indwelling as the mode of God's union with the Church
conscientious judgments by summary court vs by deliberative trial
due process in judgments of conscience (cf. cases where we would think someone negligent in reflection)
"All the wicked who have gone before are signs of Antichrist." Aquinas
The prelude to action is sometimes the most important part of the action.
Scotus on the will as a collative power: it can will not only a good but a good as related to another (e.g., wanting X to b Y, wanting to use X for Y, hoping X from Y)
Vermigli in the Commentary on 1 Corinthians argues that "faith is the mother of charity" (he is arguing against the Thomistic view that charity is the form of faith)
"From faith, which is the gift of God, proceeds the efficient cause of repentance....The formal cause is conversion and change; the material cause is the will itself; the objects are the sins for which we sorrow, and the virtues which we strive to attain; the efficient cause is faith and God; the end is the honor of God and our own salvation." Peter Martyr Vermigli (Loci Communes 2.1)
The sacrament of matrimony both signifies the unity of Christ and the Church and brings it about by forming the domestic church.
Natural religion is inherently familial.
Almsgiving becomes satisfaction insofar as it has the nature of sacrifice.
"When through his illuminating power we fix our eyes on the beauty of the image of the unseen God, and through the image are led up to the more than beautiful vision of the archetype, his Spirit of knowledge is somehow inseparably present. He supplies to those who love to the see the truth the power to see the image in himself." Basil
"the goodness and holiness by nature and the royal dignity reach from the Father, through the Only-Begotten, to the Spirit"
"no gift at all comes to creation without the Holy Spirit"
"Moses saw well and wisely that disdain readily belongs to what is trite and easily understood, while that which is much desired is somehow naturally coupled with retirement and scarcity."
"This is the reason for non-scriptural traditions, that knowledge of dogmas not be neglected or despised by many because of familiarity."
"Standing fast in non-scriptural traditions is, I think, apostolic."
"The goods in which a man participates according to the grace of God also indebt him to share ungrudgingly with others." Maximus the Confessor
Receiving grace from God, we must give quasi-graces to others.
hospitableness as a potential part of justice
We come before the tribunal of penance as whole persons, and thus as moral, jural, and sacral, all at once.
"minister est sicut instrumentum intelligens" Aquinas ST 1.112.1
exemplar causation (Bonaventure)
idea -> word -> art -> purpose
(foreseeing -> proposing -> doing -> completing)
providing-hospitality vs accomodating-hospitality
-- these are distinct and the customs regarding them often come apart
"He who is sidetracked by the pleasure of the body is neither active for virtue, nor well-moved toward knowledge." Maximus
sacramentum tantum
-- qua rite
-- qua sign-vehicle
-- qua signifying
res et sacramentum
-- qua sacramentalized
-- qua received
-- qua carried forward
res tantum
-- qua divine favor/promise
-- qua Christ
-- qua grace in us
The paradisial mysteries (lignum vitae and marriage) are types of the Church as general sacrament, i.e., of the sacramental economy as a whole.
Pagan mysteries are signs of Christian mysteries, as expressing the human need for mysteries, and as showing certain suitabilities in human nature for certain signs (e.g., sacrifice, ablution, anointing).
Scripture as 'an external symbol with which the Lord seals for our conscience the promises of his friendliness toward us, in order to offer a support to the weakness of our faith' (Calvin's description of a sacrament)
-- Scripture as sign of the covenant
the Septenary as a sign of the completeness and excellent of the sacramental economy as a whole
baptism as an initiation into a company or companionship (2 Tim 2:11-13)
oblation : contrition :: consecration : confession :: communion : satisfaction
It is remarkable how freely 'pastoral' is used by people who have no idea what shepherds actually do; one would expect from their usages that shepherds let sheep do whatever they wish and try to be pleasant and neighborly with wolves.
Christian life under religious vow is concerned specifically with *completeness* of charity.
sacramental signs as notation describing the symphony of heaven
the moral causality of values (present motives why another should act)
-- the value as an object proposes an end (at least a general one) for action
All sacraments have a value within the intercession of the Ascended Christ in Session.
The indelibleness of sacramental character arises from the perfection of Christ's priesthood.
Love, in reaching toward good, forms new values in light of the ways it draws near to good.
sacramental signs as mood-creating, like certain kinds of poetry
Things can only be erroneous relative to the normative.
formal causation -> objective causation -> valuative causation
Hope is always expressed narratively.
Some things are naturally valued for themselves, or else nothing is valued.
Food does not have value for us because it is valued by us; we value it for its value for us.
People have inherent and intrinsic value; they are inherently valuable, i.e., such that they are in themselves reasonably valued; they are, so to speak, subsistent value.
Larissa M. Katz, "Ownership and Offices: The Building Blocks of the Legal Order"
-- "Stripped down, the idea of office is the warrant to make decisions that change the normative situations of others on behalf of others."
-- Katz claims, "There are no natural offices because there is no natural authority for any of us to determine with finality the aspects of our lives that we share with others." [This seems dubious.]
-- "Offices, as artificial creations, presuppose procedures for appointment."
-- "Officials have warrant to discharge their mandate only through the powers they have in that office and are constrained to exercise their powers just for the purposes for which they are conferred -- that is, their mandate."
-- "An office is the warrant that a person has for making decisions on behalf of another or, in other contexts, on behalf of all of us as participants in a legal order."
-- "Owners have large-scale powers to change the normative situation of others, enabling them to set the agenda for things."
-- "Ownership is hierarchical (the entire structure of property rights is based on a chain of authority and so gives rise to the principle, nemo dat quod non habet), positivist (ownership authority depends on law), and impersonal (no one claims authority over others with respect to things in virtue of anything particular to her).
-- "The Office of Sovereign holds the legal system together from beginning to end: it is not only the first office, but it is also the last office: this office is the residual holder of all power, and so all other offices are liable to collapse into it."
the visitatorial jurisdiction of the pope
parenthood as natural office
It's difficult to avoid the sense that most bishops are merely LARPing.
It's important to note that Jesus did not stop St. Martha from her work, he merely rebuked her when she put her own concerns above St. Mary's.
the modes of medicinal action
(1) curative
(2) conservative
(3) ameliorative
(4) preservative
(5) mitigative
(6) comfortative
It is pointless to talk of 'the case for' or 'against' markets; there is always a market, and the only question is what kind.
Duties are ways people unite with other people.
the body politic: Plato, Laws 829a; Aristotle, Politis 1253a; Seneca, Ep 95.51f; Epictetus, Diatr. 2.5.24
the sun-literature of the Church (hymns, theological works, writings of saints) and the moon-literature of the Church (novels, hagiographies, poems)
the Church as realized reconciliation with God
the five rites of the consecration of a church: aspersio, inscriptio, inunctio, illuminatio, benedictio
The Church is authorized, and thus has the right, to engage in any reasonable act suitable for furthering its divine mission.
"Thinking that energy pushes things is like thinking cars do division since they move in miles/hour, or thinking lightbulbs can multiply because they use electricity by the kilowatt-hours." Chastek
A free market is not an unrestricted market but a market constituted by free interactions of free people.
Every sacrament achieves its sacramental ends in us.
"In the matter of the validity and completeness of a sacrament, it is irrelevant to ask what the recipient of the sacrament belongs and with what faith he might be imbued; this question has great significance for the salvation of human beings, but is irrelevant to the question concerning the sacrament itself." Augustine (De bapt. 3.14.19)
Augustine on the status of catechumens -- De Civ. 13.7
on baptism of blood & desire -- De bapt. contr. Donat. 4.22, 29
memoria passionis Christi as the foundation for spiritual reception of the sacraments
"We are to erect no artificial opposition between our professional and social activity, on the one hand, and our religious life, on the other." Gaudium et spes 43
What are the minor sacraments (sacramentals) directly instituted by Christ? Lord's Prayer, certainly; foot-washing, Eucharistic hymn; anything else?
Identity (as in 'one's identity) is something received as gift in heritage and in destiny.
"O pater urbis, / unde nefas tantum Latiis pastoribus?" Juvenal
We get many competing views of something whenever there is something to know.
Auer's pathological desire to avoid associating the sacraments with magic -- a test that is inevitably based more on cultural association than on reasoned assessment -- distorts much of his discussion of the sacraments. (It's also self-defeating, because obviously the sacraments are going to look like some kinds of magic, because in the West some kinds of magic are imitations or mockeries of the sacraments.)
Every valid argument is more similar to some invalid arguments than some valid arguments. Every possible world is more similar to some impossible worlds than to some possible worlds. Every coherent system is more similar to some incoherent systems than to some coherent systems.
Our capacity to experiment builds on our capacity to engage in and adapt ritual.
Gennadios Scholarios takes Benjamin to be a type of St. Paul
sacrament, sacramental office, sacramental economy
We may receive sacraments in promise as well as in full attainment.
the problem of induction // the problem of learning from history
Refusal to forgive at least sometimes harms common good in definite ways.
waves // causing something without immediate contact
If we operationalized theology, we would do so by prayers.
classification proper vs classification per reductionem
The existence of cancel culture follows directly from the principles of privilege theory, since privileges are typically understood as protections from kinds of cancellation.
'partially interpreted formal systems'
All scientific experimentation posits some kind of community of inquirers.
We understand reality in light of the unrealized.
Completely to articulate even one observation requires many propositions.
Connecting the analytic a priori and the synthetic a posteriori is itself synthetic (usu. requiring both synthetic a priori and synthetic a posteriori).
Simplification is itself a basic form of explanation. As there are multiple distinct kinds of explanation, there are generally different kinds of explanation you can give of one thing.
Discovery requires an ability to identify valuable novelty.
What Mill's account of induction gets right is that induction is about sameness and difference.
Justification is only as good as discovery.
Reasonable inquirers use both induction and counterinduction, just giving normal priority to the former.
Agriculture is the incorporation of environment into our ritual life.
One reason to turn the other cheek is that sometimes it prevents things from becoming irreparable.
What you really value is often what you will forego pleasure and endure pain for.
Examination in and of itself implies something beyond the examination.
We can only determine whether a sample is random by induction. (This is important for the law of large numbers in the context of induction.)
the fecundity of induction in facilitating other kinds of reasoning
Events are only known as linked together.
statistical sampling as analogical inference
statistica inference and triplex via:
(1) The sample should not be confused with the population.
(2) The sample is derived from the population.
(3) The population is at least adequate to account for the sample.
In actual use, 'All ravens are black' and 'All nonblack things are nonravens' are usually not used in the same universes of discourse.
Narrative sense is the combination of causal sense and profile-fitting sense; often in intricate ways.
Even occult qualities explain/predict in the sense that they assign higher and lower probabilities to different possibilities. Dormitive virtue implies a greater probability of sleeping, and thus a lower probability of not sleeping.
functional explanations as supposing-the-system explanations
-- The end of an object at rest or moving rectilinearly at a velocity is to continue at rest or moving rectilinearly at that velocity unless it receives another end from elsewhere.
-- The change of end in an object moving or at rest is related, by vehemence and direction, to the reception of a new modification of its end.
-- When a body modifies the end of another body, the two bodies act mutually on each other so as to give each other complementary modifications of ends.
use of empty space // use of silence
demonstratives as requiring a demonstrative act (either in the use or presupposed)
three uses of pronouns: substitution, indication, quantification
-- We seem in practice to treat indicated things as if they were nouns. Castaneda holds that indicators have no antecedent, but in fact we seem to treat the indicated things as their antecedents.
The senses cannot distinguish necessary and non-necessary connections; this is different from saying that we do not sense necessary connections.
Modern theories of meaning often err by confusing reference-to and verified-of. We may refer to something with a description that is not verified of it.
Too sharp a distinction between context of discovery and context of justification distorts understanding of theory, which often operates simultaneously in both.
Scientific investigation being a social enterprise, issues of individual belief are largely secondary.
Few things so clearly prove our free will as our capacity to engage in scientific inquiry, which is a rational navigation of alternative possibilities.
yearning as the general tone of the Qur'an
The Meccan suras primarily focus on creation and judgment.
Modern Hollywood uses sex scenes as substitutes for scenes of sexual chemistry.
