Devotion
The penultimate section of Chapter IV, Rooted in God, is about devotion. Here are the concluding two paragraphs: If we want to fix on one of the numberless examples of devotion offered to us by the saints, we can picture to ourselves St. Theresa of the Child Jesus in here last illness, dragging her fevered, […]
What of myself?
The concluding paragraph of Chapter III, The Hand of God: With unwearied insistence the old Jewish prophets used to remind their people that “peace is the fruit of righteousness,” that the only true basis of personal or national security is obedience to God’s law. Peace is indeed God’s promised gift to us if we only […]
Pieper, Preface, Four Cardinal Virtues—Why this “certain medieval writer,” Thomas Aquinas?
In the Preface to Four Cardinal Virtues, Josef Pieper explains his attention to the “doctrine of virtue.” He notes the unselfconscious way in which the virtues supplied a framework for ethical speculation in the emergence and continued tradition of Western thought. Pieper describes the intellectual framework supplied by the four cardinal virtues as “one of the […]
God’s Fourfold Presence
Theologians speak of four different ways in which God is present in creation. Firstly, he is in all things by what is called his presence (using the word in a restricted sense), insofar as all things are naked and open to his eyes, that is, insofar as he sees all things; then he is said to […]
The Crucifixion as Promulgation of a Law (WHTT: Is It Basket Weaving?)
[T]he crucifixion was not only an act in history; it was also the utterance of a judgment and the promulgation of a law. The law says that he who would save his life must lose it; the things of this life have value in that they provide the material for renouncement. Only through this renouncement, […]
Centessimus Annus ¶ 44, the Four Marks of the Church, and the Four Marks of the U.S. Constitution
I recently had occasion to revisit a blog post I wrote in April 2020 about the evaluation of separation of powers in Catholic social teaching: Centessimus Annus ¶ 44 and the U.S. Constitution. In it, I presented a multiple-choice question: * * * Four key commitments of the Constitution of the United States of America are […]
Centessimus Annus § 3: Reading and Re-Reading with the Church’s Tradition
Near the beginning of Centesimus Annus, St. John Paul II sets out three different kinds of movement in his “re-reading” of Rerum Novarum. One is to “‘look back’ at the text itself.” The purpose of this is “to discover anew the richness of the fundamental principles which it formulated for dealing with the question of the […]
Satisfied Man (a couple verses and a refrain for law students)
Can listening to the Hillbilly Thomists help you in the study of law? No doubt. Consider the first two verses and the refrain of “Satisfied Man”: You can put it in a contractWrap it in a conceptYou could put it in an advertYou could sing it with a rhymeBut if the law of the land […]
The Parable of the Persistent Widow
Then he told them a parable about the necessity for them to pray always without becoming weary. He said, “There was a judge in a certain town who neither feared God nor respected any human being. And a widow in that town used to come to him and say, ‘Render a just decision for me […]
Bishop Daniel Flores — What Was Really the Case (Lamp 2022)
Bishop Daniel Flores of the Diocese of Brownville, Texas has a meditation bearing this title in the Assumption 2022 issue of The Lamp magazine. Editor Matthew Walther describes it as “one of the most affecting pieces of writing I have come upon in ages.” Here’s the opening: Hell and the judgment that would send me […]
