Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Catholic Corner

  • Catholic Doctrine on Capital Punishment

    It is generally not understood. Catholic doctrine allows capital punishment.   Here according to Avery Cardinal Dulles is the gist of it: The doctrine remains what it has been: that the State, in principle, has the right to impose the death penalty on persons convicted of very serious crimes.  [. . .] 1) The purpose of punishment…

  • Kolakowski on the Catholic Church

    I hope the Church is not about to commit 'suicide by pope.'  Pope Francis might do well to meditate on the following truths from the pen of the agnostic philosopher, Leszek Kolakowski.  The following from an interview: It would be silly, foolish, to object to the Church on the grounds that it is "traditionalist". The…

  • The Fact-Free Flamboyance of Francis

    George Will takes the present Pope to task.  Francis is as foolish as Obama.  Both are much exercised over 'climate change' but not so much when it comes to the slaughter of Christians in the Middle East and the destruction of their languages and culture.  If Obama is an Obamination, Bergoglio is an imbroglio of…

  • Peter Kreeft on the Trinity

    This from reader D. B.:   The doctrine of the Trinity does not say there is one God and three Gods, or that God is one Person and three Persons, or that God has one nature and three natures. Those would indeed be self-contradictory ideas. But the doctrine of the Trinity says that there is…

  • The Several-Storied Thomas Merton: Contemplative, Writer, Bohemian, Activist

    An outstanding essay by Robert Royal on the many Mertons and their uneasy unity in one fleshly vehicle. There is of course Merton the Contemplative, the convert to Catholicism who, with the typical zeal of the convert, took it all the way to the austerities of Trappist monasticism, and that at a time (1941) when…

  • A Quasi-Kierkegaardian Poke at Paglia

    I have long enjoyed the writings of Camille Paglia.  But while C. P. is a partial antidote to P. C., the arresting Miss Paglia does not quite merit a plenary MavPhil indulgence endorsement.  One reason is because of what she says in the following excerpt from The Catholic Pagan: 10 Questions for Camille Paglia (via…

  • The Crusades Were Defensive Wars

    Thomas F. Madden: For starters, the Crusades to the East were in every way defensive wars. They were a direct response to Muslim aggression—an attempt to turn back or defend against Muslim conquests of Christian lands. Christians in the eleventh century were not paranoid fanatics. Muslims really were gunning for them. While Muslims can be…

  • Suicide by Pope?

    No doubt you've heard of suicide by cop.  Is the Catholic Church committing suicide by pope?  Francis the Foolish is now regularly coming out with silly statements. This post is a stub. Perhaps I will finish it later.  Or you can take the ball and run with it. 

  • The ‘9/11’ Prescience of Hillaire Belloc

    C. John McCloskey writes: After 9/11, no one should be surprised to learn that Islam is turning the West’s superiority back on itself. What is surprising is that a lone historian saw this coming in the 1930s. [emphasis added.] The great Catholic writer Hilaire Belloc, friend of G.K. Chesterton and a prolific historian, was prescient…

  • Is Catholicism a Religion?

    Is the pope Catholic? I would like to believe that James V. Schall, S. J. has a better understanding of Catholicism than I do, but I just now read the following from his otherwise very good On Revelation: Catholicism is a revelation, not a religion. The word “religion” refers to a virtue by which we…

  • Nicolás Gómez Dávila on the Vatican II Church

    Nicolás Gómez Dávila (1913-1994) is an outstanding aphorist of a decidedly conservative, indeed reactionary, bent. What follows are some of his observations on the Catholic Church of the Second Vatican Council.  I found them here thanks to Karl White.  I've added a couple of comments in blue. The phenomena of the decay of Catholicism are…

  • The Prospects and Perils of Muslim-Catholic Dialogue

    Here is a review of this new book by Robert Reilly. (HT: Monterey Tom) Excerpt: Pope Benedict XVI’s Regensburg Lecture is simply the most famous of the many examples of Christian outreach in the midst of an era in which conflict and misunderstanding seem insoluble by being inevitable. As Mr. Reilly points out, the pope’s…

  • Sex, War, and Moral Rigorism: The Aporetics of Moral Evaluation

    Fr. Robert Barron here fruitfully compares the Catholic Church's rigoristic teaching on matters sexual, with its prohibitions of masturbation, artificial contraception, and extramarital sex, with the rigorism of the Church's teaching with respect to just war.  An excellent article. Although Fr. Barron doesn't say it explicitly, he implies that the two topics are on a…

  • The Pope is a Buffoon When it Comes to Economics

    There is too much buffoonery in high places. It would be nice to be able to expect from popes and presidents a bit of gravitas, a modicum of seriousness, when they are instantiating their institutional roles.  What they do after hours is not our business.  So Pope Francis' clowning around does not inspire respect, any…

  • Miniscule and Majuscule; catholic and Catholic

    I am too catholic to be much of a Catholic.  But if one needs institutionalized religion, one could do far worse, assuming one can stomach the secular-humanist liberal namby-pambification and wussification that the post-Vatican II church can't seem to resist, the dilution of doctrine and tradition that empties into the nauseating Church of Nice. There…