Carl E. Olson's Blog, page 324

Benedict XVI reflects on bond between liturgical renewal and "the renewal of the whole life of the Church"

From Vatican Information Service:

VATICAN CITY, 6 MAY 2011 (VIS) - Today the Holy Father received participants in the Ninth International Congress on the Liturgy sponsored by the Pontifical Liturgical Institute of Rome's St. Anselm Pontifical Athenaeum, on the fiftieth anniversary of its foundation.

  The Pope recalled that "Blessed John XXIII, recognizing the requests of the liturgical movement that sought to give new impetus and a new spirit to the Church's prayer, shortly before Vatican Council II and during its celebration, asked the faculty of Benedictines on the Aventine Hill to establish a center for study and research to ensure a solid basis for conciliar liturgical reform".

  Referring to the title chosen for the congress: "The Pontifical Liturgical Institute: Between Memory and Prophecy", the Pope said that the "'memory' pertains to the very life of the Institute that has offered its contribution to the Church dedicated to the reception of the Second Vatican Council over fifty years of academic liturgical formation".

  Benedict XVI highlighted that, "with the term 'prophecy', our gaze opens to new horizons. The Liturgy of the Church goes beyond the 'conciliar reform', the objective of which in fact was not mainly to change the rites and texts but rather to renew the mentality and to put the celebration of Christ's paschal mystery at the center of Christian life and pastoral work. Unfortunately the liturgy has perhaps been seen - even by us, pastors and experts - more as an object to reform than a subject capable of renewing Christian life, seeing that "a very close and organic bond exists between the renewal of the liturgy and the renewal of the whole life of the Church".

  "The liturgy, ... lives a proper and constant relationship between sound 'traditio' and legitimate 'progressio', clearly seen by the conciliar constitution Sancrosanctum Concilium at paragraph 23. ... Not infrequently are tradition and progress in awkward opposition. Actually though, the two concepts are interwoven: tradition is a living reality that, in itself, includes the principle of development, of progress".

  The Holy Father concluded, expressing the wish that the "Faculty of Sacred Liturgy continue its service to the Church with renewed enthusiasm, in full fidelity to the rich and valuable liturgical tradition and to the reform desired by Vatican Council II, in accordance with the magisterial directives of the Sancrosanctum Concilium and the pronouncements of the Magisterium".

Paragraph 23 of Sacrosanctum Concilium states:

That sound tradition may be retained, and yet the way remain open to legitimate progress Careful investigation is always to be made into each part of the liturgy which is to be revised. This investigation should be theological, historical, and pastoral. Also the general laws governing the structure and meaning of the liturgy must be studied in conjunction with the experience derived from recent liturgical reforms and from the indults conceded to various places. Finally, there must be no innovations unless the good of the Church genuinely and certainly requires them; and care must be taken that any new forms adopted should in some way grow organically from forms already existing.

Some related Ignatius Insight articles and book excerpts:

• The Reform of the Liturgy and the Position of the Celebrant at the Altar | Uwe Michael Lang
• A Year of Crisis, Revisited | Hubert Jedin's 1968 Memorandum to the West German Episcopal Conference
• How Should We Worship? | Preface to The Organic Development of the Liturgy by Alcuin Reid, O.S.B. | by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger
• Foreword to U.M. Lang's Turning Towards the Lord: Orientation in Liturgical Prayer | Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger
• Learning the Liturgy From the Saints | An Interview with Fr. Thomas Crean, O.P., author of The Mass and the Saints
• Does Christianity Need A Liturgy? | Martin Mosebach | From The Heresy of Formlessness: The Roman Liturgy and Its Enemy
• Reform or Return? An Interview with Rev. Thomas M. Kocik, author of The Reform of the Reform?
• The Liturgy Lived: The Divinization of Man | Jean Corbon, OP
• Learning the Liturgy From the Saints | An Interview with Fr. Thomas Crean, O.P., author of The Mass and the Saints
• The Mass of Vatican II | Fr. Joseph Fessio, S.J.
• Walking To Heaven Backward | Interview with Father Jonathan Robinson of the Oratory
• Reflections On Saying Mass (And Saying It Correctly) | Fr. James V. Schall, S. J.
• Liturgy, Catechesis, and Conversion | Barbara Morgan

Highlights from Blessed John Paul II's writings...

... to Muslims and about Islam, selected and with an introduction and commentary by Fr. Samir Khalil Samir S.J., author of 111 Questions on Islam.

You know who are really obsessed with God? Atheists.

My favorite comedian, Jim Gaffigan, has an hilarious bit, "Ribs And Bologna" (on the CD, "King Baby"; you can hear most of it in the preview clip on amazon.com), that goes like this:

I like meat, I do.

But you know who seems to be really obsessed with meat? Vegetarians.

For people who don't like meat, they seem to eat a lot of vegetables that are mashed up and shaped to look like meat. [In his "vegetarian" voice]: "I find meat repulsive. I'll have a veggie burger with fake bacon, and can you serve it to me dressed like a cow? I don't like meat; I just like to call meat late at night and hang up. Let's drive by meat's house. Does meat ever ask about me? [singing] I don't care! I ain't missin' you at all...missin' youuuuuu...."

You never see that the other way: [meat eater's voice]: "I will have the steak and can you make it taste like tofu?"

It occurred to me, in reading some recent news pieces about atheism—especially one atheist in particular (much more about him in a moment)—that Gaffigan's clever observation could be reworked as follows:

I like God, I do. But you know who seems to be really obsessed with God? Atheists. For people who don't believe in or like God, they seem to talk and write a lot of about things are related to God or sound a lot like religions, especially Christianity, that believe in God. "I don't believe in God: I just talk about God all of the time. Does God ever ask about me? I don't care!"

As Chesterton said, in a quote I've posted or quoted numerous times: "If there were not God, there would be no atheists". The larger quote is worth reading:

Atheism is the supreme example of a simple faith. ... The truth is that the atmosphere of excitement by which the atheist lives, is an atmosphere of thrilled and shuttering theism, and not of atheism at all; it is an atmosphere of defiance and not of denial. Irreverence is a very servile parasite of reverence; and has starved with its starving lord. After this first fuss about the merely aesthetic effect of blasphemy, the whole thing vanishes into its own void. If there were not God, there would be no atheists. ("Where All Roads Lead," Collected Works, vol. 3 [San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1990] 37-38).

Enter prolific British philosopher, author, and atheist A. C. Grayling, who I had the pleasure of joisting with a bit back a few years ago regarding his public displays of astounding historical illiteracy. His new book is titled, The Good Book: A Humanist Bible, which is described as follows:

Few, if any, thinkers and writers today would have the imagination, the breadth of knowledge, the literary skill, and-yes-the audacity to conceive of a powerful, secular alternative to the Bible. But that is exactly what A.C. Grayling has done by creating a non-religious Bible, drawn from the wealth of secular literature and philosophy in both Western and Eastern traditions, using the same techniques of editing, redaction, and adaptation that produced the holy books of the Judaeo-Christian and Islamic religions. The Good Book consciously takes its design and presentation from the Bible, in its beauty of language and arrangement into short chapters and verses for ease of reading and quotability, offering to the non-religious seeker all the wisdom, insight, solace, inspiration, and perspective of secular humanist traditions that are older, far richer and more various than Christianity.

Organized in 12 main sections----Genesis, Histories, Widsom, The Sages, Parables, Consolations, Lamentations, Proverbs, Songs, Epistles, Acts, and the Good----The Good Book opens with meditations on the origin and progress of the world and human life in it, then devotes attention to the question of how life should be lived, how we relate to one another, and how vicissitudes are to be faced and joys appreciated. Incorporating the writing of Herodotus and Lucretius, Confucius and Mencius, Seneca and Cicero, Montaigne, Bacon, and so many others, The Good Book will fulfill its audacious purpose in every way. [emphasis added; no meat products were used in the creation of this indented quote]

Yes, audacious indeed. Like shaping tofu into the form of a hot dog or pattying up a ball of mashed vegetables into a "hamburger" patty. "Tastes just like meat, but without the meat! Looks and reads like the Bible, but without the Bible!" (And let's not forget that another British author and atheist, Philip Pullman, wrote a book last year titled, The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ, which was a "re-writing" of the Gospels. Pass the veggie dogs!) For the record, I occasionally eat a veggie burger, but it's never occured to me to deny the existence of meat or my taste for real hamburger and steak.

I certainly have no problem with a collection of sayings from great philosophers and thinkers spanning centuries and cultures. I have about a dozen book shelves filled with works of philosophy, including many of the works of the men mentioned above. I likely have more books by atheists than do most atheists. The idea of such a compilation is hardly original. Which, of course, is why Grayling—who is just as ingenious as Richard Dawkins at self-promotion, but with a softer, craftier touch—makes a big deal out out of his supposedly unique approach. The idea of an "atheist's Bible" is hardly new, so Grayling has sought to create a veneer of textual complexity and redactive creativity that directly competes with (and supposedly conquers) the collection of 73 books (66 for Protestants) known as The Bible.

This NewHumanist.org piece about Grayling's Codex Adrogantia, reports that the philosopher said that "he constructed The Good Book, [as] this grand attempt to bring into the world a Bible that does away with God." The never shy, ever coy Grayling also says, "I acknowledge the fact that it does look tremendously hubristic, but it's certainly done – and I don't want to come across as a sort of Uriah Heep here – in a spirit of great humility. After all, most of what's in it comes from really great writers. Most of it isn't me."

While the interviewer is much taken by Grayling ("Dressed in a neat navy suit, his hair is sustained behind him like some bright celestial mane, and delicate round spectacles somehow give the impression of a man wedded to the empirical idea"), another atheist, Brendan O'Neill, the editor of Spiked!, is not nearly as impressed by the project or Grayling's claims to humility:

Why, given their obtuse and ostentatious hostility towards organised religion and spiritual hoo-ha, are the so-called New Atheists so keen to refashion the Bible? What's with all these secularist versions of 'the good book', minus the original's miracles and resurrections and instead offering us guides to life firmly rooted in scientific fact and what poses as rationalism? This bible bonanza tells us a lot about the New Atheists. About their arrogance, their ignorance about where moral meaning comes from, and, most fundamentally, their allergy to, their utter estrangement from, the idea of transcendence.

The first question that any remotely inquisitive person will surely ask about these 'new bibles' is this: how massive must your head be, how unanchored your ego, to imagine that, in the space of a few months, ensconced in your office, you can rewrite the Bible? ...

O'Neill (a former Catholic with little affection for Catholicism) is especially on point in noting that Grayling is apparently quite clueless about the history and nature of the Bible:

Grayling misunderstands what a bible is, too. The Holy Bible was, for many centuries, a living, breathing text, contributed to by scores of writers, both reflecting and codifying various communities' moral beliefs and their transcendent aspirations. It was not simply a collection of wise or wacky sayings, but a system of meaning that gained its authority through its incorporation of, and adaptation to, people's experiences, discussions and rule-making.

Grayling's belief that he can codify a brand new system of meaning in his own head, magic up a moral structure on his laptop, reveals much about the New Atheists' view of meaning. It is they, rather than the religious, who seem to believe that meaning can be cobbled together by one person and handed to others. Grayling's book conforms to the New Atheists' snobby view of the Bible as a ruthless diktat better than the actual Bible does. The Bible is not really 'the Word of the Lord' – it's far more complicated than that – but Grayling's book is 'the Word of the Philosopher': good thoughts collected together and rewritten by one man. This is self-help rather than meaning – loose and disconnected views about 'good living' rather than an overarching, complex, meaningfully underwritten idea about the 'Good Life'.

What's more, Grayling, like many of the other New Atheists, is behind the times. He says his aim is to remove any notion of a deity, especially one which demands submission, from moral thought. He characterises the original Bible as: 'Just obey, just submit. The usual rather cowed posture of human beings towards divinity in the hope that it won't inflict too many earthquakes or tsunamis or plagues in the near future.' Yet today, moral thought is most frequently polluted, not by the demand for submission to that deity born in Genesis, but by the demand that we submit to a new deity: Gaia, or Mother Earth, or The Planet. (A bit like Beelzebub, She has many names.)

Many of Grayling's remarks show that he—much like Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris, and other "new atheists"—hasn't bothered to learn much about the beliefs, practices, texts, and deity he seeks to disprove, dismiss, or otherwise dismantle. For example, as I note in my 2007 essay/response, his description of early Christianity as "an amalgam of dying and resurrecting god myths and myths" is a crude description befitting a late-nineteenth-century crank such as Kersey Graves, not a remark made by an educated man with a passing familiarity with basic historical data and current scholarship. But it's not just early Christianity that Grayling doesn't get right, it is also 20th-century atheism. He states, in this April 3, 2011, piece in The Guardian:

"Well, firstly, I think the charges of militancy and fundamentalism of course come from our opponents, the theists. My rejoinder is to say when the boot was on their foot they burned us at the stake. All we're doing is speaking very frankly and bluntly and they don't like it," he laughs. "So we speak frankly and bluntly, and the respect agenda is now gone, they can no longer float behind the diaphanous veil – 'Ooh, I have faith so you mustn't offend me'. So they don't like the blunt talking. But we're not burning them at the stake. They've got to remember that when it was the other way around it was a much more serious matter.

"And besides, really," he adds with a withering little laugh, "how can you be a militant atheist? How can you be militant non-stamp collector? This is really what it comes down to. You just don't collect stamps. So how can you be a fundamentalist non-stamp collector? It's like sleeping furiously. It's just wrong."

Surely he jests. Or at least smirks (perhaps that explains the laugh). Regardless, most dictionaries define "militant" as 1). engaged in warfare, or 2) aggressively active, especially in a cause (Merriam Webster, 1994 ed.). The past two hundred plus years have seen plenty of both, if we take the French Revolution as a logical starting point. There were the violent and murderous campaigns of Lenin, Stalin, and Mao, each openly atheistic and opposed to Christianity. On the polemical front, the writings of Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris, and Co. are certainly aggressively active in promoting a cause (atheism) against a foe (religion in general, Christianity in particular). But, just as Grayling conveniently dismisses a thousand years (c. 300-1300) as the "dark ages" which marked "quite literally a return to daub and wattle because the engineering required for towers and domes was lost", ruled as it was by "the church's narrow ignorance and oppression", he conveniently ignores tens of millions murdered, communities destroyed, and cultures shredded by monsters atheist and militant.

Alas, such simple facts won't fly for Grayling, as he actually wrote (in 2007) that "the major religions and the major ideologies of fascism and communism are the same thing, namely, totalitarian ideologies - systems that seek to impose a monolithic outlook to which all must conform on pain of punishment including torture and death. They are orthodoxies insisting that all must believe and act the same, under threat." This month he told NewHumanist.org that he does hope for the extinction of religion: "I have to say I wouldn't mind if religion died out. Nor would I mind seeing institutions cease to exist – such as mosques and temples – which have such control over people's minds and behaviour."

The bad news for Grayling is that religion continues to grow while the number of atheists shrink (in related news, people prefer meat to vegetables shaped like meat). Besides, now that Grayling has humbly re-written The Good Book, he really should apply his prodigious talents as an author and promoter to another, similar project: writing a non-sacred text titled, "The Unholy Qur'an".

On Ignatius Insight:

• Dark Ages and Secularist Rages: A Response to Professor A.C. Grayling | Carl E. Olson
• Is Religion Evil? Secularism's Pride and Irrational Prejudice | Carl E. Olson
• Letter One: The Trouble with Experience | Mary Eberstadt | From The Loser Letters: A Comic Tale of Life, Death, and Atheism
• Dawkins' Delusions | An interview with Fr. Thomas Crean, O.P.
• Professor Dawkins and the Origins of Religion | Fr. Thomas Crean, O.P. | From God Is No Delusion: A Refutation of Richard Dawkins
• Are Truth, Faith, and Tolerance Compatible? | Joseph Ratzinger
• Atheism and the Purely "Human" Ethic | Fr. James V. Schall, S.J.
• C.S. Lewis's Case for Christianity | An Interview with Richard Purtill
• Paganism and the Conversion of C.S. Lewis | Clotilde Morhan
• Designed Beauty and Evolutionary Theory | Fr. Thomas Dubay, S.M.
• The Universe is Meaning-full | An interview with Dr. Benjamin Wiker
• The Mythological Conflict Between Christianity and Science | An interview with Dr. Stephen Barr
• The Source of Certitude | Fr. Thomas Dubay, S.M.

New online course coming soon on the new translation of the Roman Missal

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New Online Course Coming Soon!


Ignatius Press and My Catholic Faith Delivered want to help you gain a better understanding of the New Translation of the Roman Missal



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Click on the video below for a brief overview of the program:

Seeking Translators!

NOTE: This is an update of information that was originally posted on November 30, 2008.

Ignatius Press is currently seeking German translators to translate book-length works into English. Applicants must have English as their native language and be able to demonstrate accuracy and precision in translation as well as a good sense of English literary style. A knowledge of Catholic theological and philosophical vocabulary is also helpful.

If you are interested and meet these criteria, please send a cover letter and résumé highlighting your qualifications and experience.

Qualifying applicants will be asked to translate a few pages of text, provided by us, as a sample. (No payment is made for the translation test.) Please note that this is not a full-time position, translating will only be required when needed.

Please send cover letter and résumé to:

Ignatius Press
Attn: Translator Search
1348 10th Ave.
San Francisco, CA 94122

Fax: (415) 387-0896
E-mail: meganb@ignatius.com

No phone calls, please.

No Longer Seeking Translators

UPDATE (May 6, 2011): This position has been filled. Thank you!

NOTE: This is an update of information that was originally posted on November 30, 2008.

Ignatius Press is currently seeking German translators to translate book-length works into English. Applicants must have English as their native language and be able to demonstrate accuracy and precision in translation as well as a good sense of English literary style. A knowledge of Catholic theological and philosophical vocabulary is also helpful.

If you are interested and meet these criteria, please send a cover letter and résumé highlighting your qualifications and experience.

Qualifying applicants will be asked to translate a few pages of text, provided by us, as a sample. (No payment is made for the translation test.) Please note that this is not a full-time position, translating will only be required when needed.

Please send cover letter and résumé to:

Ignatius Press
Attn: Translator Search
1348 10th Ave.
San Francisco, CA 94122

Fax: (415) 387-0896
E-mail: meganb@ignatius.com

No phone calls, please.

The Tragedy of Democracy without Authority: A Reflection on Maritain and Thucydides

The Tragedy of Democracy without Authority: A Reflection on Maritain and Thucydides | Jose Maria J. Yulo, Ed.D. | May 5, 2011 | Ignatius Insight

Editor's note: This essay was presented to The American Maritain Association at the 2010 Annual Meeting, held at Walsh University, North Canton, Ohio.

Scrupulous fear of the gods is the very thing which keeps the Roman Commonwealth together. To such an extraordinary height is this carried among them, both in private and public business, that nothing could exceed it. –Histories, Polybius
 
Infirmity doth still neglect all office
Whereto our health is bound; we are not ourselves
When nature, being oppressed, commands the mind
To suffer with the body. – King Lear, Shakespeare
 

In the Poetics, Aristotle described the distinctly Hellenic medium of tragedy thusly. It was "the imitation of an action that is serious and also, as having magnitude, complete in itself...with incidents arousing pity and fear, wherewith to accomplish its catharsis of such emotions" (p. 1460). From Aeschylus to Sophocles and finally Euripides, there can be observed certain unspoken dynamics within tragedy. The tragic figures of Agamemnon, Oedipus, and Pentheus all share a binding doom which can be traced to the ramifications of their chosen actions in the course of their respective tales. There are subtle differences between what brings about suffering and pathos to each of these men. Aeschylus' Agamemnon agrees to divinely mandated sacrifice of his own Iphigenia. Pentheus refuses to bow to the new god from the east. Oedipus is the unhappy mean between these two in his having complicity, albeit unknowing, leading to his father's death. To study tragedy, it seems, is to attempt to understand humanity's role in bringing it about.
 
In keeping with this introspection, there can be found in antiquity separate accounts, historical rather than theatrical, telling of even greater tragedy than the abovementioned tomes. The Athenian general Thucydides, with keen and sobering perspective, wrote of the greatest of all Hellenic falls, that of a war to end Greece's golden age. In his history of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides described the descent of Greece from its height of victory over Persia and into a horrific conflict between its two powers, Athens and Sparta. This civil war will provide a link between tragedy and the study of politics, most specifically the politics of democracy.
 
Jacques Maritain outlined some potentially marring elements to particular democracies. Democracies were acutely problematic when they did not collectively comprehend the necessity of legitimate authority permeating the polis. Lacking this understanding, power was elevated in authority's absence. Ultimately, this led to the degeneration of societies thus constructed because, "To separate power and authority is to separate force and justice" (p. 94). Thucydides told of two accounts wherein this descent, or tragic fall, is most evident. These are the accounts of the Melian Dialogue, and the siege of Corcyra. In examining these accounts, Maritain's championing of democracies wed to legitimate authority has special import nearly twenty centuries ago. Toward this end, a brief discussion of the causes and outcomes of the Peloponnesian War will commence, followed by the two narratives abovementioned, and finally a particular perspective from Maritain's political thought will be discussed.
 
There are few scholars today who have written as much on the subject of Thucydides' histories as Yale's Donald Kagan. The Sterling Professor of History and Classics is noted for his four-volume opus on the Peloponnesian War, and his ability to draw parallels from this saga to more recent and contemporary world conflicts. It is precisely this that Kagan produced in his On the Origins of War (1996).

Read the entire essay at Ignatius Insight...

The May 2011 issue of "Catholic World Report"

If you're not a subscriber to Catholic World Report, here are some of the articles and essays you're missing this month:

May 2011 • Vol. 21, No. 5

The Courtyard of the Gentiles
Pope Benedict proposed an ambitious initiative to open dialogue with non-believers. But at an introductory session, only a certain type of non-believer was included, and the speeches, while provocative, sparked no interchange, reports Alessandra Nucci.
SPECIAL REPORT

Under the Cross
Jeff Ziegler offers an overview of the severe persecution of Christians that has followed Pakistan's Islamization.
SPECIAL REPORT

The Battle for God
Cardinal George Pell speaks with Michael Gilchrist on the Australian Church's struggle against secularism.
INTERVIEW

The Cuomo-Communion Controversy
Are canon law and pastoral practice really opposed? Edward N. Peters examines the question in light of recent controversy.
ESSAY

The Arab Revolutions
Edward Pentin asks: What do revolutions in the Arab world mean for religious freedom?
SPECIAL REPORT

A Gateway to the Faith
YOUCAT repackages the Catechism for World Youth Day 2011, reports Michael J. Miller.
SPECIAL REPORT

From Planned Parenthood to Pro-Life
Jim Graves tells the story of Linda Couri, a former abortion-industry insider turned pro-life advocate.
PROFILE

The Failure of Liberal Catholicism
James Hitchcock offers an examination of its claims.
ESSAY

The assumption behind the "rights-duty-dignity-values" understanding of the modern world...

... is that no human nature exists. Nothing is given. Dignity means that we are free to project on ourselves and the world how we understand ourselves. We make ourselves. Values mean that no ultimate explanation is possible about God, the cosmos, or human life. We give ourselves our own values. Rights mean that we can demand that how we define ourselves be recognized by others. Duty signifies that others have an obligation to "respect" how we define ourselves, whatever it is.

Obviously, this interpretation is relativist and individualist. It can easily, however, by the same logic, become collective. Here ecology and globalization come in handy. Natural disasters, "failed" governments, poverty, and restrictions based on religion or traditional reason are "threats" to the international community. The common good is defined in terms of modern "rights." They give rise to "humanitarian" intervention in all parts of the world, including in this country. Since we are "entitled" to our "rights," we can empower the collectivity to set conditions and enforce corresponding conduct.

The modern regime of "human rights" increasingly portends the soft totalitarianism implicit in our culture since we substituted will for reason as the ground of our understanding of God, the world, and ourselves. The warning was already in Aquinas. We just did not notice.

Those sobering thoughts are from Fr. James V. Schall's essay, "The Modern Regime of Rights", published yesterday on The Catholic Thing site. Brian Jones outlined some of the basic features of the modern notion of "rights" in his Ignatius Insight essay, "Acting Reasonable: Democracy, Authority, and Natural Rights in the Thought of Jacques Maritain" (January 2011):

Advocates of the modern philosophic, legal, and social conception of "rights" have taken as their primary guides Rousseau, Nietzsche, and Hobbes. The "rights" philosophy of Rousseau and Kant treated the individual as a god and gave him absolute rights whose limits were boundless:

Rights were to be deduced from the so-called autonomy of the Will. The rights of the human person were to be based on the claim that man is subject to no law other than that of his own will and freedom. 'A person,' Kant wrote, 'is subject to no other laws than those which he (either alone or jointly with others) gives to himself.' In other words, man must obey only himself because every measure or regulation springing from the world of nature would destroy at one and the same time his autonomy and his supreme dignity. [6]

This so-called philosophy of "rights" is often invoked to protect or legitimize particular actions, which are contrary to that very reasonableness of the natural law. This notion of "rights" has to lead to much confusion because:

It leads men to conceive them as rights in themselves divine, hence infinite, escaping every objective measure, denying every limitation imposed on the claims of the ego, and ultimately expressing the absolute independence of the human subject and a so-called absolute right-which supposedly pertains to everything in the human subject by the mere fact that it is in him-to unfold one's cherished possibilities at the expense of all other beings. [7]

In his political philosophy, Maritain seeks to establish rights as a valid expression of the natural law, (ST, I-II, 94,5) and in doing so rejects two fundamental errors that characterize much of modern "rights" theory: 1) "rights" are rooted not in a human nature, but in the human will; 2) centering "rights" on what is owed to the individual human subject. In regards to the former, much jurisprudential theory relies heavily on the self-sufficient human will. If a law is considered right merely because it has become a part of the legal order of society, then the majority will of any society takes precedence. At this point, it would become superfluous to speak of an unjust law, or inquire about the rightness of a given law because there is no standard by which to judge except the force and power of the human will.

Later this week I'll be posting an essay, "The Tragedy of Democracy without Authority: A Reflection on Maritain and Thucydides", by Jose Maria J. Yulo, Ed.D, that will take up some of these same topics, with some instructive insights taken from ancient Greek history.

On cusp of entering the Church, Abby Johnson embraced by nuns

Franciscan University of Steubenville has posted the following video, with this caption: "A few days before author, speaker, and former Planned Parenthood clinic director Abby Johnson was embraced by the Church at the 2011 Easter Vigil, she spoke at Franciscan University of Steubenville and was embraced by several brides of Christ":

For information about Abby's book, Unplanned: The Dramatic True Story of the Planned Parenthood Leader Who Crossed the Life Line to Fight for Women in Crisis, visit the Unplanned website. You can also read Chapter One of the book, "The Ultrasound", on Ignatius Insight

And here is a short commercial created recently by Ignatius Press for Unplanned: