The Fred Martinez Report

Posts

Lamont: Maritain does not grasp St. Thomas's view, simply remarking that in antiquity and the Middle Ages the natural law was focused on obligations rather than rights. 100 In the absence of criteria for determining their scope, the rights postulated by Maritain are in effect no more than a list of desirable objectives to be pursued. Maritain distinguishes between rights that can be limited by the demands of the common good, and those that are inalienable. He does not offer criteria for distinguishing between the two, and the examples of inalienable rights that he gives-those of life and the pursuit of happiness-do not have any evident characteristics that identify them as being inalienable, except for their having been so described in the American Declaration of Independence (no doubt a reflection of Maritain's sojourn in America). One need not labor the point that this account of natural law and natural rights does not stand up to examination. In addition to its influence on Vatican H's Dignitatis humanae, its interest lies in its illustrating the full flowering of the tendency, already noted by Villey in the baroque Scholastics, to substitute a concern with arriving at the right answer for a concern with answering rightly-with the content of the right answer having been provided by the goals, interests, and presuppositions of the time.

https://isidore.co/misc/Res%20pro%20Deo/Journals/The%20Thomist%20(1941-2024)/OCR-layer-only-PDFs/2009_Volume73_Number2.pdf

Examining the Deep Roots of the Abuse Crisis Taylor Darrick Taylor

https://crisismagazine.com/opinion/examining-the-deep-roots-of-the-abuse-crisis The ongoing sexual abuse crisis in the Church has left many good Catholics shaken, and like many I have tried to understand how this has happened. Obviously, homosexuality in the clergy plays a role, and the all-male nature of the priesthood provides opportunities for such abuse. But here I want to explore the larger historical forces that allowed abuse to flourish in the Church, which at least for me makes it somewhat more explicable in human terms, the supernatural nature of evil notwithstanding. Perhaps the most insightful explanation I have encountered comes from the Canadian philosopher John Lamont, whose article “ Tyranny and Sexual Abuse in the Church: a Jesuit Tragedy , ” identifies a warped idea of obedience which has influenced priestly formation since the 16th century. According to Lamont, a voluntarist conception of obedience, which made the will of a superior the necessary criteri...

The Thomist 73 (2009): 169-239 CONSCIENCE, FREEDOM, RIGHTS: IDOLS OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT RELIGION JOHN R. T. LAMONT

https://isidore.co/misc/Res%20pro%20Deo/Journals/The%20Thomist%20(1941-2024)/OCR-layer-only-PDFs/2009_Volume73_Number2.pdf The Thomist 73 (2009): 169-239 CONSCIENCE, FREEDOM, RIGHTS: IDOLS OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT RELIGION JOHN R. T. LAMONT Catholic Institute of Sydney Strathfield, NSW, Australia THE UNDERLYING THEME of this article is the teaching of the Catholic Church on religious liberty. In order to address this much-contested subject one must first consider other subjects that are at least as important: the concepts of conscience, freedom, and rights. In this article, I will contrast St. Thomas's understanding of these concepts with the understandings of the Counter-Reformation and the Enlightenment, and will argue that St. Thomas's understanding is the one that should be adopted. In addition to providing a necessary preliminary to an examination of Catholic teaching on religious liberty, this discussion will put us in a position to understand the state of the Church as a who...