Catholic University Of America Research Articles

A "final disposition. .. one way or another": The Real End of the First Curran Affair

In 2003, as United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) opened its June meeting in St. Louis, Missouri, clergy sexual abuse scandal was obviously at top of list of continuing concerns. The President of Conference, Bishop Wilton D. Gregory, musing, perhaps lamenting, his leadership role at such a uniquely difficult time, told a Washington Post reporter that he wished his mentor, late Joseph Cardinal Bernardin, late John Cardinal Dearden were around to help guide church.1 Gregory might as easily have added one more name to his wish list: Alexander Zaleski, Bishop of Lansing from 1965 to 1975, confidant of Dearden and admirer of Bernardin. For four crucial years (1966-1970), he was also first chairman of singularly important Bishops' Committee on Doctrine (COD), one of busiest and most essential of some two dozen standing committees for what was then National Conference of Catholic Bishops (NCCB). As chairman, Zaleski was an insightful and highly respected leader of American hierarchy. He was also an effective conciliator between bishops' conference and American Catholic Theological Society. Together with bishops like Dearden and Bernardin, he was a moderate and cautiously optimistic proponent of aggiornamento (renewal or updating) and principles of collegiality and subsidiarity endorsed by Vatican Council II (1962-1965). In cases of internal dissent from church doctrine, he proved a staunch supporter of due process during heady and critical half-decade that followed Council. Zaleski was a highly competent, fair-minded, and collegial chair of an extremely active committee that confronted and worked through a myriad of often daunting internal controversies and crises that shook American church in late 1960's.2 Among those controversies, several reflected era's preoccupation with limits of authority and dissent. Most significant were challenges to nature and scope of Magisterium, Church's teaching authority on matters of faith and morals. Two episodes, in particular, had lasting consequences for study of theology and for Catholic higher education. In both instances key protagonist was Father Charles E. Curran, a young moral theologian at The Catholic University of America. He is best remembered for lead role he played in second controversy that began at a press conference in late July, 1968. There, on behalf of eighty-seven theologians, he read a statement of dissent from Pope Paul VTs encyclical, Humanae Vitae (On Proper Regulation of Propagation of Offspring), in which pontiff reaffirmed Church's proscription of artificial contraception. Within weeks, more than six hundred individuals qualified in sacred sciences had personally endorsed dissent. Curran's leadership role in asserting that a Catholic theologian had a right to disagree with Church's non-infallible teachings helped lay groundwork for decades of controversy over moral authority of Magisterium.3 Eighteen years later, during summer of 1986, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, prefect of Vatican's Congregation for Doctrine of Faith (CDF), sent Curran a letter that would end his career at Catholic University of America. After at least seven years of investigating his teaching and writing, and after failing to get Curran to agree to change his stance on contraception and other issues related to sexual morality, CDF declared that he was longer . . . suitable nor eligible to teach Catholic theology. Ratzinger mailed a similarly worded directive to Chancellor of university and Archbishop of Washington, James Hickey. Hickey wasted no time initiating the withdrawal of [his] . . . ecclesiastical license, but it was not until winter of 1987 that he was able to suspend Curran.4 A year later, in spring of 1988, Board of Trustees formally withdrew Curran's canonical mission. …

Catholics and Contraception: An American History (review)

Reviewed by: Catholics and Contraception: An American History John T. Noonan Jr. Catholics and Contraception: An American History. By Leslie Woodcock Tentler. [Cushwa Center Studies of Catholicism in Twentieth-Century America.] (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press. 2004. Pp. xvi, 335. $29.95.) In 1873, the Congress of the United States enacted a bill gingerly described in the Congressional Globe as prohibiting the use in commerce of "obscene and immoral things." The bill banned the use of the mail for the distribution of "any article whatever for the prevention of conception" or for the advertisement of such articles. Imprisonment up to ten years was the penalty for violation. The bill employed the federal arsenal's most powerful tool against crime: not much could be accomplished in this country without using the mail. Modeled on English statute, the bill was enacted by a Republican-controlled Congress and signed into law by President Grant. It was named for Anthony Comstock, the Secretary of the New York Society for the Prevention of Vice. At the date of the Comstock Act's enactment, public opinion in this country was united. No special Catholic position on contraception existed. Catholics and Contraception is the story of how, in the ninety years following enactment of the Comstock Act, the Catholic Church became conspicuous as the condemner of contraception. The story is ably told by Leslie Woodcock [End Page 873] Tentler, professor of history at the Catholic University of America. The author of a history of the Archdiocese of Detroit and a study of women wage-earners in the United States from 1900 to 1930, Tentler employs her experience to draw on a range of sources that give concreteness to the tale. Among these sources are mission sermons or notes for mission sermons (missions having once been a staple for strengthening parish life); oral interviews with priests recalling their experience as confessors (sometimes fifty years ago); and, most touching and most troubling, the letters of married women when, in the 1960's, they were invited, in connection with the examination of the existing rules, to recount their own efforts to observe them. The data are fragmentary for the first part of the twentieth century. They become thicker after Pius XI's Casti connubii in 1930. They are abundant for the decade of Vatican Council II and the debate that principally centered on "the pill." Among the surprises of the story is the role of "the reformers" to invigorate the inculcation of an anti-contraceptive morale. That such reformers included John A. O'Brien of Notre Dame; Reynold H. Hillenbrand, the Chicago liturgist; and John A. Ryan, later famous as "Right Reverend New Dealer," is a sign of how deeply the opposition to birth control had become entrenched in the Catholic clerical conscience. The arguments against contraception ranged from that of John Montgomery Cooper, a priest-anthropologist at the Catholic University, to that of Patrick Hayes, archbishop of New York. Cooper's case Tentler finds to have been "humane and engagingly argued." Hayes, in a pastoral letter appearing in the New York Times, December 18, 1921, described contraception as worse than murder, "a diabolical thing." His reason: "an immortal soul is denied existence in time and eternity." It is difficult today to empathize with the passions engaged in the struggle. What seems significant now is the seriousness with which all sides saw the connection between sexual conduct and salvation. It is also probably difficult for anyone born after 1955 to comprehend this seriousness and believe that there was a struggle. But the struggle occurred and reached its climax in the 1960's, as Tentler accurately records. In 1968, Paul VI issued Humanae vitae. The hierarchies of Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands read the encyclical as less than an absolute directive; English-speaking episcopates were more literal-minded. In the United States, after a few years, what followed was silence. Humanae vitae had the impact on public pronouncements on sexual subjects by Catholic authorities that Benedict XIV's encyclical in 1745 reiterating the condemnations of usury had had on public pronouncements on economic subjects by Catholic authorities. It took a century and a half for the Church to...

Black, White, and Catholic: Southern Jesuits Confront the Race Question, 1952

In the summer of 1952, the New Orleans Province of the Society of Jesus rejected the practice of racial segregation. Basing their decision on Catholic philosophical and theological precepts, the Jesuits of the New Orleans Province examined the racial practices of post-World War II America and found them wanting. They decided that the time had come to end segregation within their order and its various ministries. By integrating Jesuit-run educational institutions, retreat houses, and parishes as well as the religious order itself, members of the Society of Jesus, however, ran the risk of alienating benefactors, hampering apostolic effectiveness, and decreasing vocations. Nevertheless, the Jesuits had concluded that racial segregation was incompatible with church teachings regarding Christian justice and charity—"Jim Crow" Catholicism was no longer welcomed at church.1 Jesuit action came two years before the Supreme Court rendered its decision in the Brown v. Board of Education, Topeka, Kansas, case, and three years before the Montgomery bus boycott commenced. The process by which Southern Jesuits concluded that racial segregation was morally untenable is a hitherto unexamined aspect of the broader civil rights movement in the United States and is the focus of this work. The history of the Roman Catholic Church's response to American racial practices has been less than edifying. Beginning with slavery and continuing with racial segregation, the Church has equivocated and rationalized [End Page 484] the varied treatment of blacks in the United States.2 While the papacy regularly condemned the slave trade, Holy Scripture, Church Fathers, and church tradition never proscribed slavery. Within three decades following the end of slavery in the United States, American Southern Catholics adopted the practice of racial segregation as it was established and institutionalized by legal and extra-legal means.3 In post-World War II America, Southern Catholics still followed the practice of segregation as prescribed by law and custom. Southern parishes were established either for black or white Catholics as were parochial grammar and high schools, Catholic medical and social establishments, and Catholic institutions of higher learning. Notable exceptions were found in the border states of Kentucky and Missouri, where several Catholic institutions of higher learning were integrated. And while the Catholic University of America, in the still largely segregated District of Columbia, accepted black applicants, none of the institutions in the Deep South did. For Southern Jesuits, the situation changed with the promulgation of a policy statement regarding interracial affairs in 1952. The impetus for members of the New Orleans Province of the Society of Jesus to examine the race question came from a letter of John Baptist Janssens, S.J., the superior general of the order, entitled De Apostolatu Sociali (Concerning the Social Apostolate). Writing in October, 1949, to fellow Jesuits regarding the socio-economic and religious challenges presented by atheistic communism and liberal materialism, Janssens worried that Jesuits were not sufficiently aware of the plight of the working class and the threat this posed to an individual's material and spiritual welfare arising from "the inequitable condition, both temporal and spiritual, of by far the greater part of the human race."4 The Society of Jesus, he believed, needed to demonstrate solidarity with workers if Christianity was to have any impact on their lives; if not, the appeal of secular doctrines would draw them away from the Church and Christian values. [End Page 485] For Janssens, Christ's love was the motivating factor for examining and then changing society. "Christ, in an untold number of His members, still suffers hunger, nakedness, exile and contempt. Let us turn our eyes attentively to sights which daily meet our eyes and, in the light of truth, study conditions to which we have grown accustomed and even indifferent. They must not be tolerated; there must be a change." The superior general of the Jesuits rhetorically asked whether it was right that people all over the world should live in...

Resurrection and Science: A Response to Kirk Wegter-McNelly

DialogVolume 44, Issue 2 p. 189-190 Resurrection and Science: A Response to Kirk Wegter-McNelly By Anders S. Tune, By Anders S. TuneSearch for more papers by this author By Anders S. Tune, By Anders S. TuneSearch for more papers by this author First published: 17 May 2005 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0012-2033.2005.00256.x Anders S. Tune is a campus pastor at Wittenberg University in Springfield, Ohio, where he also occasionally teaches courses. He holds the Ph.D. from the Catholic University of America. AboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume44, Issue2Summer 2005Pages 189-190 RelatedInformation

Jules Zeiser Klose

Jules Zeiser Klose, an atomic physicist at NIST in Gaithersburg, Maryland, died 8 August 2004 at an elder care center in Annapolis, Maryland, following a lengthy illness and complications related to heart disease and vascular dementia. A member of the plasma spectroscopy section of the National Bureau of Standards in Washington, DC, and, later, when NBS became known as NIST in 1988, a member of the atomic and plasma radiation division, Klose was internationally recognized for using a method called delayed coincidence to measure the lifetimes of atomic and molecular excited states. Born 7 August 1927 in St. Louis, Missouri, Klose received a BA in physics (1949) from Washington University in St. Louis and an MS in physics (1953) from the University of Rochester in New York. In 1958, he earned his PhD in physics from the Catholic University of America under adviser Malcolm Henderson, with a thesis on “Ultrasonic Dispersion and Absorption in N-Hexane Vapor.”Klose spent the period 1953–61 first as an assistant professor and then later as an associate professor of physics at the US Naval Academy in Annapolis. Concurrently in 1960–61, he was a research associate and lecturer at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. In 1961, he joined NBS.There, the focus of his research was the measurement of atomic lifetimes. He first used electron-beam excitation methods, and then, as lasers were developed, laser-excitation methods that minimized contributions to the atomic level lifetime of electrons cascading from higher energy levels. His research in the 1960s and 1970s was an important component of the NBS atomic data program, which was expanded during those years to include atomic energy levels, transition probabilities, and oscillator strengths. Klose’s measurement of the lifetime of the 372-nanometer resonance line in neutral iron was published in the Astrophysical Journal in 1971. It remains one of the best values, used through the years to put relative measurements of transition probabilities in iron on an absolute scale.In the 1980s, Klose helped to develop primary and secondary standard radiation sources in the vacuum UV region of the spectrum and used those standards to calibrate sources for projects such as the Solar Ultraviolet Spectral Irradiance Monitor and the Hubble Space Telescope . In 1987, he received the US Department of Commerce’s Bronze Medal Award for that work.He retired from NBS the following year—just before the transition to NIST—but continued with his research at NIST until the late 1990s. During that period, he published a series of papers on applications of the branching ratio technique for making absolute vacuum UV radiation measurements. Jules, as everyone called him, was a World War II veteran, who served with the US Army in Japan. He had a lifelong interest in tennis and was a founding member of the Anne Arundel County Tennis Association in Maryland, for which he served as president in 1971. He was a member of the NBS tennis team for 25 years and competed—in the number one position for many of those years—in the federal interdepartmental tennis league in Washington, DC. He had a great interest in the history of American railroads and was a member of the Maryland and Pennsylvania Railroad Preservation Society. He also was an active parishioner of St. Mary’s Church in Annapolis for 50 years. Jules Zeiser Klose MARK HELFERPPT|High resolution© 2005 American Institute of Physics.

Nurse Practitioners in Community Health Settings Today

During a typical week as a Family Nurse Practitioner, I provide primary care to uninsured immigrant patients on a mobile van, teach an undergraduate nursing course entitled Community and Environmental Health Nursing at the Catholic University of America, screen Hispanic women for breast and cervical cancer through Celebremos La Vida (Celebrate Life) at Georgetown University’s Lombardi Cancer Center and lead continuing professional education programs for health care providers who work with the poor and underserved through the Association of Clinicians for the Underserved (ACU)’s Pediatric Asthma Prevention Project and Early Childhood Caries Prevention Project. As a Family Nurse Practitioner, I am trained for a variety of practice settings, including primary care, teaching, research, and management. It is this flexibility and variety of work that I thrive on and that allows me the opportunity to be part of many exciting public health projects, while still having time for my family and community. This varied skill set allows me and other Nurse Practitioners to take on multiple roles in the evolving health system. The ACU is a non-profit, transdisciplinary organization of clinicians, advocates, and health care organizations united in a common mission to improve the health of America’s underserved populations and to enhance the development and support of the health care clinicians serving these populations. The ACU defines transdisciplinary care as a holistic approach to patient assessment and treatment through a highly collaborative team of health care professionals. This approach only allows health care professionals other than physicians increased decision-making powers in patient care; furthermore, through continuing cross-disciplinary education and regulated overlapping roles, greater efficiency in patient care can be achieved. This collaboration is beneficial to patients and could be a cost-effective way to improve the U.S. health system, and to expand it to treat those who currently go without regular health care. Furthermore, for people living with long-term illnesses such as HIV, hypertension and diabetes, Nurse Practitioners (NPs) can help provide long term patient education and preventive care.

Catholic Social Action at Work: A Brief History of the Labor Collections at The Catholic University of America

The Catholic University of America (CUA) may seem like an unlikely home for important collections of archival records documenting the labor movement in the United States. By tapping into the sympathies of many priests for the labor movement as well as the devout Catholicism of many union organizers, however, the CUA managed to compile an impressive body of labor records at a time when very few archives were collecting such records. This article explores how different priests and bishops developed and maintained this collection over the years. The history of the collecting of labor records at CUA offers insight into the various internal and external factors that influence collection development practices and acquisition policies over time.

Christianity and the Religions: From Confrontation to Dialogue (review)

Reviewed by: Christianity and the Religions: From Confrontation to Dialogue John Borelli Christianity and the Religions: From Confrontation to Dialogue. By Jacques Dupuis, SJ. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2001. 276 pp. Why read Jacques Dupuis's Christianity and the Religions (2001) when his more comprehensive, ground-breaking Toward a Christian Theology of Religious Pluralism (Orbis, 1997) is still available? Father Dupuis reminds us in the introduction to Christianity that he has actually written three books on the same subject—Jesus Christ at the Encounter of World Religions (Orbis, 1991) being the first—but he reaffirms the central importance of Religious Pluralism. After publication of this second work, his editors wanted another volume on the same topic, "less ponderous, more accessible, and aimed at an audience broader than the circle of specialists and the academy." That was the origin of Christianity and the Religions, a story Fr. Dupuis related to me when I visited him at Gregorian University in early February 2001. It was meant to be an easier-to-read version of Religious Pluralism, something for students who do not need abundant references to authors and historical developments. Circumstances, however, added another dimension to the need for yet another volume. [End Page 182] Christianity and the Religions was ready for publication in early 2001, but Fr. Dupuis was waiting for "official notification" from the Holy See's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith regarding its charges that Religious Pluralism contained "serious doctrinal error." By then, the case was in its thirty-second and final month, for later in February 2001 he received word from Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, prefect of the Congregation, that the charge had been reduced to "ambiguities and difficulties on important points which could lead a reader to erroneous or harmful opinions." Dupuis last appeared before Cardinal Ratzinger and the Congregation's advisers on the day before Dominus Iesus was released in September 2000, accompanied by Fr. Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, superior general of the Jesuits, and Dupuis's advocate and colleague at the Gregorian University, Fr. Gerald O'Collins. Dupuis used the opportunity of a more accessible version of the book in question to address squarely the charges raised against him. He writes in the introduction to Christianity and the Religions: "Suffice it to say that in this new book I have scrupulously avoided all expressions that could raise any misunderstanding or create ambiguity over either the content of the faith or my thought." Dupuis dedicated the book to retired Cardinal Franz Kōnig. He chose to quote an earlier (1963) text by Cardinal Ratzinger on the page following the dedication: "What the Church needs today, as always, are not adulators to extol the status quo, but men whose humility and obedience are no less than their passion for truth: men who brave every misunderstanding and attack as they bear witness; men who in a word, love the Church more than ease and the unruffled course of their personal destiny." In 1999, Ratzinger and Kōnig had exchanged views, point and counterpoint, in the British Catholic weekly, The Tablet, over Dupuis's earlier Religious Pluralism. Fr. Jacques Dupuis died of an apparent stroke on 28 December 2004 at age 81. Although the investigation had brought him increased attention and invitations to speak, he was in Rome, his home since 1984, at the time of his death. When I visited him in 2001 and again heard him speak at the Catholic University of America just twenty-four days before his death, it was clear how much the case and accompanying suspicion had hurt him. Dupuis was principally a theologian who had considered it his good fortune to have lived and taught in India for thirty-six years. He also had taught theology for nearly fifteen years at Gregorian University, the premier university of his religious order. Many viewed the outcome of the investigation as a vindication of his work because he did not have to change a single sentence in Religious Pluralism for it to remain in publication, but the success of his defense came at a great price. The shadow of suspicion never left him. He had adopted a style of stopping, often amidst reflections on religious...

Authority in Byzantine Provincial Society, 950–1100 by Leonora Neville (review)

413 Ab Imperio, 4/2005 Archimandrite Pavel STEFANOV Leonora Neville, Authority in Byzantine Provincial Society, 9501100 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). xi+210 pp. Appendix, Guide to the Sources, Bibliography, Index. ISBN: 0-52183865 -7. What makes an empire? What are the driving forces and mechanisms that sustain it as a system and, when the level of internal pressure becomes critical, cause its dissipation ? Do all empires subscribe to an identical developmental model or do they follow separate paths? Byzantium, which is the archetypal Christian state, serves as a case study in the present monograph by Leonora Neville, lecturer at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. Its temporal scope covers a period of 150 years during the 10th and 11th centuries, a period that witnessed enormous changes. After the acknowledgments, a list of abbreviations and a map, the author sets the scene in a very succinct introduction. One would expect to read here a full-blown discussion of previous historiography, but Neville prefers to deal with it in the course of her narrative, an unusual approach, to say the least. Her sources include treatises, charters, lives of saints, seal inscriptions, etc. She aims to disprove the prevailing view among scholars that Byzantium was a hermetic, inflexible, and overtly sophisticated society steeped in bureaucracy and strongly dominated by central authority. Her opinion is that expressions of political culture should be separated from administrative phenomena in order to understand the problem. Neville contends that the period in question was “a turning point in the administrative history of the Byzantine Empire , in which government through (Рр. 147-150, 157-161). Такой ме- тод, конечно, делает изложение живым и увлекательным для ши- рокого круга читателей. Итак, если относиться к ре- цензируемому изданию не как к монографии, а как к добротному научно-популярному нарративу, то отмеченные недостатки не вли- яют на его просветительское зна- чение. В целом же работа Кинга получилась достаточно типичной для западной историографии и западной манеры писания книги научно-популярного жанра, унас- ледовав все характерные черты последнего, его достоинства и недостатки. 414 Рецензии/Reviews a pseudo-meritocracy of officials gave way to government through the personal relationships of aristocratic kin” (P. 6). Imperial authority was exercised very loosely or was absent altogether in the Byzantine provinces except through military presence and taxation. At the same time emperors prevented ambitious figures from becoming rivals, but when they appeared and tried to win power usually by revolt, no effort was spared to crush the budding opposition. Society was formed and governed by households possessing considerable autonomy. Chapter 1 explores changes in the government administration of Byzantium during the 10th and 11th centuries. Initially they included recovery of territory in the East and its partial conversion into imperial estates, and monetization of the economy accompanied by devaluation of the coinage and increase of the population, but in the second half of the 11th century the situation worsened. Emperor Alexios I Komnenos (1081-1118) implemented reforms that abolished the traditional salaries paid to title-holders, gave them land to subsist on, introduced stricter taxation, and defended the frontiers by largely relying on the loyalty of local potentates. Neville presents the numerous titles, offices , and gifts that were provided to nobles and tied them to the throne. When the political culture of the Komnenoi changed, it became closer to the culture of medieval Western Europe.Alexios bestowed new titles and honors, mainly to the members of his family. This change from a ceremonial culture to a political one did not mean a shift in the manner of government or the number of officials . It is impossible to distinguish closely between Byzantine civil and military aristocracy either. In Chapter 2, Neville poses the question about the preoccupations of imperial authority. In contrast to some attempts to dismiss it as weak and ineffective, Neville argues that this was hardly the case in Byzantium. The empire set itself limited goals that were largely achieved: preservation of territorial integrity, building and refurbishing fortifications, and resettling conquered populations. In exchange, the administration extracted taxes which the population naturally and in many cases successfully resisted. In the early 11th century revenue increased by direct exploitation of imperial estates . But Eastern Anatolia was lost to the Seljuks in the 1070s. Chapter 3 begins by stating that Byzantine terms to describe people and things were not fixed but depended on relationships. Neville posits the literal or metaphorical prevalence of the oikos (household) as a dominant unit in all aspects of Byzantine society. Dynamics of life comprised competition and 415 Ab Imperio, 4/2005 alliances between households. This model, as the author admits, calls “for a change...

Prudence and Acquired Moral Virtue

The Thomist 69 (2005): 535-55 PRUDENCE AND ACQUIRED MORAL VIRTUE ANGELA MCKAY The Catholic University ofAmerica Washington, D.C. IT IS WELL KNOWN that Aquinas holds that the acquired moral virtues can exist apart from charity.1 Several Thomist scholars, however, have argued that we are to understand Aquinas's repeated assertions that the acquired moral virtues can exist apart from grace only in the following highly qualified sense: although an individual can acquire disconnected dispositions to various good actions apart from charity, he cannot possess connected acquired moral virtue.2 In this paper I wish to address a defense of the above claim recently put forward by Thomas Osborne.3 Osborne questions 1 Aquinas makes this claim explicitly in STh I-II q. 65, a. 2; and STh II-II q. 23, a. 7. Aquinas's remarks in other texts, such as his assertion in Quaestiones disputatae De virtutibus, q. 1, a. 9, ad 5 that the acquired virtues are not destroyed by mortal sin, imply the same thesis. 2 Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange holds that the acquired virtues cannot be connected apart from grace; see Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, The Three Ages of the Interior Life, trans. Sr. Timothea Doyle (New York: Herder Book Co., 1947), 59. Jacques Maritain also argues in favor of this position (Jacques Maritain, Science and Wisdom, trans. Bernard Wall [London: The Centenary Press, 1940], 145-52). Robert Miner has recently defended the same thesis on the basis of his reading of STh I-II q. 61, a. 5; and STh I-II q. 62, a. 4. Miner believes that the "purgative virtue" Aquinas describes in the fifth article of question 61 is a description of the highest form of acquired virtue, and concludes on the basis of this that acquired prudence cannot exist without charity. Due to length constraints, I will not address Miner's argument in this paper. However, I should note that a comparison of De virtutibus cardinalibus, a. 2; and STh I-II q. 61, a. 5 indicates that what Miner takes as a description of acquired virtue is in fact a reference to infused virtue. See Robert Miner, "Non-Aristotelian Prudence in the Prima Secundae," The Thomist 64 (2000): 401-22. 3 Thomas Osborne, "The Augustinianism of Thomas Aquinas's Moral Theory," The Thomist 67 (2003): 279-305. Osborne is responding to Brian Shanley, "Aquinas on Pagan Virtue," The Thomist 63 (1999): 553-77. 535 536 ANGELA McKAY whether the pagan can possess connected moral virtue. Specifically , he argues that because there can be no acquired prudence without charity, neither can there be any connected acquired moral virtue without charity, but only disconnected inclinations to good actions.4 Definitive proof for this conclusion, he believes, can be found in the first and second articles of question 65 of the Prima Secundae. He argues that these articles establish that (1) without prudence the acquired moral virtues can be no more than isolated dispositions to good actions, and that (2) prudence cannot exist without charity. Consequently, we cannot but conclude that (3) without charity there can be no prudence and hence no connected acquired moral virtue.5 If such an argument can be found in question 65, it certainly seems to prove Osborne's point. However, as I shall argue in this paper, it is by no means clear that we ought to interpret the second article of question 65 as Osborne and others do. I shall argue that a careful reading of the relevant textsespecially question 65 of the Prima Secundae-indicates that Aquinas does believe that the acquired moral virtues, connected by acquired prudence, can exist apart from grace. If scholars believe the texts indicate otherwise, it is most likely because they overlook Aquinas's distinction between acquired and infused moral virtue in general, and his distinction between acquired and infused prudence in particular. My argument will have three parts. First, I will examine Aquinas's treatment of the connection of the virtues in his Quaestio disputata De virtutibus cardinalibus. This text reveals that Aquinas recognizes three separate levels of virtuous habits: (1) disconnected inclinations towards good actions; (2) the acquired moral virtues, which are connected by prudence but which...

Theology's Responsibility and Tasks in Today's Church and World

[In this lecture, delivered originally at the Catholic University of America, Washington, the Archbishop of Strasbourg develops a question close to his heart, namely theology's responsibility and tasks in today's Church and world. After having enunciated as a principle the embeddedness of this responsibility in faith considered as a total entity, he then outlines the relationship between the different aspects of this faith and theology's multiple tasks. In the final section, he enumerates three formal characteristics of theology that emerge from its direct connection with faith.]

The Catholic University of America The Center for the Study of Early Christianity AN INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ‘Early Christian Studies and the Academic Disciplines’ Early June 2005

The study of early Christianity has never been monopolised by historians, even though a keen historical sense is crucial to a full understanding of Christianity's initial development. Biblical scholars, experts on Judaism, classicists, archaeologists, art historians, sociologists and anthropologists, philosophers and theologians have all laid claim to a rightful interest in the field, and have contributed to its vitality and its clarity of interpretation.

Morales's Officium, chant traditions, and performing 16th-century music

Journal Article Morales's Officium, chant traditions, and performing 16th-century music Get access Grayson Wagstaff Grayson Wagstaff Grayson Wagstaff, associate professor of musicology at the Catholic University of America, Washington DC, specializes in the music of Spain and Colonial America from the late Middle Ages to the Baroque era Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Early Music, Volume 32, Issue 2, May 2004, Pages 225–243, https://doi.org/10.1093/em/32.2.225 Published: 01 May 2004

The Cantus Database: Progress Report

The CANTUS database provides indices of chant manuscripts for the Office in both electronic and printed formats. The database was developed in the 1980s at the Catholic University of America under the leadership of Ruth Steiner. The goals and basic structure of the project remain true to the vision of its founder; however, since the move to Canada there have been some changes in format and presentation of the data. This progress report is the first official presentation of these alterations. Seventy-one liturgical books have been indexed. The centre of distribution is the project's website at http://publish.uwo.ca/~cantus/. The database consists of indices that indicate the actual contents of individual sources. The project has proven useful in a variety of fields including liturgical chant, early music, medieval liturgy, hagiography, and ecclesiastical history.

November 1889 — “The Cadbury Girls”

NEWMAN STUDIES JOURNAL 81 PASTORAL VIGNETTES In its original meaning, a “vignette” is a decoration of vine leaves and tendrils that are used to ornament a picture frame or home furnishings, a wall or a ceiling, etc. The word “vignette” has come to mean any type of picture, but especially a portrait that merges into its background. In an extended sense, “vignette” might also be applied to stories that portray a person’s inner self or spirituality in a way that biographical facts do not and cannot. In this latter sense, “vignette” seems an appropriate way of describing stories about Newman’s pastoral activities. Pastoral work was an essential element of his life; indeed one might say that he saw all his activities—in education, literature, theology, philosophy—as forms of what today would be called pastoral ministry: his pastoral ministry blended into all his other work. Some of Newman’s pastoral activities are recorded in his writings, especially his Apologia pro Vita Sua (1864); accounts of his other pastoral activities have been provided by his biographers or can be found in his letters, diaries and autobiographical writings. Stories about these pastoral activities often present facets of Newman’s personality in striking ways.Thus, pastoral vignettes are “little stories” that help to tell the larger story of a person’s life. In other words, Newman’s cardinalatial motto cor ad cor loquitur (“Heart speaks to heart”) is exemplified not only in his writings but in the stories or “vignettes” about his pastoral activities. November 1889 — “The Cadbury Girls” Christmas 1889 was the last time that the aging and ailing Cardinal was able to celebrate mass.The previous month,however,Newman acted as a mediator in a labor dispute at the Cadbury factory in Bournville near Birmingham.The Catholic women who worked at Cadbury’s were at odds with their Quaker employers, who insisted that all their employees should attend daily Bible study—reading of Scripture with commentary—before beginning work. The employers did not understand why the local parish priest had forbidden the women to attend the morning Bible study. The women, who were following their pastor’s instructions, were understandably afraid that they would be fired, if they did not attend.The employers,in turn,thought that the parish priest was unreasonable and were sure that Cardinal Newman would agree with them. So Newman went to the factory to see the Cadbury owners,even though there was heavy snow on the ground and he had to walk some distance after getting out of his carriage to get to the factory. Newman argued persuasively on behalf of the Catholic workers by defending their right of conscience—a belief particularly cherished by Quakers, who in the past had often been persecuted for their conscientious refusal to obey the official religious laws of England.In the seventeenth century,for example,Quakers,seeking religious freedom for themselves and for all, had established the colony of Pennsylvania under the leadership of William Penn. NEWMAN STUDIES JOURNAL 82 Cardinal Newman conceded that the Cadbury employers might think that the Catholic women were misguided in refusing to attend Bible study. However, were the Quaker employers to demand attendance at Bible study as a condition of employment, they would in effect be violating the freedom of conscience of the “Cadbury girls,” as they were called.Accordingly, Newman proposed that the workers be allowed to say their own prayers in a separate room and the Cadbury employers agreed. In the carriage on the way back to the Birmingham Oratory, Cardinal Newman reportedly remarked to Fr.William Neville, the Oratorian who had accompanied him during his visit to the Cadbury factory:“If I can but do work such as that, I am happy and content to live on.” Sources:MeriolTrevor,Newman:Light inWinter (Garden City,NY:Doubleday,1963) 64041 ;Ian Ker,John Henry Newman:A Biography (Oxford:Clarendon Press,1988) 744-45. John T. Ford c.s.c. The Catholic University of America [Contributions for this section of “pastoral vignettes” are welcome; vignettes should be one to five pages in length and indicate the source(s) for stories about Newman’s pastoral activities; submissions should follow the guidelines for...

Cor ad Cor Loquitur Heart Speaks to Heart

NEWMAN STUDIES JOURNAL 3 EDITORIAL PREFACE COR AD COR LOQUITUR HEART SPEAKS TO HEART On April 25, 1879, after his arrival in Rome to receive his cardinal’s hat, Newman wrote to Arthur Hutton (1848-1912) requesting him to check whether the words—Cor ad Cor Loquitur—appeared in theVulgate (St.Jerome’s Latin translation of the Bible) or in the writings of Thomas a Kempis (c.1380-1417).1 In fact,the words are found in a letter written by St.Francis de Sales (1567-1622) in 1604:“The ancient Fathers . . . spoke from the heart to the heart, like good fathers to their children.”2 Newman apparently had forgotten that he had cited this passage two dozen years earlier in his Dublin lecture on “University Preaching” in 1855.3 Historical origins aside, Cor ad Cor Loquitur might be considered emblematic of Newman’s life and work. As vicar of Saint Mary’s in Oxford (1828-43), Newman’s preaching attracted not only locals, but out-of-town visitors, who considered their trip incomplete without listening to Newman preach:his sermons spoke to their hearts.This attraction was even the case with his philosophical writings such as the Grammar of Assent (1870), parts of which were drawn from his personal correspondence with people experiencing problems of faith.4 Similarly, his theological lectures—on the prophetical office of the Church and the nature of justification— packed the Adam de Brome chapel with undergraduates during the heyday of the Oxford Movement. As a Roman Catholic, Newman attracted the attention of the English-speaking world with his discourses on the nature of a university.He also fascinated his readers with the self-revelations about the development of his “religious opinions” in his Apologia pro Vita Sua (1864), which like many Victorian novels was originally published serially in fascicles,before being collected into a single volume.This list of Newman’s remarkable ability to touch the minds and hearts of his contemporaries could continue at length, but what is important to note is that he spoke not only to his contemporaries in the nineteenth century, he continues to speak to the minds and hearts of people today. 1 The Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman XXIX,The Cardinalate, January 1879 to September 1881,edited by Charles Stephen Dessain andThomas Gornall,S.J.(Oxford:Clarendon Press,1976) 107-108; for his cardinalatial coat-of-arms, Newman adapted those used by his father on his seals and book plates (ibid., 108, n.1). 2 Citation from P. Boyle, Instructions on Preaching, Catechising and Clerical Life (Dublin, 1902) in Geoffrey Rowell,“«Cor ad Cor Loquitur»: Newman’s Choice of His Cardinalatial Motto as a Pointer to his Understanding of Christian Faith and its Communication,” in John Henry Newman: Theologian and Cardinal, Atti del Simposio internazionale (7-12 ottobre 1979), Studia Urbaniana 10 (Rome: Urbaniana University Press; Brescia: Paideia Editrice, 1981) 49-73, at 50. 3 “University Preaching,” in Part 2 of The Idea of a University, which is available on line at: http://www.newmanreader.org/works/idea/article6.html ¶ 3 (410);Newman changed the Latin from the dative (cor cordi loquitur,translating the French:le coeur parle au coeur) to the accusative,which is both linguistically more rhythmical and grammatically more plurivalent. 4 For a detailed discussion of the personal antecedents of the Grammar,see Edward J.Enright,Faith and Reason in Newman’s Anglican and Roman Catholic Correspondence as Historical Background to An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent, S.T.D. dissertation,The Catholic University of America, 1990. NEWMAN STUDIES JOURNAL 4 5John Paul II, “Papal Letter Celebrating the Bicentenary of Newman’s Birth,” available at: http://www.newmanreader.org/canonization/popes/or22jan01.html; the citation within in the citation is from Fides et ratio (Introduction; also see ¶ 74). 6 Pope Paul VI,“Address to Newman Scholars” (7 April 1975), available at: http://www.newmanreader.org/canonization/popes/or17apr75.html; italics in the original. 7 The International Centre of Newman Friends maintains a Web site that lists publications by and about Newman from 1990 to the present: www.newmanfriendsinternational.org. 8 Some of the presentations at the conference held at the...

Medically Assisted Nutrition and Hydration in Medicine and Moral Theology: A Contextualization of its Past and a Direction for its Future

The Thomist 68 (2004): 69-104 MEDICALLY ASSISTED NUTRITION AND HYDRATION IN MEDICINE AND MORAL THEOLOGY: A CONTEXTUALIZATION OF ITS PAST AND A DIRECTION FOR ITS FUTURE1 JOHN BERKMAN The Catholic University ofAmerica Washington, D.C. FOR A SIGNIFICANT PORTION of the 1980s, ethical issues regarding the use of various forms of support to prolong life grabbed newspaper headlines in the United States. Highprofile legal cases over the "right to die," such as those of Karen Ann Quinlan and Nancy Cruzan, became legal landmarks. Other highly publicized cases, such as those ofBrophy, Conroy, Herbert, and Jobes, contributed to making the issue a commonplace part of the news. In the midst of the headlines generated by these and other related cases, many Catholic ethicists attempted to provide analysis and guidance. These cases also elicited frequent formal statements from the Catholic episcopacy, both from individual bishops and from episcopal conferences.2 1 Thanks to Michael Baxter, Bill Mattison, Joyce McClure, Gilbert Meilaender, John Grabowski, and William Barbieri for helpful comments on earlier drafts ofthis paper. Thanks also to Jennifer Moore, M.D., and Heidi White, M.D., for insight on current medical practice with regard to MANH, and to Thomas Bender, M.D., for originally bringing to my attention the Kelly-Donovan debate. Finally, I wish to acknowledge with gratitude the support of the Duke Institute on Care at the End ofLife, where I wasVisiting Scholar in 2001-02, and where much of the research for this paper was conducted. 2 For example, "Guidelines for Legislation on Life-Sustaining Treatment," U.S. bishops' Committee for Pro-life Activities, Origins 14:32 (24 January 1985): 526ff.; "Providing Food and Fluids to Severely Brain-Damaged Patients," friend of the court brief by the New Jersey Catholic Conference in the Nancy Ellen Jobes Case, Origins 16:32 (22January1987):582ff.; "Georgia Man Asks to Turn Off Life-Supporting Ventilator," friend of the court brief by the archdiocese of Atlanta in the case of Larry James McAfee, Origins 19:17 (28 September 69 70 JOHN BERKMAN Of the various ethical dilemmas surrounding decisions regarding the use of life support, none provoked more disagreement among both Catholic ethicists and the Catholic episcopacy than that of the use of medically assisted nutrition and hydration (henceforth MANH). Among the episcopacy, this disagreement gained high profile in statements from the Texas and Pennsylvania bishops, as well as those of other groups of bishops. There were regular if not constant exchanges between Catholic ethicists on this question through the 1980s and early 1990s.3 The literature detailing various arguments for or against the use of MANH in caring for the dying and debilitated is extensive. Yet the thesis of this article is that a large part, if not the main thrust, of the debates over MANH have been inadequate and misguided on a number of different levels. I hope to reorient and redirect the debate by attending to the medical history of MANH (part 1) and recent medical developments with regard to MANH (part 5), examining and contextualizing the earliest debate (i.e., in the 1950s) over MANH among moral theologians (part 2) as well as a more recent debate over MANH involving numerous American Catholic bishops (part 3), and critically evaluating the types of moral arguments that preoccupy many of those who currently write on the ethics of MANH (part 4). The first section-a brief history of nineteenth and twentiethcentury medical practice with regard to MANH-aims to show that inadequate understanding of the medical history, 1989): 273ff.; "The Nancy Cruzan Case," Bishop John Leibrecht, Origins 19:32 (11 January 1990): 525ff.; "Treatment of Dying Patients," bishops of Florida, Origins 19:3 (1 June 1989): 47ff. 3 For examples of such exchanges, see John Connery, "The Clarence Herbert Case: Was Withdrawal ofTreatmentJustified," Hospital Progress (February 1984): 32-35, 70; andJohn Paris, "Withholding orWithdrawingNutrition and Food: What are the Real Issues," Hospital Progress (December 1985): 22££. See also Richard McCormick, S.J., "'Moral Considerations' Ill Considered," America 166 (14 March 1992): 210-14; and Kevin McMahon, "What the Pennsylvania Bishops Really Said," Linacre Quarterly 59 (August 1992): 6-10. For an exchange between William E. May and Kevin O'Rourke, see...

Being & Some 20thCentury Thomists by John F. X. Knasas

148 BOOK REVIEWS Ultimately, I cannot see how what goes under Rowland's rubric of "postmodern" and "Augustinian" coheres with what goes under the rubric of "Thomism." It is therefore no accident that she never tries to explain what she means by the term: it cannot be given a credible definition in the light of the "postmodern" and"Augustinian" assumptions driving this book. While it would take more space than I have here to explain why this is so, I would say that it has something to do with another famous Greek term that Rowland neglects to consider: physis. One can grant to de Lubac (as Gilson did) that the Thomist tradition went wrong in its parsing of the nature-grace distinction while at the same time maintaining the importance of that distinction and the intelligibility of nature as the terminus of God's first gift in creation. One can also grant that culture has a profound influence on nature without collapsing the latter into the former. If nature is intelligible apart from grace and culture, then it can indeed serve as a starting point for an account of the human good that does not make explicit appeal to revelation and so can serve as a way to talk about that good to those who are not inside the circle. The simple fact that separates Thomas from us-he lived in a culture permeated by Catholic Christianity and we do not-means that we need some moral language that allows us a voice in the secular domain. Such language is not a substitute for evangelization and critique, both of which need to go on, but it is in the meantime a way of talking to strangers that can promote the common human good (including human rights) this side of the coming of the kingdom. The Catholic University ofAmerica Washington, D.C. BRIAN]. SHANLEY, O.P. Being & Some 20'h Century Thomists. By JOHN F. X. KNASAS. Bronx, N.Y.: Fordham University Press, 2003. Pp. 335. $65.00 (cloth). ISBN 0-82322248 -9. Being and Thomism are two very elusive ideas. Knasas's book tries to pin them both down in no uncertain terms and, one might add, in function of one another. Thomism is taken primarily as a unique philosophy of being in a realistic sense and this realistic sense is taken to mean one thing only in the approach to the question of being: namely, that which is derived only from sense experience. Being & Some 20'h Century Thomists comes as a response to other accounts of Thomism and its evolution in the twentieth century, such as that of Gerald McCool's From Unity to Plurality (also published by Fordham University Press, in 1992). In fact, it could be viewed as a response of the Toronto school, or more precisely the Joseph Owens school, to the transcendental Thomism BOOK REVIEWS 149 propounded by Joseph Donceel of Fordham. The argument of the book, to put it perhaps too succinctly, is to show that versions of Thomism other than that of Joseph Owens, especially those labeled as idealist but also some thought to be realist, fail the test of realism in their approach to the question of being and therefore fail the test of Thomism as found in the writings of St. Thomas. "Generally speaking," we are told in the introduction, "Existential Thomism is a posteriori. It is built from extra-mental reality as presented in the data of sensible experience. It is specified by the perception of a basic intelligibility, or commonality, in those real things of sensation" (xvii). The problem for the author is that this Existential Thomism, as he conceives it, is only a species of Neo-Thomism, which must be distinguished from and defended against other species because it is the only one that really works as an elaboration of the ratio entis. In chapter 1 Knasas gives his own version of the Neo-Thomist revival contra that of the man he calls "the dean of the twentieth-century Thomist narrative, Gerald McCool, S.J."(29) Knasas names most of those one would think of as part of this revival and then divides them into what he calls three...

Religion and Public Life: The Legacy of Monsignor John A. Ryan (review)

This collection of essays emerged from a 1995 conference commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the death of John A. Ryan, the American social theorist who was professor of moral theology at the Catholic University of America, director of the Social Action Department of the National Catholic Welfare Conference, and author of numerous books including most notably A Living Wage (1906) and Distributive Justice (1916).

The Ideology of American Empire

Claes G. Ryn is professor of politics at the Catholic University of America and chairman of the National Humanities Institute. He is editor of Humanitas and author of numerous books, including Unity Through Diversity: On Cultivating Humanity’s Higher Ground (Beijing University, 2000) and Will, Imagination and Reason: Babbitt, Croce and the Problem of Reality (2nd ed., Transaction, 1997). This article is adapted from a chapter in his America the Virtuous: The Crisis of Democracy and the Quest for Empire (forthcoming, Transaction 2003).