5 posts tagged “catholic”
Very sadly, I have to report that The Charles Goyette Show, at least on KFNX AM 1100 in Phoenix, is at an end. My very best wishes and prayers to Mr. Goyette and his new wife. Hands down he is the best talk radio show host in the nation.
Visit his website: CharlesGoyette.com.
The great Lew Rockwell is interviewed on AntiWar Radio. Listen here [mp3].
The Revolution Hasn't Ended: CampaignForLiberty.com.
Beltway Libertarians vs. Rothbardians:
- "Libertarianism’s Divergent Roads" by Justin Raimondo.
- "The Kochtopus vs. Murray N. Rothbard" by David Gordon.
- "The Kochtopus vs. Murray N. Rothbard, Part II" by Gordon.
Another Review of The Revolution: A Manifesto.
For those who have not read the book yet, go out and get it. It's an excellent and succinct book. Despite its short size, I believe Ron Paul covers the issues brought up in the book very well. It will bring a new generation in the Liberty movement. Among other things, he covers the foreign policy views of the founding fathers and of the traditional conservatives. He points to the work of Michael Scheuer, Philip Giraldi, and Robert Pape to document the underlying root causes of terrorism. For instance, Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini tried for years to create a Jihad against the West because, as the neoconservatives say, of the "freedom" we have. That didn't work out all that well. And if we compare this to Osama bin Laden, we find that he gets recruits by different rhetoric which rallies people against the foreign policy of the U.S. government. Or if we just look at all individual suicide attacks, these individuals who became terrorists for reasons of religion is statistically low. Well, there is much more---but you will have to get the book.
Butler Shaffer is a brave soul. He attended a Republican Convention. Here he writes about it.
Some Politically Incorrect Taboos about the U.S. Government:
- "The United States has become a rogue state, a pariah nation, an evil empire.
- "The United States' military is the greatest force for evil in the world.
- "The United States is the arms dealer to the world.
- "The United States is not the world's policeman.
- "The United States cannot redeem the world through violence.
- "The United States is not the God-anointed protector of Israel that enjoys a special relationship with God.
- "The United States government is the greatest threat to American life, liberty, and property – not the leaders or the military or the people of Iraq, Iran, Syria, China, Russia, or Venezuela."
From "Christianity and War" by Laurence M. Vance.
The Empire has murdered a greater amount of persons than the terrorist organizations that originate from the Middle East. Or am I not allowed to say that? Maybe neoconservatives will follow the lead of their ideological left-liberal cousins in Canada and try to pass "Hate Speech" laws!
"War and the Common Good" by Anthony Gregory.
See "Legislating Tyranny," excerpted from The Tyranny of Good Intentions, by Paul Craig Roberts and Lawrence M. Stratton.
Now I do not relish seeing yet another administration in the White House. It is nothing but replacing one criminal gang with another. However, it will at least be nice to see the Bush nightmare administration gone. Why if only the modern version of "red state fascist" conservatism (and the whole Republican Party) would leave with him.
"The Spy Who Loves Us" by Philip Giraldi.
"You Want Change?" asks Justin Raimondo, "Me too – but don't hold your breath…"
Thomas J. DiLorenzo on Dictator Lincoln.
Dr. Wilson writes at Chronicles:
Thought experiment. According to widely accepted folklore, the Northern States fought the Southern States in 1861-1865 in order to free the slaves. If the South had freed the slaves after seceding, would the North have attacked them? (The answer is yes. The North attacked not to free the slaves but to “preserve the Union,” i.e., in order to keep the South captive for economic exploitation. The slaves being freed would have increased the incentive to attack and control the South because the Northern ruling class believed, mistakenly, that free blacks would provide cheaper and more profitable labour than slaves.)
"The ‘Good War’ and the Terrible Peace" by Patrick J. Buchanan.
Ludwig von Mises: “The desire for an increase of wealth can be satisfied through exchange, which is the only method possible in a capitalist economy, or by violence and petition as in a militarist society, where the strong acquire by force, the weak by petitioning.”
"War and Inflation" by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
"What Are Just Prices?" by Jeffrey A. Tucker.
"Starving the World's Poorest" by Bogdan C. Enache.
Upcoming Book to Buy: Eliot and His Age: T. S. Eliot's Moral Imagination in the Twentieth Century by Russell Kirk. It will be out sometime in July. Here is it at ISI Books. Besides The Essential Russell Kirk, this book stands out the most in their Kirk collection. It should be a good read.
Most "discount" book clubs are not worth it. The ISI Books Readers Club seems to be an exception to the rule. It is $15 and there are no obligations. I am a member and I'm happy with it.
Speaking of Books: If you do not have Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt, then you must. The Mises Institute has a new edition out. Buy it.
In this 1998 essay Sobran asks: "Are you a Marxist?"
Did Someone Say "Blackmail in Politics"?
(Off-Topic) "'Some of us are owed an apology': Traditionalists and the Latin Mass" - An Interview with Thomas E. Woods, Jr.
"Vatican City as a Free Society" [pdf] by Carlo Lottieri argues that "Despite its official self-description, the State of Vatican City is not a State."
[I]t is possible to put Vatican City in the set of legal and economic entities marked by a voluntary collaboration of individuals (as the families, the companies, the associations, and so on). Vatican City is the outcome of free and spontaneous relationships, in absence of any kind of violence, and there is a big difference between this type of interactions and the bounds imposed by a State with the violence and the threat.
Forget about Adam Smith, the modern day infatuation with the man, and many of his confused and daft economic views (for example, his confusion over the so-called "paradox of value"). Instead the real tradition of superior economic thought goes back a little further to the thirteenth to mid-seventeenth centuries, working from the tradition of St. Thomas Aquinas. It is the work of the Late Scholastics. Some have called them the founders of economic science. Even the first "Austrians," or the pre-Austrians.
These theologians had a remarkably grounded understanding of private property, free markets and liberty, which might be surprising to you given the horrible economic views that plague religion circles today.
Recently, to learn more about them and their thoughts, I added Alejandro A. Chafuen's Faith and Liberty: The Economic Thought of the Late Scholastics to my private Liberty library. It is a superb and succinct book.
Unlike Adam Smith and his group the Late Scholastics never got confused over the nature of value and prices. Because of this there was no confusion over why diamonds have a higher price than water. Water is more important for life, but no one is confronted with the choice of picking between all the water in the world versus all the diamonds. A man in that circumstance, who cared to live, would obviously value the water more highly. But in daily life man is confronted with "distinct" unit quantities. Water is in great abundance; diamonds are not. A man who owns a great deal of water will value additional quantities of water less and less because he can only put those additional unit quantities to less and less valued uses. They thus understood the principle of diminishing marginal utility, and also subjective value.
Money was another area they wrote about. They saw that the "worth" of money depends on its quantity relative to all other goods and services. That money, as a common medium of exchange, makes calculation possible. What is the preferable money based on? Gold. And what is inflation, caused by government? A tax.
Neither were they confused, as many are today, on what makes a "just price" and a "just wage": the voluntary interactions of persons on the free market. They understood the rationality of the pricing system, including in regards to why prices go up in times of trouble. As a result they would never have been fooled by the nonsensical modern day cries against "price gouging."
Of course they had a great concern for the poor, but it was for this reason that they understood the importance of the market place. It is a shame that they are not more known and that so many Catholics, not to mention Christians in general, have left this particular tradition behind to replace it with various socialist ideologies. It is the reason this book should be read far and wide.
Parenthetically, for those interested, a good book to read along with Faith and Liberty is The Church and the Market: A Catholic Defense of the Free Economy by Thomas E. Woods, Jr. Everyone, even non-Catholics, could benefit. It is a good standalone introduction to Austrian economics. I would especially recommend it to traditional conservatives who are skeptical of capitalism and the free market.
Articles to Read:
- "Juan de Mariana & the Influence of the Spanish Scholastics" by Jesús Huerta de Soto
- "Catholicism, Protestantism, and Capitalism" by Murray Rothbard
- "Morality and Economic Law" by Thomas Woods
- "Catholics and Capitalism" by Woods
- "Economics and Profit: A Final Word" by Woods
- "Faith and Liberty" by Woods
- "Christianity's Free-Market Tradition" by Stephen Carson
- "Profits vs Society: Must We Choose?" by Carson
I hope you had a very merry, blessed, and holy Christmas day. Hopefully the New Year, 2008, will be a very productive and happy one for you and your family. In view of the fact that I have broken the rules before when it comes to topics on theology and Catholicism (and a couple of other subjects), and given the time of the year, I would like to type a little bit about the new book Sacred Then and Sacred Now: The Return of the Old Latin Mass by Thomas E. Woods, Jr.
It is an excellent, very slim book that can be read in one sitting; especially great for the laymen. It is very handy. All Catholics not familiar (or whose familiarity is very little) with the Old Mass should go buy it, particular in light of this Mass being made more available in the future.
As I said in a previous blog entry, I purchased a copy for myself and for another person, a priest. It might be too basic for him, but I did learn from it. I'm much too young, the New Mass (now a.k.a. "ordinary form") is what I know. My experience with the Tridentine Mass ("extraordinary form") is little. The majority of my "experience" I have with it is just by reading about it. It is not offered in many places. Many of those that do experience it regularly drive hours every week, something not that feasible for many others that would like to attend this form of the Mass.
This is changing, though. Pope Benedict XVI's liberation of the extraordinary form will make it more widely available to those that desire it. As the Pope has written (July, 2007 letter to the bishops), and is the first quote in the book you will see inside:
What earlier generations held as sacred, remains sacred and great for us too, and cannot be all of a sudden entirely forbidden or even considered harmful. It behooves all of us to preserve the riches which have developed in the Church’s faith and prayer, and to give them their proper place.
What was then holy is still holy today, in other words. It cannot just be left behind, abandoned or forbidden. This is just common sense, at least it should be. (I grant that "common sense" is defined differently in today's world. Haha.)
In Sacred Then and Sacred Now, Dr. Woods explores some of the writings of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, before he became Pope. This exploration shows that he always had a deep love and appreciation for the old liturgy, even though he did not reject reform or been as much as a critic as some traditionalists.
One component of his thoughts has been that liturgical reform must be developed and changed organically; not abruptly. One cannot just break from the past. He also believes that Mass has now become more man-focused versus God-focused and that changes have given more individual concoction for creativeness in the new missal detached from a binding and sharing to all members of the Church. For a greater taste on this, see this article by Woods which was adapted for the book.
Woods also examines Pope Benedict XVI's issued motu proprio Summorum Pontificum. (The Pope's document and his letter to the bishops are included in the book at the end in the appendix section.) The message of these documents echoes the above. The Old Mass was not "outlawed." A group of people that desire it should be able to get it by asking their pastor, and he should do his best to grant their request. If he does not, they should then go to the diocesan bishop. And if that does not work, then they should go to the Pontifical Commission "Ecclesia Dei." This (quoting Summorum Pontificum) "will exercise the authority of the Holy See." Thus, writes Woods, "the Pope expects his instructions to be obeyed ... [his] message to the bishops could scarcely be clearer."
Chapter three in the book gives a simple guide to the extraordinary form. Like the rest of the book, it is very well done and easy to read.
The next two chapters highlight the differences between the extraordinary and ordinary forms. I believe Woods does this very well, and answers objections to the extraordinary form powerfully----but understandably for the beginner. It shows how political correctness has taken over today, even in the Church. And how, in my view, the ordinary form does appear to cheapen the Mass.
This includes talk on the reasons for communion on the tongue, and kneeling for it. Woods writes about why only male altar servers are allowed and Eucharistic ministers are not used.
He tries to clear up "common misconceptions." For example, Woods talks about why Latin should be used because of its nature of being (as Pious XI said) "universal, immutable, and non-vernacular." The Catholic Church goes beyond nations, nationality, ethnicity, race. Its language should reflect that and should unite people. How wonderful is the idea that if one is traveling to a place around the world that the same Holy, True Mass is taking place. Woods also addresses the claims that people did not understand the Old Mass or that it supposedly diminished participation. Another complaint that is dealt with, is the priest and how he has his back to the people. (As if, Woods says, the people are the center of the Mass! An unfortunate example of today's misplaced modernism.) Then there is the criticism that the Old Mass should be rejected because it is really not that ancient.
You will find some online and offline resources at the end, plus a sermon of Father Calvin Goodwin.
Buy it here.
Traditional Catholics should be happy on Robert Nisbet's comments on Vatican II:
The greatest religious event of our age will prove to have been the signal transformation of the Roman Catholic Church by the Vatican Council summoned by John XXIII in 1960. For the Roman Catholic Church was the last real stronghold of the kind of authority that lies in religious institutions, in ritual and in sacrament. To an astonishing degree it had resisted the acids of modernity which in the Protestant faiths had virtually destroyed the sense of visible community in religion and that had driven more and more of their members either out of religion altogether or to the work of further secularizing these faiths in the interests of either politics or Mammon. I do no think it too strong a statement to say that in large areas of Protestantism----and the same applies to Jewish areas also----the capacity of religion to inspire respect, to provide spiritual anchor, to offer community worthy of the name, had just about vanished. Only, really, in the Roman Catholic church did ritual, liturgy, and sacrament remain vivid, a fact attested to in some part by the rising number of conversions to Catholicism from Protestant and nonreligious sectors.
Vatican II changed that, though we cannot be sure at this juncture exactly how much. If the Roman church, by virtue of the acts of this momentous council, goes the way of the Protestant churches, if escalating secularism is accompanied there as it has been in the Protestant faiths by loss of visible community and authority in the vital sphere of faith, then one more wall of the political community will have been weakened. Religions like Christianity and Judaism were once both strong in the authority of the sacred, and in this fact lay their internal strength and also their extraordinary value to the whole idea of the political community, together with its liberties and rights, in Western society.
Some Links:I cannot help thinking that the often mindless nostalgia that has come over American society during recent decades is related to the loss of the sacred and of the power of ritual in human affairs. The great effect of ritual is its capacity to bind past and present in a single act, with the emphasis, of course, on the present. In ritual the past, and also by implication the future, are enacted, but, as I say, in the present. There is nothing in ritual that leads one to look back at all, least of all fondly, on the past, for it is the merit of ritual that it keeps the past around in our daily existence. But when ritual declines and disappears the sterile spirit of archaism or nostalgia takes command. Nostalgia is the rust of memory. Having, as it were, lost the past from our present, we look back on it fondly, and so often vapidly. It is a poor substitute for the sacred.
Traditional Catholic Articles at LRC:
- "The Catholic Church's great divide" by Steven Greenhut (orregister.com)
- "PC in the Catholic Church" by Tom Woods
- "What the Next Pope Should Do" by Lew Rockwell
- "Pius XII And John Paul II" by Pat Buchanan
- "A Catholic Looks at the State" by Don Mathews
- "Catholic Social Teaching and Economic Law: An Unresolved Tension" by Tom Woods
- "Three Catholic Cheers for Capitalism"
- "Morality and Economic Law: Toward a Reconciliation"
- Read Woods' book: The Church and the Market: A Catholic Defense of the Free Economy
