Catholic View Research Articles

End-of-life: a Catholic view

Catholic bioethics is not a fully monolithic structure. Different theological and philosophical methodologies have resulted in differences of opinion on issues such as birth control, sterilisation, reproduction, and abortion. However, more common ground is found on end-of-life issues. The Catholic understanding of sickness, suffering, and death is grounded in a belief in Jesus Christ who, as the incarnation of God, suffered, died, and was resurrected. In light of this faith and hope for an afterlife, Catholics accept that although an effort must be made to eliminate sickness, suffering, and death, these things can also have a positive meaning. The belief that God participates in the human condition grounds Catholic values and positions on end-of-life issues. Catholic bioethics therefore has its source both in faith and in the ability of human reason to interpret scripture and, as Vatican II directed, to read the “signs of the times” in applying the teaching of the Church to contemporary situations. 1 In other words, Catholics should remain attuned to the message of Christ through history in attempting to “do the right thing”. In Catholic bioethics, two basic human values 2 ground

L’Orient méditerranéen du Moyen âge chrétien : La rencontre de l’Islam

Anachronism is one of the most common distorsions of history by which we circumscribe the past with our own mental universe. That is what the modem West has done and continues to do as regards Islam - a society almost without distinction of time or space. Thus today the encounter between Western Christendom and Islam is commonly seen as essentially negative, having been reduced to the military - religious conflict of the Crusades during the ll,h and 13,h centuries. Of course, it was at that period of time that took shape a Catholic view of Islam as a religion obnoxiously stereotyped, a view which would spread across Europe and which, much later, would give rise to a truly different form of racism, still around to day. Such an overall despising attitude tends to cover up the positive aspects of what had been the encounter between Islam and Christianity. Y et, those were many and they have been invaluable in the development of the Western thought and sciences. Far from being only a region of conflict, at that time the Mediterranean was also a zone of cultural symbiosis to which the modem West owes much. Europe would do well to remember this today that its supremacy is already part of a past which is definitely over.

Lightning Man: The Accursed Life of Samuel F.B. Morse (review)

Reviewed by: Lightning Man: The Accursed Life of Samuel F. B. Morse Paul Israel (bio) Lightning Man: The Accursed Life of Samuel F. B. Morse. By Kenneth Silverman. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003. Pp. vi+503. $35. Samuel F. B. Morse is a particularly problematic figure to write about. Best known today for his telegraph system, he was also a noted American artist and a controversial political figure in New York. Unlike earlier biographers, Kenneth Silverman has brought the diverse elements of Morse's life together by seeking to understand his religious faith and his political beliefs as crucial elements of his vision of himself and his nation. Indeed, like his father Jedediah Morse, a prominent Massachusetts pastor best known for [End Page 420] his books on American geography, Samuel Morse believed that Protestantism and American liberty were intertwined. Silverman provides considerable insight into Morse's experience as an art student in Britain and his experiences as a young artist struggling to create a distinctly American form of historical painting that focused on the great events and the political life of his young nation. His inspiration, however, came from the masterpieces of European art, and it was a younger generation, led by Thomas Cole, that created a distinct American school by drawing on the power of the American landscape. Morse's artistic ambitions were thwarted by the lack of patrons who could support the kind of painting he envisioned. To gain commissions, he had to settle for the life of an itinerant portrait painter. Morse's more lasting impact on American art came through his efforts in establishing the National Academy of Design, an organization run by artists that he deemed more appropriate to republican art than the American Academy established by John Trumbull and dominated by the very patrons and collectors who might have supported Morse's artistic ambitions. His failure to obtain a commission from Congress to paint one of the panels of the Capitol rotunda effectively marked the end of his career as a painter. As Morse's artistic ambitions foundered in the 1830s, his effort to develop an electric telegraph offered another outlet for his ambition. But it initially took a back seat to his desire to preserve his Protestant republic from the hordes of Catholic immigrants that were coming to America. As Silverman shows us, Morse's experiences during a visit to Rome confirmed his view of Catholicism as a coercive religion opposed to liberty. Indeed, his first contribution to the debate on immigration was a series of articles on Catholicism that he subsequently collected under the title Foreign Conspiracy against the Liberties of the United States (1835). Morse's anti-Catholicism subsequently led him into nativist politics and an unsuccessful candidacy for mayor of New York City, but, as Silverman demonstrates, his views remained remarkably naïve and ill suited to the rough and tumble of American politics. Morse retained this same naiveté in the rough and tumble of commerce. Nonetheless, he played well the role of American inventor, by portraying himself as both the single originator of the electric telegraph and as defender of America's right to the invention against the claims of various European inventors. The telegraph, of course, is why Morse is so well known today and what makes him a figure of interest to readers of Technology and Culture. Silverman does an excellent job of discussing the invention, development, and diffusion of the new technology and provides what is probably the best-balanced analysis to date of the role of Morse and the many other individuals involved in this effort. "Ironically," he concludes, "Morse's claims for himself as an inventor rest most convincingly on the part of his work that he valued least, his dogged entrepreneurship" (p. 322). In reaching this [End Page 421] conclusion Silverman agrees with recent scholarship on the telegraph and on invention and innovation that points to the crucial role played by those who bring together people with a variety of skills and talents to turn ideas into a commercial technology. Morse was one such person. While drawing on the work of scholars in his effort to understand Morse and the world he...

The Catholic Imagination and Popular Religion in Lowland Philippines: Missiological Significance of David Tracy's Theory of Religious Imaginations

AbstractBy way of critical appreciation, the author (an evangelical) investigates David Tracy's analysis of the Catholic imagination in relation to popular religiosity and inculturation in lowland Philippines. A survey of contemporary Evangelical and Roman Catholic views on folk religiosity sets the stage for the study as a whole. To explain and highlight the missiological significance of Tracy's approach, this study makes use of contemporary religio-philosophical (hermeneutical) and missiological perspectives. Such perspectives open up the missiological usefulness of Tracy's socio-theological analysis of the Catholic imagination especially for religionists and missiologists. They also point to the naturalistic limitations of Tracy's revisionist understanding of religion even as it encounters a non-Western religious outlook such as in the Philippines. A conversation with Tracy's approach becomes an instance of dialogue between Roman Catholics and Evangelicals not only on folk Catholicism, but also on revelation, inculturation and mission.

The Beginnings of English Protestantism (review)

The Beginnings of English Protestantism. Edited by Peter Marshall and Alec Ryrie. (New York: Cambridge University Press. 2002. Pp. xi, 242. $55.00 hardback; $20.00 paperback.) For generations the first English Protestants were regarded as the harbingers of post-medieval enlightenment and the founders of English national identity. Then about thirty years ago they began to be stigmatized as a revolutionary and destructive minority who first undermined and then destroyed a perfectly viable church, and permanently damaged the spiritual life of the country. This reemergence of a traditional Catholic view in turn prompted a radical rethinking of the whole religious history of sixteenth-century England. Now scholars do not see the Reformation in terms of Protestant/Catholic confrontation, but of a long and subtle process of transformation in which many factors played a part. The Reformers did not even adopt the name Protestant until the reign of Edward VI, and Peter Marshall here carefully refers to them as evangelicals, with all the doctrinal ambiguity which that implies. It was politics which determined the form of the English Reformation, but not its content. Whatever else he may have been, Henry VIII was not a Protestant. This collection, however, is not really concerned with politics, and not very much with the church at an institutional level, but rather with a variety of groups and individuals who for different reasons found themselves in conflict with the established orthodoxy of the time. Some, like the friars considered by Richard Rex, were well educated, and their views sprang partly from the continental theology of the time, and partly from what might be described as an indigenous skepticism about certain traditional practices. Others, like the Freewillers examined by Tom Freeman, were almost totally uneducated (a fact of which they made a conscious virtue), and their views were equally at odds with those of the Catholic Church and those of established Protestantism. In fact, in spite of the efforts of John Foxe, the unity of English Protestantism was more apparent than real, more imposed than spontaneous. Evangelical conversion was a highly individual experience, and expressed itself in eccentric ways, like those of Clement Armstrong described by Ethan Shagan, who contrived to mix a totalitarian view of the Royal Supremacy with a theology which was mainly Anabaptist. Dissent is a scarlet thread which runs through the whole of this story, from the known men of the fifteenth century to the Brownists and the Family of Love in the reign of Elizabeth. Women, as Susan Wabuda points out, were often leaders in this essentially domestic revolution, and exercised an influence which the leaders of the official Reformation were reluctant to acknowledge-although their Catholic opponents made much of it. …

Autorité de l’Écriture et autorité ecclésiastique dans l’Église d’Angleterre : l’héritage de Richard Hooker

Locke’s marked praise of Richard Hooker’s seminal work, Of the Lawes of Ecclesiastical Polity, shows that the Elizabethan divine’s work was appreciated by political philosophers. Olivier Loyer’s thesis (1977) also extensively proved that Hooker’s reflection went far beyond mere problems of church organization and ceremonial Hooker aimed at defending the Elizabethan Religious Settlement against harsh criticism originating either from the Roman Catholic or from the Puritan sides. Although he firmly adhered to the three great Protestant principles — sola scriptura, sola fides, sola gratia — and refused the Roman Catholic view of Tradition, Hooker nevertheless considered that Scripture only contained divine law as far as man’s salvation through Christ was concerned and therefore embarked in a complex and thorough analysis of the concept of law, and of authority, which implied an outright rejection of all forms of religious enthusiasm and granted a fairly wide scope for the exercise of reason. He can therefore be considered as the forerunner or founding father of Anglican rationalism.

The Reformed doctrine of irresistible sanctification

The Reformed confession of Grace Alone obviously involves the doctrines of faith, election, justification and perseverance. The conception of irresistible grace is comfortably applied to the same doctrines. However, sanctification is a special case in that the theological focus shifts from divine action to human effort. This emphasis on human striving must avoid the Catholic view of works righteousness, and reject the Thomistic teaching on cooperative grace and condign merit. Analysis of these issues raises again the question of the proper use of human reason in theological reflection. (Acta Theologica, Supplementum 3, 2002: 107-124)

The Morality of Unenabled Embryo Use—Arguments That Work and Arguments That Don't

The Morality of Unenabled Embryo Use—Arguments That Work and Arguments That Don't

Catholicism and American Freedom: A History (review)

Reviewed by: Catholicism and American Freedom: A History Leslie Woodcock Tentler Catholicism and American Freedom: A History. By John T. McGreevy. (New York: W.W. Norton & Company. 2003. Pp. 431. $26.95.) Is anti-Catholicism really the last acceptable prejudice of the intellectuals? John T. McGreevy's masterful Catholicism and American Freedom offers abundant evidence to this effect. But McGreevy also situates this faintly self-pitying saw in broad historical context, with generous references to parallel developments in Europe and the British Isles. This has the effect of mostly deflating Catholic claims to victim status. Liberal intellectuals in the United States and Europe may have been prone to the grossest stereotypes in their various battles against the Church. They were right, however, to see the Catholic world-view as resting on assumptions in fundamental opposition to their own. Catholics, moreover, often promoted their views in ways that were calculated to confirm the worst prejudices of the other side. Catholics were not so much victims of liberal bigotry as liberalism's sparring partners—vigorous co-participants in an on-going debate about the nature of the human person and of society. "This book sketches the interplay between Catholic and American ideas of freedom," as McGreevy explains. "The trick is to capture two traditions in motion, not one: to explore American ideas about Catholicism along with the predispositions (at times blinders) framing the mental landscape of American Catholics" (p. 15). McGreevy's ambitious narrative opens with a pair of closely-related debates in the 1840's and '50's over slavery and education. Catholics in the United States, like those in Europe, were mostly opposed to emancipation, at least of the immediate variety. And in view of the overly Protestant content of the public school curriculum, many American Catholics—again, like those in Europe—championed public funding for religiously separate schools. What linked the two positions was a distinctively Catholic view of freedom. As Catholic intellectuals saw it, human freedom had moral meaning only in a relational context—a very different notion from the autonomous choice-maker posited by liberals. As McGreevy explains, "...Catholics saw moral choice and personal development as inseparable from virtues nurtured in families and churches" (p.36). Hence the almost obsessive Catholic fear of "liberal individualism and [End Page 357] social disorder" (p. 52) that characterized the Catholic revival in Europe and Catholic intellectual life in the United States. Nor did Catholic intellectuals see the mitigation of suffering as critical to human freedom, although nearly all liberals did. Suffering, in the Catholic view, was a means of spiritual purgation. It also underwrote communal bonds, as families and Church-sponsored institutions cared for those in distress. Catholic schools made eminent sense in such a world; slavery made a kind of tragic sense as well. Not surprisingly, abolitionists both in the United States and Europe trafficked in anti-Catholicism and continued to do so even after the death of slavery. The 1864 publication of the Syllabus of Errors caused liberals on both sides of the Atlantic to regard Catholicism more than ever as a threat to the secular nation-state. American liberals—most of them with abolitionist pedigrees—praised Bismarck's Kulturkampf, the Italian Risorgimento, and the various anticlerical laws in France. The Republican-controlled Congress in 1876 came close to ratifying a constitutional amendment prohibiting public aid to religious schools, and toyed with levying taxes on church-owned properties—a policy that would have had disproportionate impact on Catholics. The proponents of such measures were convinced that Catholic separatism undermined national unity. Many Catholic intellectuals confirmed their fears by trumpeting the ultramontanism so spectacularly embodied in the 1870 declaration on papal infallibility. Despite the polarization of the 1870's and '80's, a rapprochement of sorts took place in the early twentieth century. Catholic intellectuals and their liberal counterparts still saw the world through very different lenses. But Protestant and secular liberals had by this time abandoned their benign view of laissez-faire capitalism. So Catholics and liberals were increasingly able to make at least semi-common cause in support of social welfare measures and the regulatory state. The process reached its high-water mark during the first administration...

Catholic Moral Teaching and the Problem of Capital Punishment

The Thomist 68 (2004): 41-67 CATHOLIC MORAL TEACHING AND THE PROBLEM OF CAPITAL PUNISHMENT E. CHRISTIAN BRUGGER Loyola University New Orleans New Orleans, Lousiana I. THE PAPAL TEACHING INTERPRETED ESPONSESTO THE PRESENT papal teaching on the problem of apital punishment have been varying and even conflicting. teven Long, whose ideas I consider in the second part of this essay, argues that the papal teaching cannot say what it appears to be saying because the Church has never said such a thing; it therefore must be interpreted as saying what the Church has always said. Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J., tends to agree, arguing that what is new is not the underlying principle regarding the legitimacy of capital punishment but the application of that principle to changing conditions.1 Gerard Bradley, on the other hand, says the treatment is novel; capital punishment, once justified as a means of retribution, is now being assessed in terms of civil society's right to defend itself.2 Mark Latkovic agrees but says the novelty does not go so far as to render capital punishment intrinsically evil.3 Janet Smith suggests the pope might be leaning 1 See Avery Dulles, "The Death Penalty: A Right to Life Issue?" Laurence J. McGinley Lecture, Fordham University (17 October 2000), reprinted as "Catholicism and Capital Punishment," in First Things 112 (April 2001): 30-35. 2Gerard V. Bradley, "The Teaching of the Gospel of Life," Catholic Dossier 4 (Sept.-Oct. 1998): 43-48. 3Mark S. Latkovic, "Capital Punishment, Church Teaching, and Morality: What is Pope John Paul II Saying to Catholics in Evangelium vitae?" Logos 5, no. 2 (Spring 2002): 82 41 42 E. CHRISTIAN BRUGGER precisely in that direction.4 James Hitchcock thinks the pope is trying to elevate the social conversation "to a higher plane ... by affirming the sacredness of human life in all situations."5 Charles Rice agrees and thinks the papal teaching has made "obsolete" the traditional view that death is the only fitting punishment for certain very grave crimes.6 Justice Antonin Scalia thinks that Charles Rice and the pope are flat wrong.7 And so on. I think the papal teaching is saying something new.8 Catholic tradition has argued that legitimate public authority rightly inflicts the death penalty for very grave crimes, and that its infliction-insofar as it serves to redress the disorder introduced by a criminal's crime, protects the community from a dangerous influence, and deters others from committing similar crimes-is not only justified, but good. This is not something the present pontificate has taught, nor in my estimation would it be willing to teach. The papal teaching as articulated in the 1997 edition of the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) (which includes the morally relevant elements of the death penalty account of Evangelium vitae) is unprecedented for a magisterial document. A careful examination justifies the conclusion that a theoretical foundation is being laid for a substantive revision in the Church's teaching on the morality of capital punishment. That revision would teach that capital punishment as punishment is no longer legitimate; that the state rightly uses lethal force only for purposes of self-defense, which means that inflicting death could not be justified as a means of retribution; that in using lethal force against a dangerous criminal, the state is justified only in using •Janet E. Smith, "Rethinking Capital Punishment," Catholic Dossier4 (Sept.-Oct. 1998): 49-50. 5 James Hitchcock, "Capital Punishment and Cultural Change in American Life," in Capital Punishment: Three Catholic Views (Washington, D.C.: Faith and Reason Institute, 2003), 13 6 Charles Rice, "Avery Cardinal Dulles and His Critics: An Exchange on Capital Punishment," First Things 115 (August/September 2001): 9 7 Antonin Scalia, "Justice Scalia's Letter to the Editor," National Catholic Register (24-31 March 2002). • 8 Catechism ofthe Catholic Church 2263-67; Evangelium vitae 55-56. CAPITAL PUNISHMENT 43 force proportionate to render him incapable of causing harm; and that if he dies as an consequence, his death would have to remain praeter intentionem (i.e., unintended). This is not the explicit teaching of the Catechism, but the conclusions follow neatly from a fair reading of the text. I...

Tradition and Sacred Texts

Abstract: Having defined ‘tradition’ and ‘sacred texts’, this article traces the developing Roman Catholic understanding of the relationship of tradition and scripture, looking especially at the formation of the canon and the attitude to inspiration. It places a particular stress on the central place of liturgy in this relationship. It then compares Catholic views with those of the Eastern Orthodox, noting particularly what Syrian exegesis has to teach Western readers, and with those of Protestant and Anglican Christianity. It then addresses the claims of the heirs of tradition, believers, to be interpreters of scripture vis‐à‐vis scientific biblical scholarship, concluding that they have great advantages in sympathy and imagination in entering into dialogue with the texts.

Relational Responsibility, and Not Only Stewardship. A Roman Catholic View on Voluntary Euthanasia for Dying and Non-Dying Patients

Relational Responsibility, and Not Only Stewardship. A Roman Catholic View on Voluntary Euthanasia for Dying and Non-Dying Patients

The Catholic Church and the Other Religious Paths: Rejecting Nothing that is True and Holy

[Catholic thinking about other religious traditions has continued to develop rapidly since the Second Vatican Council. The author discusses the impact of conciliar texts, the thought of John Paul II, the “pluralist” and “regnocentric” theologies of religion, and the practice of interreligious dialogue on Catholic views of other religious paths. The multiple issues selected for discussion reflect the controversy surrounding the declaration Dominus Iesus of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.]

Relational responsibility, and not only stewardship, a Roman Catholic view on voluntary euthanasia for dying and non-dying patients.

The Roman Catholic theological approach to euthanasia is radically prohibitive. The main theological argument for this prohibition is the so-called "stewardship argument": Christians cannot escape accounting to God for stewardship of the bodies given them on earth. This contribution presents an alternative approach based on European existentialist and philosophical traditions. The suggestion is that exploring the fullness of our relational responsibility is more apt for a pluralist--and even secular--debate on the legitimacy of euthanasia.

Catholic Views on Life

Catholic Views on Life

CHRISTIAN HIGHER EDUCATION IN EUROPE: A CATHOLIC VIEW

CHRISTIAN HIGHER EDUCATION IN EUROPE: A CATHOLIC VIEW

Morality: The Catholic View by Servais Pinckaers, O.P.

166 BOOK REVIEWS controversy with Gisbert Voetius (1588-1676), the Dutch theologian who campaigned against Regius and to whom Descartes replied through Regius. Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia (1618-1680), who was living in exile in the Netherlands, was another correspondent of Descartes who challenged him to explain better the interaction of the mind and the body. Descartes was always consistent in affirming the unity of man but again he failed to come up with any explanation that would satisfy the princess. At last in a letter of 21May1643 he blustered that the unity was a primitive notion that was most difficult to explain. His attempt to defend personal immortality was trumped by his failure to give a satisfactory account of our obvious unity. Fowler's book is most readable; the print is large with generous white spacious margins; the quotations are in English, the French and Latin originals are in the footnotes at the bottom of the page; references are given to both the sources in the Adam-Tannery (AD edition and the CMS (Cottingham, Stoothioff, Murdoch) translations. Whenever a person is first mentioned his or her dates are given; reference to the writings of the others besides Descartes and his correspondents (e.g., Mersenne, Gassendi, Arnauld, and others) are well cited. The bibliographies are divided into "Lexica, lndecas, Bibliographies," "Primary Sources," and "Secondary Sources"; the last is quite extensive, including journal articles as well as relevant books. It is puzzling that the Haldane/Ross translation, which was the stand-by of graduate students from 1911 until 1985, is mentioned neither here nor in Stephen Gaukroger's biography of Descartes. The book is expensive, but no library can afford to be without it. It is an outstanding study of an essential part of Descartes's work. DESMOND J. FITZGERALD University ofSan Francisco San Francisco, California Morality: The Catholic View. By SERVAIS PINCKAERS, 0.P. Translated by MICHAEL SHERWIN, 0.P. South Bend, Ind.: St. Augustine's Press, 2001. Pp. 121. $19.00 (cloth). ISBN 0-890318-56-6. The publication and subsequent translation of Fr. Servais Pinckaers's Les Sources de la Morale Chretienne performed an invaluable service for the professional theological world. Now Fr. Pinckaers's popular precis of that seminal work, entitled La Morale Catholique, with its attendant skilled translation by Michael Sherwin, O.P., Morality: The Catholic View, may reach a broader audience with profound pastoral effect. BOOK REVIEWS 167 Pinckaers divides his work into two main sections. The first offers a summary of the history of Catholic moral thought. In this section Pinckaers treats Scripture, the Fathers, the classical period of high Scholasticism, the period of the moral manuals, the Second Vatican Council, and the period following upon the council. Building on his historical narrative, Pinckaers proceeds more systematically in the second section in which he treats of freedom and happiness, the Holy Spirit and the new law, and natural law and freedom. This brief review will tie together three themes that appear in in both the historical and systematic sections. The first is history and ressourcement. The second is the relationship between morality as the search for happiness and morality as obligation. The third is the relationship between the natural law and the New Law. Pinckaers begins with a tour of history. However, he is not interested in the history of moral theology for its own sake. The historical synthesis advances substantive claims about moral theology and the authentic forms of its renewal. It should be remembered that Pinckaers belongs to that generation oftheologians who came of age nurtured in the promise of ressourcement. These theologians believed that the Church would be able to read the signs of the times and renew its mission in the modern world precisely by renewed contact with the Word of God in all of the modes of its transmission. Thus, the scientific study of the Scriptures, the Fathers, the liturgy, and the development ofthe whole theological tradition of the Church served no merely antiquarian interests but rather would "equip the saints for the work of ministry" in the midst of their world. In a phrase, these theologians believed that aggiornamento could only be secured by ressourcement. The Second Vatican...

Continuity Amidst Disruption: The Spirit and Apostolic Succession at the Reformation

What light might a greater attentiveness to the role of the Holy Spirit radiate over the tangled question of apostolic succession and the validity of orders? Here I have in mind the question of orders in the Protestant communities, as understood from a Roman Catholic perspective, although the question is relevant to some of the Eastern Orthodox and other Eastern Christian churches as well. For although it is commonly held, given the teaching of Vatican II (Unitatis Redintegratio, Decree on Ecumenism, no. 15) and later papal teaching (John Paul II, Ut Unum Sint, no. 50), that Catholics recognize the validity of orders of the Orthodox, the recognition is not always mutual.The typical Roman Catholic view of the “Protestant question,” if I may abbreviate it in this way, is that an unbridgeable break—a radical disruption—occurred at the Reformation in both the form and the matter of apostolic succession. That is, the teaching (or doctrine) about orders, as well as the concrete, institutionalized forms of its presence in the threefold diaconate-priesthood-episcopacy, were fatally disrupted at the Reformation. Apostolic succession was thereby fatally flawed, at least as regards ordained ministry. And this fatal flaw was in turn reflected in the liturgical rites and larger ecclesial institutional forms of the Protestant communities.

Joseph Husslein, S.J., and the American Catholic Literary Revival: “A University in Print”

I. Rationale and Organization of University in Print Arnold Sparr described the American Catholic Literary Revival of this century in To Promote, Defend, and Redeem: the Catholic Literary Revival and the Cultural Transformation of American Catholicism, 1920-1960.1 Sparr mentioned the work and writings of such figures as Daniel A. Lord, Francis X. Talbot, and Frank O'Malley. Other Catholic writers also contributed to this revival, including Allen Tate and Joseph Husslein. Husslein is significant for his effort to promote Roman Catholic literature through his writings and more importantly through his project University in Print,in which he edited over two hundred books on Catholic thought and culture for a wide audience. Joseph Caspar Husslein, SJ. (1873-1952), was born and raised in Milwaukee, Wisconsin! In 1891 he entered the Society of Jesus at St. Stanislaus Seminary near St. Louis, Missouri. After studying and teaching at Saint Louis University, Husslein was ordained in 1905. From 1911 to 1930 Husslein worked on the staff of the Jesuit weekly America in New York and taught at Fordham University. During these years Husslein wrote over four hundred articles and ten books on such social issues as worker cooperatives, factory working conditions, woman workers, socialism, and unjust business practices. He produced one of the largest corpora of American Catholic writing on social issues. Husslein's most important books on social questions were The Church and Social Problems (1912), The World Problem: Capital, Labor and the Church (1918), Democratic Industry (1919), The Bible and Labor (1924), and The Christian Social Manifesto (1931).' Of particular significance is Husslein's The Bible and Labor In a method untypical for Catholic thinkers of this period, Husslein used the Bible-particularly the Old Testament-to develop principles for social ethics. This approach would not be repeated until after Vatican Council II. In 1930 Husslein curtailed his writing on social issues and moved to Saint Louis University, where he founded the School of Social Service and began his University in Print.4 Husslein's work at Saint Louis University coincided with a particularly vibrant period for the university. New journals were published: The Modern Schoolman, Historical Bulletin, and Classical Bulletin. The Institute for Social Order was founded. The figure from the University's Jesuit community to garner the most attention was Father Daniel Lord. A showman and promoter, he organized and ran the Catholic youth program Sodality. He edited the Queen's Work, produced musical pageants, and wrote hundreds of pamphlets. Lord and Husslein knew each other and believed they had the same mission of promoting Roman Catholicism, but Lord-flamboyant and gregarious-and Husslein-hardworking and quiet-were too independent for long-term co-operation. The St. Louis Jesuit community produced a number oflone stars. Husslein and Lord shared the American penchant for promotion. For all the difficulties of the 1930's, it was an age of growing confidence for Catholics. The worst of the anti-Catholic nativism had died down; American Catholics had proven their patriotism in World War 1; the National Catholic Welfare Conference brought some unity to the American hierarchy, and the calamity of the depression reaffirmed among Catholic social thinkers the conviction that Catholic teaching had much to say to the world. Radio provided a means for a number of speakers to disseminate a Catholic view. (It is unfortunate that Charles Coughlin is the most remembered of these voices.) The final and most important factor in the growth of confidence was simply the burgeoning Catholic population caused by large families descended from the immense waves of immigrants of the 1800's and early 1900's. Catholics had become the largest denomination in America. American Catholicism had the confidence not only to promote itself to the world, but ironically, and perhaps more importantly, Catholicism had to promote itself to its own members. …

SEXUAL MORALITY: IS CONSENT ENOUGH?

The liberal view that valid consent is sufficient for a sex act to be morally legitimate is challenged by three major philosophies of sex: the Catholic view of sex as ordained for procreation and properly confined to marriage, the romantic view of sex as bound up with love, and the radical feminist analysis of sex in our society as part and parcel of the domination of women by men. I take a critical look at all three, focusing on Mary Geach's recent statement of the procreation view, Roger Scruton's theory of sexual desire as naturally evolving into intimacy and love, and several radical feminist discussions of sex in sexist society which argue that the notion of consent is unhelpful and, indeed, irrelevant. I argue that none of these lines of argument is convincing, and that consent remains the touchstone of morally permissible sex – although, dmittedly, it may not be very helpful in discussing ideals of human sexuality.