A THEOLOGIAN’S QUESTIONS
Visitors to this website will be aware of the position we have adopted, in the face of opposition from members of the Catholic clergy and laity, on the authority of the Second Vatican Council. The Chiesa website has just published an opinion piece by Canadian theologian John R T Lamont, who has taught at the Catholic Institute of Sydney and at the University of Notre Dame in Australia, which bears on this question—http://chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it/articolo/1350219?eng=y. That paper addresses issues raised by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in respect of the attitude of the Society of St. Pius X to certain determinations of the Second Vatican Council. We refer it to our readers for their careful consideration. For those who are content to read it on this website we have reproduced the article in pdf format here.
ITALY, THE VATICAN & DR MORARO
In December last an Australian academic, Dr Piero Moraro, criticised certain advice by Archbishop Bregantini of the Italian Bishops Conference to the Italian Government in respect of the current economic crisis in Italy. His criticisms had some merit; and some shortcomings. more
SCIENCE AND ARISTOTLE'S AETHER
In 2004, American philosopher, Christopher A Decaen, published in 'The Thomist' a remarkable paper on Aristotle's aether. This commentary on what he had to say there is an attempt to develop the consequences of Aristotle's thought - as refined by St Thomas Aquinas - in the light of modern science.
This is a substantial revision of the commentary which appeared on this website on 25th May 2008. more
AFTER AMERICA
This is a critique of Mark Steyn's praiseworthy study of America's moral, social and economic decline, 'After America'. more
FAILURE OF THE EXECUTIVE POWER
This is a revision of a paper that appeared on this website in August 2005.
It deals with the problems that arose for Catholics on the interplay of two influences, one from outside the Church and the other, the more important, from within. more
ANOTHER LEO XIII
It can only be a matter of time before Almighty God endows His Church with another pope of the calibre of Leo XIII. more
JOHN XXIII AND VETERUM SAPIENTIA
On 22nd February 1962, in the Apostolic Constitution, Veterum Sapientia, Bl.
John XXIII wrote as follows: "[I]t is necessary that the language the Church employs be not only universal but immutable. For if the truths of the Catholic Church were to be handed on via one or other of more recent and malleable languages, no one of which is superior to another, the meaning of these truths, varied as they are, would not be manifest to everyone with sufficient clarity and precision. There would, moreover, be no language which could serve as a common and constant norm by which to gauge the exact meaning of other renderings. But Latin is indeed such a language. It is set and unchanging. It has long since ceased to be affected by the alteration in meaning of words which is the inevitable concomitant of daily, popular use... [T]he Catholic Church has a dignity far surpassing that of every merely human society, for it was founded by Christ the Lord. It is altogether fitting, therefore, that the language it uses should be noble, majestic, and non-vernacular."
The wisdom of these observations and the directives the Apostolic Constitution contained were swamped by the indulgence in novelty which followed upon the Second Vatican Council. Pope Benedict has stirred the Church's members to recognise the critical place that Latin plays in the Church's mission and liturgy. It is timely, then, to resurrect this important Church document. more
THE SCHISMATIC TENDENCY IN ‘CREATION SCIENCE’
'Creation Science', the naive assertion that the universe was created only 6,000 years ago, is a Protestant thing. Its adoption by Catholics presents real dangers to their faith. more
THE LOSS OF METAPHYSICS
John of Salisbury, 12th Century philosopher, says in his Metalogicon:
'Bernard of Chartres used to say that we are like dwarfs sitting on the
shoulders of giants. We see more... because they raise us up...' In the
century that followed John of Salisbury, the greatest of the intellectual
giants appeared, Thomas Aquinas. His philosophy, metaphysics, is the only
ultimately satisfying explanation of reality, the only philosophy which
leads us inevitably to the Author of all reality, Almighty God. Thomas's
philosophy was adopted by the Catholic Church as her own to assist in
formulating doctrine and in solving the great problems of morals. Yet, in
the last 40 years that philosophy has been abandoned and the Church and the
world have suffered. If the Church is to be returned to her rightful position of
influence in the world, her bishops and teachers must return to St Thomas's metaphysics. more
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