The Catholic Thing

By John Paul Royal

France, once the acknowledged cultural leader of the West, is experiencing what many French men and women describe as 'La Malaise' - the societal apprehension, unease, and disillusionment caused by a perceived sense of national decline and economic stagnation. For Americans interested in understanding this now prominent state of ennui and melancholy, Chantal Delsol's new book Prosperity and Torment in France offers a clear diagnosis of its ideological, intellectual, and spiritual roots.

Delsol, a prominent French Catholic writer, philosopher, and member of the Academie des Sciences Morales et Politiques of the Institut de France, reflects on the persistent paradoxes and pathologies undermining the French republican ideals of liberty, equality, and fraternity. Her compelling analysis draws from and modernizes critiques first put forward by Alexis de Tocqueville in The Old Regime and the Revolution, which detailed the conditions in France that led to the Revolution of 1789.

This short study, published by the University of Notre Dame Press and translated by Andrew Kelley, argues that despite France's enviable fortunes, it is a depressed country due to its unrealistic expectation of an earthly utopia. France has the "national riches of Germany, the social expenditures of Denmark, and the happiness of. . .Mexico." Daniel J. Mahoney, Claremont Institute senior fellow and professor emeritus at Assumption University, who has written extensively on French political thought, provides an insightful foreword placing Delsol's rich and provocative arguments in a broader historical and philosophical context.

Despite its rich cultural legacy, high living standards and a generous welfare state, Delsol contends that France fears "relegation" from a great national power to a middle-tier nation. While France considers its language, way of life, and social model to be without rival, many feel a sense of humiliation that its socialist governing system and social compact are inadequate, and must adapt in order to compete with the outside world.

Delsol traces these feelings of inadequacy and "torment" through manifold historical and cultural paradoxes. She discusses France's primacy as the "eldest daughter of the Church" starting from the baptism of Clovis, the barbarian king, in 496 AD. This primacy has been destroyed due to aggressive anti-clericalism and secularism, and replaced with being the "eldest daughter of revolution."

Delsol describes France's small, fervent Catholic community of young families (often among the elite class, surprisingly) which provides a glimmer of hope for the future. But France is now the most nonreligious country in Europe. According to Delsol, this has resulted in a search for substitute religions, renewed paganism, and especially worshipers of Gaia and ecology. The laws, behaviors, and morals inspired by Christianity essentially no longer exist in France.

In contrast, the author describes the "tortuous, hypocritical" support given to Islam by French media and intellectuals, even often-times radical Arab-Muslim immigrants. This stems from "colonialist" guilt, which undermines French ideas of unity and fraternity, and produces "a kind of redemptive self-flagellation."

The statistics are startling: according to a 2015 survey, nearly a third of young Muslims in France prefer Sharialaw to French law. In the near future, Arab-Muslims will represent one in four inhabitants. Every two weeks, a new mosque opens while a church closes; and many cities in France already appear more Arab-Muslim than French, with large neighborhoods that police dare not enter. A 2023 study found that 87 percent of the French said they feared civil war as a result of Islamic fundamentalism and liberal immigration policy.

Assimilation and integration are common problems across much of the West, especially in relation to Muslim communities. Delsol identifies the Achilles heel of French intellectuals: "We believed that religion w...

By Fr. Peter M. J. Stravinskas

The dogma of Mary's Assumption, celebrated on August 15, teaches that the Lord's Mother was taken into Heaven, body and soul, since no decay should touch the body of her who bore the Messiah. Christians believe "in the resurrection of the body." And the doctrine of the Assumption merely asserts God's acknowledgment of Mary's worthiness to anticipate (from the earth-bound perspective of human time) the fullness of salvation as both Mother of Christ and Mother of the Church.

This has both a Christological and an ecclesiological dimension. Mary's reward is in virtue of her divine maternity. It likewise points toward the resurrection of the dead, which is the hope of the whole Church. Mary's privileges are promises. What God has done for her, He is willing to do for all members of His Son's Church.

Mary's experience is unique only from the temporal point of view. The experience of salvation (her Immaculate Conception) and the experience of resurrection (her Assumption) are possible for all believers. The difference is that her possession of these gifts is present and real, while ours is in the future.

In the Risen Christ and the Assumed Virgin, both bodily present in Heaven, we behold the fullness of redeemed humanity. Male and female, the New Adam and the New Eve, stand as signs of hope for us all.

While the doctrine of Mary's bodily Assumption was only defined as a dogma by the Venerable Pope Pius XII in 1950, he didn't create a new teaching but proclaimed what had always been held from time immemorial.

The reason, prompted by the Holy Spirit, may be that modern man is in great need of hope, given the tragic wars of the twentieth century, with their unspeakable assaults on human life and dignity. This Solemnity is truly a celebration of hope reminding us that God rewards faithfulness.

Mary's life of joyful service has been taken up into the risen life of Heaven. Like a good mother, as she waits for us to reach the finish line, she prays for us. Like good children, we try to imitate her example, hoping to be found worthy of that eternal home where God is "all in all." (1 Corinthians 15:28)

For anyone who finds this dogma difficult to accept, I offer two responses.

First, if Elijah could be taken up to Heaven in a whirlwind, without dying (see 2 Kings 2), why not the Mother of the Word Incarnate? Indeed, there is even a pious tradition among some Jews that Moses was also assumed into Heaven.

St. John Henry Cardinal Newman, very humanly and tenderly suggests:

One reason for believing in Our Lady's Assumption is that her Divine Son loved her too much to let her body remain in the grave. A second reason - that now before us - is this, that she was not only dear to the Lord as a mother is dear to a son, but also that she was so transcendently holy, so full, so overflowing with grace. Adam and Eve were created upright and sinless, and had a large measure of God's grace bestowed upon them; and, in consequence, their bodies would never have crumbled into dust, had they not sinned; upon which it was said to them, "Dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return." If Eve, the beautiful daughter of God, never would have become dust and ashes unless she had sinned, shall we not say that Mary, having never sinned, retained the gift which Eve by sinning lost? . . .Was her comeliness to be turned into corruption, and her fine gold to become dim, without reason assigned? Impossible. ("Sancta Dei Genetrix")

Second, every major Protestant Reformer accepted this event as self-evident. So meaningful a doctrine was this to Martin Luther that his burial chamber in the Wittenberg church, on whose door he had posted his ninety-five theses, was adorned with Peter Vischer's 1521 sculpture of the Coronation of the Virgin, with a Latin inscription for the feast of the Assumption: "The Queen, whose feast this is, is taken to her throne on high, escorted by the angelic choirs, and the Son Himself places His Mother in the high...

Michael Pakaluk

How can it be that, simply from viewing a picture of someone, you can form a conviction that he is a saint? The conviction appears to be a mere intuition, but later you discover that it is well-grounded. So it was for me and Maximilian Kolbe. Before he was famous, upon seeing his picture in a parish newspaper - the familiar one, where he has his long beard and is in his habit - a heartfelt conviction arose in me that I should follow this man, because he was one of the "holy ones." And so I did follow him, and learned about his remarkable death and extraordinary life.

You probably know the basic facts of his death. Like other religious in Poland, he was arrested and sent to Auschwitz. There, a prisoner escaped, and the concentration camp guards, following their usual mode of reprisal, were going to put ten innocent prisoners to death, through starvation in the notorious torture box, the "Hunger Bunker." One unfortunate man, when he was picked out of the lineup, shouted out, "My wife, my children!"

At that moment, Kolbe, standing nearby, came forward, identified himself as a Catholic priest, and said that he would take the man's place. The deputy camp-commander Karl Fritzsch agreed, and Kolbe went to the Hunger Bunker, spending the next several days encouraging the men there with prayers and hymns. He did not starve to death in the allotted time, so he had to be killed with an injection of carbolic acid.

Kolbe's life as an apostle in Poland and Japan, building up the Knights of the Immaculata, and teaching Catholic truth, was just as extraordinary, although quietly so. But here I want to focus on his death and its meaning.

If you have any doubts about the continuing power of Kolbe's death to inspire, I urge you to look into, and support if you wish, a new film about him, cleverly entitled Triumph of the Heart. The film's writer and director, Anthony d'Ambrosio, tells how he turned to Kolbe when he was suffering from a severe illness:

The darkness closed in, and I lost my faith. I didn't want to live anymore. But then I remembered Kolbe. . . .I thought about how he forged a brotherhood in that darkness, how he transformed despair into hope. Slowly, a light began to break through. Kolbe's story gave me a way forward, and this film is my way of sharing that light with the world.

But why does his death inspire? How does the self-sacrifice of one holy man "triumph" over the millions of murders by the Nazis?

When I studied Kolbe's cause, I found that one of the witnesses had commented that it was a miracle that Deputy Commander Fritzsch even let Kolbe take the place of the other man. It would have been more characteristic of him to mock Kolbe's idealism by sending him to the Hunger Bunker as an 11th man.

It was a miracle, too, I suppose, that a prisoner had escaped from Auschwitz (a rare occurrence) just when Kolbe was there; that the ten unfortunates were chosen from among Kolbe's group; that Kolbe happened to be standing right there; that Kolbe's words were even witnessed; that anyone lived to be able to give an account.

That's to say, we think of Kolbe's deed as an heroic act, as it was, but more fundamentally it was his acceptance of a gift, to play a role and to be a clear witness to a truth. When Kolbe was a child, the Virgin Mary appeared to him and held out two crowns, asking which he would pick, the white crown of holy purity, or the red crown of bloody martyrdom. And Kolbe replied that he would like both.

Which brings in yet another miracle about the whole thing, which is that the Nazis decided to inject him with carbolic acid on August 14, 1944, the vigil of the Assumption, so that his dies natalis, it turns out, was as closely placed to a great solemnity of Our Lady as possible.

And yet another miracle is that the man whom Kolbe saved (Franciszek Gajowniczek) survived Auschwitz and lived long enough to witness, as an 80-year-old man, Kolbe's canonization by St. Pope John Paul II in St. Peter's Square on...

by Francis X. Maier.

Small books can carry big ideas. Simple but important ones. An obvious example, first published in hardback edition in 1948 with barely 190 pages, is Richard Weaver's Ideas Have Consequences. It's a little work of genius. The title says it all. But just to be clear: Good-sounding bad ideas - like government-owned grocery stores; not that anyone rational would suggest such a thing - can have unhappy results. As Weaver knew firsthand, from living in it, the 20th century was littered with great ideas, their consequences, and too often their casualties. Consider the blessings of Lenin and Pol Pot.

A similar small book, published exactly 60 years later, is especially timely right now. Eric Cohen's In the Shadow of Progress (2008) is a slim volume, easily overlooked. But it has an outsized measure of wisdom on what it means to be human in an age dominated by science, technology, and the idea - in effect, the cult - of progress. Cohen, founder of the New Atlantis journal and executive director of the Tikvah Fund, has a gift for blending serious content with a pleasing style. So it's a book that should be read by anyone who wants to understand the animating spirit of our current culture, and its implications.

More on that in a moment. First, some fun facts.

Remember the confident lectures we heard from so many expert sources during the Obama-Trump1-Biden years telling us that "science is real" - as opposed, one would reasonably conclude, to things like religious belief and its concerns? Remember all the urgings to "follow the science," to not get bogged down in fruitless bioethical bickering on vital research matters? Remember the scientific gravitas and the social bullying it licensed, brought to bear in enforcing the COVID lockdown?

Yes, it was awkward when all those old people died in quarantine. Also when much of the "science" behind the whole lockdown affair unraveled. But hey, mistakes happen, and apologies get lost in the shuffle.

I mention this because our culture's golden-calf attitude toward science, and the delusions and professional ambitions it engenders, need some adjustment.

On August 5, the Wall Street Journal reported that "a growing tide of fake papers is flooding the scientific record and proliferating faster than current checks can rid them from the system." An entire industry has grown up over the past two decades involving "businesses or individuals that charge fees to publish fake studies in legitimate journals under the names of desperate scientists whose careers depend on their publishing record."

One study found more than 32,000 fake scientific papers from nearly every scientific journal. The rate of fake-paper generation roughly doubled every 18 months between 2016 and 2020. As a result, publishers "have been forced to retract hundreds of papers at once, and in some cases shut down journals."

Artificial intelligence actually compounds the problem "because large language models [consume] scientific literature without discriminating between legitimate and fraudulent papers." The pervasive use of search engines and related AI tools then "muddies the waters of science and scientific understanding." It also leads to a range of other issues.

The same Wall Street Journal later reported that "the very qualities that make AI chatbots appealing - they always listen, never judge, and tell you what you want to hear - can also make them dangerous. Especially for autistic people." It noted that "autistic people, who often have a black and white way of thinking and can fixate on particular topics, are especially vulnerable" to AI-driven conversations that can literally never end.

Finally, an August 7 Journal article referenced "a case where a woman spent tens of thousands of dollars to pursue a project that [a] chatbot told her would save humanity." People have cut off contact with their family on the advice of chatbots. One chatbot veteran noted that "some people think they're the messiah, they're...

by Brad Miner.

They say of Julius II (pope from 1502 to 1513) that he did not choose his papal name in honor of his illustrious predecessor Julius I of some 1150 years earlier, but because of his esteem for Julius Caesar (100-44 BC). Maybe, although the pope's birth name was Giuliano della Rovere, and Giuliano is a close cognate: Iulius in Latin and Giulio in Italian.

As much as any other pope, Julius II is responsible for bringing great art to the Vatican. The Sistine Chapel was built at the behest of Pope Sixtus IV, after whom it's named, but it was Julius II who hired Michelangelo to decorate its ceiling and altar backdrop. The pope also brought in other esteemed Renaissance artists, among them Raphael.

Now, after a decade of restoration, the Vatican has reopened the Apostolic Palace's Hall of Constantine (Sala di Costantino). The Hall is one of four rooms in the Palace that Julius II commissioned Raphael to decorate with frescoes. Collectively, they are known as the Raphael Rooms (Stanze di Raffaello).

Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino was born in 1483. His father, Giovanni Santi, was also a painter, and Raphael trained with him and another very fine artist, Pietro Perugino, who is best known for his The Delivery of the Keys (Sistine Chapel, 1481-82), completed just before his future student was born. (One may see similarities between that work and Raphael's The School of Athens, 1509-11, also in the Apostolic Palace).

We know Giovanni Santi and Perugino were fine teachers, because Raphael was considered a master at 17. At the behest of Julius II, Raphael came to Rome in 1508, where, until his death, he worked almost side by side with the great Michelangelo.

They were not friends, however. Michelangelo considered Raphael a plagiarist, a libertine, and a dilettante. There's no question Michelangelo believed that Raphael imitated him. In one letter, the older man wrote that "all he had in art, he got from me." That seems unlikely and an insult to Giovanni Santi and Perugino.

But why honor a Roman emperor in the Apostolic Palace? Because it was Constantine I who knocked down the barrier between his City of Man and Christ's City of God. Christians went from being persecuted by Rome's pagan emperors to being protected by Constantine's Edict of Milan (313), allowing Christian worship to flourish.

Thus, we see depicted in the Hall of Constantine the highlights of the emperor's life: The Vision of the Cross, The Battle of the Milvian Bridge, The Baptism of Constantine, and The Donation of Rome.

Briefly: In the 4th century, Rome had divided leadership that led to armed conflict. On the eve of a battle in 312 that would take place at Rome's Ponte Milvio (still standing today), the then-pagan Constantine had a vision of the Cross. In his version of this miraculous event, Raphael did not use the famous Latin words In Hoc Signo Vinces ("in this sign conquer") but its Greek equivalent, Εν τούτῳ νίκα.

The next painting shows the battle itself:

The battle won and the vision having been confirmed, Constantine becomes a Christian through baptism:

The final painting is of the emperor ceding temporal power to the pope:

The pope in Constantine's time was Sylvester I, who is credited in the fresco with baptizing the emperor, but that's untrue. The rite was likely administered by Eusebius of Nicomedia, an Arian priest, not to be confused with Eusebius of Caesarea.

What the newly converted Constantine might have thought when someone alerted him to the unorthodox beliefs of the Arians (rejection of the Trinity and the divinity of Christ), we can't know. Perhaps the heresy of Arius seemed reasonable to the emperor.

But somebody put a bug in the emperor's ear, which is why he convened the Council of Nicaea in 325, which gave us the Creed, and Arius a slap in the face, although only figuratively. (And that's a shame because the image of Nicholas of Myra - THE St. Nicholas of Christmas fame - hauling off and striking Arius is such a good one, and es...

by Robert Royal.

Is there any sane person on earth who loves nuclear bombs? As such? If so, I've never met one. And I've certainly never encountered any good argument for them, as such. Ronald Reagan, the American president whom I heard many Europeans back in the day describe as a warmongering "cowboy," hated nukes and seriously negotiated with the Soviets to limit their spread. His "Star Wars" plans were defensive not offensive, however much the mere notion of missile defense inspired not only that derisive label, but also fear and loathing among the professional nuclear gamers. Nukes are potentially apocalyptic. Would that we could ban them.

But we dare not. When Winston Churchill heard of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, he remarked that henceforth, safety would be the "sturdy child of terror." Meaning nations with such weapons would, out of necessity, deter one another. Commenters less experienced in worldly affairs often wished that nukes could be simply made to go away. Church figures, including the American bishops, have regularly opined on the immorality of nuclear war - sometimes even the immorality of the mere possession of such weapons.

Which brings us to the "Pilgrimage of Peace" to Japan a few days ago by four American bishops - Chicago Cardinal Blase Cupich, Seattle Archbishop Paul Etienne, Santa Fe Archbishop John Wester, and Washington's Cardinal Robert McElroy - for the 80th anniversary of America's nuclear attacks in World War II.

Cardinal Cupich rightly called for a return to the classic just war criterion on not attacking civilian populations and limiting warfare to combatants. Cardinal McElroy called for the abolition of nuclear weapons and cited Pope Francis that nuclear deterrence "is not a step on the road to nuclear disarmament but a morass." Indeed, that's true, but there are worse things than morasses, such as tyrannical states having weapons that they are not afraid to use because there is no reason not to.

So even as Church officials expound such worthy ideals - which they do often - in a wider view, unless there are achievable alternatives, their remarks are overly idealistic, bordering on irresponsible and even in a way themselves immoral. The Church, when it speaks of public affairs - which should be infrequently and very carefully - has to take into account that we live in a fallen world (which is part of its reason for being) after all. And in a fallen world, deadly threats, even man-made potential for global apocalypses, have to be handled carefully, calmly, but firmly.

I regard Pope Leo XIV, so far, as a man who typically displays those very traits. He hasn't been making himself a public spectacle by injecting himself into every public issue. And his demeanor is sober and thoughtful. So it was unfortunate to see that he, too, weighed in on the question of nuclear arms in what seems a simply unrealistic way.

Last week, he called for nuclear disarmament - again a goal devoutly to be pursued: "True peace demands the courageous laying down of weapons - especially those with the power to cause an indescribable catastrophe. . . .Nuclear arms offend our shared humanity and also betray the dignity of creation, whose harmony we are called to safeguard."

A worthy ideal and a proper warning.

But how would you get from here to there? Diplomacy? At the very least, it would call for much more rational world leaders than we have, or are likely to have. And it would mean those non-existent world leaders would all have to trust one another at the same time, and to the same degree such that they would be willing to make their nations vulnerable by disarming. Does that sound remotely possible given Putin, the Chinese Communist Party, the radical Hinduism of today's India, not to mention Pakistan, Israel, North Korea, Iran? We always hope for newer and better leaders, but does world history give us any reason to believe that we would see a whole crop of such philosopher-kings, simultaneously, in ever...

by John M. Grondelski.

In a recent essay, I defended Pope St. John Paul II's emphasis on Jesus Christ as the revelation of man to himself. If the human person wants to know what he is supposed to be, he needs to look to Christ and the Blessed Virgin Mary, who reveal what humanity without sin should look like.

John Paul's pontificate focused on Christian humanism because he rightly recognized that the problem of man was the problem of our times. No Archbishop whose archdiocese was under Soviet occupation (his included Auschwitz-Birkenau) could deny that.

I fear, however, that there's a certain pushback in some traditionalist Catholic circles that this humanistic focus is somehow inimical to "true" religion. Yes, there is always the danger of excessive anthropocentrism in religion but, as Wojtyła insisted, the degree to which man lives as God wills and the degree to which he lives an authentically human life proceed inseparably in tandem. God and man are not in "either/or" relationship. Arguably, one can maintain that removing either from the equation distorts theology.

Recently discussing the centennial of the famous Scopes ("monkey") trial, I asked whether the real question at stake was not one of "science v. religion" but an anthropological one: Who is man?

For the fundamentalists, man seemed to be the creature God placed into a rapidly constructed but essentially finished Paradise. In other words, the idea of man as "co-creator" is missing. For the evolutionists, man seemed to be just another species, an advanced monkey with nothing exceptional about him.

Neither side recognized man as co-creator, given dominion by God by virtue of his being made in the divine image and likeness, charged with advancing the world to the glory of God through his procreation and his work.

As good Protestants, the fundamentalists seemed to be boxed into a ready-made and finished universe, not just because that's how they read Genesis but because of their theological assumptions: an unfinished world in which man advances Creation challenges the classical Protestant antinomy of God's grace never desiring (and perhaps even tainted by) human works.

Creation, then, seen almost exclusively as a finished divine product, seems a possible way of paving the path to Deism: does Deism, with its narrowed notion of the Deity, not only take God essentially out of the picture, but man, too? It seems human co-creatorship is rendered superfluous by the superbly designed cosmic clock that never needs winding, adjusts itself, and keeps on ticking. In that sense, did Protestantism's negation of human acts pave the way to the divinely absent watchmaker?

In short, it seems that cutting either side out of the picture - God or man - adversely affects our understanding of both. With God absent from His Creation, one loses awareness of the dynamism of Creation: that God not only makes but constantly sustains Creation and remains active in it. Creation instead becomes a static event that happened, not one that continues to happen.

That leads, of course, to the error Joseph Ratzinger points out in The Divine Project: the idea that Creation is separable from salvation, as if Creation has no role to play in salvation history.

With creation "back then" and the cancellation of Providence as a result, it seems we are on a straight path to morally therapeutic deism - a "god" who offers nice ethical teachings designed to make us feel good but who otherwise can be kept to the side, like a fire extinguisher in a box, "break glass when needed." You end up with Dostoyevsky's warning that without God everything is permitted.

The same might be said of the nominalism that Protestantism perpetuated. Nominalism rendered morality an act of God's omnipotent will. It's not that God called X "good" or Y "evil" because they were; they were "good" or "evil" because God said so. Is morality prior even to God's declaration (Catholic), or does God's declaration define the morality (Protestant)?

...

Edith Stein and the Soul of a Woman

Richard A. Spinello

Controversies continue over the nature and role of women as modern society edges ever closer to embracing an androgynous anthropology. During the last Olympic Games, spectators were exposed to the surreal exhibition of biological males pummeling women boxers. Those who protested were informed that there is no scientific way to differentiate men from women.

The secular mentality has lost sight of what it means to be a woman. There are many reasons for this tragic exit of womanhood, but foremost among them is the negation of transcendence, which obscures the light that shines forth about the truth of our humanity. As Carrie Gress has pointed out, the poisonous influence of anti-Christian feminism has led to the "end of woman" because we have no answers to the question of what makes a woman a woman.

On this feast day of Edith Stein, Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, it is fitting that we consult her work on these issues because of its reflective openness to the depths of human existence. If we want to reconstruct the idea of womanhood, her daring and intelligent book Woman is an optimal starting point.

The details of her life are well-known. She was a brilliant Jewish atheist who studied philosophy under the famous phenomenologist, Edmund Husserl. She converted to Catholicism after reading the autobiography of St. Theresa of Avila. Several years later she became a Carmelite nun. When the Nazis targeted Jewish converts in Holland, she was sent to Auschwitz, where she was executed on August 9, 1942.

After her dramatic conversion, she encountered the metaphysics of St. Thomas Aquinas, which made a deep impression on her philosophical development. She was not a Thomist in the strict sense, but her magnum opus, Finite and Eternal Being, is certainly Thomistically inspired. She found an original way to harmonize the modern philosophy of phenomenology with the medieval philosophy of Thomism.

Stein follows Aquinas by endorsing a hylomorphic anthropology, an old idea with an Aristotelian pedigree: the person is a natural and indivisible unity of a material body and a spiritual soul. The soul penetrates the body as it unifies all the different physical and spiritual aspects of each person.

In Woman, Stein's main objective is to demonstrate the distinctive nature of womanhood that derives not just from the body but also from the soul. One's sex is determined by the body's given order informed by the soul, which comes into existence as already either male or female. Sexual differences, therefore, represent two irreducible ways of being a living, personal substance.

In declaring that there is a difference between the male and female soul, Stein parts company with Aquinas for whom the soul was the same for every member of the human species. For Aquinas, the soul becomes differentiated once it is united with a sexed body. But for Stein, the soul is different before it unites with and animates a male or female body, so that a person is feminine not just because of her body but also because of her soul.

Thus, Stein speaks about a "double species" because of the immutable differences between man and woman. Stein's subtle anthropological vision has implications for understanding how egregiously transgender ideology undermines the profound body-soul unity of the human person.

Transgenderism is a rebellion against the finitude that permeates our being. As Stein insists, no one is the source of her own existence, but rather finds oneself as a being created by God, either male or female. If Edith Stein is right, both the body and the soul impose certain natural constraints on our choices and aspirations. Also, proponents of transgenderism would be asking us to believe that God blundered when he infused a female soul into a male body.

Stein's anthropology becomes the foundation for her reflections on the nature of woman. Because they possess a different soul, women are different in kind from ...

by David Warren.

According to Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805), sensuous man must pass through aesthetic experience, which is physical, in order to reach the conditions of reason and morality.

Let us begin by noting that Schiller was not a huckster for democracy. Though he can be mysterious, at least to me, and sometimes cloyingly abstract, he nevertheless imagines that what makes a man is not that he exists as a cipher for the purpose of counting. Schiller does not, for instance, discount reason and faith. If the more numerous faction declares that something is "right," he is unimpressed. What was wrong is still wrong.

Like the Founding Fathers of America, he is, in fact, suspicious of democracy. Right and wrong are discernible in nature. The republic that God smiles upon will be favorable to the right, and will advance righteous interests. It will not be indifferent to the making of good men. It will be naturally opposed to men who are evil. It will be at the service of men who are free.

Being free, therefore, does not mean simply having the vote. It rather means not having a vote for the purpose of creating our rational and moral realities. It means rather leaving to God - or to "The Absolute" - what is in God's realm.

And this means we must become, as it were, art students, to discover what is true. We must, by an effort that is not indifferent, allow ourselves to be restored to the condition of being truly human; to being Man among Men.

Schiller, of course, wrote about this in an aspirational way. The habit of participating in his poetry of "joy" has continued over the intervening centuries, with Beethoven's help.

Though he became a professor of philosophy (and history) at Jena, he was never a professional philosopher in the contemporary meaning; he does not use words with mechanical precision. He was one of the great amateur philosophers, like Plato, Aristotle, Saint Thomas, and the rest.

His interest was in the truth, and in finding a way to live it (in the moments when he was not being a degenerate himself). Mostly, he wished to escape being what Fichte would call a "pure Object," pushed about by material causes. Instead, he wished to be pushed about by the Absolute, Schiller's eccentric name for God the Father.

And it was in his quest for an education that would make men human - in the highest sense - that he, I think inevitably, fell back upon the idea of "education through art." This had been expounded by Plato in The Republic (books III and VII), in The Laws, and in Protagoras.

Schiller's contribution was "On the Aesthetic Education of Man," a series of 27 letters. The best modern "textbook" is by Sir Herbert Read: Education Through Art.

It is curious, to my mind, that all the other educational theories largely ignore this dimension, in favor of things that I consider to be irrelevant.

They like to teach art, in a technical, "how to" sort of way, but as most artists of all the various arts realize, the subject cannot be taught. Indeed, most topics, including engineering and veterinary medicine, cannot be taught. One learns what can be learnt, not from bureaucrats, but by example.

This rolls in the train of freedom and of godliness. A man (or woman, as we now say) discovers things by throwing himself in; by "going with God," as my father (a sometime teacher) used to put it. And by "mimesis," as the Greeks understood this term.

One learns in the course of breathing, and one is educated by what one becomes - educated, well or poorly. As an inspiring university professor once told me, when I asked if his best handful of students had anything in common: "All, without exception, were self-educated."

Only the deadbeats had to be "taught," and none of the many hundreds gained much by it.

Reason and faith, which are background to morality, are communicated in one's encounter with truth. This begins with first strange perceptions, and by means of that holy humility that is one's guide beyond the reach of schools. Art forms...

by Stephen P. White.

The dog days of summer are upon us. Here in the Virginia suburbs of Washington, where I live, the heat and humidity have a way of hitting full strength just as many of us leave for summer vacations.

One of the downsides of leaving town at the height of summer is that weeds grow best when you're not looking. What was a reasonably manicured lawn or garden can be transformed into a primordial jungle after just a week or two of neglect.

Still, it is good to get away with the family for a little rest and relaxation. We were lucky enough to spend five days on the sandy shores of Lake Michigan, where the sunsets are glorious and the evening breezes gentle and cool. There one sleeps with the windows open, even in late July, and the most stressful decision of the day is deciding whether to garnish one's martini with an olive or with a twist.

Even the most glorious vacation eventually comes to an end. The demands of ordinary life beckon. It's not too long before the question that has been lurking in the back of one's mind - "How many unread emails are stacking up in my inbox?" - lurches to the fore, disrupting the peace of mind and robbing the sand and sun and even the gin of their delicious charms. Besides, school starts again in just a few weeks. And the garden weeds are surely running amok.

Sooner or later, one's attention must turn to what comes next, after the respite and rejuvenation of the holiday.

Which brings us to the feast the Church celebrated yesterday: the Feast of the Transfiguration.

It is not often that the veil of the world is pulled back, and the glory of God is made visible to human eyes. We are occasionally afforded hints and whispers, as in the glory of a sunset or a mountain vista, which are like Creator's glory by analogy.

Many of us experience, if rarely, profound and intense moments of grace. I certainly have. Such moments can be utterly transformative, but the moment itself does not last. As St. Paul (himself no stranger to such experiences of grace) writes, "For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face." We rely on faith to behold what the senses cannot: Praestet fides supplementum sensuum defectui.

On that mountain, Peter, James, and John saw. They beheld Jesus there, in his glory, speaking with Moses and Elijah. And Peter, being Peter, wants to remain on the mountain. He does not want to relinquish the sight before his eyes. St. Augustine, in his inimitable way, captures Peter's mindset:

Peter sees this, and as a man savoring the things of men says, "Lord, it is good for us to be here." He had been wearied with the multitude, he had found now the mountain's solitude; there he had Christ the Bread of the soul. What! should he depart thence again to travail and pains. . . .He wished well for himself; and so he added, "If You will, let us make here three tabernacles; one for You, and one for Moses, and one for Elias." To this the Lord made no answer; but notwithstanding Peter was answered. "For while he yet spoke, a bright cloud came, and overshadowed them." He desired three tabernacles; the heavenly answer showed him that we have One, which human judgment desired to divide. Christ, the Word of God, the Word of God in the Law, the Word in the Prophets.

St. Augustine continues, as though cajoling Peter:

Come down, Peter: you were desiring to rest on the mount; come down, "preach the word, be instant in season, out of season, reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine." Endure, labor hard, bear your measure of torture; that you may possess what is meant by the white raiment of the Lord, through the brightness and the beauty of an upright laboring in charity.

No. They would not remain on the mountain. They had seen Christ transfigured, been shrouded in the cloud of glory and heard the voice of the Father: "This is my chosen Son; listen to him." But that moment of grace was over. It had been afforded the disciples to strengthen them for what was to come.

J...