Here and There

• Artur Rosman () has a two-part interview with Thomas Pfau, Alice Mary Baldwin Professor of English and professor of German at Duke University and author of Minding the Modern: Human Agency, Intellectual Traditions, and Responsible Knowledge: Part I: Threatening Naturalism’s Universal Authority (08/13/15) | No Theology, No Phenomenology of the Person? (08/14/15).

• Letter to a Friend on Ressourcement and the New Theology The Paraphasic 12/01/14:

  A friend of mine, a student in a very prominent graduate program in theology at a major Catholic university in the US, wrote to me recently. In his letter he expressed confusion and dismay at the hostility to Western theology and liturgy since the Middle Ages which he has encountered among his professors, and asked me for some thoughts on the matter. ...

• Bishop-elect Fr. Robert Barron (via Alisdair MacIntyre): "We've lost the capacity even to have a coherent moral conversation..."

• Would Alasdair MacIntyre Live in a “Benedict Option” Community?, by Dr. Adam J. De Ville. "For all the intriguing ideas that seem to huddle under the capacious canopy of the “Benedict option,” and for all my sympathy towards it, there are three lingering doubts about it."

• A Quick Guide for Doctrinally Classifying Contemporary Catholics Paraphasic Catholic. 05/04/15.

• The Conversion of Paul Ryan, by Timothy Kirchoff. Ethika Politika 05/21/15. On Ryan's involvement with community activist Bob Woodson in Comeback, a documentary series sharing "the inspiring, true stories of real-life Americans overcoming adversity in our nation’s cities and communities."

  Over the course of the 2012 presidential campaign, Ryan eagerly employed the language of Catholic social thought, invoking subsidiarity alongside solidarity and arguing that the preferential option for the poor does not imply a preferential option for big government. It may once have been possible to read his use of such terms as a cynical attempt to twist the Church’s teaching to support Republican economic policies, but Ryan seems to have taken these principles to heart and sought out the opportunity to see them lived out.

• The new Pope Benedict Roundup and Pope Francis Roundup of news and commentary are live on their respective blogs.