Tuesday, March 5, 2024

When do popes speak ex cathedra?

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Consider four groups that, one might think, couldn’t be more different: Pope Francis’s most zealous defenders; sedevacantists; Protestants; ...
54 comments:
Sunday, February 25, 2024

What counts as magisterial teaching?

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Popes speak infallibly when they either proclaim some doctrine ex cathedra , or reiterate some doctrine that has already been taught infalli...
85 comments:
Monday, February 19, 2024

A comment on comments

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Dear reader, if it seems your comment has not been approved, sometimes it actually has been approved even if you don’t see it.  The reason ...
12 comments:
Saturday, February 17, 2024

Avicenna, Aquinas, and Leibniz on the argument from contingency

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Avicenna, Aquinas, and Leibniz all present versions of what would today be called the argument from contingency for the existence of a divi...
96 comments:
Wednesday, February 7, 2024

The heresy with a thousand faces

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In a new article at Postliberal Order , I discuss the disturbing parallels between the woke phenomenon and the medieval Catharist or Albigen...
228 comments:
Saturday, January 27, 2024

Immortal souls at West Point

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Had a great time visiting the United States Military Academy at West Point this week for a Thomistic Institute talk on the theme “Do You Hav...
27 comments:
Monday, January 22, 2024

Voluntarism in The Vanishing

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The reputation of 1993’s The Vanishing has suffered because critics judge it inferior to the 1988 Dutch movie of which it was a remake.  Bu...
38 comments:
Wednesday, January 17, 2024

Avicenna’s flying man

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Peter Adamson’s new book Ibn Sīnā (Avicenna): A Very Short Introduction is an excellent primer on the great medieval Islamic philosopher.  ...
24 comments:
Wednesday, January 10, 2024

Progress report

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My friends, it exists. More news later.
149 comments:

Jesuit Britain?

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My review of the anthology Projections of Spanish Jesuit Scholasticism on British Thought: New Horizons in Politics, Law, and Rights , edite...
9 comments:
Tuesday, January 2, 2024

New Year’s open thread

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Let’s open the New Year with an open thread.  Now’s the time at last to bring up that otherwise off-topic comment that keeps getting deleted...
234 comments:
Friday, December 29, 2023

What is a “couple”?

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In my recent article on the controversy over Fiducia Supplicans , I noted three problems with the document’s qualified permission of blessi...
129 comments:
Friday, December 22, 2023

The scandal of Fiducia Supplicans

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By now many readers of this blog will likely have heard about Fiducia Supplicans and the worldwide controversy it has generated, which may ...
144 comments:
Sunday, December 17, 2023

The Aristotelian proof on Within Reason

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Some time back, Alex O’Connor and I recorded a discussion of the Aristotelian argument from motion for the existence of God, for his Within ...
207 comments:
Tuesday, December 12, 2023

On Vallier, Vermeule, and straw men (Updated)

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Over at his Substack, Kevin Vallier responds to my recent review at The Josias of his book All the Kingdoms of the World .  Vallier claim...
58 comments:
Friday, December 8, 2023

Contra Vallier on integralism

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Over at The Josias , I critique Kevin Vallier’s new book All the Kingdoms of the World: On Radical Religious Alternatives to Liberalism .
83 comments:
Sunday, November 26, 2023

Ryle on microphysics and the everyday world

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Science, we’re often told, gives us a description of the world radically at odds with common sense.  Physicist Arthur Eddington’s famous “tw...
147 comments:
Saturday, November 18, 2023

What is free speech for?

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In a new article at Postliberal Order , I discuss the teleological foundations of, and limitations on, the right to free speech, as these ar...
50 comments:
Thursday, November 9, 2023

All One in Christ at Public Discourse

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At Public Discourse , John F. Doherty kindly reviews my book All One in Christ: A Catholic Critique of Racism and Critical Race Theory .  F...
50 comments:
Saturday, November 4, 2023

The Thomist's middle ground in natural theology

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The Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition holds that knowledge must begin with sensory experience but that it can nevertheless go well beyond any...
108 comments:
Tuesday, October 24, 2023

Cartwright on reductionism in science

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In her superb recent book A Philosopher Looks at Science , Nancy Cartwright revisits some of the longstanding themes of her work in the phil...
119 comments:
Thursday, October 12, 2023

Thomism and the Nouvelle Théologie

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My review of Jon Kirwan and Matthew Minerd’s important new anthology The Thomistic Response to the Nouvelle Théologie appears in the Novem...
120 comments:
Tuesday, October 10, 2023

A little logic is a dangerous thing

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Some famous and lovely lines from Alexander Pope’s “An Essay on Criticism” observe: A little learning is a dangerous thing; Drink deep, ...
40 comments:
Monday, October 2, 2023

Michael F. Flynn (1947-2023)

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It is with much sadness that I report that Michael F. Flynn, well-known science fiction writer and longtime friend of this blog, has passed ...
32 comments:
Wednesday, September 27, 2023

Aquinas on the will’s fixity after death

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My essay “Aquinas on the Fixity of the Will After Death” appears in New Blackfriars .  (It’s behind a paywall, I’m afraid.)  Here’s the abs...
110 comments:
Tuesday, September 26, 2023

Augustine on false community

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In a new article at Postliberal Order , I discuss the perverse forms of human community identified and criticized by Augustine in the Confes...
13 comments:
Wednesday, September 20, 2023

The Death Penalty and Genesis 9:6: A Reply to Mastnjak (Guest article by Timothy Finlay)

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Genesis 9:6 famously states: “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; for God made man in his own image” (RSV). This...
74 comments:
Sunday, September 10, 2023

Hartshorne on the project of natural theology

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Process theism denies some of the key attributes ascribed to God by classical theism, such as immutability and impassibility.  Charles Hart...
145 comments:
Wednesday, August 30, 2023

Fastiggi on Capital Punishment and the Change to the Catechism, Part II

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In 2018, Pope Francis authorized a revision of the Catechism of the Catholic Church , which now states that “the death penalty is inadmissib...
145 comments:
Saturday, August 26, 2023

Fastiggi on Capital Punishment and the Change to the Catechism, Part I

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In 2018, Pope Francis revised the section of the Catechism of the Catholic Church dealing with the topic of capital punishment, so that it ...
92 comments:
Wednesday, August 23, 2023

Aquinas and Nietzsche on the politics of envy

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Recently, I joined Postliberal Order as a regular contributor.  Today, my essay “Against the Politics of Envy” appears at the site.  It di...
51 comments:
Monday, August 21, 2023

All One in Christ on EWTN Bookmark

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Some time back I was interviewed about my book All One in Christ: A Catholic Critique of Racism and Critical Race Theory for EWTN Bookmark ...
38 comments:
Sunday, August 13, 2023

Haugeland on hylomorphism

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In his essay “Ontological Supervenience” (in his anthology Having Thought: Essays in the Metaphysics of Mind ), John Haugeland puts forward ...
67 comments:
Friday, August 4, 2023

Open-minded open thread

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It’s time for an open thread.  So dust off those otherwise off-topic comments you’ve been aching to post.  Because from M.C. Escher to MC Ha...
329 comments:
Friday, July 28, 2023

Stove and Searle on the rhetorical subversion of common sense

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One of the stranger aspects of contemporary political and intellectual life is the frequency with which commentators put forward extremely d...
156 comments:
Monday, July 24, 2023

A comment on the Lofton affair

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For any readers of my recent reply to Michael Lofton who have not been following events at Twitter and YouTube, Lofton has, over the course...
42 comments:
Friday, July 21, 2023

Lofton’s YouTube straw man (Updated)

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There’s a popular mode of online intellectual discourse that I rather dislike, which might be labeled “the extended YouTube hot take.”  It i...
74 comments:
Wednesday, July 19, 2023

What is classical theism?

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Recently, I was interviewed by John DeRosa for the Classical Theism Podcast.  The focus of our discussion is my essay “What is Classical The...
88 comments:
Tuesday, July 18, 2023

Archbishop Fernandez’s clarification

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Recently, it was announced that Archbishop Víctor Manuel Fernandez would become the new prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Fai...
30 comments:
Friday, July 14, 2023

Cardinal Newman, Archbishop Fernandez, and the “suspended Magisterium” thesis

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St. John Henry Newman famously noted that during the Arian crisis, “the governing body of the Church came short” in fighting the heresy, an...
48 comments: