Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas from all at the Albertus Institute!





[Details of image: Master of Vyšší Brod, 1350. Full details here.

The beginning of Advent

The holy prophets prophesied both the first coming in his birth, and also the second at the great judgement. We too, God's servants, strengthen our faith by the services of this season, because in our hymns we confess our redemption by his first coming, and we remind ourselves that we should be ready for his second coming, so that we may follow him from that judgement to the eternal life, as he promised us.

[From Aelfric's sermon on the First Sunday of Advent. Discussed on A Clerk of Oxford blog here]

YEAR after year, as it passes, brings us the same warnings again and again, and none perhaps more impressive than those with which it comes to us at this season. The very frost and cold, rain and gloom, which now befall us, forebode the last dreary days of the world, and in religious hearts raise the thought of them. The year is worn out: spring, summer, autumn, each in turn, have brought their gifts and done their utmost; but they are over, and the end is come. All is past and gone, all has failed, all has sated; we are tired of the past; we would not have the seasons longer; and the austere weather which succeeds, though ungrateful to the body, is in tone with our feelings, and acceptable. Such is the frame of mind which befits the end of the year; and such the frame of mind which comes alike on good and bad at the end of life.

[From The Newman Reader, 'Worship, a Preparation for Christ's Coming' here]

Image: The Advent and Triumph of Christ by Hans Memling c 1480. Details here.

Feast Day of St Albert the Great

Happy Feast Day of St Albert the Great, our patron!


Albertus Magnus, also known as Albert the Great, was one of the most universal thinkers to appear during the Middle Ages. Even more so than his most famous student, St. Thomas of Aquinas, Albert’s interests ranged from natural science all the way to theology. He made contributions to logic, psychology, metaphysics, meteorology, mineralogy, and zoology. He was an avid commentator on nearly all the great authorities read during the 13^th Century. He was deeply involved in an attempt to understand the import of the thought of Aristotle in some orderly fashion that was distinct from the Arab commentators who had incorporated their own ideas into the study of Aristotle. Yet he was not averse to using some of the outstanding Arab philosophers in developing his own ideas in philosophy. His superior understanding of a diversity of philosophical texts allowed him to construct one of the most remarkable syntheses in medieval culture.

[Read more here from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article]


The influence exerted by Albert on the scholars of his own day and on those of subsequent ages was naturally great. His fame is due in part to the fact that he was the forerunner, the guide and master of St. Thomas Aquinas, but he was great in his own name, his claim to distinction being recognized by his contemporaries and by posterity. It is remarkable that this friar of the Middle Ages, in the midst of his many duties as a religious, as provincial of his order, as bishop and papal legate, as preacher of a crusade, and while making many laborious journeys from Cologne to Paris and Rome, and frequent excursions into different parts of Germany, should have been able to compose a veritable encyclopedia, containing scientific treatises on almost every subject, and displaying an insight into nature and a knowledge of theology which surprised his contemporaries and still excites the admiration of learned men in our own times. He was, in truth, a Doctor Universalis. Of him it in justly be said: Nil tetigit quod non ornavit [he touched nothing which he did not adorn]; and there is no exaggeration in the praises of the modern critic who wrote: "Whether we consider him as a theologian or as a philosopher, Albert was undoubtedly one of the most extraordinary men of his age; I might say, one of the most wonderful men of genius who appeared in past times" (Jourdain, Recherches Critiques).

[Read more here from the Catholic Encyclopedia article]



Podcasts from History of Philosophy without any gaps:

Albert on nature here

Albert's metaphysics here


[Details of image: Fresco of St Albert by Tommaso da Modena 1352 (full details of image here)]

What's coming up

Monday 7 November 7pm: 

'God is not a thing!': Science and religion debates among young Catholics today.
19:00, Mon 7th Nov, 2016
The Garden Room, St Albert's Catholic Chaplaincy, Edinburgh, EH8 9LD. Entrance via George Square Lane.
Free.

To celebrate 800 years since the bull of foundation of the Dominican Order by Pope Honorius III, the Albertus Institute will be offering a series of three talks this autumn on Dominican influence on the teaching of the sciences. Lectures will be chaired by Dr Sara Parvis, Senior Lecturer in Early Church History at the School of Divinity, University of Edinburgh.

The lecture by Michael O'Duffin on "God is not a thing!": Science and religion debates among young Catholics today' will be the third talk in this series. Michael is a schoolmaster and a Glasgow Lay Dominican.

Whilst lectures are free, we suggest a donation of a £5 for each lecture to cover costs. Tea and coffee will be available after the talk and questions.

Saturday 26 November

Conference on 'Modern Security and Human Values: The Changing Face of Conflict' - Saturday 26th November 2016

 Explore how modern security, conflict, the use of emerging technologies to counteract terrorism impacts on the state, civil liberties and the individual.


Speakers will include Hon Richard Stearns, a US Federal Judge; Dr Laura Cleary, Head of the Centre for International Security & Resilience, Cranfield University; General Zoltan Szenes, a retired military officer in the Hungarian Army; Richard Hoskins, retired senior official in the US FBI and Andrew Dolan, a consultant in training simulation exercises in various aspects of security. The Conference will be chaired by Professor Juliet Kaarbo, co-director of the Centre for Security Research, The University of Edinburgh and the Revd. Dr David G Coulter, CB, QHC, Chaplain General to HM Land Forces.

This day conference will be held at the Appleton Tower, University of Edinburgh, Crichton Street, Edinburgh, EH8 9LE. For further information and booking details visit the conference details on our main website here.

Course on Russell Kirk: final post and overall reflection

Welcome to the final post of our course on Russell Kirk. The previous posts can be accessed via the links on our Russell Kirk page here. In this final post I shall reflect on some of the key points which Kirk raises for Catholic social teaching.

For me, three points which are important in assessing Kirk's work are:

1) His emphasis on prudence and virtue as being at the heart of politics.
2) His emphasis on the importance of the past.
3) His emphasis on imagination.

The placing of prudence at the heart of political life echoes ancient philosophical thought which Kirk accessed primarily through Stoicism. Not only is there a focus on the importance of individual flourishing as the key end of politics, but there is a resistance to systematic accounts of political science as opposed to a reliance on the wise judgment of the sage. Both can be seen as being in tension with a certain understanding of Catholic social teaching as providing a recipe book of principles for politics and of its downplaying the individual's good in favour of the common good. Although there may well be moments either in Kirk's own politics or in American conservatism in general where prudence becomes mere pragmatism and a concern for the individual turns to subjectivism and self interest, such distortions are not a necessary consequence of Kirk's views. On the other hand, such emphases can be a needed corrective to modern tendencies to reduce the messiness of political life to techniques and the supernatural end of the individual soul to the emptiness of the merely collective life.

Kirk's conservative emphasis on retaining the past can certainly be criticised in the light of Catholic emphasis on natural law. Apart from noting that Kirk always acknowledged the need for change in some circumstances, however, it is important to remember that he is working within a culture constructed for 1500 years under a Christian influence. Whatever evils may exist within that culture are unlikely to removed by a wholesale abandonment of its main beneficial elements. Again, at the very least, an emphasis on the wisdom of tradition is a corrective to a modern tendency to regard the past merely as quaint or even as something from which to escape.

Finally, there is Kirk's emphasis on imagination. For all his affectation of the paraphernalia of the past, this makes Kirk a surprisingly modern, indeed, post-modern figure. His suspicion of technological reasoning and reliance instead on imaginative storytelling is based fundamentally on the ancient philosophical principle that human affairs can only be correctly governed by a virtuous ruler with the insight of wisdom. But to that basic foundation he adds a delight in playfulness and individual creativity. (For all their differences, he reminds me here of GK Chesterton.)

If I had to sum up the reasons for reading Kirk, I'd simply offer the thought that, whatever general principles can be established in  social thought, those principles still have to be interpreted and applied through practical wisdom (prudentia). Getting to grips with the insights of  the Wizard of Mecosta, both as a practising Catholic and major figure in American political thinking, is an important contribution to developing our own prudentia.

'Knowing that his death was coming soon gave great comfort to the family. At one of the last gatherings with his daughters, Kirk reminded his children to read always four specific works to sustain the moral imagination: Hans Christian Anderson's tale "Little Fur Tree," Tolkien's "Leaf by Niggle," C.S. Lewis's allegorical tale "Pilgrim's Progress," and George MacDonald's fairy tale "The Golden Key". He blessed each of his girls, promised to look over them from heaven, and made them promise to care for Annette. Kirk died on Friday morning, April 29, 1994, the Feast of St Catherine of Sienna, doctor of the church and patroness of communication. That morning Kirk had worried about John Paul II, who had just fallen, and had prayed for him. He and Annette had had breakfast together. Knowing this was probably his final meal, Kirk had asked for chocolate chip cookies and custard pie. As he had drifted off after breakfast, Monica, the oldest daughter, sang lullabies to him, the ones he had sung to her as a little girl. Russell Amos Augustine Kirk thus passed into timelessness.'

From Bradley J. Birzer (2015) Russell Kirk: American Conservative, University Press of Kentucky, pp. 392-3.

[That's all, folks! Normal blogging on general matters of interest for Catholic social thought will continue in future weeks...]

Course on Russell Kirk: week 10

Welcome to the tenth post in our online course on Russell Kirk. Links to previous posts may be found on our Russell Kirk page here.

This week we consider Kirk's final principle of conservatism:

Tenth, the thinking conservative understands that permanence and change must be recognized and reconciled in a vigorous society. The conservative is not opposed to social improvement, although he doubts whether there is any such force as a mystical Progress, with a Roman P, at work in the world. When a society is progressing in some respects, usually it is declining in other respects...

Change is essential to the body social, the conservative reasons, just as it is essential to the human body. A body that has ceased to renew itself has begun to die. But if that body is to be vigorous, the change must occur in a regular manner, harmonizing with the form and nature of that body; otherwise change produces a monstrous growth, a cancer, which devours its host.

Reading:

Russell Kirk, 'The essence of conservatism' here

Russell Kirk: 'How dead is Edmund Burke?' here

Critical discussion:

Although it is easy to read Kirk (and Burke) as resistant to any change, as he makes clear above, Kirk at least is open to change and even progress. Unlike 'progressives', however, he is sceptical about the possibility of anything more than piecemeal improvements and is acutely aware of the dangers of destruction. Burke too is open to organic change n harmony with existing structures, and indeed is accused by Leo Strauss of being too willing to accept social change as a sign of God's will (see the passage from Strauss here).

In a scepticism about the benefits of change, Kirk is at one with a strong tendency in classical philosophy. For example, Plato in the Republic devotes two books (eight and nine) to the inevitable process of the decline of his perfect City, a decline that cannot be avoided but at best delayed. Both Plato and Kirk are primarily concerned with internal forces of change, but a strong tendency within modern thought (and echoed by Catholic social teaching) identifies modernity itself as an external factor which both disrupts the organic growth of society requires new responses:



87. The term “social doctrine” goes back to Pope Pius XI [139] and designates the doctrinal “corpus” concerning issues relevant to society which, from the Encyclical Letter Rerum Novarum [140] of Pope Leo XIII, developed in the Church through the Magisterium of the Roman Pontiffs and the Bishops in communion with them[141]. The Church's concern for social matters certainly did not begin with that document, for the Church has never failed to show interest in society. Nonetheless, the Encyclical Letter Rerum Novarum marks the beginning of a new path. Grafting itself onto a tradition hundreds of years old, it signals a new beginning and a singular development of the Church's teaching in the area of social matters[142].

In her continuous attention to men and women living in society, the Church has accumulated a rich doctrinal heritage. This has its roots in Sacred Scripture, especially the Gospels and the apostolic writings, and takes on shape and body beginning from the Fathers of the Church and the great Doctors of the Middle Ages, constituting a doctrine in which, even without explicit and direct Magisterial pronouncements, the Church gradually came to recognize her competence.

88. In the nineteenth century, events of an economic nature produced a dramatic social, political and cultural impact. Events connected with the Industrial Revolution profoundly changed centuries-old societal structures, raising serious problems of justice and posing the first great social question — the labour question — prompted by the conflict between capital and labour. In this context, the Church felt the need to become involved and intervene in a new way: the res novae (“new things”) brought about by these events represented a challenge to her teaching and motivated her special pastoral concern for masses of people. A new discernment of the situation was needed, a discernment capable of finding appropriate solutions to unfamiliar and unexplored problems.
[From the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church here]

Questions:

Does Kirk underestimate the 'newness' of the changes in modernity and of the responses required to deal with them?

Given Catholicism's reliance on a body of achieved doctrine, shouldn't Catholics have a conservative bias in trying to retain the truth in the face of unexpected challenges?


Further reading:

Cardinal Newman: 'An essay on the development of Christian doctrine' here


[Next post: 10 October 2016. (This will be the final post of the series and will take the form of an overall reflection on Kirk's work.)]

[Details of image: John Henry Newman by Millais. Full details here.]

Talk today at Chaplaincy in Edinburgh

Just a quick reminder that there is a further talk today in the series 'The Dominican Order and the Teaching of the Sciences':

Dr Peter Hunter OP will now speak on ‘Science before Galileo? Early Dominican physics' on Monday 3 October at 7pm in the Garden Room at St Albert’s, 24 George Square, Edinburgh (entrance via George Square Lane) 

Full details on main Albertus website here

[Our online series on Russell Kirk continues tomorrow 4 October]