Sep

22

Ensoulment Theories and the Abortion Debate

September 22, 2007 | 8 Comments

“Ensoulment” is the word which describes the point at which the body of the conceptus is said to be informed by a human soul. (The notion of a living being having “no soul” is a philosophical oxymoron, since the soul is the principle of life in a material being.) There are two basic theories of [...]

Sep

22

The Principle of Totality

September 22, 2007 | 2 Comments

On September 14, 1952, Pope Pius XII gave an address to the First International Congress on the Histopathology of the Nervous System. On that occasion, the Holy Father discussed the Principle of Totality at length and in the contrasting terms spelled out in this question. The principle itself is the general notion that, since parts [...]

Sep

22

The Principle of Double Effect in Contemporary Medicine

September 22, 2007 | 4 Comments

Sometimes the same act causes both a good result and an evil result at the same time. The question for the moralist is “Should such an act be performed?” The answer is that is can be, but only if four conditions are met: First, the act itself must be good or indifferent. Second, the good [...]

Sep

22

The Natural Law in Medical Ethics

September 22, 2007 | Leave a Comment

The natural law tradition as explicated by Saint Thomas Aquinas is foundational for Catholic medical ethics. Here is a very brief description of the Natural Law theory of Thomas Aquinas as it affects that field of moral theology. Included in the description are (a) the historical antecedents of Natural Law, (b) the remote and proximate [...]

Sep

16

The Divine Missions and the Indwelling of the Three Persons of the Trinity in the Souls of the Just

September 16, 2007 | 1 Comment

The eternal processions in the Blessed Trinity – the Son’s generation from the Father and the Holy Ghost’s spiration from the Father and the Son – are reflected in creation in the temporal missions of the Son and the Holy Ghost. A divine mission involves a temporal “sending” of one divine Person by another [...]

Sep

10

Recent Posts on Modernism

September 10, 2007 | Leave a Comment

The last three posts were all on Modernism, or subjects closely related to Modernism. This is my (slightly belated) celebration of the 100th anniversary of Pascendi Dominici Gregis, Pope St. Pius X’s wonderful encyclical condemning that heresy. The encyclical was published on September 8, 1907, the Feast of Our Lady’s Nativity.
The vigilant pope’s definitive condemnation [...]

Sep

10

How the Popes and Other Catholic Leaders in the 19th Century Responded to Modernity

September 10, 2007 | Leave a Comment

The eighteenth-century Enlightenment mounted a severe offensive against the Church, one which combined various malignant cultural and intellectual trends that had gradually come into ascendancy since the Renaissance. “For the most part, the Church did not respond to this attack very well.”[1] However, the nineteenth century saw a change in this, “an immense religious revival, [...]

Sep

10

The Relationship of Americanism to Modernism

September 10, 2007 | Leave a Comment

It would be a gross oversimplification to put an equal sign between the words “Americanism” and “Modernism,” as if the former were merely the American embodiment of the latter. However, while we must avoid this facile identification of the two, so too must we appreciate the points of agreement between them. Not only were there [...]

Sep

9

What did St. Pius X mean when he called Modernism “the synthesis of all heresies”?

September 9, 2007 | 7 Comments

This phrase – “the synthesis of all heresies” – shows up toward the end of the Encyclical Pascendi Dominici Gregis, placed in the context of a rhetorical question.[1] After an apology for taking so long to explore the entire scope of the Modernist doctrines, even disclosing “certain uncouth terms in use among the Modernists,”[2] the [...]

Sep

6

How the Renaissance Papacy contributed to the Reformation

September 6, 2007 | 3 Comments

The Catholic historian, A. Dufourcq, called the papacy of 1447 to 1527, la papauté princière, “the papacy of princes.”[1] This trenchant appellation conveys Fr. Maurice Sheehan’s meaning when he says “these popes were more men of culture or rulers than popes.”[2] Regardless of the scandalous particulars of their military extravagances, personal profligacy, or political [...]

Sep

1

The Relationship between the Virtues and the Gifts of the Holy Ghost

September 1, 2007 | 3 Comments

The gifts of the Holy Ghost resemble the infused virtues in a number of ways. Both are operative habits which have God as their efficient cause and the perfection of man as their final cause. Both reside in the human faculties and have right behavior as their material object.
Where they differ is in their motor [...]