Here and There

• Disputations on "Modern Prometheuses" (of Pope Francis' Evangelii Gaudium):

  The modern Prometheus claims to be able to define his own nature and to create his own good, and in doing so he creates a monster. He doesn't just fail to do God's will, he fails to do his own will, because man isn't able to define his own nature and create his own good. ...

  The neopelagianism comes in, I suppose, in the de facto reliance on human actions -- the right prayers, said on the right day in the right language -- for salvation, rather than on Divine mercy. This reliance on human actions may perhaps be more clearly be seen in attitudes towards those who don't follow their prescribed orthopraxis. (As an extreme example, I once came across a condemnation of the Divine Mercy Chaplet as a ruse of the devil to trick Catholics into not praying the Rosary.)

  I'll go so far as to suggest the possibility of a neopelagian orthodoxy -- placing one's hope for salvation in believing the right doctrines, according to the right formulas, rather than in the indwelling of the Holy Spirit promised to those who live according to those doctrines, and Whose presence is a guarantee of salvific grace.

• "The End of Protestantism" turns out to be ... Protestant - Michael Liccione responds to Peter Leithart's "The End of Protestantism" (First Things "On the Square" 11/8/13): "What Leithart is advocating, which he calls "reformational Catholicism," has been around since the 16th century."

• Balthasar's Interpretation of Aquinas Thomistica.net.:

  A few years ago I translated Angelo Campodonico's essay “Il pensiero filosofico di Tommaso d’Aquino nell’interpretazione di H.U. Von Balthasar” for the English edition of Nova et Vetera. It was published as "Hans Urs von Balthasar's Interpretation of the Philosophy of Thomas Aquinas" in vol. 8 of Nova et Vetera on pp. 33-53. I recently uploaded it to my Academia.edu page. You can find it here.

  Since Thomists and Balthasarians often find themselves at odds, this makes Campodonico's essay all the more interesting, or so it seems to me. In fact, Campodonico argues that Aquinas had a profound influence on Balthasar's thought. He even makes the (in my view) provocative claim that...

  [t]he influence of Thomas Aquinas on the formulation of Balthasar’s theology and philosophy is clear and shows that Balthasar regarded him with perhaps more esteem than any other theologian in history (33-34).

• Texts on natura pura A compilation from Mark Johnson. Thomistica 11/02/13.

• Catholicism and the problem of modernity, by James Chastek. Just Thomism 12/19/13.

• Remembering Jim Morrison, by Paul Beston. The American Conservative. The Doors frontman and his admiral father lived a generation's turmoil.

• I had the privilege to attend part of the "Thomas Aquinas and Philosophical Realism" Symposium in NYC in November. Among the presenters was Ed Feser (“An Aristotelian Argument for the Existence of God") and John Haldane ("Aquinas and Realism"). Unfortunately no texts of the presentations have surfaced yet online, although William Briggs gives a detailed account of the conference on his blog. (Feser's much anticipated Scholastic Metaphysics: A Contemporary Introduction will be published next year).