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
CAUSE OF THE DESCENT INTO ATHEISM
A recent article on 'The Catholic Thing' website prompts us to raise once more the problematic effects of the Declaration on Religious Liberty of the Second Vatican Council. more
SPEM IN ALIUM
This is a republication of an article which appeared on this website in September 2007. The majestic Latin motet for 40 voices which is its subject was written by (Catholic) Thomas Tallis in sixteenth century England. Many assert he did so during the reign of Queen Elizabeth [1558 - 1603], but American conductor and musicologist George Steel has made a compelling argument for the reign of Catholic Queen Mary Tudor [1553-1558]. more
A PROPOS OF MODERN MANGLISH
Two Australians have established a website to address the mangling of the English language. Here is a letter of response to an article by one of them, Harold Scruby, in 'The Australian' of 22nd December, 2011. more
A REMAINING CHRISTMAS
We reproduce here a famous essay by Hilaire Belloc written more than eighty years ago. more
USURY PART II
A second instalment of the consideration of the economic evil. more
AFTER AMERICA
This is a critique of Mark Steyn's praiseworthy study of America's moral, social and economic decline, 'After America'. more
THE SUICIDE OF PETER ROEBUCK
Respected cricket commentator and writer, Peter Roebuck, killed himself in South Africa recently. No writer seems to have considered the critical issues his death raises. more
USURY
A study of the causes of an economic evil which is rife in every society. more
ONE DARK NIGHT
A translation into English of 'En una noche oscura' of St John of the Cross. more
WHAT AILS THE YOUTH OF BRITAIN
The heirs of Henry Tudor have come into their inheritance. more
THE PROTESTANTISM OF CATHOLICS FOR RENEWAL
The organisation, Catholics for Renewal, has published an 'open letter' to the Pope and Australia's bishops in anticipation of the bishops' coming ad limina visit to Rome. more
ABOUT FR JOHN C FORD SJ
Germain Grizez has published on his website at http://www.twotlj.org/Ford.html a short biography of one of the theologian heroes of the 1960s, Fr John Cuthbert Ford SJ. We have reproduced the same article in Word format with a short commentary for those who wish to view it here. more
PAUL BRAZIER
At about 10.00 pm on Easter Wednesday, 27th April 2011, the feast in the Tridentine rite of his favourite saint, St Peter Canisius, bishop and doctor of the Church, Paul Andrew John Brazier, died suddenly at his home in Faulconbridge in Sydney’s Blue Mountains. 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
THE GHOST OF JOHN COURTNEY MURRAY
Fr John Courtney Murray SJ was a promoter of Americanism the theological error which subordinates the Church to the State, exemplified in the United States Constitution, an error condemned by Leo XIII in 1899. Murray's admission to the ranks of periti at the Second Vatican Council coloured the Council's bishops' determinations with the Americanist error. more
ISLAM AND THE CATHOLIC CHURCH
What distinguishes Catholicism from Mohammedanism? Why are they so fundamentally opposed? What future lies in store for western countries, their Catholic roots now abandoned, at the hands of the Muslim? more
GO TO JOSEPH
The great evils that currently afflict the world are likely to distract Australians from a much greater evil that confronts their country, Mohammedanism. more
THE ONE NECESSARY ENCYCLICAL
This is a recasting with slight amendments of a paper published in August 2009 inviting His Holiness to address the one intellectual issue that presses mankind in the modern world. more
WHEN THE WATTLE TURNS TO GOLD
Australian poet, James McAuley, penned his poem 'Explicit' in 1976 when he learned that his death was inevitable and imminent. This article picks up his last line and offers, in poetic form, a comment on the state of the Church and the world that confronts us today. more
'RELIGIOUS LIBERTY' & THE DEVELOPMENT OF DOCTRINE
This is a detailed criticism of the relatio (introduction) to the Fathers of the Second Vatican council of the original schema which became the Declaration on Religious Liberty. 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
EVOLUTION IS IMPOSSIBLE
There have been endeavours to prove the falsity of Darwin's theory from facts. Here is a proof from principle. more
GENESIS & LITERALISM
Fr Peter Joseph has published a commentary on the issue addressed on this
website in the paper 'The Schismatic Tendency in Creation Science'. We attach a link to Fr Joseph's paper on the Servants of St Michael website - http://www.servantsofstmichael.org/index.php?view=article&catid=41%3Aarticles-by-fr-peter-joseph-pp-st-dominics-syd&id=63%3Agenesis-and-literalism&option=com_content&Itemid=65
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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