Michael Pakaluk
@michael_pakaluk
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Philosopher @catholicuniv | golf, hiking, French horn | BOOKS on Mark, John, Nic Eth | student of Quine, Rawls | Ordinarius Pontifical Acad St Thomas | patriot
Washington, DC
Joined July 2023
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And if you write I may send you my translation of Bk I by “Wittgenstotle.”
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John Finnis receiving an honorary degree this morning from my university, “for probing the profound questions that are essential to the law, and for keeping morality at the forefront of law.”
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I published this defense of the death penalty just out of grad school,and even today people walk up to me and say that they rely upon it. It still stands after all these years as a truthful representation of the Catholic tradition.
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My daughter, Sarah, when I took her to hear the National Symphony Orchestra when she was in high school said something very wise afterwards. She said that it was marvelous to her and almost incredible, that 100 or more skilled professionals who had spent their entire lives become
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Admirers of Roger Scruton typically overlook the fact that for him phenomenology played the role of metaphysics. I mean, it really did. He would say that what was on the surface of things was the most important. He also thought it was sufficient and did not need to be
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“An intelligent, discreet, and pious young woman is worth more than all the money in the world. Tell her that you love her more than your own life, because this present life is nothing, and that your only hope is that the two of you pass through this life in such a way that, in
25 years ago OTD I accepted
@michael_pakaluk
proposal to wed—still crazy still great
erunt duo en carne una
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Natural law at the time of the Council of Trent. (From the Roman Catechism on the Fifth Commandment)
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A clear abuse of a source in “Infinite Dignity.” (How many such abuses are there?)
In its section asserting that the dignity of the human person implies pacifism— “No war is worth the tears of a mother who has seen her child mutilated or killed; no war is worth the loss of the
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If you don't know John Finnis's "Abortion is Unconstitutional," if you can make an hour of free time (it is not an "easy read"), you will thank me for recommending that you read it -- so much beneficent truth has hardly been put into an essay in recent years.
His essay is
John Finnis receiving an honorary degree this morning from my university, “for probing the profound questions that are essential to the law, and for keeping morality at the forefront of law.”
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His commencement speech was perhaps the greatest I have ever heard.
Who would have guessed?
(This is Jonathan Roumie of The Chosen.)
The Catholic University of America was pleased that “Jesus” came to speak to us today.
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An excellent essay—and short—arguing that economics is not properly taught as social engineering (and it must languish in that role) but once again as a branch of moral philosophy (political economy) emphasizing no free lunch, free order, reasonable optimism, and humanity.
I am
New essay on teaching economics … if interested DM with best email to send
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For Catholics, a reminder of Catholic teaching:
The concept of a "just wage" includes making it practically possible for moms to stay at home with their children--as this is typically for the greater benefit of the children.
Note the lovely nuance of this passage (a standard to
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@lukeburgis
Most of these figures are not actually polymaths.
When I hosted Roger Scruton at Ave Maria University he lectured or spoke on oenology, music, neurobiology, art, and moral philosophy. He might additionally have lectured on religion, literature, architecture and law.
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I’ve so far only defended “Infinity Dignity” in print. But there’s plenty wrong with it. Here’s my list written in preparation for a podcast whose host wants to discuss the document’s flaws.
@FeserEdward
@catholicthing
@CatholicCurrent
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"We live effectively in a Church without an Ascension. It has been moved to Sunday – assuredly, not to make it more important. ... We live in grave discontinuity with our brothers and sisters in the past. I see no way out but: the study by Catholics today, ardently, of our
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Did someone say “Deus lux mea est?” Scene from a sunset walk at Clam Shell Pass Beach in Naples. FL.
@CRPakaluk
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“But there are lots of things the Church teaches that are clearly infallibly taught but have not been defined in that formal way. That capital punishment can be licit at least in principle is an example of that.” Excellent statement by
@FeserEdward
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TOC of the book I'm putting together in May. Working title, "Essays in Classical Natural Law and Civic Friendship."
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On this feast day of St. Joan of Arc, I want to share with you a paragraph from Mark Twain's astounding biography, Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc, where he gives a portion of the transcript of her trial.
Now, remember that Twain himself was one of the greatest of
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My eldest son, named Michael, was born in Edinburgh, Scotland. My legal name is "Michael Pakaluk Jr." Therefore, when I went to the city's registry of births, to record the birth, I asked that he be given the name, "Michael Pakaluk III." The grumpy old clerk in a Harris tweed
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Sometimes you find—it seems to be given to you, apart from your intentions—a work of scholarship that is so deep, thorough, balanced, yet unassuming, that you feel as if you are nothing, and you conceive a wish to disciple yourself completely to this person.
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My Twitter feed, I can promise you: wines, classical music, civilization, truthful philosophical insights, the political economy of freedom, and (although completely contrary to my personality, but I’ll force myself) good cheer.
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There truly is nothing new under the sun. Plato said long ago that a mirror appears to give you complete power to represent everything but is wholly deceptive because it consists of images.
Christians and well-educated persons need to stop chasing down every last explanation
If you were horrified by the new Apple iPad ad -- as
@suzania
was, among many others -- then drop whatever you are doing and read my review essay of last year's tremendous book by philosopher Anton Barba-Kay, about the digitalization of humanity.
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The “new natural law” can give no account of the death penalty or killing in war.
As
@michael_pakaluk
notes in this article, when theologian Germain Grisez first started to push the novel view that the death penalty is intrinsically evil, he admitted that this amounted to “dissent” from the “received teaching” of the Church. Now we are told by many that it is
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Book designers' first mock up for the cover of my next gospel book. It's hard not to like Caravaggio. (But I'd still love to see an AI generated modern transposition.)
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Skip all of that stuff, all the secondary literature, and read it —more than once.
Then, read it again using St Thomas’s commentary.
There’s no royal road; it’s as difficult as a treatise in pure math.
Hive mind: what are the best introductions to or companions to Aristotle's Metaphysics?
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I tell people that my most recent book on Mary's influence on the gospel of John (inconceivable that she didn't influence it, if they lived together for 30 years), is more of an investigation into the truth than a devotional book. My concern was: Is this true?
But the
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“Is he posting yet another review of his wife’s book?”
5 Questions With Family Studies: Catherine Ruth Pakaluk on Why Some Women Choose to Have Large Families
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Jonathan Roumie of 'The Chosen' Gives Commencement Speech at CUA via
@YouTube
In case you want to watch. Remember, a contemporary commencement speech is expected to be humorous, light hearted, yet also deep ('unexpectedly' so) and challenging. It
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Consider simply the inference:
1. The death penalty is state murder.
Therefore,
2. Imprisonment is state kidnapping and enslavement.
The inference looks unimpeachable. On what basis does anyone seize you violently and take you away from your family, your work, your church,
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It's not easy to recommend a 90 minute podcast featuring oneself. Or maybe it is easy, because a lot of podcasts are 2 or 3 hours now. This one in comparison is "short."
It might be entitled, "How Catholics Would Explain and Defend Their Differences from Protestantism. " I
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To a friend who asked whether Liberty Fund conferences were conservative or libertarian: “I have found them a welcome bastion of (1) civil discussion, (2) liberal learning, and (3) devotion to freedom.”
@Liberty_Fund
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I’ve always loved the motto of Oxford University. My own university’s motto, as seen here at a new gate, is probably second best.
@CRPakaluk
@CatholicUniv
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The most serious problem for "the DP is intrinsically evil" folks is that in some cases it is morally obligatory, in just the same way that in some cases war is morally obligatory.
Don't get me wrong, I don't exult in either the DP or war. Both are horrific. (Long ago I
Thank you, Father, for so thoughtfully replying to my argument for the permissibility (and in some cases moral bindingness) of the death penalty.
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Thank God we need to heed the Pope when he defines doctrine but not when he defines “conservative.”
@MNeuhengen
A grossly prejudicial view. The conservative position is well described by Newman in The Development of Doctrine; it is not "clinging." And may I ask what, outside of sex, we're to be "moving" on? After the continuing human and social disaster of the sexual revolution, too!
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It wasn’t a take for a thread on X when, 20 years ago, I co-authored with my wife, Catherine, still a graduate student, an essay about how the acceptance of Hiroshima/Nagasaki has undermined public morality in the US.
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It used to be that the most studious students "gave up" television-watching during college and grad school.
Serious scholar-professors would oppose the wiring of dorms for cable TV as bad "statements" by colleges about study habits and use of time.
Those times look laughably
I started full-time teaching in 2001, the year
@nytdavidbrooks
published “The Organization Kid”. That essay framed many professors’ perceptions of ambitious college students.
Today the psycho-spiritual landscape on campus is decidedly different.
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The exquisite sourdough bread of
@CRPakaluk
, Optimal Wit beer (
@PortCityBrew
, Alexandria, VA), good butter and salt -- as good as Prague, or better.
Earlier: an espresso shot pulled from the Tin Lizzie roast of
@VigilanteCoffee
in my very own Hyattsville, with poured in frothed
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Computer geek son Nicholas processing in the commencement ceremony for the School of Engineering. Thank God I can hold my own against my sons still in golf—and computational theory!
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“This is what Butker misses …”.
Translation. No one would ever invite me to give a commencement address. I am so small-minded, that I’m going to promote myself by attacking him.
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“Infinite Difgnity” rules out just war in just the same way as it rules out the DP.
Those of you who applaud the one — do you say the same about the other?
I wonder just how much this teaching is a matter of imposing on laypersons a certain “clericalism.” After all
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This happens. A father, in setting down precepts for his child, for that child’s complete welfare and good, comes to realize that he ought to be living by the same precepts himself. Similarly for the mother.
By natural law, as it were, we become mature through care for the true
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Rubens, “Defense of the Eucharist,” Ringling Museum, Sarasota. St Thomas is in the center, next to the patroness depicted as St Clare.
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In case you missed it, the video of
@DouthatNYT
@CRPakaluk
@TPCarney
in discussion about demographic decline
@CatholicUniv
sponsored by
@HumanEcologyCUA
The Population Bust via
@YouTube
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If an American travels to NYC, Miami, New Orleans, Santa Fe, Portland, and Wyoming, he might just as well have visited six or seven countries. Add: the Grand Canyon, the Badlands, the Great Plains, the Maine coast.
We are a vast and diverse country, as interesting to visit as
I would fit into the best-traveled category; I think I’ve been to 25 or so non-US countries. But since having kids… one.
It’s just hard to get anywhere from America! But that does of course impact our perspective on the world.
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Important article for Catholics because it establishes a basis in Catholic moral teaching for conscientious objection to certain vaccines.
This basis was denied by many clerics in the covid lockdown time.
And then secular authorities argued: if you are not obliged by your
Delighted that this article (
@CRPakaluk
co-author) just published in the Linacre Quarterly--on conscientious objection to vaccines developed from cell lines derived from abortion. Permanent link:
@AaronKheriatyMD
@DrJayRichards
@RyanTAnd
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File under: we suffer from twisted Bible translations
I figured I had tweeted enough for today but just can’t stop myself over what I encountered in the readings at Mass in the New American Bible (which is the translation that Catholics are stuck with). The reading is from Acts
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Perhaps it's because I grew up in a working class family, and I worked a lot of "manual labor" jobs when I was young, that when I think of the ethic of the workplace, I think first of how workers steal from employers, not the reverse. And I have seen many, many instances!
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Εἶπέ τις, Δαβίδ, τεὸν μόρον, ἐς δέ με δάκρυ
ἤγαγεν· ἐμνήσθην δ' ὁσσάκις ἀμφότεροι
ἥλιον ἐν λέσχῃ κατεδύσαμεν.
I heard the news just now that David Konstan had passed away on May 2. A prodigious and brilliant scholar, I learned much from his work on friendship. (His
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Question raised by this graf in the Slate review of Hannah’s Children: Is heroism “meant” (in the human condition) to be extraordinary? Also, are athletes the pinnacle or only a clear image of something else, more important?
@CRPakaluk
@rebeccaonion
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“My father’s pigs eat better than I do” was apparently a good enough reason.
This isn’t a silly concern, but you have to bear in mind that nobody ever converts for *fully adequate reasons*. The tent feels much bigger from the inside. At some point a convert looks back and thinks, well, I was an idiot obviously, but thankfully grace led me here.
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My Egan Lecture in NYC 2023 was an extended discussion of a phrase in Rerum Novarum, “The family a true society older than the state.” In attendance, Fr. Murray, Brad Miner, Justice Alito, Matt Schmitz, et al.
@CRPakaluk
@GreenPlusAnE
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Happy birthday, Antoś Ulma, b. 1941. He’s holding the cross.
Celebrate as if he’s in your family!
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“Woman, what is it to you and to me? My time has not yet come.” (Jn 2:4)
Here in the Bible we learn that *but for* Mary’s intervention, Jesus would not have done the miracle. There was no need for John to write this detail, unless it taught something important.
We therefore
@Pastor_Gabe
So why should I believe you and not St. Augustine?
And if Jesus promised to guide His Church into all truth, why would God allow the veneration of saints, their relics, and requesting their prayers—something that DISGUSTED even pagans—to continue unabated for 1,500 years?
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Some friends said the other cover design was too dark. I ended up thinking Caravaggio was too oldish.
So I found a photo of Lombard Street in London and colorized it, and the book designer added the type. I'm not sure I like the font, but I'm fascinated by this cover.
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I’m confident no one else has anything like this in their office. These, the bronzed baby shoes of Michael Novak. A gift of his family.
(Maybe they thought, “he can maybe fill these at least” 😂)
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I have published many articles in top peer reviewed journals in my life. One semester, I published four articles in top journals in four different areas of philosophy.
(That was my top semester in publication. My top semester in teaching was when I had already undertaken a
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Find someone marriageable.
Getting married soon.
What are your best marriage tips guys?
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Michael Novak and my daughter Lizzie from the years when I would teach with Michael a popular course on ”The 20th Catholic Intellectual Renaissance” (you know, that impoverished life)
@CRPakaluk
@AEI
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This collection a paradigm of civil, constructive academic debate. Also, of how we depend on one another. Because the truth for all of us becomes clearer through oakeshottian ‘conversation.’
Working on this project with
@ZonderAcademic
. Writing the introduction over the next two weeks with
@RyanTAnd
and then it is off to the publisher for a 2025 release. Really, really strong essays showing the spectrum of views on natural law. All the essays are wonderful, but the
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Fathers
Look your children directly in their eyes when you speak with them.
You can make this a habit if it’s not your habit already.
The eyes are a gateway to the soul. The human soul is the most beautiful creation on earth. How can we pass by souls and never look at them?
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The only change I would make is to investigate more why in general we prefer “bloodless means” for punishment, not just for capital punishment but for all punishments.
Modern resistance to capital punishment is based I think on two things, and rightly so:
1. A strong sense of
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Pretty good to cite St Paul, who spent 14 years in study after his conversion before he thought himself capable of preaching the gospel.
Yeah what have converts ever done for the Catholic church...
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A center of teaching virtue would need to be a place which imparted virtue, not a place which taught *about* virtue.
Someone might say that the aspiration to be the "recognized global center" of the most "influential" school of the most "powerful" formulations of virtue ethics
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Whoever the flat earthers were, they weren’t Aristotelians or Thomists. Here’s St Thomas referring in an offhand way to proofs of the earth’s roundness, citing a text where Aristotle does the same in the same offhand way.
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Proposed rule for picking commencement speakers henceforward: no celebrities, stand-up comics, athletes, singers, or movie, TV or media personalities. Pick only someone whose very life testifies to the goodness of scientific, scholarly, or intellectual activity.
It might appear
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This is hilarious. Hasn't ND been claiming for decades that it is the "leading global Catholic research university"?
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7 year old. “Dad, are they prisoners?” —“No, that’s called ‘day care.’” —“That’s illegal, right? It should be illegal.”
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@CRPakaluk
has received dozens of excellent reviews. My books, three or four. Am I jealous? No, her book is superb, a truly great achievement.
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Now it is both Elon Musk and Pope Francis who I guess would love to read
@CRPakaluk
Hannah's Children.
The birth rate is the first indicator of a people’s hope. Without children and young people, a country loses its drive for the future.
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Pleased to attend with
@CRPakaluk
a stimulating conference at New College Florida on righting the ship of academia, hearing Joshua Katz,
@PhilWMagness
@DrJBhattacharya
and other superb speakers.
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It’s foolish to celebrate Harvard’s supposed statement of neutrality.
1. It changes nothing about ideological classrooms and campus culture.
2. It means nothing anyway for university administration unless operationalized in policies and procedures.
3. Therefore it just gives
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Most people it seems are embarrassing themselves badly by what they are saying about the Butker address.
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I wonder how many Marxians have actually read Marx's exposition of LTV in Capital, which is patently pseudo-science.
The labor theory of value was thoroughly discredited in 1871, only 4 years after Marx published Capital.
Without the LTV, Marx's theory of "surplus value" (which he plagiarized from Rodbertus) collapses. Ergo, your boss is not exploiting you and Marx does not explain how.
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@PhilWMagness
What’s astonishing is that he’s taught a whole course on this, and this is what he has to say.
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But that's not a mathematical statement while it is a metaphysical statement.
(Oh man this is too easy. But why do intelligent people make this obvious mistake?)
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I have come to think that this is the most important paragraph in the Secunda Pars of the Summa (q. 90, a. 2c). Its argument is that practical reason must, most fundamentally, involve the measuring or moderation of all human actions with respect to some fundamental law, and
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These days now: we feel them as -- has the Ascension "taken place" or not?
After all, aren't we (Catholics) supposed to be reliving and re-enacting the first days of the Church?
We've been doing so since Passion Week. But now -- we've gone off the rails.
And then it is
"We live effectively in a Church without an Ascension. It has been moved to Sunday – assuredly, not to make it more important. ... We live in grave discontinuity with our brothers and sisters in the past. I see no way out but: the study by Catholics today, ardently, of our
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There’s that pattern again! 😂 (Pano of beach in Naples, FL).
@CRPakaluk
@AustinRuse
@TPCarney
@BradWilcoxIFS
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Uber and taxi drivers have instructed me better than anyone else about how to view and love my country.
Uber driver today was a Moroccan who came here in the 80’s. Four kids: three college grads and one in high school. Glad he came to the US because there’s more opportunity and less racism than in France, or the rest of Europe. I meet people like this often.
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Son Joe’s senior thesis presentation at Ave María University under the direction of Grabriel Martínez. Today.
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I applaud your efforts
@naomirwolf
but the best path here would be to study the work of Claude Tresmontant, who believed that Matthew’s gospel was written first in a specifically religious, Hebrew language and later translated into Greek. This is not a crazy view, and he makes a
Reading the Hebrew Gospel of Matthew, in Hebrew. This text’s word choices give a significantly different picture of Jesus, than do English translations from Greek or Latin. This Gospel depict a Jewish rabbi engaged in recognizably Jewish scholarly activities, and the later
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Everything about human nature you need to know is contained in this fact: the most brilliant minds, working in (just about) the most contemplative discipline, within only a couple of decades of brilliant discoveries, willingly aided authorities to incinerate cities, and
Kenneth Bainbridge's remark to R. Oppenheimer right after the first atomic bomb detonation at Alamogordo (Trinity Test) ✍️
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And so of course was John Maynard Keynes—
—as I know directly by reading his papers filed under “Malthus” in the King’s College archives.
Margaret Sanger (founder of Planned Parenthood) was a eugenicist.
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Delighted that this article (
@CRPakaluk
co-author) just published in the Linacre Quarterly--on conscientious objection to vaccines developed from cell lines derived from abortion. Permanent link:
@AaronKheriatyMD
@DrJayRichards
@RyanTAnd
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Reading for my next gospel book on St Luke, known as “the Pauline gospel”(my Matthew book is in press). Astounded by this man’s erudition and good judgment. Do you know? I gather he is ignored by current scholarship—not surprising and for me an additional recommendation.
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Newman. Preaching by the way to a congregation that on average knew far more science and technology than we know on average. Faith for a Christian requires the humility of accepting the simple "language" in which the Ascension is presented to us.
Mysteries in Religion
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On this feast day of St. Mark, may I recommend this recent translation of Mark’s gospel and commentary?
The translation is distinguished for conveying the spoken sound of Mark’s gospel and sense of immediacy.
@CRPakaluk
@roddreher
@JoshuaTCharles
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Game with friends: what is your oldest order on Amazon? I’m quite pleased by mine. Post yours.
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We can have moral certainty that this saying, "Be good bankers," can indeed be attributed to Jesus. Multiple Fathers of the Church quote it, and there are multiple independent sources.
The Greek is: ginesthe dokimoi trapezitai.
Some friends said the other cover design was too dark. I ended up thinking Caravaggio was too oldish.
So I found a photo of Lombard Street in London and colorized it, and the book designer added the type. I'm not sure I like the font, but I'm fascinated by this cover.
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Did
@JamesWHankins1
really claim that Elizabeth Anscombe originated the ethics of virtue? This is very hard to believe. But according to
@PillarCatholic
:
"His position at the dCEC provided Hankins 'the opportunity to talk with Alasdair about my book and one of his own mentors,
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