Video: The Thomist Cosmological Argument (Peter Kreeft)

Catholic philosopher Peter Kreeft explains the Thomistic cosmological argument.  I feel like I'm back in Philosophy of Religion with Van Fleteren again.

Guy Fawkes and Us

So much for the textbook Catholic high school teaching on Guy Fawkes.

The Whiskey and Gunpowder blog has an excellent article based on its namesake that explores the Whiskey Rebellion of the 1700's and the Gunpowder Plot of the early 1600's.

The following passage really made me think of something I'd thought of before:

Anarchists and various anti-government types often appropriate a stylized simulacrum of Guy Fawkes’ face as their symbol because Guy was the one caught preparing the barrels of gunpowder. He is most closely associated with the anti-government plot in the popular imagination…

But Guy wasn’t interested in permanently or drastically reducing the reach of power of government; he merely wanted a Catholic monarch in power to persecute the Protestants, instead of the prevailing situation in which a Protestant monarch was persecuting the Catholic minority.

Guy was actually much like your garden-variety nationalist. He wanted his kind of people in power. This is not unlike the supporters of the few politicians we like — like Ron Paul.

The Republican Party and the Democratic Party aren't small-government or pro-civil liberties. They just kick and scream as if they are. But really, it's just that their version of big government isn't being posed on the rest of the nation.

That's it.

And it also reminded that statism has so many different incarnations (in this case religious) that we really have to question whether it was the religions themselves or something else that was the cause of it.

I don't know. Maybe something like, you know, the human heart.

Ron Paul had good words for Pope John Paul II

From a 2005 column:

Just two years ago conservatives were busy scolding the Pope for his refusal to back our invasion of Iraq. One conservative media favorite even made the sickening suggestion that the Pope was the enemy of the United States because he would not support our aggression in the Middle East. The Pontiff would not ignore the inherent contradiction in being pro-life and pro-war, nor distort just war doctrine to endorse attacking a nation that clearly posed no threat to America — and conservatives resented it. September 11th did not change everything, and the Pope understood that killing is still killing. The hypocritical pro-war conservatives lauding him today have very short memories.

Liberals also routinely denounced the Pope for maintaining that Catholicism, like all religions, has rules that cannot simply be discarded to satisfy the cultural trends of the time. The political left has been highly critical of the Pope's positions on abortion, euthanasia, gay marriage, feminism, and contraception. Many liberals frankly view Catholicism as an impediment to the fully secular society they hope to create.

Both conservatives and liberals cannot understand that the Pope's pronouncements were theological, not political. He was one of the few humans on earth who could not be bullied or threatened by any government. He was a man of God, not a man of the state. He was not a policy maker, but rather a steward of long-established Catholic doctrine. His mission was to save souls, not serve the political agendas of any nation, party, or politician.

To the secularists, this was John Paul II's unforgivable sin — he placed service to God above service to the state. Most politicians view the state, not God, as the supreme ruler on earth. They simply cannot abide a theology that does not comport with their vision of unlimited state power. This is precisely why both conservatives and liberals savaged John Paul II when his theological pronouncements did not fit their goals. But perhaps their goals simply were not godly.

Theology, Not Politics

Catholic Bishops on Obamacare Reg: 'Unprecedented Attack on Religious Liberty,' Even Jesus Wouldn't Qualify as 'Religious' | CNSnews.com

In an "urgent" call to action distributed as a bulletin insert at Catholic churches across the country on Sunday, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops said that a new federal regulation proposed under President Barack Obama's health-care law "poses an unprecedented threat to individual and institutional religious freedom."

Catholic Bishops on Obamacare Reg: 'Unprecedented Attack on Religious Liberty,' Even Jesus Wouldn't Qualify as 'Religious' | CNSnews.com