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A comment on comments
Dear reader, if it seems your comment has not been approved, sometimes it actually has been approved even if you don’t see it. The reason is that once a combox reaches 200 comments, the Blogger...
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What counts as magisterial teaching?
Popes speak infallibly when they either proclaim some doctrine ex cathedra, or reiterate some doctrine that has already been taught infallibly by virtue of being a consistent teaching of the ordinary...
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When do popes speak ex cathedra?
Consider four groups that, one might think, couldn’t be more different: Pope Francis’s most zealous defenders; sedevacantists; Protestants; and Catholics who have recently left the Church (for Eastern...
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The metaphysics of individualism
Modern moral discourse often refers to “persons” and to “individuals” as if the notions were more or less interchangeable. But that is not the case. In his book Three Reformers: Luther, Descartes,...
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Mind, matter, and malleability
Continuing our look at Jacques Maritain’s Three Reformers: Luther, Descartes, Rousseau, let’s consider some arresting passages on the conception of human nature the modern world has inherited from...
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Jesuit Britain?
Did Spanish Scholastic thinkers influence British liberalism? You can now access my Religion and Liberty review of Projections of Spanish Jesuit Scholasticism on British Thought: New Horizons in...
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Wishful thinking about Judas
In a recent article at Catholic Answers titled “Hope for Judas?” Jimmy Akin tells us that though he used to find convincing the traditional view that Judas is damned, it now seems to him that “we don’t...
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The illusion of AI
My essay “The Illusion of Artificial Intelligence” appears in the latest issue of the Word on Fire Institute’s journal Evangelization & Culture.
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Ed Piskor (1982-2024)
This week, cartoonist Ed Piskor committed suicide in the wake of the relentless online pillorying and overnight destruction of his career that followed upon allegations of sexual misconduct, of which...
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Western civilization's immunodeficiency disease
Liberalism is to the social order what AIDS is to the body. By relegating the truths of natural law and divine revelation to the private sphere, it destroys the immune system of the body politic,...
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Two problems with Dignitas Infinita
This week the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF) published the Declaration Dignitas Infinita, on the topic of human dignity. I am as weary as anyone of the circumstance that it has now...
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Mansini on the development of doctrine
My review of Guy Mansini’s excellent new book The Development of Dogma: A Systematic Account appears in the May 2024 issue of First Things.
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Daniel Dennett (1942-2024)
Prominent philosopher of mind, apostle of Darwinism, and New Atheist writer Daniel Dennett has died. I have been very critical of Dennett over the years, but he had two great strengths. First, he...
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Plato and Aristotle on youth and politics
As faculty, including even philosophy professors, aid and abet student bad behavior on campus, it is worth considering what the most serious thinkers of the Western tradition would have thought about...
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Dignitas Infinita at The Catholic Thing
At The Catholic Thing, Diane Montagna interviews me about the Vatican’s recent Declaration Dignitas Infinita.
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Let’s open it up
If we had a new open thread post, what would you talk about? Current events? That off-topic philosophical or theological question you vainly keep trying to bring up in other threads? Or perhaps one...
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Immortal Souls
My book Immortal Souls: A Treatise on Human Nature will be published this summer by Editiones Scholasticae. At well over 500 pages, it's my longest book yet. Here are the back cover copy,...
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New video course at Word on Fire
Recently I recorded a six-part video course titled Six Arguments for the Existence of God for the Word on Fire Institute. You can find an interview about the course and further information here.
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Update on Immortal Souls
Immortal Souls has at last been reduced from potency to act. The official publication dates are in June for Europe and July in the United States. Pre-order is now possible at Amazon’s websites in the...
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Multiverses and falsifiability
Adam Becker’s 2018 book What is Real? The Unfinished Quest for the Meaning of Quantum Physics is an excellent account of the longstanding and intractable controversy over how to interpret quantum...
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