This just in, from Fr Lawrence Dewan, OP, who heard the news from Anna Zhyrkova at Kalamazoo: Fr Mieczysław Albert Krąpiec, OP, long-time leader of the Lublin School of Thomism—associated in the public mind most especially with Karol Wojtyla (the late pope, John Paul II)—has died. I’ll try to get more particular information as I’m able, and would be grateful for information from anybody.
Thanks to Adriano Oliva, OP, for this information about an upcoming event in Paris. While it might be difficult for people in the USA to attend, Adriano provided the program of the event, so we can see what's going on these days in Paris, at the Institut de Recherche et d'Histoire des Textes:
Journée d'étude, jeudi 15 mai 2008
Les innovations du vocabulaire latin à la fin du moyen âge :
autour du Glossaire du latin philosophique (philosophie, théologie, sciences)
Le Glossaire du latin philosophique, un fichier d'environ 230.000 fiches consacré au vocabulaire philosophique du moyen âge, se trouve désormais à l'Institut de Recherche et d'Histoire des Textes, où il est consultable à la Section latine.
A l'occasion de l'arrivée du Glossaire du latin philosophique à l'Institut de Recherche et d'Histoire des Textes et pour marquer un nouveau départ, nous organisons une journée d'étude consacrée à ce fichier, le jeudi 15 mai 2008, à l'IRHT, 40 avenue d'Iéna, 75016 Paris.
Programme:
9.00-9.30 Accueil des participants
9.30 introduction par Louis Holtz
9.40-10.20 Jacqueline Hamesse, Le « Glossaire du latin philosophique médiéval » : histoire, buts et utilization
10.20-11.00 Anne Grondeux, Parler de grammaire en philosophie : l'enrichissement du vocabulaire médiolatin de la pensée grammatical
pause
11.10-11.50 Alfonso Maierù, Sur la « suppositio vaga » au XIIIe siècle
11.50-12.30 Charles Burnett, The Enrichment of Latin philosophical vocabulary through translations from Arabic
déjeuner
14.00-14.40 Ruedi Imbach, Experiri et experiential chez Albert le Grand et Thomas d'Aquin
14.40-15.20 Monica Calma, La "rhetorica viatoris » dans les commentaires des Sentences au XIVe siècle
15.20-16.00 Ana Gómez Rabal, Exemples de termes philosophiques dans les glossaires médiévaux et leur survivance/ oubli chez un humaniste, Michel Servet
16.15-17.30 Table ronde : discussion générale sur l'avenir du Glossaire et une éventuelle version informatisée, avec la participation de Bruno Bon, Dragos Calma, Monica Calma, Anita Guerreau, Caroline Heid, Louis Holtz, Adriano Oliva, Jacqueline Hamesse, Jean-Pierre Rothschild, Mariken Teeuwen, Olga Weijers.
Inscriptions et renseignements : aoliva@nerim.net, olgaweijers@hotmail.com
Laura Arrington at Notre Dame points out that an extensive interview was conducted with the late Fr Servais Pinckaers, OP on the Thomas Instituut of Utrecht's website (main link), in the year 2000. You can find the interview directly here (by-passing the frames of the site).
Some terribly sad news, from Michael Sherwin, OP:
Dear Colleagues,
I just received the following note from Fr. Benoît-Dominique de La Soujeole, prior of the Albertinum:
"Fr. Pinckaers left us this evening at 2 AM to go receive the recompense of faithful servants. We were able to keep vigil at his side without interruption beginning Sunday afternoon, when his situation became grave."
Fr. de La Soujeole had taken him to the Cantonal Hospital on the Friday before Holy Week, because Fr. Pinckaers was looking more tired than usual. On Tuesday of Holy Week, he suffered an intestinal hematoma (internal bleeding). On Easter Sunday he suffered a heart attack, and had another one on Saturday, April 4th. Throughout it all, Fr. Pinckaers maintained his good humor and a spirit of confidence in the Lord.
This is a sad day for us, but a happy day for Servais.
Pax,
P. Michael Sherwin, o.p
Pinckaers has left behind prodigious output, and a useful collection of his articles is available in English, from CUA Press.
John W. Carlson (Creighton University) has published a book for undergraduates on perennial philosophy (PDF). Here is CUA's blurb:
The Catholic University of America Press is pleased to announce publication of Understanding Our Being: Introduction to Speculative Philosophy in the Perennial Tradition by John W. Carlson.
In the encyclical Fides et ratio, Pope John Paul II called upon teachers of philosophy "to recover, in the flow of an enduringly valid philosophical tradition, the range of authentic wisdom and truth." Understanding Our Being responds to this call with a much-needed introduction to speculative philosophy.
Written as an undergraduate textbook, Understanding Our Being treats central topics about our knowledge of being, the being of the natural world, and, via the latter, being as such. It then treats the special character and implications of our human, personal being—in particular, our intellect, free choice, and reason-conditioned sociality. Finally, it considers God as Source and End of being and it discusses the "problem of evil" and the nature of religious faith.
In addition to presenting essential elements of the "perennial" philosophy, as developed in the tradition of Thomas Aquinas (especially as interpreted by Jacques Maritain and others), this book discusses contemporary challenges to the critical realist approach. These include scientism, historicism, and nihilism, as well as religious fideism. The author also encourages students to think for themselves, and he offers them resources to do so, via questions for reflection at the end of each part, a comprehensive bibliography, and a glossary of key philosophical terms.
More about the book can be found on the CUA website (link), or on Carlson's website.
Been wanting to know more about "Analytical Thomism"? The people at Ashgate Publishing have put out a book on the subject (link), and have provided PDF files of the book's Introduction and Table of Contents. With authors such as Hilary Putnam, Anthony J. Lisska, John C. Cahalan, Stephen L. Brock, and, of course, John Haldane (plus many more), it's bound to be about as effective an overview as one can get.
Okay, I know that Fr Dewan was my teacher in Toronto and all, so I might be expected to pay him filial homage now and again. But the fact is that it’s a good time to be Fr Dewan. He gave the Aquinas Lecture at Marquette University in 2007, and now Catholic University has not only recently published a collection of his essays on metaphysics (Form and Being: Studies in Thomistic Metaphysics [Washington, DC: CUA Press, 2006]—link), but they have also published a Festschrift in his honor: Wisdom’s Apprentice: Thomistic Essays in Honor of Lawrence Dewan, O.P. (PDF/link). Edited by Peter Kwasniewski of Wyoming Catholic College, here is the blurb:
Lawrence Dewan, O.P., has long graced the world of Thomistic scholarship with the impressive lucidity, depth, and comprehensiveness of his research on many facets of the Angelic Doctor’s legacy. A professor at the Collège Universitaire Dominicain in Ottawa and a member of the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas, his more than one hundred articles have brought him international renown as a foremost authority on metaphysics, natural philosophy, and ethics as well as on aspects of the work of John Capreolus, Albert the Great, Etienne Gilson, and Jacques Maritain, among others.
In Wisdom’s Apprentice, twelve distinguished scholars pay grateful homage to their friend and mentor in recognition of his extraordinary contributions to the study of the philosophia perennis. Prompted by the honoree’s seventy-fifth birthday in March 2007, this volume gathers incisive essays on a variety of key topics in the Thomist tradition.
The book is divided into four parts. Part I engages fundamental metaphysical issues, Jan Aertsen writing on truth as a transcendental, Stephen Brock and David Twetten on the doctrine of being, and J. L. A. West on supposit and nature. Part II contains essays on natural theology, with Ralph McInerny and Leslie Armour posing questions on the rational basis of man’s knowledge of God and Gregory Doolan showing how deliberately Aquinas integrates divine ideas into his doctrine of God. In Part III natural philosophy comes to the fore: Christopher Decaen expounds the impossibility of action at a distance, Jude Dougherty the relationship between physics and philosophy, and Ralph Nelson the influence of Bergson on an important difference between Gilson and Maritain. The two authors of Part IV address the world of man; Kevin Flannery argues that for Aristotle no less than for Aquinas acts can be good or bad in their very species and Heather McAdam Erb unfolds Aquinas’s views on interior peace, the foretaste of eternal life.
Catholic University of America Press has published a collection of Fr Martin Rhonheimer's essays, entitled The Perspective of the Acting Person: Essays in the Renewal of Thomistic Moral Philosophy (link/PDF). The volume was edited by William F. Murphy, Jr., of the Pontifical College Josephinum. Here's the blurb, thanks to CUA Press:
The Perspective of the Acting Person introduces readers to one of the most important and provocative thinkers in contemporary moral philosophy. In this collection of essays Martin Rhonheimer examines the central themes of natural law, moral action, and virtue emphasized by John Paul II's 1993 encyclical Veritatis Splendor. Rhonheimer's work follows the general direction taken by the encyclical through an almost unprecedented rigor of philosophical argumentation and level of engagement with both European and American scholarship.
Rhonheimer argues extensively, from the texts of Aquinas, against aspects of more traditional interpretations of the Angelic Doctor. He maintains that their deficiencies helped precipitate both the postconciliar crisis in moral theology and the rise of revisionist approaches. He addresses not only the central topics of natural law and moral action but also the reasonableness of Christian morality, the relation between nature and reason, and that between metaphysics and ethics. All are considered from the distinctively moral perspective of the agent. Rhonheimer also responds to critics of both Veritatis Splendor and his own work and critiques works by revisionist moral theologians.
The collection focuses on Rhonheimer's fundamental ethical theory, establishing the theoretical bases for his more applied works in areas such as sexual ethics, political philosophy, social ethics, and medical ethics. A detailed introduction by William F. Murphy, Jr., sketches Rhonheimer's intellectual biography and the development of his thought, and summarizes key content from the essays. Finally, a detailed bibliography of Rhonheimer's work is included, which further enhances the volume's value to moral philosophers and theologians.
Life can be full of coincidences. A couple weeks back, just in time for Palm Sunday, I scooted out of Milwaukee to Paris to work at the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF), trying to make some headway on my Paul of Hungary, OP, project (I’ll post more about that on my personal blog soon). It was a wonderful and intense five days.
My daily trip to the BnF took me from the Dominican convent at St. Jacques (home to the Saulchoir and the Leonine Commission) through the Ile de la Cité, along the Louvre, and then up to the old BnF (58, rue de Richelieu). Most afternoons I hiked back down to Notre Dame for a visit, and then caught the bus back to the convent. On Palm Sunday I was an outright tourist, and went to Sainte-Chapelle, and over to the Louvre—which I hadn’t gone to since the late-1970’s. Inside, among the many, many precious and informative objects, I came across a painting of St. Peter Martyr, OP, which I promptly snapped.
Today I was finally organizing the pictures I took while at Paris when it struck me: today is the day in the liturgical calendar when St. Peter of Verona suffered martyrdom (the Saturday following Easter, in the year 1252). I know this because of my reading of Donald Prudlo’s The Martyred Inquisitor: The Life and Cult of Peter of Verona (†1252) (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 2007) (link), which presents the first full modern biography of Peter’s life, death, and cult. If you’ve seen pictures of key Dominicans in European painting, you’ve seen pictures of Peter (usually with a split, bleeding head—he was killed by blows to the head with a farmer’s tool). Peter was the Dominican Order’s first martyr, his cult was encouraged throughout the Order, and Thomas Aquinas would surely have known about, and participated, in his cult.
The Ashgate website has a few PDF files you can download, key among which is Prudlo’s helpful Introduction to the work.
One of my teachers in Toronto, Walter Principe, C.S.B., had a long-standing interesting in St Thomas's "spirituality," worked on this topic, and published on it, until the very end of his life, in 1996.
Isn't life interesting? Another one of my other teachers, James Weisheipl, OP, wrote an article once insisting that St Thomas had no spirituality, to his credit!
Anyway, a nice overview of Fr Principe's thinking on Thomas's spirituality can be found on-line, on the Spirituality Today website. The article is entitled "Aquinas' Spirituality for Christ's Faithful Living in the World," Spirituality Today 44/2 (1992): 110-131 (link).
Every year I try to "scrape" the PDF file that the people at Western Michigan University put out for that year's Congress. Here are the papers directly on Aquinas for this year's Congress, plus some allied topics.
Yesterday I posted the homily that Fr James Farge, CSB, delivered at the wake service for Armand Maurer. Today I'm able to post the homily that Fr James McConica gave at the funeral proper (thanks, again, to Fr Teske):
HOMILY: Funeral Mass for Armand Maurer CSB
Cardinal Flahiff Centre, Toronto
Wednesday of Easter Week, 2008
Acts 3:1-10; Luke 24: 13-35
"That same hour they got up and returned to Jerusalem; and they found the eleven and their companions gathered together, who said, 'The Lord has risen indeed, and he has appeared to Simon!'"
Some time shortly after six in the morning of Holy Saturday, five days ago, Armand Maurer was called from his sleep to God. The journey was brief. On getting settled in his new quarters, where he was fondly reunited with his parents and many members of his family, he made his way soon as possible to Etienne Gilson, who was expecting him. Armand immediately inquired about the accuracy of a text he had been editing, an unpublished lecture once given in Montreal about the education of a philosopher, and recently discovered in a transcription that seems to pose an internal inconsistency in Gilson's argument.
This much is certain. More, I cannot say, except that nothing in heaven or on earth could shake Armand Maurer's focus on his life's work. As Father Farge reminded us last night, he was a philosopher to the end. He was truly in love with Wisdom.
For those of us who lived with Armand, there was something astonishingly familiar about the manner of his going. In his week in hospital the doctors could provide no diagnosis. Apart from his obvious weakness, there was no drama. It seemed to us that Armand did not so much die as – quietly - withdraw. So he has kept his Easter on another plane, and seems to be with us now as he was then: quiet, attentive, present, and at peace.
It is fitting that we should be gathered here to say goodbye in the light of Easter, especially on that day in Easter Week – still, in liturgy, on Easter Day – when we have the brilliant story of the journey to Emmaus and the gift of discipleship. Armand's pilgrimage has come to an end that is, for him, a new beginning. Nonetheless, his journey here must have been one that, over his lifetime, contained its own anxieties and disappointments. Whatever those may have been - and who now can say? – one thing is clear: he was supremely faithful to his vocation, and to his teachers: St Thomas, of course, and certainly Etienne Gilson. But he had another Master than St Thomas, or even Gilson. That Master was his rock.
Let us think for a moment of the disenchanted followers of Jesus in today's Gospel. Jesus, they lament, has failed to meet their expectations, and they complain sadly and unknowingly to him: "We had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel".
He stays with them patiently, teaching them, explaining to them how what had happened was entirely consistent with all that they had been taught to expect of the Messiah. They are intrigued, but that is not enough. They offer him hospitality: "Stay with us because it is almost evening and the day is now nearly over." This, it seems, is the condition finally needed by Jesus to reveal himself in his true nature. "When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized Jesus and he vanished from their sight."
Their joyful realization is followed by their return to the tiny community of the eleven in Jerusalem, who confirm the truth of their immense discovery: "The Lord has risen indeed, and he has appeared to Simon!" This passage may be the oldest text that we possess testifying to the Resurrection. It is the Gospel. Within it is contained the whole of our faith.
There are surely many journeys such as that to Emmaus, and many epiphanies of the Lord Jesus. Jesus reveals himself all of the time and in many ways, to those who give him hospitality, which is to say, to those who seek him, knowingly or not. And he does so through his presence in his devoted followers. Among the most important, and most potent formal means is that of teaching - always synonymous with the breaking of bread, the bread of wisdom, of the Word, to which Armand was so entirely devoted.
He was a great teacher, and that in a community dedicated to teaching in its many forms. His stature was revealed in his commanding grasp of the tradition, in his clarity of exposition, and in his sense of mission. A reviewer of his recent Festschrift called him, "one of the most outstanding historians of medieval philosophy of our time." For all of his gentleness of manner, he was also most demanding – I know whereof I speak, as I attended his seminar on Scotus and Ockham. He would not tolerate slackness or indifference in the all-important pursuit of truth.
In the early '70's, to a brash and very bright, determined student of the day who was keen to learn Aristotle but objected to studying Greek, Armand said with a shake of the head and a gentle smile: "Our way or the highway," and showed him the door. The student told me of this some years later. Of course he learned Greek, and his career since that day has been rooted in what he learned at the Institute, and the study of Aristotle.
Above all, Armand's devotion to the breaking open of the Word was not confined to the classroom. It showed also, and above all, in his nature: in his modesty and humility, his patience, his quiet dignity, his charity – who ever heard him utter a critical word? – and it showed in his delight in the arts, in literature, in nature, and quite simply, in all aspects of our human vocation, including its comedy. Some time ago a passer-by on Bay Street pressed a ten-dollar bill secretly into his pocket, evidently taking pity on this distinguished looking, frail old man. When he got home and realized what had happened, Armand was immensely amused and in no way disconcerted or abashed. It was part of la comédie humaine.
In the end, he showed us what it is to live and to be, in the light of the Resurrection, in the light of that commanding proclamation, "The Lord has risen indeed, and he has appeared to Simon!" Let us honour Armand's example, and conclude with the prayer we use on Easter day: "May the risen Lord breathe on our minds and open our eyes, that we may know him in the breaking of bread, and follow him in his risen life."
James McConica, csb
Under the direction of the Sacra Doctrina Project
