Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Catholic Corner

  • Ash Wednesday

    "Remember, man, thou art dust and unto dust thou shalt return." Memento, homo, quia pulvis es et in pulverem reverteris. This warning, from the Catholic liturgy for Ash Wednesday, is based on Genesis 3, 19: In sudore vultus tui vesceris pane, donec revertaris in terram de qua sumptus es: quia pulvis es et in pulverem reverteris. How real can we…

  • Subsidiarity as Bulwark against the Left’s Assault on Civil Society

    David A. Bosnich, The Principle of Subsidiarity: One of the key principles of Catholic social thought is known as the principle of subsidiarity. This tenet holds that nothing should be done by a larger and more complex organization which can be done as well by a smaller and simpler organization. In other words, any activity…

  • Bergoglio the Benighted Aims to End Latin Mass Permission

    There was and is something profoundly stupid about the Vatican II 'reforms' even if we view matters from a purely immanent 'sociological' point of view. Suppose Roman Catholicism is, metaphysically, buncombe to its core, nothing but an elaborate  human construction in the face of a meaningless universe, a construction  kept going by human needs and desires noble…

  • Tom and Van: A Tale of Two Idealists and their Disillusionment

    Thomas Merton and Jean van Heijenoort were both studies in youthful idealism. Both made drastic life decisions early on, and both sacrificed much for their respective ideals. Van joined Leon Trotsky to save the world rather than attend the prestigious Ecole Normale in pursuit of a bourgeois career. While Van was motivated by a desire…

  • The Question of Private Judgment

    I have commented critically on the Roman Catholic teaching on indulgences. One who refuses to accept, or questions, a teaching of the Church on faith or morals may be accused of reliance upon private judgment and failure to submit to the Magisterium or teaching authority of the Church.  Two quick observations on this accusation. First, for…

  • On the Specificity of Traditional Catholic Claims

    Just over the transom from Vito Caiati: I want to thank you for recommending Garrigou-Lagrange's L'éternelle vie et la profondeur de l'âme, which I am reading now and enjoying, while casting an eye of the relevant sections St. Thomas’ Summa Theologiae, with which I was already somewhat familiar.  I find Garrigou-Lagrange's thoughts on the nature,…

  • Michael Liccione on Private and Collective Judgment

    Herewith, some comments on an excerpt from Michael Liccione, Faith, Private Judgment, Doubt, and Dissent. So understood, private judgment can yield at least a measure of certitude, but not in any fashion certainty. I agree that private judgment cannot deliver certainty, if objective certainty is in question. But I should think that the same is…

  • Catholics Defending Communists!?

    Hats off to Rod Dreher for condemning the Jesuit magazine America for publishing an article defending commies.  Excerpt: Wait a minute. No fair-minded and intellectually curious person could object to an essay in a Catholic magazine criticizing the excesses of capitalism. It’s also easy to see the justification for publishing an essay defending democratic socialism…

  • Bergoglio the Secularist on the Miracle of the Loaves and the Fishes

    Dr. Vito Caiati reports: Something that the Argentinian did this week really annoyed me. Specifically, in his homily on the Solemnity of Corpus Christi, Bergoglio continued his devious discouragement of belief in miracles, flagitiously denying the great nature miracle by which Christ fed a multitude with just five loaves of bread and two fish. As…

  • Integralism in Three Sentences

    Here: Catholic Integralism is a tradition of thought that rejects the liberal separation of politics from concern with the end of human life, holding that political rule must order man to his final goal. Since, however, man has both a temporal and an eternal end, integralism holds that there are two powers that rule him:…

  • Synchronicity, Alain, Monasticism, Sense of Life, and the Unseen Order

    The other morning I recalled the passage in Alain where he recorded his boyhood visit to the abbey at La Trappe and his visceral revulsion at the life of the monks. So I pulled his On Happiness from the shelf and to my surprise opened right to the passage in question. Coincidence, or synchronicity? I'll…

  • It Used to be Hard to be a Good Catholic

    John Fante, Full of Life, HarperCollins 2002, pp. 86-87. Originally published in 1952. I liked an atheistic wife. Her position made matters easy for me. It simplified a planned family. We had no scruples about contraceptives. Ours had been a civil marriage. We were not chained by religious tenets. Divorce was there, any time we…

  • CORRUPTIO OPTIMI PESSIMA

    nymag.com   Andrew Sullivan: The Corruption of the Vatican’s Gay Elite Has Been Exposed

  • A Christological and Mariological Query That Leads into the Philosophy of Language

    Theme music: What If God Was One of Us  (just a slob like one of us)? My favorite Oregonian luthier, Dave Bagwill, checks in: Karl White wrote in your post of 12-6-18: "If Jesus is a person of the Godhead then it must hold that his essence is immutable and above contingent change, particularly in…

  • Word of the Day: Dégringolade

    Merriam-Webster:   a rapid decline or deterioration (as in strength, position, or condition) : DOWNFALL Example from Why I Left by Jim Holt: I will now confess to the obvious: the foregoing account of my spiritual dégringolade, while true in every detail, is a caricature. My alienation from the Catholic Church was not mainly intellectual. It was moral, even…