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Robert Bellah’s Religion in Human Evolution
Robert Bellah’s Religion in Human Evolution is an immensely learned and informative book, from which I learned much. It is, however, in the tradition of those thinkers since Kant who have defended the truth of religion by redefining “truth.” Bellah’s redefinition of truth is quite different from Kant’s; he owes much to William James’s pragmatism,… Continue reading
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The New Natural Law Theory
A paper of mine on the New Natural Law Theory of Germain Grizez, et al. has been posted at The Josias. It’s an English version of a paper that has just been published in Spanish in a volume edited by the great Catholic jurist Miguel Ayuso. Continue reading
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He Misses Somebody He’s Never Even Met
Over at Humanum I have a piece on David Foster Wallace’s analysis symptoms of the perennial human condition that are aggravated by our own times. Continue reading
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Latin Scholastic Mystagogy
A story one sometimes hears from clerics who attended liberal seminaries in the 1970s is that, unlike the mystagogues of the East, the scholastics of the Latin West did not appreciate the riches of the liturgy. Obsessed as they were with the essential matter and form of the Sacraments, and the juridical and requirements for… Continue reading
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The Great Struggle
The brothers asked Agatho, ‘Abba, which virtue in our way of life needs most effort to acquire?’ He said to them, ‘I may be wrong but I think nothing needs so much effort as prayer to God. If anyone wants to pray, the demons try to interrupt the prayer, for they know that prayer is… Continue reading