Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Catholic Corner

  • Are Atheists Vincibly Ignorant?

    In Catholic thought there is what is called vincible ignorance. Here is a definition: Lack of knowledge for which a person is morally responsible. It is culpable ignorance because it could be cleared up if the person used sufficient diligence. One is said to be simply (but culpably) ignorant if one fails to make enough…

  • More on the Hypostatic Union

    I am very impressed with Thomas Joseph White, OP, The Incarnate Lord: A Thomistic Study in Christology, The Catholic University of America Press, 2017, xiv + 534 pp. It deserves to be called magisterial, the work of a magister, a master.  I am presently working through Chapter One, "The Ontology of the Hypostatic Union." White and…

  • Thomas Joseph White on the Hypostatic Union: Questions

    Vito Caiati writes,  I am struggling, in particular, to understand what [Thomas Joseph] White is proposing with regard to the hypostatic union on pages 82-84 [of The Incarnate Lord: A Thomistic Study in Christology, The Catholic University of America Press, 2017].  He follows Aquinas in affirming “a substantial union of God and man. . .…

  • The Cross Won, but the Battle Never Ends

    I ended my European tour in June at Rome where all roads are said to lead.  After hours of prayer and meditation in Santa Maria Maggiore, I spent a long time in the vicinity of the Coliseum where I noticed something I had missed on previous visits: The brutal Romans contributed mightily to civilization, but…

  • James Soriano, The Sin of Silence

    Yesterday I quoted Madeleine Albright, Secretary of State (1997-2001) in the Clinton Administration: "There's a special place in hell for women who don't help each other." The context was Albright's urging of women to vote for a woman, Hillary Clinton. This just in from James Soriano,  "a retired Foreign Service Officer who spent three decades in the…

  • The Pope as Supreme Being

    Is this what happens when a Jesuit becomes pope?

  • Paul Gottfried on the Destructive Left

    Here: The pulling down and defacing of statues by the cultural Left has now spread from the states of the onetime Confederacy to the West Coast. There, Democratic politicians in alliance with various leftist activists are removing what we are told are offensive images from public view. This iconoclastic fury has spread from removing statues…

  • ‘Catholic’ Universities More of a Joke than the Roman Church Itself

    Defund the cultural polluters! They understand money if nothing else.  Dreher: Christine Fair is a Provost’s Distinguished Associate Professor at Georgetown University, and a troubled person, judging by her Twitter feed. For example: Look at thus chorus of entitled white men justifying a serial rapist’s arrogated entitlement.All of them deserve miserable deaths while feminists laugh as they take…

  • Why the Catholic Church is Breaking Apart

    Jonathan V. Last. Essential reading.

  • Corruptio Optimi Pessima

    The corruption of the best is the worst. The evidence mounts. An Irish correspondent sends use here. Following the dark revelations of the McCarrick scandal, former seminary formator, Father David Marsden, decided it was time to go public on the real reason he resigned from Maynooth and why he remains deeply concerned about the presence…

  • The Role of Concupiscence in the Decline and Fall of the Catholic Church

    The role of concupiscence in dimming our spiritual sight has long been recognized by many, among them, such luminaries as Plato, Augustine, and Blaise Pascal: There are some who see clearly that man has no other enemy but concupiscence, which turns him away from God. (Pensées, Krailsheimer #269, p. 110) Has anyone pointed out that…

  • My Relation to Catholicism

    Here at Maverick Philosopher: Strictly Philosophical.

  • Bergoglio the Environmentalist

    Image copied from here. This is one pontiff who has his priorities straight. Priestly pederasty is no problem; straws in the ocean are the problem! Is this the last straw? Will Bergoglio the Boneheaded  perhaps be the last pope as the Roman church collapses under the weight of its own decadence or breaks apart in…

  • The Plot to Bring Down Bergoglio

    A view from the Left.

  • Stupid Catholics with a Death Wish

    Here Vito Caiati responds: On "Stupid Catholics with a Death Wish," we should keep in mind the words of the chief gravedigger of the faith, your aptly dubbed "Bergoglio the Benighted”:  “È vero che l’idea della conquista appartiene allo spirito dell’islam. Ma si potrebbe interpretare secondo la stessa idea di conquista la fine del Vangelo di…