Rutilio Grande, S.J. was the first priest assassinated in El Salvador on March 12, 1977. He was targeted for his work with the poor as he applied Vatican II and the Medellín conference to his own reality in El Salvador. Grande’s progressive, creative and ultimately transformative ministry with the rural poor was aided by the UCA Jesuits with whom he partnered. Through his pastoral strategy of listening to communities, using the social sciences to understand their reality and embracing a pedagogy (...) of conscientization, Grande challenged traditional pastoral strategies in El Salvador by collaborating with the UCA Jesuits. Ultimately, these commitments to helping Grande organize and educate rural agricultural workers contributed to government persecution and their eventual death at the hands of the Salvadoran military. (shrink)

St. Amand could count among his many feats the extraordinary achievement of social equilibrium. “The way he was in the midst of the rich and the poor,” his hagiographer marveled, “the poor saw him as a poor man, and the rich treated him as their better.” On a résumé of miracles performed and peoples converted, this accomplishment was no less impressive. Bishops in the post-Roman kingdoms of Gaul/Francia maintained an ongoing balancing act between seeking social and political distinction, on the (...) one hand, and fulfilling their obligation to defend the poor, on the other. Their authority increasingly depended upon both, even as it engendered a tension between elitism and inclusivity. To study bishops' choice of company is therefore to highlight the difficulty inherent in an ambitious pastoral and political positioning. Linked to the subject of the episcopal entourage, and to the issue of episcopal authority and its representation more generally, was a change in the culture of Merovingian government, for bishops were becoming more and more valuable to a monarchy that confronted new standards of responsibility toward its subjects. (shrink)

This first part of Thomas Aquinas’ third way has provoked a variety of allegations on the theme of a quantifier shift fallacy. For even if it be granted that every thing at some time does not exist, that is.

In May 2010, philosophers, family and friends gathered at the University of Notre Dame to celebrate the career and retirement of Alvin Plantinga, widely recognized as one of the world's leading figures in metaphysics, epistemology, and the philosophy of religion. Plantinga has earned particular respect within the community of Christian philosophers for the pivotal role that he played in the recent renewal and development of philosophy of religion and philosophical theology. Each of the essays in this volume engages with some (...) particular aspect of Plantinga's views on metaphysics, epistemology, or philosophy of religion. Contributors include Michael Bergman, Ernest Sosa, Trenton Merricks, Richard Otte, Peter VanInwagen, Thomas P. Flint, Eleonore Stump, Dean Zimmerman and Nicholas Wolterstorff. The volume also includes responses to each essay by Bas van Fraassen, Stephen Wykstra, David VanderLaan, Robin Collins, Raymond VanArragon, E. J. Coffman, Thomas Crisp, and Donald Smith. (shrink)

Through a critical analysis of the work of Henry Davis, S.J. and Francis, C.SS.R., this study examines the Catholic tradition in respect to the moral responsibilities of physicians. It first reviews the historical formation of the manuals of moral theology in order to historically situate Davis and Connell in the twentieth century. The study then examines the work of Davis and Connell in light of David Kelly's The Emergence of Roman Catholic Medical Ethics in North America, wherein he posits (...) a shift in moral methodology in 1940 from physicalism to ecclesiastical positivism. Contrary to Kelly's thesis, this study finds essentially no methodological difference between Davis' commandment-centered methodology and Connell's virtue-centered method. In actuality, both theologians throughout their careers focused upon the physical nature of the action and employed the traditional principles of double effect and cooperation when determining the morality of an intrinsically evil act. ;Through a comparison of the work of Davis and Connell, the study concludes with a description of the moral responsibilities of physicians for a contemporary practice of medicine. These duties include basic responsibilities, social responsibilities and the responsibilities to the dying patient. (shrink)

Two theses are central to recent work on the epistemology of disagreement: Conciliationism:?In a revealed peer disagreement over P, each thinker should give at least some weight to her peer's attitude. Uniqueness:?For any given proposition and total body of evidence, the evidence fully justifies exactly one level of confidence in the proposition. 1This paper is the product of full and equal collaboration between its authors. Does Conciliationism commit one to Uniqueness? Thomas Kelly 2010 has argued that it does. (...) After some scene-setting (?1), in ?2 we explain and criticize Kelly's argument, thereby defeating his larger argument that Conciliationism deserves no dialectical special treatment. But we argue further that Conciliationists are committed to a disjunction, one of whose disjuncts is Uniqueness, that amounts to an ?extremely strong and unobvious position? (??3?4). If we are correct, theorists should not treat Conciliationism as a default position in debates about the epistemic significance of disagreement. (shrink)

Dr. Oguejiofor argues that Aquinas’s philosophical anthropology “is not much more than his philosophy of the human soul.” In his well-documented book he first gives a survey of the positions of philosophers on our question during the earlier part of the thirteenth century paying special attention to Albert the Great. Albert hesitated to accept Aristotle’s definition of the soul as the act of the body, believing that it is not compatible with the soul’s immortality. The second chapter explains this definition (...) and stresses the fact that the soul is immaterial and therefore subsistent. The author might have argued from the fact that it does not share its intellectual activity with the body. Surprisingly he thinks that many of M. Kelly’s remarks against the main argument of the mind’s immateriality—the mainstay of Thomas’s theory—are correct. The third, central chapter deals with Aquinas’s proofs of the soul’s immortality. It examines in their chronological order passages from six works of Thomas where they are put forward, paying special attention to chapters 79 to 81 of the Summa contra gentiles, II. The argument from man’s natural desire is linked to the immateriality of intellectual knowledge. The main arguments are: thought is immaterial and therefore the soul as its source also is; the rational soul transcends the contrary qualities responsible for corruption; the natural desire to exist for ever cannot be in vain. (shrink)

Two theses figure centrally in work on the epistemology of disagreement: Equal Weight (‘EW’) and Uniqueness (‘U’). According to EW, you should give precisely as much weight to the attitude of a disagreeing epistemic peer as you give to your own attitude. U has it that, for any given proposition and total body of evidence, some doxastic attitude is the one the evidence makes rational (justifies) toward that proposition. Although EW has received considerable discussion, the case for U has not (...) been critically evaluated. Endorsing U, we argue, commits one to the highly controversial thesis that whatever fixes your rational attitudes can do so only by fixing what evidence you have. This commitment imposes a relatively demanding requirement on justified belief in U, one that we argue is not satisfied by what is currently the strongest available case for U, due to Roger White [2005]. Our challenge to U makes more trouble for its proponents than do the worries about U expressed by Gideon Rosen [2001] and Thomas Kelly [2010]. Moreover, if Kelly [2010] is correct in thinking that EW “carries with it a commitment to” U—a claim which we accept for reasons similar to Kelly’s but is beyond this paper’s scope (but see Ballantyne and Coffman [forthcoming])—then our challenge to U bears importantly on EW: to the extent that our challenge to U succeeds, EW also suffers. (shrink)

Loneliness is commonly conceived of as a topic under the purview of psychology. Empirical research on loneliness utilizes a definition of psychology as essentially subjective, i.e. as a first-personal mental property an individual can have. As a first-personal mental property, subjects have, as it were, privileged access to their state of being lonely. Rehearsing some well-known arguments from later Wittgenstein, I argue that loneliness – contrary to an unargued assumption present in several academic engagements – is not subjective in the (...) sense that whether or not a person is lonely does not in all cases hinge on that person’s subjective mental states. This becomes apparent when considering cases of alienation from self-knowledge (Moran 2001). Using Heidegger’s notion of being-in-the-world and being-with I argue that such cases from alienation point towards the notion that loneliness is not merely a subjective feeling, but a categorically different privation of the fundamental mode of being with others. (shrink)

Varying forms of ontological and methodological naturalism are among the most popular theses in contemporary philosophy. However, each of these theses faces a different dilemma: ontological naturalism is famously challenged by Hempel’s dilemma, while methodological naturalism faces issues regarding its coherence. Some prominent naturalists (Elpidorou and Dove 2018, Ney 2009, Rea 2002) have suggested to circumvent these respective dilemmas by reconceiving naturalism as an attitude (rather than a thesis). This paper argues that such attitude accounts are unsuccessful: naturalism as an (...) attitude either collapses into a thesis again or is rationally unjustifiable. This paper closes by suggesting two options a naturalist has remaining. Either a naturalist can reasonably choose to revert to defending naturalism as a thesis; given that naturalism receives substantial support, it is not unlikely that a solution to the problems encountered by naturalism qua thesis is forthcoming. Or a naturalist might simply want to embrace an a-rational form of naturalism as a worldview, as suggested by Kim (2003) and Stoljar (2010) (and earlier by thinkers like Dilthey 1960 and Jaspers1925). (shrink)

Countless academic books have been written about how to interpret literary texts. From reader response criticism to Marxist hermeneutics and beyond, the scholarship on interpretive methods is vast. Yet all these books fail to address a more fundamental question: Why should we read in the first place? Or, to put it another way, why is reading an important thing to do? In order to answer these questions, Thomas J. Millay turns to the wisdom of Danish philosopher-theologian Søren Kierkegaard. In (...) this the first book to be written on Kierkegaard's philosophy of reading, Millay finds that reading does have a specific purpose: it is supposed to change your life. With lucid, nontechnical prose, Millay both establishes the definitive interpretation of Kierkegaard's philosophy of reading and explores the various concrete practices Kierkegaard recommended for its implementation"--Publisher's description. (shrink)

There is a close conceptual relation between the notions of religious disenchantment and scientific naturalism. One way of resisting philosophical and cultural implications of the scientific image and the subsequent process of disenchantment can be found in attempts at sketching a reenchanted worldview. The main issue of accounts of reenchantment can be a rejection of scientific results in a way that flies in the face of good reason. Opposed to such reenchantment is scientific naturalism which implies an entirely disenchanted worldview. (...) However, one of the main problems of scientific naturalism are placement problems. A reenchanted worldview does have the conceptual resources to avoid placement problems, yet seems to throw out the baby with the bathwater. A dilemma results: the Scylla of an undesirable scientific naturalism and the Charybdis of a rampant, seemingly prescientific reenchanted worldview. In this article I argue that there is a safe middle passage between these two options, i.e. the recently proposed liberal naturalism which allows for a moderate normative reenchantment. Liberal naturalism lets us have it both ways: avoiding the placement problems while retaining a necessary and reasonable adherence to science, thereby avoiding both an all-too restrictive scientific naturalism. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:THE EUCHARISTIC THEOLOGIES OF LAUDA SION AND THOMAS AQUINAS'S SUMMA THEOLOGIAE THOMAS J. BELL Emory University Atlanta, Georgia MANY works associated with Thomas Aquinas stand both the Office and Mass for the Feast of Corpus Christi.1 The earliest witness to this association comes from two of Thomas's Dominican brothers and younger contemporaries, Tolomeo of Lucca and William of Tocco. Around 1317 Tolomeo wrote in his (...) Historia Ecclesiastica: " Thomas composed [the Corpus Christi Office] in full, including the lessons and all the parts to be recited by day or night; the Mass, too, and whatever has to be sung on the day." 2 William, in his Historia beati Thomae completed around 1320, lists the liturgy of Corpus Christi among Thomas's works and informs us that Thomas wrote the liturgy " at the request of Pope Urban [IV]." 3 It is known that on August 11, 1264, Urban, in the bull Transiturus, declared that the Feast of Corpus Christi was to be celebrated throughout Christendom according to a "new, Roman," liturgy.4 Thomas had returned from Paris to Italy, his 1 This does not mean that Thomas created the liturgy for the feast de nova. Rather it means that Thomas selected and combined older elements from the Scriptures, the Fathers, and existing liturgies, only venturing to write from scratch those hymns and prayers necessary for expressing the theological and devotional views central to the Feast of Corpus Christi. In other words, Thomas wrote or pieced together texts " proper " to the feast and united them with the " ordinary " texts of the Mass and Office. 2 James A. Weisheipl, Friar Thomas d'Aquino: His Life, Thought and Works (Washington, D.C., 1974), p. 177. a Ibid., pp. 132, 177. 4 Ibid., pp. 179, 183. For a partial translation of the bull Transiturus see also Darwell Stone, A History of the Doctrine of the Holy Eucharist (London, 1909), vol. 1, 344-46. This "new, Roman" liturgy promulgated by Urban IV was, indeed, a new 163 164 THOMAS J. BELL homeland, five years before the bull was published. Furthermore, by 1264 he had developed a "warm friendship" with Urban, whom we know to have commissioned Thomas to write several works between 1261 and 1265.5 These facts have led most scholars since the early fourteenth century to conclude that Urban's "new" liturgy was the work of Thomas.6 In recent years, however, Cyrille Lambot has questioned whether Thomas wrote or compiled the liturgy promulgated by Urban. He has noted that Reginald of Piperno, Thomas's amanuensis and companion from 1259 to 1274, did not include the liturgy for Corpus Christi in his list of Thomas's works. Moreover, the Dominican Order, like most Orders and dioceses, did not adopt Urban's liturgy for the Feast of Corpus Christi until 1317, when John XXII required its use throughout Western Christendom.7 If Thomas had written the liturgy, argues liturgy composed for the celebration of Corpus Christi. Around 1246 a certain John, a religious of Mont-Cornillon, had compiled a liturgy for the " Body of the Lord " that was in place throughout the diocese of Liege. Being so impressed by the solemnities of the Liege eucharistic celebration, Hugh of Saint-Cher, a Dominican and the cardinal legate of Germany, declared in 1252 that the feast of Corpus Christi was to be celebrated throughout the territory under his leadership. Jacques Pantaleon, the future Urban IV, knew the solemnities of Liege from his time as the city's archdeacon. It seems that upon his election as Pope, Urban was urged by many people to establish the Feast throughout Christendom. Eventually he did this with the publication of the bull Transiturus. For more details, see Weisheipl, Friar Thomas d'Aquino, pp. 178-79. 0 Weisheipl, Friar Thomas d'Aquino, p. 147. 6 The liturgy for the Feast of Corpus Christi that is associated with Thomas is not identical with the one currently used in both the Roman rite and Dominican rite. The modern texts for the Feast reflect the liturgical reforms that have occurred since Thomas's day. Notwithstanding these reforms, the Mass for the Feast (Cibavit eos), which includes Lauda Sion, has for the most part... (shrink)

We assess the current state of sociology of religion, particularly in the United States, for the extent to which a “critical sociology of religion” currently exists and how it might look if it did. We focus particular attention on two areas of inquiry: religion and health; and religion and violence.

This short essay was published by Shelterforce, the journal of affordable of housing and community development published by the National Housing Institute. It is largely taken from my law review article entitled "'We Shall Not Be Moved': Eminent Domain, Urban Redevelopment and the Socioeconomics of Just Compensation" published by St. John's Law Review. That article can be downloaded from SSRN at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=904224 This shorter piece focuses on the two proposals outlined in the second part of the law review article that (...) are designed to curb abuses of eminent domain in the urban redevelopment context without destroying its effectiveness as a tool for community revitalization and, even, community empowerment. Specifically, homeowners should not be subject to eminent domain pursuant to a redevelopment plan until the majority of them have approved the plan. To further solidify resident ownership of redevelopment, the right to continued residency in the community should be protected by amending relocation laws to guarantee an alienable entitlement to be offered replacement housing in the redeveloped district area. Together, these two legislative reforms express a more nuanced balance of property and liability rules that will facilitate a more productive interface between community residents and redevelopment officials. (shrink)

Identifying the determinants of reproductive success in small-scale societies is critical for understanding how natural selection has shaped human evolution and behavior. The available evidence suggests that status-accruing behaviors such as hunting and prosociality are pathways to reproductive success, but social egalitarianism may diminish this pathway. Here we introduce a mixed longitudinal/cross-sectional dataset based on 45 years of research with the Batek, a population of egalitarian rain forest hunter-gatherers in Peninsular Malaysia, and use it to test the effects of four (...) predictors of lifetime reproductive success: foraging return rate, sharing proclivity, cooperative foraging tendency, and kin presence. We found that none of these factors can explain variation in lifetime reproduction among males or females. We suggest that social egalitarianism, combined with strikingly low infant and juvenile mortality rates, can mediate the pathway between foraging, status-accruing behavior, and reproductive success. Our approach advocates for greater theoretical and empirical attention to quantitative social network measures, female foraging, and fitness outcomes. (shrink)

In the introductory chapter to this collection, the editors point out that, until recently, most Anglophone Spinoza scholarship has been focused on the metaphysics and epistemology of the Ethics. But according to Kisner and Youpa, Spinoza thought that metaphysics and epistemology were significant chiefly because they are required for understanding the more important part of his project—the ethical doctrine developed in the last three parts of the work. Ethica was so-titled because it is a book about ethics.In recent years, the (...) scholarly community has begun to shift its attention to bring itself more in line with Spinoza's intentions—to focus more directly on his ethical views. The volume under review presents... (shrink)