"Envy seeks to have good for oneself without any companion, or exclusively; wrath seeks to have good without any opposition, or imperturbably; sloth seeks to have good without any work, or effortlessly." Bonaventure
relics: portable contiguities, naturally linked resemblances,narrative connection in social convention
arguments for abstraction
(1) chiliagon
(2) indifference
(3) ideas with no adequate phantasm
(4) infinites
awareness of external world vs conceptionalization of it as external world
infinite regress argument from material signs to formal signs
Cain sacrificed the fruit of his work; he did not sacrifice his plants or fields. But Abel sacrificed not merely the wool of the lamb but the lamb itself.
Hoping for good involves preparing against evil that opposes it.
definite descriptions and the notion of a limit
The copy principle cannot be based on an induction of successful empirical analyses, because there is no reason to regard the empirical analyses as complete successes without the copy principle.
Material objects are substances known through sensible experience.
The more one presses a 'bundle' account of objects, the harder it is to see how it is anything other than a substance account under a different metaphor. The sole difference of metaphor seems to be about unity, and yet to apply either requires attributing to things the unity they have in reality.
accounts of salvation // accounts of truth as end
modalities arising from causal potential
modalities arising from uncertainty (incompleteness)
Newman's Notes and liturgical change and degeneration
Human civilization is formed by human beings and various secondary species organized to serve human ends.
The entire liturgy of the Church proclaims divine love. All in it is a divine caress. The history of our friendship with god is always linked to the particular cultural contexts in which we pray. From great feasts to the least sacramentalia, the liturgy is a constant source of wonder and awe.
The ecclesial liturgy as a whole, in all its manifold relationships, exhibits the inexhaustible riches of God. Its multiplicity and variety come from the intention of the first agent, who willed that what was lacking to one representation of divine things might be supplied by another, inasmuch as no creaturely expression on its own could fittingly represent divine things.
This liturgy as a whole not only manifests God but is indwelt by His presence. The Spirit of Life moves in the living activity of the liturgy and divinizes us in doing so, like the heart sending out life to all parts of the body.
Because of this, the whole Church in all its members is linked together by unseen bonds and forms a kind of divine family, a sublime communion that is infused, from beyond itself, with divine charity. The full treasury of the liturgy cannot be opent to any of us if our hearts lack the love for others that is implicated in love for God. For the living Body of Christ has only one Heart, joining and unifying us all.
The liturgy is a common good, the patrimony of the whole Church, and the responsibility of everyone. If we take special interest in any one form of it, it is only to care for it for the good of all.
liturgy and the natural method of learning theology
the three modes of instruction in morals
(1) preceptive
(2) admonitory, hortatory, promissory
(3) narrative (examples)
Cynicism does not tend to wit, for it does not tend to the playful reasoning that is wit's most natural form. It may stumble on to the witty, the thing that could be said with play, but it never comes to it as being said with play.
analogical cascade from argument to argument
analogy as a method of conceptual analysis
prayers as prehensive
To have Fortune for a friend,
always think upon the end.
deacon : priest : bishop :: baptized : confirmed : ordained
Presiding in charity is necessarily an act of universal scope.
For mental intentionality to be explicable, there must be either a broader genus of intentionality or a genus broader than intentionality, of which intentionality is a species. And it seems that this would have to be causal disposition.
Note, incidentally, that Hume's account of causation takes intentionality to be primitive and makes causation a species of it.
God grants aridity that we might not merely think and act as Christians but settled down to be Christians.
| bishop | priest | deacon |
| love | knowledge | worship |
| command | execute | defend |
| rule | reveal | assist |
Communion is at once an act of love of God, love of neighbor, and love of self: of self, for it refreshes us; of neighbor, for it is communing in a single sacrament; of God, for it is a sacrifice offered for union with God.
the aridities and consolations of the Church herself
Where it is not simply caused by the pressure of the moment, anxiety is most often a sign of misplaced priorities.
Peter and Paul as representing two aspects of Catholicity (for all and to all)
Gregory of Narek reads the Song of Songs as an allegorical presentation of salvation history, beginning with Adam in Paradise, and his fall, then passing to the coming of Christ, then to the spread of the faith through the world, and ending with the second coming.
Scripture as icon, sacramental, canon, and common prayer
God gave even to Himself the destiny of being a sign of God.
the six days of creation and the structure of conversions
sola scriptura // copy principle
(cp Feyerabend)
Every opportunity is an opportunity for the gospel; for good news for all is good news always.
Every deed corrosive to society that is widely accepted is so because it is supported by an appeal to faith, an appeal to consistency, and an appeal to consequences; for corrupt moral reasoning follows the most powerfully affecting lines of good moral reasoning.
the consensus of primary liturgies as infallible teaching (near-consensus of major liturgies as authoritative teaching)
- the complication is movable and variable parts, which are clearly important but make it harder to determine exactly what counts as agreement
- there are also the usual comparative problems arising from different force in translation, variations that obscure rather than eliminate the consensus, and liturgical corruptions and confusions
- the safest thing is perhaps to start with basic elements and general structure, but even there much of the consensus will be implied or implicated
- an interesting question is how genealogy of liturgy enters into this
sacramental character as a form of participation, in some way, in the Magisterium
teaching acts of the whole Church
(1) the people receiving their inheritance (e.g., in respecting our predecessors)
(2) the people acting together (e.g., praying together as Church)
(3) the bishops acting together as bishops, properly speaking
(3a) informally (e.g., in the harmony of their everyday episcopal acts)
(3b) formally (e.g., in ecumenical council)
(4) the Pope acting from the chair of Peter
Never spend more time complaining about something that you spend praying.
the Catholic unfaithful
docetism // sola scriptura
(they are basically both sola positions motivated by a concern for purity, of Christ in one and of Scripture in the other)
The simple summative account of group intentionality cannot distinguish accidental from important unities; this is a problem more complex summative accounts do not seem to avoid.
An account of group intentionality should begin with an account of group causation.
collective intentionality // emergence // organismic activity
married love as a sort of conversion
baptism/confirmation : wedding
unction : supprot in sickness and in death
eucharist : shared life
penance : forgiveness of fault and acts of mercy
orders : domestic church
matrimony : parenthood
the ostiarial ministry of priests and deacons
the ostiary as the seal of the scroll and the material affects of the Church
the infinite regress objection to the immaculate conception (e.g., Bernard Ep 174)
meals of fish in the gospel as representing proclamation of Scripture
"When people submit to force, they do so unwillingly because they are not strong enough. When people submit to the transforming influence of morality they do so sincerely, with admiration in their hearts." Mencius IIB3
three forms of necessary truth
(1) A is quasi-integral part of what it is to be a world (truths about world-ness)
(2) A is subjective part of being a world (truths about kinds of worlds)
(3) A is potential part of being a world (truths about what follows given a world)
The wrong kind of victory is the beginning of the worst kind of defeat.
