)

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Recently, theologian Robert Fastiggi was interviewed about the topic of the Church and the death penalty by apologist Suan Sonna on his pod...
106 comments:
Monday, September 29, 2025

Against flag burning

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In a new essay at Postliberal Order , I argue that burning the flag as an expression of contempt for one’s country is contrary to the virtue...
100 comments:
Sunday, September 28, 2025

John Searle (1932-2025)

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Daily Nous has reported that John Searle has died.  Searle was one of the true greats of contemporary philosophy, having made huge and las...
18 comments:
Saturday, September 20, 2025

How not to limit free speech

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I am by no means a free speech absolutist.  In an article at Postliberal Order a couple of years ago, I set out the natural law position on...
79 comments:
Friday, September 12, 2025

Thucydides’ times and ours

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All of my readers will no doubt have been following the horrific and heartbreaking news of the assassination of conservative activist Charli...
137 comments:
Saturday, September 6, 2025

Is mandatory vaccination intrinsically wrong?

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Florida governor Ron DeSantis and state Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo have announced that they will be ending all mandatory vaccination...
79 comments:
Friday, August 29, 2025

Maimonides on negative theology

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Negative theology (also known as apophatic theology) is the approach to understanding the divine nature that emphasizes that what we know ab...
12 comments:
Monday, August 18, 2025

Diabolical modernity

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Satan tempted Christ to avoid the cross, and offer us instead the satisfaction of our appetites, marvels or wonders, and political salvation...
54 comments:
Tuesday, August 12, 2025

Hanson on observation

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According to the conception of scientific method traditionally associated with Francis Bacon, science ought to begin with the accumulation o...
30 comments:
Wednesday, August 6, 2025

Newman on capital punishment

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It was announced last week that Pope Leo XIV will be declaring St. John Henry Newman to be a Doctor of the Church.  As the Catholic Encyclop...
48 comments:
Wednesday, July 30, 2025

Suffering for the truth (Updated)

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As many readers will have heard by now, last week Detroit’s new archbishop Edward Weisenburger suddenly fired three well-known professors a...
30 comments:
Thursday, July 24, 2025

A postliberal middle ground on trade

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In my latest article at Postliberal Order , I defend a postliberal middle ground position between free trade dogmatism and rigid protectioni...
10 comments:
Saturday, July 19, 2025

Heeding Anscombe on just war doctrine

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Elizabeth Anscombe’s “War and Murder” is a magnificent essay, an intellectually rigorous and morally serious defense of traditional Christi...
92 comments:
Friday, July 11, 2025

A second Honorius?

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Like his predecessor Honorius, Pope Francis failed clearly to uphold traditional teaching at a time the Church was sick from heresy.  So I a...
38 comments:
Thursday, July 10, 2025

Aquinas and prudential judgment

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In contemporary debates in Catholic moral theology, a distinction is often drawn between actions that are flatly ruled out in principle and ...
53 comments:
Monday, June 30, 2025

Talk it out

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Time again for an open thread.   Now’s your chance to get that off-topic comment off your chest.  The burning philosophical or theological q...
225 comments:
Wednesday, June 25, 2025

Solidarity

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The ideal to strive for in international relations is what in the natural law tradition and Catholic social teaching is called solidarity . ...
13 comments:
Monday, June 23, 2025

Preventive war and the U.S. attack on Iran

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Last week I argued that the U.S. should stay out of Israel’s war with Iran.  America has now entered the war by bombing three facilities as...
61 comments:
Saturday, June 21, 2025

Shields on Aquinas on the Unmoved Mover

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My review of Daniel Shields’ important recent book Nature and Nature’s God: A Philosophical and Scientific Defense of Aquinas’s Unmoved Mov...
4 comments:
Tuesday, June 17, 2025

The U.S. should stay out of Israel’s war with Iran (Updated)

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Let me say at the outset that I agree with the view that it would be bad for the Iranian regime to acquire a nuclear weapon.  How close it i...
86 comments:
Monday, June 16, 2025

Immortal Souls in Religion & Liberty

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In the Summer 2025 issue of the Acton Institute’s Religion & Liberty , David Weinberger kindly reviews my book Immortal Souls: A Treatis...
5 comments:
Wednesday, June 11, 2025

Riots should be suppressed swiftly and harshly

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In an article at Postliberal Order , I argue that the Trump administration has the right under natural law to intervene to suppress riots of...
134 comments:
Friday, June 6, 2025

MacIntyre on Hegel on human action

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Phrenology was the pseudoscience that aimed to link psychological traits to the morphology of the skull.  Physiognomy was the pseudoscience ...
23 comments:
Friday, May 30, 2025

Lamont on Trump, abortion, and Ukraine

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In an article at One Peter Five , philosopher John Lamont warns his fellow Catholics and traditionalists that on issues such as abortion and...
59 comments:

What is ideology?

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What does the pejorative use of “ideology” amount to, and what is it to be an “ideologue”?  I consider some common accounts before developin...
5 comments:
Thursday, May 22, 2025

Alasdair MacIntyre (1929-2025)

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Alasdair MacIntyre has died. His classic After Virtue had a tremendous effect on me when I was an undergrad and still in my atheist days, g...
9 comments:
Saturday, May 17, 2025

Pope Leo XIV on families and the family of nations

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Yesterday, Pope Leo XIV delivered an address to the diplomatic corps at the Vatican .   It was brief and very simple, but elegant and deep a...
82 comments:
Thursday, May 8, 2025

Greenland and the ethics of annexation

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President Trump has repeatedly called for U.S. acquisition of Greenland.  The motivations have to do with Greenland’s strategic location an...
76 comments:

Pope Leo XIV

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Let us pray for our new pope, Leo XIV.  His choices to take a traditional name and to appear in traditional papal garb (as Benedict XVI did ...
38 comments:
Monday, April 28, 2025

The ethics of wealth and poverty

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In my latest essay at Postliberal Order , I discuss what Christ, the Fathers of the Church, and Aristotle have to say about the moral hazard...
18 comments:
Sunday, April 27, 2025

Catholicism and immigration: Reply to Cory and Sweeney

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Recently, my article  “A Catholic Defense of Enforcing Immigration Laws”  appeared at  Public Discourse .  Both Therese Cory and Terence Sw...
7 comments:
Tuesday, April 22, 2025

The pope’s first duty

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Let us pray for the repose of the soul of Pope Francis.  We ought to pray no less fervently that God in His mercy will bless His Church with...
35 comments:
Thursday, April 17, 2025

The two thieves

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Christ was not crucified alone.  Of those who died with him, Luke’s Gospel tells us the following: There were also two others, criminals, ...
23 comments:
Tuesday, April 8, 2025

On the tariff crisis

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Like many others across the political spectrum, I’ve been alarmed at the extreme tariff policy President Trump announced last week, which wa...
98 comments:
Sunday, April 6, 2025

On pride and vainglory

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Pride, as Aquinas defines it in De Malo , is “the inordinate desire for pre-eminence” (Question 8, Article 2). With Augustine and the Christ...
34 comments:
Friday, April 4, 2025

Scholastic regress arguments

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Many are familiar with arguments to the effect that an infinite regress of causes is impossible, as Aquinas holds in several of his Five Way...
33 comments:
Saturday, March 29, 2025

Immortal Souls on the Classical Theism Podcast

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Recently I was interviewed at some length by John DeRosa for the Classical Theism Podcast , about my book Immortal Souls: A Treatise on Huma...
10 comments: