How should a rational civil authority regulate marriage, supposing that the state does not accept a particular religious revelation or tradition as definitive, and that the citizens of the state recognize various religious authorities? Since most of us live in civil states like this, the question is not unimportant for us. This is the actual [...]
Archive for the ‘law’ Category
Only excerpts or summaries of the posts are shown on this page. Click on the title of a post to see the whole post.Rational Civil Authority and Marriage
Tuesday, March 16th, 2010Aquinas's Moral Theology
Tuesday, February 9th, 2010The Aquinas Institute will be offering an eight week study program covering the first part of the second part of the Summa Theologiae of Thomas Aquinas, which comprises his treatment of Christian moral life in general.
Studying Thomas Aquinas is of value because he integrates deep insights about human nature and reason that are often presented and thought of as opposed to one another: e.g., the objectivity of moral truth, and its dependence on reason; the primacy of the end, and the importance of moral character.
Moral Theology and Legalism
Saturday, August 15th, 2009In my post on Aquinas on Sexual Sins I promised to return to the issue of the legalistic morality that became dominant in the Catholic church. For St. Thomas Aquinas, law is fundamentally an ordinance of practical reason perceiving the appropriateness of things to an end, and ordering concrete means to that end. A law [...]
Natural Law and Universal Ethics – Update
Monday, July 27th, 2009I've now translated the footnotes in the International Theological Commission's document The Search for Universal Ethics: A New Look at the Natural Law, including the Latin notes (mostly from the Summa Theologiae) that were left untranslated in the original document. The footnote references have also been hyperlinked to the text of the notes, for easier [...]
Natural Law and Universal Ethics
Tuesday, July 21st, 2009The International Theological Commission recently published a document on the natural law as the foundation for universal ethics. The document is available on the Vatican website in French and Italian. I've made a translation into English (the body of the text is complete, notes will be coming) and posted it here on this website. The [...]
Law, counsels, virtue, perfect virtue
Sunday, September 28th, 2008An analogy occurred to me between the relationship between law and virtue, and the counsels and perfect virtue, which may be helpful in considering the role and necessity of the counsels in attaining spiritual perfection. A lawmaker intends to lead those who are subject to the law, to virtue, so that from within themselves, from [...]
I am a Catholic seminarian and deacon in Vienna, and a teacher at the