Image: Antonio Escobar y Mendoza, a prominent casuist of the 17th century. One might think casuistry is dead and buried, that the controversies of the 17th century should be over once and for all. Rarely do any of our contemporaries still read the Lettres Provinciales (Provincial Letters) and the authors whom Pascal (1623-1662) attacks therein.…
“My Lord and my God, from this moment I accept at Thy hands, with resignation and cheerfulness, the kind of death it may please Thee to send me, with all its pains and anguish.” Despite the countless daydreams I’ve indulged in throughout my sanguine life, it struck me a few days ago that I have…
Last month, our friends at LifeSiteNews conducted an interview with Professor Joseph Seifert and several other Catholic Scholars on the topic of the development of doctrine. The occasion was the controversy raised by the pope’s recent comments that the Death Penalty “is, in itself, contrary to the Gospel.” Although LifeSiteNews published links to PDF versions of the…
In a two-part essay at Public Discourse (here and here), E. Christian Brugger has responded to Edward Feser and Joseph M. Bassette’s new book on capital punishment (By Man Shall His Blood Be Shed: A Catholic Defense of Capital Punishment). Feser and Bessette argue that the Church’s traditional teaching on the moral permissibility of the death penalty…
In light of the Filial Correction and its aftermath, we are witnessing how faithful Christians who have always adhered to the Church teachings are being accused of contradicting themselves. It is alleged that not adhering to the wildest interpretations of Amoris Laetitia and other papal or episcopal statements contradicts Catholic obedience. In the light of…
In the important newspaper “la Repubblica” of which he is the founder, Eugenio Scalfari, an undisputed authority of Italian secular thought, last October 9 returned to speaking in the following terms about what he sees as a “revolution” of this pontificate, in comments by Francis that are derived from his frequents conversations with him: “Pope Francis…
Speaking in Rome on October 11th, 2017 (55th anniversary of the opening of Vatican Council II), at a conference promoting the ‘New Evangelization’, Pope Francis made known his will for the Catechism of the Catholic Church to be revised so as to condemn capital punishment as absolutely immoral in principle. He declared the death penalty to be “in itself contrary to…
Image: Pope Pius XII” (CC BY-SA 2.0) by truerestoration In 1952 Pope Pius XII said the following, in a public address recorded among his official acts: Even when it is a question of the execution of a condemned man, the State does not dispose of the individual’s right to life. In this case it is reserved to the public power…
Image credit: Ben Yanke At one point in Plato’s Republic, Thrasymachus, the nihilistic proponent of might-makes-right, asks his interlocutor Socrates: “Am I to take my argument and pour it into your very own soul?” To which query Socrates replies: “God forbid, don’t do that!”[1] I was thinking about this recently in connection with some truly…
In the current climate of confusion and debate over the contents of Amoris laetitia, I recently re-read Veritatis splendor, the 1993 encyclical letter of Pope St. John Paul II on moral theology, which is cited in three of the five dubia relating to Amoris laetitia. It is not my purpose to enter here into any of the…
There is a good bit of confusion currently among faithful Catholics about whether it was morally licit for the pastors and theologians to make public their filial correction of the Holy Father regarding portions of Amoris Laetitia and his actions that, in their estimation, propagate heresy; or the liceity of Prof. Seifert’s public expression of…
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