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(Apologies for the absurdly sparse blogging of late – the beginning of the semester has kept me quite busy since returning from New Jersey. The following are my notes on the fifth chapter of Caritas in Veritate, and I’ll plan to have my final set of notes up some time tomorrow. The archive of my [...]
Filed under: Caritas in Veritate, foreign affairs, government/law, reading groups, religion
This chapter begins with a discussion of the reciprocal relationships between rights and duties, arguing that the latter are necessary for the right ordering of the former, and indeed that the recognition of reciprocal duties provides “a more powerful incentive to action than the mere assertion of rights”. This is surely correct, and it seems [...]
Filed under: Caritas in Veritate, environment, morality, reading groups, religion
by JL Wall
Normally David Goldman (”Spengler”) is astute, or at least astute enough to require serious thought in grappling with his arguments. But about this latest, I just don’t know where to begin. Courtesy of the opening anecdote, it appears to be an explanation of how, precisely, Rahm Emanuel is a “self-hating Jew” [...]
Filed under: foreign affairs, religion
The central themes of this chapter are the nature of gift and gratuitousness, and what it means to have a market economy – whether domestic or global – built on love and ordered toward integral human development. A helpful way to think about this challenge is in terms of the distinction drawn in sec. 36 [...]
Filed under: Caritas in Veritate, economics, government/law, morality, reading groups, religion
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has published some guidelines (pdf) for health care reform that it seems to me should be accepted as a basic framework by all people of good will. They argue that health care reform should:
⇒ Include health care coverage for all people from conception until natural death; [...]
Filed under: abortion, health care, politics, religion
I suppose it’s around this point that George Weigel started going wild with his red pen.
Here’s an example of the kind of claims that have got free market critics rather up in arms about the message of this document:
Profit is useful if it serves as a means towards an end that provides a sense both [...]
Filed under: Caritas in Veritate, economics, reading groups, religion
Jody Bottum thinks environmentalism is a Christianity without Christ:
An original innocence in a Garden of Eden? Check. The ruination of that paradise by human action? Check. A sinful human nature? A demand to change your life? A looming apocalypse? Check. Check. Check. A redemption?
Well, no, not that: There is no Christ in environmentalism. The heavenly [...]
Filed under: environment, religion
Having had a good friend whose father was briefly a professor at Ave Maria Law School, I’ve long harbored a quiet fascination with Tom Monaghan’s attempt to create a premiere Catholic university in the swamps of Naples. (Michael Brendan Dougherty profiled the attempt to develop the surrounding town in TAC last August.) But whether or [...]
(The text of the encyclical is here, and here are my initial thoughts on the introduction, together with the lively discussion that followed. Up for next weekend: chapter two.)
This chapter is meant to provide an introductory overview of Paul VI’s Populorum Progressio, and as other commentators have noted a key goal of Benedict’s (see secs. [...]
Filed under: Caritas in Veritate, reading groups, religion
Via Henry Karlson, I see that one Daniel Indiviglio, of The Atlantic’s business channel, has up a post on Caritas in Veritate. Indiviglio is a Catholic who calls himself “knowledgeable about Catholic thought” and then admits to not having read the whole encyclical (“I have read a great deal of it, however” – well, good [...]